Totalitarianism

Joseph Stalin(left),leaderof theSoviet Union,andAdolf Hitler(right),leaderof theGerman Reich—considered prototypical dictators of totalitarian regimes

Totalitarianismis apolitical systemand aform of governmentthat prohibits opposition political parties, disregards and outlaws the political claims of individual and group opposition to the state, and controls thepublic sphereand theprivate sphereof society. In the field ofpolitical science,totalitarianism is the extreme form ofauthoritarianism,wherein allsocio-political poweris held by adictator,who also controls the national politics and the peoples of the nation with continual propaganda campaigns that are broadcast by state-controlled and by friendly privatemass communications media.

The totalitarian government uses ideology to control most aspects of human life, such as thepolitical economyof the country, the system of education, the arts, the sciences, and the private-lifemoralityof the citizens.In the exercise of socio-political power, the difference between a totalitarian régime of government and an authoritarian régime of government is one of degree; whereas totalitarianism features acharismatic dictatorand a fixedworldview,authoritarianism only features a dictator who holds power for the sake of holding power, and is supported, either jointly or individually, by amilitary juntaand by the socio-economic elites who are theruling classof the country.

Definitions

Contemporary background

Modern political science catalogues three régimes of government: (i) the democratic, (ii) the authoritarian, and (iii) the totalitarian.Varying by political culture, the functional characteristics of the totalitarian régime of government are:political repressionof all opposition (individual and collective); acult of personalityabout The Leader; officialeconomic interventionism(controlled wages and prices); official censorship of all mass communication media (the press, textbooks, cinema, television, radio, internet); officialmass surveillance-policing of public places; andstate terrorism.In the essay "Democide in Totalitarian States: Mortacracies and Megamurderers" (1994) the American political scientistRudolph Rummelsaid that:

Totalitarian dictator: The politicianKim Il Sungwas the founding-father and leader (r. 1948–1994) of theDemocratic Peoples Republic of Korea,acommunisttotalitarian state based on the USSR.

There is much confusion about what is meant bytotalitarianin the literature, including the denial that such [political] systems even exist. I define atotalitarian stateas one with a system of government that is unlimited, [either]constitutionallyor by countervailing powers in society (such as by a Church, rural gentry, labor unions, or regional powers); is not held responsible to the public by periodicsecretand competitive elections; and employs its unlimited power to control all aspects of society, including the family, religion, education, business, private property, and social relationships. UnderStalin,theSoviet Unionwas thus totalitarian, as wasMao'sChina,Pol Pot'sCambodia,Hitler'sGermany,andU Ne Win'sBurma.

Totalitarianism is, then, a political ideology for which a totalitarian government is the agency for realizing its ends. Thus, totalitarianism characterizes such ideologies asstate socialism(as inBurma),Marxism–Leninismas in formerEast Germany,andNazism.Even revolutionary MuslimIran,since theoverthrow of the Shah in 1978–79has been totalitarian—here totalitarianism was married toMuslim fundamentalism.In short, totalitarianism is the ideology of absolute power. State socialism,Communism,Nazism,fascism,and Muslim fundamentalism have been some of its recent raiments. Totalitarian governments have been its agency. The state, with its international legal sovereignty and independence, has been its base. As will be pointed out,mortacracyis the result.

Degree of control

In exercising the power of government upon a society, the application of an officialdominant ideologydifferentiates theworldviewof the totalitarian régime from the worldview of the authoritarian régime, which is "only concerned with political power, and, as long as [government power] is not contested, [the authoritarian government] gives society a certain degree of liberty."Having no ideology to propagate, the politically secular authoritarian government "does not attempt to change the world and human nature",whereas the "totalitarian government seeks to completely control the thoughts and actions of its citizens",by way of an official "totalist ideology, a [political] party reinforced by asecret police,andmonopolistic controlof industrialmass society."

Historical background

From the right-wing perspective, the social phenomenon of political totalitarianism is a product ofModernism,which the philosopherKarl Poppersaid originated fromhumanist philosophy;from theRepublic(res publica) proposed byPlatoinAncient Greece,fromHegel's conception ofthe Stateas a polity of peoples, and from thepolitical economyofKarl Marxin the 19th century—yet historians and philosophers of those periods dispute the historiographic accuracy of Popper's 20th-century interpretation and delineation of the historical origins of totalitarianism, because the ancient Greek philosopher Plato did not invent themodern State.

In the early 20th century,Giovanni GentileproposedItalian Fascismas a political ideology with a philosophy that is "totalitarian, and [that] the Fascist State—a synthesis and a unity inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people".In 1920s Germany, during theWeimar Republic(1918–1933), the Nazi juristCarl Schmittintegrated Gentile's Fascist philosophy of united national purpose to the supreme-leader ideology of theFührerprinzip.In the mid 20th-century, the German academicsTheodor W. AdornoandMax Horkheimertraced the origin of totalitarianism to theAge of Reason(17th–18th centuries), especially to theanthropocentristproposition that: "Man has become the master of the world, a master unbound by any links to Nature, society, and history", which excludes the intervention ofsupernatural beingsto earthly politics of government.

