Once that premise is accepted, all actions of the state can be justified by appeal to nature or the law of history , justifying their establishment of authoritarian state apparatus. In addition to Arendt, many scholars from a variety of academic backgrounds and ideological positions have closely examined totalitarianism. Each one of these describes totalitarianism in slightly different ways, but they all agree that totalitarianism seeks to mobilize entire populations in support of an official state ideology and is intolerant of activities which are not directed towards the goals of the state, entailing repression or state control of business , labour unions , non-profit organizations , religious organizations and buildings and political parties.
The concept became prominent in Western anti-communist political discourse during the Cold War era as a tool to convert pre-war anti-fascism into postwar anti-communism. The political scientists Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski were primarily responsible for expanding the usage of the term in university social science and professional research, reformulating it as a paradigm for the Soviet Union as well as fascist regimes.
Friedrich and Brzezinski argue that a totalitarian system has the following six, mutually supportive, defining characteristics:. Totalitarian regimes in Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union had initial origins in the chaos that followed in the wake of World War I and allowed totalitarian movements to seize control of the government while the sophistication of modern weapons and communications enabled them to effectively establish what Friedrich and Brzezinski called a "totalitarian dictatorship".
Some social scientists have criticized Friedrich and Brzezinski's approach, arguing that the Soviet system, both as a political and as a social entity, was in fact better understood in terms of interest groups , competing elites, or even in class terms using the concept of the nomenklatura as a vehicle for a new ruling class. For some followers of this pluralist approach, this was evidence of the ability of the regime to adapt to include new demands.
However, proponents of the totalitarian model claimed that the failure of the system to survive showed not only its inability to adapt, but the mere formality of supposed popular participation. The German historian Karl Dietrich Bracher , whose work is primarily concerned with Nazi Germany, argues that the "totalitarian typology" as developed by Friedrich and Brzezinski is an excessively inflexible model and failed to consider the "revolutionary dynamic" that Bracher asserts is at the heart of totalitarianism.
In his book The True Believer , Eric Hoffer argues that mass movements like Stalinism , fascism and Nazism had a common trait in picturing Western democracies and their values as decadent , with people "too soft, too pleasure-loving and too selfish " to sacrifice for a higher cause, which for them implies an inner moral and biological decay.
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He further claims that those movements offered the prospect of a glorious future to frustrated people, enabling them to find a refuge from the lack of personal accomplishments in their individual existence. The individual is then assimilated into a compact collective body and "fact-proof screens from reality" are established. In the field of Soviet history, the totalitarian concept has been disparaged by the revisionist school, some of whose more prominent members were Sheila Fitzpatrick , Jerry F.
Writing in , Walter Laqueur said 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's argument has been criticized by modern revisionist historians, such as Paul Buhle , who claim that Laqueur wrongly equates Cold-war revisionism with the German revisionism.
The latter reflected a "revanchist, military-minded conservative nationalism". Other scholars, such as F. Non-political aspects of the culture and motifs of totalitarian countries have themselves often been labeled innately "totalitarian". For example, Theodore Dalrymple , a British author, physician and political commentator, has written for City Journal that brutalist structures are an expression of totalitarianism given that their grand, concrete-based design involves destroying gentler, more-human places such as gardens.
Columnist Ben Macintyre of The Times wrote that it was "a prescient description of the sort of totalitarian architecture that would soon dominate the Communist bloc". Another example of totalitarianism in architecture is the Panopticon , a type of institutional building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late eighteenth century. The concept of the design is to allow a watchman to observe -opticon all pan- inmates of an institution without their being able to tell whether or not they are being watched.
It was invoked by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish as metaphor for "disciplinary" societies and their pervasive inclination to observe and normalise. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Reflections on a Ravaged Century. The Concept of the Political German: Retrieved 14 September Vintage Books, Random House Inc. Comparison and Definition UW Press, , p. The Spanish Civil War: New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. Britain, America and Anti-Communist Propaganda — The Information Research Department. The democratic, social, and economic credentials of the Soviet Union were typically seen as "lies" and as the product of a deliberate and multiform propaganda In this context, the concept of totalitarianism was itself an asset.
When these workers are no longer needed, they are simply turned loose to starve.
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Like in China today, the children of the Soviet elite received a completely different education that prepared them to manage the country. After leaving the Commissariat of Health, children of the elite would enter a communist version of a preschool where they would spend nights with their parents. When these children entered what we would call grade school, it was with the understanding that they would receive a more substantial education. In addition to math and physics, these children would receive lectures in Marxism, and other aspects of the socialist faith, including sexuality.