In the essay "The 'Dark Forces', the Totalitarian Model, and Soviet History" (1987), by J.F. Hough,and in the bookThe Totalitarian Legacy of the Bolshevik Revolution(2019), by Alexander Riley,the historians said that the Russian Marxist revolutionaryLeninwas the first politician to establish a sovereign state of the totalitarian model.As theDuceleading the Italian people to the future,Benito Mussolinisaid that his dictatorial régime of government madeFascist Italy(1922–1943) the representativeTotalitarian State:"Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State."Likewise, inThe Concept of the Political(1927), the Nazi jurist Schmitt used the termder Totalstaat(the Total State) to identify, describe, and establish thelegitimacyof a German totalitarian state led by asupreme leader.

American historianWilliam Rubinsteinwrote that:

The 'Age of Totalitarianism' included nearly all the infamous examples of genocide in modern history, headed by the JewishHolocaust,but also comprisingthe mass murders and purges of the Communist world,other mass killings carried out byNazi Germanyand its allies, and also theArmenian genocideof 1915. All these slaughters, it is argued here, had a common origin,the collapse of the elite structure and normal modes of governmentof much of central, eastern and southern Europe as a result ofWorld War I,without which surely neither Communism nor Fascism would have existed except in the minds of unknown agitators and crackpots.

After the Second World War (1937–1945), U.S. political discourse (domestic and foreign) included the concepts (ideologic and political) and the termstotalitarian,totalitarianism,andtotalitarian model.In the post-war U.S. of the 1950s, to politically discredit theanti-fascismof the Second World War as misguidedforeign policy,McCarthyitepoliticians claimed that Left-wing totalitarianism was an existential threat toWestern civilisation,and so facilitated the creation of the Americannational security stateto execute the anti-communist Cold War (1945–1989) that was fought byclient-stateproxies of the US and the USSR.

Historiography

Kremlinology

During the Russo–American Cold War (1945–1989), the academic field ofKremlinology(analysing politburo policy politics) produced historical and policy analyses dominated by thetotalitarian modelof the USSR as apolice statecontrolled by the absolute power of the supreme leaderStalin,who heads a monolithic, centralised hierarchy of government.The study of the internal politics of thepolitburocrafting policy at the Kremlin produced two schools of historiographic interpretation of Cold War history: (i) traditionalist Kremlinology and (ii) revisionist Kremlinology. Traditionalist Kremlinologists worked with and for thetotalitarian modeland produced interpretations of Kremlin politics and policies that supported the police-state version ofCommunist Russia.The revisionist Kremlinologists presented alternative interpretations of Kremlin politics and reported the effects of politburo policies upon Soviet society, civil and military. Despite the limitations of police-state historiography,revisionistKremlinologists said that the old image of theStalinist USSRof the 1950s—a totalitarian state intent upon world domination—was oversimplified and inaccurate, because the death of Stalin changed Soviet society.After the Cold War and the dissolution of theWarsaw Pact,most revisionist Kremlinologists worked the national archives of ex–Communist states, especially theState Archive of the Russian Federationabout Soviet-period Russia.

Totalitarian model for policy

In the 1950s, the political scientistCarl Joachim Friedrichsaid thatCommunist states,such asSoviet RussiaandRed China,were countries systematically controlled with the five features of thetotalitarian modelof government by a supreme leader: (i) an officialdominant ideologythat includes acult of personalityabout the leader, (ii) control of all civil and military weapons, (iii) control of the public and the privatemass communications media,(iv) the use ofstate terrorismto police the populace, and (v) a political party of mass membership who perpetually re-elect The Leader.

In the 1960s, the revisionist Kremlinologists researched the organisations and studied the policies of the relatively autonomousbureaucraciesthat influenced the crafting of high-level policy for governing Soviet society in the USSR.Revisionist Kremlinologists, such asJ. Arch GettyandLynne Viola,transcended the interpretational limitations of the totalitarian model byrecognisingandreportingthat the Soviet government, the communist party, and the civil society of the USSR had greatly changed upon the death of Stalin. The revisionistsocial historyindicated that thesocial forcesof Soviet society had compelled the Government of the USSR to adjustpublic policyto the actualpolitical economyof a Soviet society composed of pre–War and post–War generations of people with different perceptions of the utility ofCommunist economicsfor all the Russias.Hence, Russian modern history had outdated thetotalitarian modelthat was the post–Stalinistperception of the police-state USSR of the 1950s.

Politics of historical interpretation

Thehistoriographyof the USSR and of the Soviet period of Russian history is in two schools of research and interpretation: (i) the traditionalist school of historiography and (ii) the revisionist school of historiography. Traditionalist-school historians characterise themselves as objective reporters of the claimed totalitarianism inherent toMarxism,toCommunism,and to the political nature ofCommunist states,such as the USSR. Moreover, traditionalist historians criticise the politically liberal bias they perceive in the predominance ofrevisionist historiansin academic publishing, and claim that revisionist-school historians also over-populate the faculties of colleges, universities, andthink tanks.Revisionist-school historians criticise the traditionalist school's concentration upon the police-state aspects of Cold War history, and so produceanti-communisthistory biased towards a right-wing interpretation of the documentary facts,thus, the revisionist school dismiss traditionalist historians as the being thepolitically reactionaryfaculty of theHUACschool of scholarship about theCommunist Party USA.

New semantics

In 1980, in a book review ofHow the Soviet Union is Governed(1979), by J.F. Hough and Merle Fainsod, William Zimmerman said that "the Soviet Union has changed substantially. Our knowledge of the Soviet Union has changed, as well. We all know that the traditional paradigm [of the totalitarian model] no longer satisfies [our ignorance], despite several efforts, primarily in the early 1960s (the directed society, totalitarianism without police terrorism, the system of conscription) to articulate an acceptable variant [of Communist totalitarianism]. We have come to realize that models which were, in effect, offshoots of totalitarian models do not provide good approximations of post–Stalinist reality [of the USSR]."In a book review ofTotalitarian Space and the Destruction of Aura(2019), by Ahmed Saladdin, Michael Scott Christofferson said that Hannah Arendt's interpretation of the USSR afterStalinwas her attempt tointellectuallydistance her work from "the Cold War misuse of the concept [of the origins of totalitarianism]" as anti-Communist propaganda.

In the essay, "Totalitarianism: Defunct Theory, Useful Word" (2010), the historianJohn Connellysaid thattotalitarianismis a useful word, but that the old 1950stheoryabout totalitarianism is defunct among scholars, because “The word is as functional now as it was fifty years ago. It means the kind of régime that existed in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the Soviet satellites, Communist China, and maybe Fascist Italy, where the word originated.... Who are we to tellVáclav HavelorAdam Michnikthat they were fooling themselves when they perceived their rulers as totalitarian? Or, for that matter, any of the millions of former subjects of Soviet-type rule who use the local equivalents of the Czech [word]totalitato describe the systems they lived under before 1989? [Totalitarianism] is a useful word, and everyone knows what it means as a general referent. Problems arise when people confuse the useful descriptive term with the old 'theory' from the 1950s. "

InRevolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism(2022), the political scientistsSteven Levitskyand Lucan Way said that nascent revolutionary régimes usually became totalitarian régimes if not destroyed with a military invasion. Such a revolutionary régime begins as asocial revolutionindependent of the existing social structures of the state (not political succession, election to office, or a militarycoup d'état) and produces a dictatorship with three functional characteristics: (i) a cohesiveruling classcomprising the military and the political élites, (ii) a strong and loyal coercive apparatus of police and military forces to suppress dissent, and (iii) the destruction of rival political parties, organisations, and independent centres of socio-political power. Moreover, the unitary functioning of the characteristics of totalitarianism allow a totalitarian government to perdure against economic crises (internal and external), large-scale failures of policy, mass social-discontent, and political pressure from other countries.Some totalitarianone-party stateswere established throughcoupsorchestrated by military officers loyal to a vanguard party that advancedsocialist revolution,such as theSocialist Republic of the Union of Burma(1962),Syrian Arab Republic(1963),andDemocratic Republic of Afghanistan(1978).

Politics

Early usages

Italy

In 1923, in the early reign of Mussolini's government (1922–1943), the anti-fascist academicGiovanni Amendolawas the first Italian public intellectual to define and describe Totalitarianism as arégime of governmentwherein the supreme leader personally exercises total power (political, military, economic, social) asIl Duceof The State. ThatItalian fascismis a political system with an ideological, utopianworldviewunlike therealistic politicsof the personal dictatorship of a man who holds power for the sake of holding power.

Il DuceBenito Mussolini was supreme leader ofFascist Italy (1922–1943).

Later, the theoretician of Italian FascismGiovanni Gentileascribed politically positive meanings to the ideological termstotalitarianismandtotalitarianin defence ofDuceMussolini's legal, illegal, and legalistic social engineering of Italy. As ideologues, the intellectual Gentile and the politician Mussolini used the termtotalitarioto identify and describe the ideological nature of the societal structures (government, social, economic, political) and the practical goals (economic, geopolitical, social) of the newFascist Italy (1922–1943),which was the "total representation of the nation and total guidance of national goals."In proposing the totalitarian society of Italian Fascism, Gentile defined and described a civil society wherein totalitarian ideology (subservience to the state) determined thepublic sphereand theprivate sphereof the lives of the Italian people.That to achieve the Fascistutopiain the imperial future, Italian totalitarianism must politicise human existence into subservience to the state, which Mussolini summarised with the epigram: “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."

Hannah Arendt, in her bookThe Origins of Totalitarianism,contended that Mussolini's dictatorship was not a totalitarian regime until 1938.Arguing that one of the key characteristics of a totalitarian movement was its ability to garnermass mobilization,Arendt wrote:

"While all political groups depend upon proportionate strength, totalitarian movements depend on the sheer force of numbers to such an extent that totalitarian regimes seem impossible, even under otherwise favorable circumstances, in countries with relatively small populations.... [E]ven Mussolini, who was so fond of the term" totalitarian state, "did not attempt to establish a full-fledged totalitarian regime and contented himself with dictatorship andone-party rule."

For example,Victor Emmanuel IIIstill reigned as afigureheadand helped play a role in thedismissal of Mussoliniin 1943. Also, theCatholic Churchwas allowed to independently exercise its religious authority inVatican Cityper the 1929Lateran Treaty,under the leadership ofPope Pius XI(1922–1939) andPope Pius XII(1939–1958).