Education at all levels instilled politics into all subjects, often at the expense of teaching the subjects themselves. The walls of schools were decorated with political posters depicting slogans, while school songs were about completing the five-year plan in four. History was rewritten, providing information about foreign countries that was blatantly false, where pre revolutionary Russia was demeaned, and post-revolutionary Russia was glorified.
The young were required to recite hymns to further the socialist faith and the Stalin cult such as:. Thou, splendor of my Spring, O Thou Sun reflected from millions of hearts. Today we see the same kind of hymns being sung to Barack Obama, while socialist propaganda adorns the walls of our schools — including environmental paganism. Teachers were not allowed to teach Western economics or Christian religion; but were required to teach communist economics and religion, calling it atheism. More and more school districts have given up on teaching students anything of value, so long as there is a poster of Obama on the wall, surrounded by propaganda and slogans regarding sexuality and environmentalism.
As Christians we need to stop apologizing when the truth offends the purveyors of evil, such as the ACLU. We need to stand up for our faith, the greatest force for good in the history of the world. We need to speak out against socialism, the faith of destruction — responsible for more deaths than any other force in history. If you would like to learn more, including how the totalitarian method of education came to America, read the book: How the Socialist Faith is Destroying America. This article is about 2, words, while volume 1 of the book is over , words — providing a lot more information.
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Information contained in the book will challenge almost everything you believe to be true. It describes an ongoing war between Hebrew-Christianity and Socialism, between Good and Evil, and why America is currently losing that war. Central to this description is a documented assertion that Socialism is a faith, the only definition that explains its actions.
A product of 7 years of research, the book presents a view of our nation, world, and history that is unique because it provides something you have probably never heard before, the truth. Unfortunately, the truth is often hard to swallow; but if you want to accept the same old party line, or believe that things are just fine as they are, continue doing what you are doing.
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In response the Bishop apologized for offending anyone; but he did not retreat from his point saying: Stalin agreed with Hitler and Mussolini when he said: Socialist Education and Political Indoctrination The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci — said that no political regime can last without a certain degree of effective cooperation from most of its members; in fact, the development of this loyalty has traditionally been the concern of all governments. Conservatism emphasized a 'natural order' based on tradition and slow evolutionary change.
The hierarchical nature of society was seen as part of an evolving order, in which institutions adapt gradually with the times. European conservatism originally supported the fitness of a monarch and aristocracy to rule, since these institutions were seen to have developed over a long period and to be important for social stability.
Conservatism still tends to resist radical change, however its goals have changed. Conservatism today opposes state control of activities that have traditionally been matters for the family and individual responsibility.
Totalitarianism
Environmentalism or ecologism is an ideology which rejects the human-centered core of other political theories, and emphasizes instead the priorities of the biosphere. It sees humanity as only one part of an interrelated web of life, which incorporates the living planet itself.
Environmentalism stresses that current human economic and political activity has come with an unacceptable 'price tag' of environmental damage and irreparable harm. It advocates a radical directional change in humanity's view of 'progress' based on economic expansionism and sees a 'higher morality' of living in harmony with nature, reducing human consumption and accepting a consequent altering of living standards.
As environmental crises such as global warming and depletion of fossil fuels have become more evident, environmental ideology has featured more significantly in political parties in Western nations, particularly in Australia, where the first 'green parties' emerged, and Europe, where they have experienced significant electoral successes. Fascism is a less rational theory of ideas than it is a recipe for power and political opportunism.
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Fascism emerged in the context of post-World War I economic difficulties and social crisis and articulated a rejection of liberalism and parliamentary rule as 'failures'. It also articulated a rejection of communism as a further direct threat to the middle class groups that had felt severely the impact of those economic and social difficulties. In their places, fascism emphasized 'strong' leadership, appealing to a long tradition of autocracy prior to recent and allegedly 'failed' democratic regimes. The ideology is nationalist, authoritarian, militaristic, somewhat socialist and action-based rather than theory-based.
War, expansionism and totalitarian controls of the populace are all justifiable in terms of power. Nationalism is a belief, creed or political ideology that involves an individual identifying with, or becoming attached to, one's nation. Nationalism involves national identity, by contrast with the related construct of patriotism, which involves the social conditioning and personal behaviors that support a state's decisions and actions.
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From a political or sociological perspective, there are two main perspectives on the origins and basis of nationalism. One is the primordialist perspective that describes nationalism as a reflection of the ancient and perceived evolutionary tendency of humans to organize into distinct groupings based on an affinity of birth. The other is the modernist perspective that describes nationalism as a recent phenomenon that requires the structural conditions of modern society in order to exist.
In its early forms, socialism was a reaction against the stark inequality and misery produced by the Industrial Revolution and emerging capitalist economies, where those with property had political voice but those without were open to exploitation and oppression. Though many somehow confuse communism and socialism, they are two different things.