Britain

One of the first people to use the termtotalitarianismin the English language was Austrian writerFranz Borkenauin his 1938 bookThe Communist International,in which he commented that it united the Soviet and German dictatorships more than it divided them.The labeltotalitarianwas twice affixed to Nazi Germany duringWinston Churchill's speech of 5 October 1938 before theHouse of Commons,in opposition to theMunich Agreement,by which France and Great Britain consented to Nazi Germany's annexation of theSudetenland.Churchill was then abackbencherMP representing theEpping constituency.In a radio address two weeks later, Churchill again employed the term, this time applying the concept to "a Communist or a Nazi tyranny."

Spain

José María Gil-Robles y Quiñones,the leader of the historic Spanishreactionaryparty called theSpanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right(CEDA),declared his intention to "give Spain a true unity, a new spirit, a totalitarian polity" and went on to say: "Democracy is not an end but a means to the conquest of the new state. When the time comes, eitherparliamentsubmits or we will eliminate it. "GeneralFrancisco Francowas determined not to have competing right-wing parties in Spain and CEDA was dissolved in April 1937. Later, Gil-Robles went into exile.

Politically matured by having fought and been wounded and survived theSpanish Civil War(1936–1939), in the essay "Why I Write"(1946), the socialist George Orwell said," the Spanish war and other events in 1936–37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and fordemocratic socialism,as I understand it. "That future totalitarian régimes would spy upon their societies and use the mass communications media to perpetuate their dictatorships, that" If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever. "

USSR

In the aftermath of the Second World War (1937–1945), in the lecture series (1945) and book (1946) titledThe Soviet Impact on the Western World,the British historianE. H. Carrsaid that "the trend away fromindividualismand towards totalitarianism is everywhere unmistakable "in thedecolonisingcountries ofEurasia.ThatrevolutionaryMarxism–Leninism was the most successful type of totalitarianism, as proved by the USSR'srapid industrialisation(1929–1941) and theGreat Patriotic War(1941–1945) that defeated Nazi Germany. That, despite those achievements in social engineering and warfare, in dealing with the countries of theCommunist bloconly the "blind and incurable" ideologue could ignore the Communist régimes' trend towards police-state totalitarianism in their societies.

Cold War

Anti-totalitarian: Hannah Arendt thwarted thetotalitarian modelKremlinologists who sought to co-opt the thesis ofThe Origins of Totalitarianism(1951) as American anti–Communist propaganda that claimed that everyCommunist statewas of the totalitarian model.

InThe Origins of Totalitarianism(1951), the political scientistHannah Arendtsaid that, in their times in the early 20th century, corporateNazismandsoviet Communismwere new forms of totalitarian government, not updated versions of the oldtyranniesof a military or a corporate dictatorship. That the human emotional comfort ofpolitical certaintyis the source of the mass appeal of revolutionary totalitarian régimes, because the totalitarianworldviewgives psychologically comforting and definitive answers about the complex socio-political mysteries of the past, of the present, and of the future; thus did Nazism propose that all history is the history ofethnic conflict,of the survival of the fittest race; and Marxism–Leninism proposes that all history is the history ofclass conflict,of the survival of the fittest social class. That upon the believers' acceptance of theuniversal applicabilityof totalitarian ideology, the Nazi revolutionary and the Communist revolutionary then possess the simplistic moral certainty with which to justify all other actions by the State, either by an appeal tohistoricism(Law of History) or by anappeal to nature,as expedient actions necessary to establishing an authoritarian state apparatus.

True belief

InThe True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements(1951),Eric Hoffersaid that political mass movements, such asItalian Fascism(1922–1943), GermanNazism(1933–1945), and RussianStalinism(1929–1953), featured the common political praxis of negatively comparing their totalitarian society asculturally superiorto themorally decadentsocieties of the democratic countries of Western Europe. That suchmass psychologyindicates that participating in and then joining a political mass movement offers people the prospect of a glorious future, that such membership in a community of political belief is an emotional refuge for people with few accomplishments in their real lives, in both thepublic sphereand in theprivate sphere.In the event, the true believer is assimilated into a collective body of true believers who are mentally protected with "fact-proof screens from reality" drawn from the official texts of the totalitarian ideology.

Collaborationism

In "European Protestants Between Anti-Communism and Anti-Totalitarianism: The Other Interwar Kulturkampf?" (2018) the historian Paul Hanebrink said that Hitler's assumption of power in Germany in 1933 frightened Christians into anti-communism, because for European Christians, Catholic and Protestant alike, the new postwar 'culture war' crystallized as a struggle against Communism. Throughout theEuropean interwar period(1918–1939), right-wing totalitarian régimes indoctrinated Christians to demonize the Communist régime in Russia as the apotheosis ofsecular materialismand [as] a militarized threat to worldwide Christian social and moral order ".That throughout Europe, the Christians who became anti-communist totalitarians perceived Communism and communist régimes of government as an existential threat to the moral order of their respective societies; andcollaboratedwith Fascists and Nazis in the idealistic hope that anti-communism would restore the societies of Europe to their root Christian culture.

Totalitarian model

In the U.S. geopolitics of the late 1950s, the Cold War concepts and the termstotalitarianism,totalitarian,andtotalitarian model,presented inTotalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy(1956), by Carl Joachim Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski, became common usages in the foreign-policy discourse of the U.S. Subsequently established, thetotalitarian modelbecame the analytic and interpretational paradigm forKremlinology,the academic study of the monolithic police-state USSR. The Kremlinologists analyses of the internal politics (policy and personality) of the politburo crafting policy (national and foreign) yieldedstrategic intelligencefor dealing with the USSR. Moreover, the U.S. also used the totalitarian model when dealing with fascist totalitarian régimes, such as that of abanana republiccountry.As anti–Communist political scientists, Friedrich and Brzezinski described and defined totalitarianism with the monolithic totalitarian model of six interlocking, mutually supporting characteristics:

1. Elaborate guiding ideology.
2. One-party state
3. State terrorism
4. Monopoly control of weapons
5. Monopoly control of themass communications media
6. Centrally directed and controlledplanned economy

Criticism of the totalitarian model

Anti-totalitarian: the American political scientistZbigniew Brzezinskipopularised combating Left-wing totalitarianism in U.S. foreign policy.

As traditionalist historians, Friedrich and Brzezinski said that the totalitarian régimes of government in the USSR (1917), Fascist Italy (1922–1943), and Nazi Germany (1933–1945) originated from the political discontent caused by the socio-economic aftermath of the First World War (1914–1918), which rendered impotent the government ofWeimar Germany(1918–1933) to resist, counter, and quell left-wing and right-wing revolutions of totalitarian temper.Revisionist historians noted the historiographic limitations of the totalitarian-model interpretation of Soviet and Russian history, because Friedrich and Brzezinski did not take account of the actual functioning of the Soviet social system, neither as a political entity (the USSR) nor as a social entity (Soviet civil society), which could be understood in terms of socialist class struggle among the professional élites (political, academic, artistic, scientific, military) seeking upward mobility into thenomenklatura,the ruling class of the USSR. That the political economics of the politburo allowed measured executive power to regional authorities for them to implement policy was interpreted by revisionist historians as evidence that a totalitarian régime adapts the political economy to include new economic demands from civil society; whereas traditionalist historians interpreted the politico-economic collapse of the USSR to prove that the totalitarian régime of economics failed because the politburo did not adapt the political economy to include actual popular participation in the Soviet economy.

The historian of Nazi Germany,Karl Dietrich Brachersaid that thetotalitarian typologydeveloped by Friedrich and Brzezinski was an inflexible model, for not including therevolutionary dynamicsof bellicose people committed to realising the violent revolution required to establish totalitarianism in a sovereign state.That the essence of totalitarianism is total control to remake every aspect of civil society using a universal ideology—which is interpreted by an authoritarian leader—to create a collective national identity by merging civil society into the State.Given that the supreme leaders of the Communist, the Fascist, and the Nazi total states did possess government administrators, Bracher said that a totalitarian government did not necessarily require an actual supreme leader, and could function by way ofcollective leadership.The American historianWalter Laqueuragreed that Bracher's totalitarian typology more accurately described the functional reality of the politburo than did the totalitarian typology proposed by Friedrich and Brzezinski.

Dynasty of totalitarians: The Syrian Arab Republic (Syria) has been ruled by the generational dictatorships ofHafez al-Assad(r. 1971–2000) and his sonBashar al-Assad(r. 2000 – ) since the late Cold War of the 1970s.

InDemocracy and Totalitarianism(1968) the political scientistRaymond Aronsaid that for a régime of government to be considered totalitarian it can be described and defined with the totalitarian model of five interlocking, mutually supporting characteristics:

1. A one-party state where the ruling party has a monopoly on all political activity.
2. A state ideology upheld by the ruling party that is given official status as the only authority.
3. A state monopoly on information; control of the mass communications media to broadcast the official truth.
4. A state-controlled economy featuring major economic entities under state control.
5. An ideological police-state terror; criminalisation of political, economic, and professional activities.

Post–Cold War

PresidentIsaias Afwerkihas ruledEritreaas a totalitarian dictator since the country's independence in 1993.

Flag of theIslamic State,which is a self-proclaimedcaliphatethat demands the religious, political, and military obedience ofMuslims worldwide

Laure Neumayerposited that "despite the disputes over its heuristic value and its normative assumptions, the concept of totalitarianism made a vigorous return to the political and academic fields at the end of the Cold War".In the 1990s,François Furetmade a comparative analysisand used the termtotalitarian twinsto link Nazism and Stalinism.Eric Hobsbawmcriticised Furet for his temptation to stress the existence of a common ground between two systems with different ideological roots.InDid Somebody Say Totalitarianism?: Five Interventions in the (Mis)Use of a Notion,Žižek wrote that "[t]he liberating effect" of GeneralAugusto Pinochet's arrest "was exceptional", as "the fear of Pinochet dissipated, the spell was broken, the taboo subjects of torture and disappearances became the daily grist of the news media; the people no longer just whispered, but openly spoke about prosecuting him in Chile itself".Saladdin Ahmed cited Hannah Arendt as stating that "the Soviet Union can no longer be called totalitarian in the strict sense of the term afterStalin's death",writing that" this was the case in General August Pinochet's Chile, yet it would be absurd to exempt it from the class of totalitarian regimes for that reason alone ". Saladdin posited that whileChile under Pinochethad no "official ideology", there was one man who ruled Chile from "behind the scenes", "none other thanMilton Friedman,the godfather ofneoliberalismand the most influential teacher of theChicago Boys,was Pinochet's adviser ". In this sense, Saladdin criticised the totalitarian concept because it was only being applied to" opposing ideologies "and it was not being applied to liberalism.

In the early 2010s, Richard Shorten,Vladimir Tismăneanu,and Aviezer Tucker posited that totalitarian ideologies can take different forms in different political systems but all of them focus onutopianism,scientism,orpolitical violence.They posit that Nazism and Stalinism both emphasised the role of specialisation in modern societies and they also sawpolymathyas a thing of the past, and they also stated that their claims were supported by statistics and science, which led them to impose strict ethical regulations on culture, use psychological violence, and persecute entire groups.Their arguments have been criticised by other scholars due to their partiality and anachronism.Juan Francisco Fuentestreats totalitarianism as an "invented tradition"and he believes that the notion of" moderndespotism"is a" reverse anachronism "; for Fuentes," the anachronistic use of totalitarian/totalitarianism involves the will to reshape the past in the image and likeness of the present ".

Other studies try to link modern technological changes to totalitarianism. According toShoshana Zuboff,the economic pressures of modernsurveillance capitalismare driving the intensification of connection and monitoring online with spaces of social life becoming open to saturation by corporate actors, directed at the making of profit and/or the regulation of action.Toby Ordbelieved that George Orwell's fears of totalitarianism constituted a notable early precursor to modern notions of anthropogenic existential risk, the concept that a future catastrophe could permanently destroy the potential of Earth-originating intelligent life due in part to technological changes, creating a permanenttechnological dystopia.Ord said that Orwell's writings show that his concern was genuine rather than just a throwaway part of the fictional plot ofNineteen Eighty-Four.In 1949, Orwell wrote that "[a] ruling class which could guard against (four previously enumerated sources of risk) would remain in power permanently".That same year,Bertrand Russellwrote that "modern techniques have made possible a new intensity of governmental control, and this possibility has been exploited very fully in totalitarian states".

In 2016,The Economistdescribed China's developedSocial Credit SystemunderChinese Communist Partygeneral secretaryXi Jinping'sadministration,to screen and rank its citizens based on their personal behavior, astotalitarian.Opponents of China's ranking system say that it is intrusive and it is just another tool which a one-party state can use to control the population. Supporters say that it will transform China into a more civilised and law-abiding society.Shoshana Zuboff considers it instrumentarian rather than totalitarian.

North Koreais the only country in East Asia to survive totalitarianism after the death ofKim Il-sungin 1994 and handed over to his sonKim Jong-iland grandsonKim Jong-unin 2011, as of today in the 21st century.

Other emerging technologies that could empower future totalitarian regimes includebrain-reading,contact tracing,and various applications ofartificial intelligence.PhilosopherNick Bostromsaid that there is a possible trade-off, namely that some existential risks might be mitigated by the establishment of a powerful and permanentworld government,and in turn the establishment of such a government could enhance the existential risks which are associated with the rule of a permanent dictatorship.

Religious totalitarianism

Islamic

Flag of the Taliban

TheTalibanis a totalitarianSunni Islamistmilitant group and political movement inAfghanistanthat emerged in the aftermath of theSoviet–Afghan Warand the end of the Cold War. It governed most of Afghanistan from1996 to 2001andreturned to power in 2021,controlling the entirety of Afghanistan. Features of its totalitarian governance include the imposition ofPashtunwaliculture of the majorityPashtunethnic group as religious law, the exclusion of minorities and non-Taliban members from the government, and extensiveviolations of women's rights.

TheIslamic Stateis aSalafi-Jihadistmilitant group that was established in 2006 byAbu Omar al-Baghdadiduring theIraqi insurgency,under the name "Islamic State of Iraq".Under the leadership ofAbu Bakr al-Baghdadi,the organization later changed its name to the "Islamic State of Iraq and Levant" in 2013. The group espouses a totalitarian ideology that is afundamentalisthybrid ofGlobal Jihadism,Wahhabism,andQutbism.Following itsterritorial expansion in 2014,the group renamed itself as the "Islamic State" and declared itself as acaliphatethat sought domination over theMuslim worldand established what has been described as a "political-religious totalitarian regime".Thequasi-stateheldsignificant territoryin Iraq and Syria during the course of theThird Iraq Warand theSyrian civil warfrom 2013 to 2019 under the dictatorship of its first Caliph,Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,who imposed a strict interpretation of Sharia law.

Christian

See also:National Catholicism

Portrait ofFrancisco Franco

Francoist Spain(1936–1975), under the dictatorFrancisco Franco,has been characterized as a totalitarian state until at least the 1950s by scholars. Franco was portrayed as a fervent Catholic and a staunch defender ofCatholicism,the declaredstate religion.Civil marriagesthat had taken place in the Republic were declared null and void unless they had been validated by the Church, along with divorces. Divorce,contraceptionand abortions were forbidden.According to historianStanley G. Payne,Franco had more day-to-day power thanAdolf HitlerorJoseph Stalinpossessed at the respective heights of their power. Payne noted that Hitler and Stalin at least maintained rubber-stamp parliaments, while Franco dispensed with even that formality in the early years of his rule. According to Payne, the lack of even a rubber-stamp parliament made Franco's government "the most purely arbitrary in the world."However, from 1959 to 1974 the "Spanish Miracle"took place under the leadership oftechnocrats,many of whom were members ofOpus Deiand a new generation of politicians that replaced the oldFalangistguard.Reforms were implemented in the 1950s and Spain abandonedautarky,reassigning economic authority from the isolationistFalangist movement.This led to massive economic growth that lasted until the mid-1970s, known as the "Spanish miracle".This is comparable toDe-Stalinizationin the Soviet Union in the 1950s, whereFrancoist Spainchanged from being openly totalitarian to an authoritarian dictatorship with a certain degree ofeconomic freedom.

The city of Geneva underJohn Calvin's leadership has also been characterised as totalitarian by scholars.

Revisionist school of Soviet-period history

Soviet society after Stalin

The death of Stalin in 1953 voided the simplistictotalitarian modelof the police-state USSR as the epitome ofthe totalitarian state.A fact common to the revisionist-school interpretations of thereign of Stalin(1927–1953) was that the USSR was a country with weak social institutions, and thatstate terrorismagainst Soviet citizens indicated the political illegitimacy of Stalin's government.That the citizens of the USSR were not devoid ofpersonal agencyor of material resources for living, nor were Soviet citizenspsychologically atomisedby the totalist ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union—because "the Soviet political system was chaotic, thatinstitutionsoften escaped the control of the centre, and that Stalin's leadership consisted, to a considerable extent, in responding, on anad hocbasis, to political crises as they arose. "That thelegitimacyof Stalin's régime of government relied upon the popular support of the Soviet citizenry as much as Stalin relied upon state terrorism for their support. That by politically purging Soviet society of anti–Soviet people Stalin created employment and upwardsocial mobilityfor the post–War generation of working class citizens for whom such socio-economic progress was unavailable before theRussian Revolution(1917–1924). That the people who benefited from Stalin's social engineering becameStalinistsloyal to the USSR; thus, the Revolution had fulfilled her promise to those Stalinist citizens and they supported Stalin because of the state terrorism.

German Democratic Republic (GDR)

In the case ofEast Germany,(0000) Eli Rubin posited that East Germany was not a totalitarian state but rather a society shaped by the confluence of unique economic and political circumstances interacting with the concerns of ordinary citizens.

Writing in 1987,Walter Laqueurposited that the revisionists in the field of Soviet history were guilty of confusing popularity with morality and of making highly embarrassing and not very convincing arguments against the concept of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian state.Laqueur stated that the revisionists' arguments with regard to Soviet history were highly similar to the arguments made byErnst Nolteregarding German history.For Laqueur, concepts such as modernisation were inadequate tools for explaining Soviet history while totalitarianism was not.Laqueur's argument has been criticised by modern "revisionist school" historians such asPaul Buhle,who said that Laqueur wrongly equates Cold War revisionism with the German revisionism; the latter reflected a "revanchist, military-minded conservative nationalism."Moreover,Michael ParentiandJames Petrashave suggested that the totalitarianism concept has been politically employed and used for anti-communist purposes. Parenti has also analysed how "left anti-communists" attacked the Soviet Union during the Cold War.For Petras, theCIAfunded theCongress for Cultural Freedomto attack "Stalinist anti-totalitarianism."Into the 21st century,Enzo Traversohas attacked the creators of the concept of totalitarianism as having invented it to designate the enemies of the West.

According to some scholars, calling Joseph Stalintotalitarianinstead ofauthoritarianhas been asserted to be a high-sounding but specious excuse for Western self-interest, just as surely as the counterclaim that allegedly debunking the totalitarian concept may be a high-sounding but specious excuse for Russian self-interest. ForDomenico Losurdo,totalitarianism is a polysemic concept with origins inChristian theologyand applying it to the political sphere requires an operation of abstract schematism which makes use of isolated elements of historical reality to place fascist regimes and the Soviet Union in the dock together, serving the anti-communism of Cold War-era intellectuals rather than reflecting intellectual research.

See also

• List of totalitarian regimes
• Inverted totalitarianism
• Totalitarian democracy
• Guided democracy
• Illiberal democracy
• Defective democracy
• Herrenvolk democracy
• Ethnic democracy
• Racial segregation
• Apartheid
• Crime of apartheid
• Settler colonialism
• Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism
• Surveillance capitalism
• List of cults of personality
• Totalitarian architecture
• Nazism
• Fascism
• Stalinism

Further reading

• Arendt, Hannah (1958).The Origins of Totalitarianism(Second Enlarged ed.). New York, US: Meridian Books.LCCN58-11927.
• Armstrong, John A.The Politics of Totalitarianism(New York: Random House, 1961).
• Béja, Jean-Philippe (March 2019)."Xi Jinping's China: On the Road to Neo-totalitarianism".Social Research: An International Quarterly.86(1): 203–230.doi:10.1353/sor.2019.0009.S2CID199140716.ProQuest2249726077.Archivedfrom the original on December 3, 2022.
• Bernholz, Peter. "Ideocracy and totalitarianism: A formal analysis incorporating ideology",Public Choice108, 2001, pp. 33–75.
• Bernholz, Peter. "Ideology, sects, state and totalitarianism. A general theory". In: H. Maier and M. Schaefer (eds.):Totalitarianism and Political Religions,Vol. II (Routledge, 2007), pp. 246–270.
• Borkenau, Franz,The Totalitarian Enemy(London: Faber and Faber 1940).
• Bracher, Karl Dietrich,"The Disputed Concept of Totalitarianism," pp. 11–33 fromTotalitarianism Reconsiderededited by Ernest A. Menze (Kennikat Press, 1981)ISBN0804692688.
• Congleton, Roger D. "Governance by true believers: Supreme duties with and without totalitarianism."Constitutional Political Economy31.1 (2020): 111–141.online
• Connelly, John. "Totalitarianism: Defunct Theory, Useful Word"Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History11#4 (2010) 819–835.online.
• Curtis, Michael.Totalitarianism(1979)online
• Devlin, Nicholas. "Hannah Arendt and Marxist Theories of Totalitarianism."Modern Intellectual History(2021): 1–23online.
• Diamond, Larry. "The road to digital unfreedom: The threat of postmodern totalitarianism."Journal of Democracy30.1 (2019): 20–24.excerpt
• Fitzpatrick, Sheila, and Michael Geyer, eds.Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared(Cambridge University Press, 2008).
• Friedrich, CarlandZ. K. Brzezinski,Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy(Harvard University Press, 1st ed. 1956, 2nd ed. 1965).
• Gach, Nataliia. "From totalitarianism to democracy: Building learner autonomy in Ukrainian higher education."Issues in Educational Research30.2 (2020): 532–554.online
• Gleason, Abbott.Totalitarianism: The Inner History Of The Cold War(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995),ISBN0195050177.
• Gray, Phillip W.Totalitarianism: The Basics(New York: Routledge, 2023),ISBN9781032183732.
• Gregor, A.Totalitarianism and political religion(Stanford University Press, 2020).
• Hanebrink, Paul. "European Protestants Between Anti-Communism and Anti-Totalitarianism: The Other Interwar Kulturkampf?"Journal of Contemporary History(July 2018) Vol. 53, Issue 3, pp. 622–643
• Hermet, Guy, with Pierre Hassner and Jacques Rupnik,Totalitarismes(Paris: Éditions Economica, 1984).
• Jainchill, Andrew, and Samuel Moyn. "French democracy between totalitarianism and solidarity: Pierre Rosanvallon and revisionist historiography."Journal of Modern History76.1 (2004): 107–154.online
• Joscelyne, Sophie. "Norman Mailer and American Totalitarianism in the 1960s."Modern Intellectual History19.1 (2022): 241–267online.
• Keller, Marcello Sorce. "Why is Music so Ideological, Why Do Totalitarian States Take It So Seriously",Journal of Musicological Research,XXVI (2007), no. 2–3, pp. 91–122.
• Kirkpatrick, Jeane,Dictatorships and Double Standards: Rationalism and reason in politics(London: Simon & Schuster, 1982).
• Laqueur, Walter,The Fate of the Revolution Interpretations of Soviet History From 1917 to the Present(London: Collier Books, 1987)ISBN002034080X.
• Menze, Ernest, ed.Totalitarianism reconsidered(1981)onlineessays by experts
• Ludwig von Mises,Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War(Yale University Press, 1944).
• Murray, Ewan.Shut Up: Tale of Totalitarianism(2005).
• Nicholls, A.J. "Historians and Totalitarianism: The Impact of German Unification."Journal of Contemporary History36.4 (2001): 653–661.
• Patrikeeff, Felix. "Stalinism, Totalitarian Society and the Politics of 'Perfect Control'",Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions,(Summer 2003), Vol. 4 Issue 1, pp. 23–46.
• Payne, Stanley G.,A History of Fascism(London: Routledge, 1996).
• Rak, Joanna, and Roman Bäcker. "Theory behind Russian Quest for Totalitarianism. Analysis of Discursive Swing in Putin's Speeches."Communist and Post-Communist Studies53.1 (2020): 13–26online.
• Roberts, David D.Totalitarianism(John Wiley & Sons, 2020).
• Rocker, Rudolf,Nationalism and Culture(Covici-Friede, 1937).
• Sartori, Giovanni,The Theory of Democracy Revisited(Chatham, N.J:Chatham House,1987).
• Sauer, Wolfgang. "National Socialism: totalitarianism or fascism?"American Historical Review,Volume 73, Issue #2 (December 1967): 404–424.online.
• Saxonberg, Steven.Pre-modernity, totalitarianism and the non-banality of evil: A comparison of Germany, Spain, Sweden and France(Springer Nature, 2019).
• Schapiro, Leonard.Totalitarianism(London: The Pall Mall Press, 1972).
• Selinger, William. "The politics of Arendtian historiography: European federation and the origins of totalitarianism."Modern Intellectual History13.2 (2016): 417–446.
• Skotheim, Robert Allen.Totalitarianism and American social thought(1971)online
• Talmon, J. L.,The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy(London: Seeker & Warburg, 1952).
• Traverso, Enzo,Le Totalitarisme: Le XXe siècle en débat(Paris: Poche, 2001).
• Tuori, Kaius. "Narratives and Normativity: Totalitarianism and Narrative Change in the European Legal Tradition after World War II."Law and History Review37.2 (2019): 605–638online.
• Žižek, Slavoj,Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?(London: Verso, 2001).online

External links

• "Totalitarianism".Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.