Totalitarianism refers to a political system where the state holds absolute power and total authority over the society; it seeks to control every aspect of life, public and private, wherever necessary.
-Key Questions - Can good people do evil things? Are we inherently good/evil?-
-How could this happen?-
Totalitarianism clearly differs from any other form of political oppression, and is an extreme version of authoritarian regime; it developed a new way and new political institutions whilst destroying all legal, social and political traditions of the country. The totalitarian government transformed the classes into the masses in order to practice full control. Plato's republic was against these ideas of totalitarian regime - contract theory; powers of the state should be limited. Hobbes had a very low view of humanity; he believed that humanity needs a leader to keep everyone straight and in order to live our lives without fear of what could happen without an authority figure.
Hitler’s Nazi regime is an example of a Totalitarian rule. The reason Hitler’s regimes worked in Germany were because of the struggles that Germany were suffering at the time - loss of money from other countries because of their failure in WW1 - before Hitler came into power. Hitler provided the 'way out' of this great depression after WW1, he was extreme in his ways, yet the people of Germany were so desperate that they would believe him and he didn't really give them a choice either - executions of people who did not approve of Hitler's regimes.
Hannah Arendt believed that totalitarianism was different to any other regimes mainly because the totalitarian regime focused on destroying the individuality of a person through control and overall power over the person.
“Everything we know of totalitarianism demonstrates a horrible originality – its very actions constitute a break with all our traditions.” - Arendt
The state is everything - you are part of the state or you are nothing, the state should not come within your home - there should be ultimate freedom within the home. However, Mussolini believed the home was just another place where control should be.
"Fascism is for liberty. And the only liberty which can be a real thing, the liberty of the State and the individual within the State. Therefore, for the fascist, everything is in the State, and nothing human or spiritual exists, much less has value, outside the State. Outside the State there can be neither individuals or groups. Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State" - Mussolini
However, Arendt saw the imperialism as a precursor to totalitarianism – because it contained so many traits which the new regimes could use.
Individuality of a person can make them hard to keep track of and control, in order to destroy this individualism two methods are used - state terror and ideology.
Terror - is to destroy, not only through murder of vast numbers, but through destroying individuality and make people scared to think, speak do anything. A concentration camp in WW2 is a good example of this.
Ideology - compliments the policy of terror, it eliminates the capacity for individuals to think which develops into only referring to the state (not thinking for yourself), the state tell you what to do which means you have no responsibility at all.
The ideology system refers to something being the way it is, just because. Orders to guards at concentration camps from higher authority, the guard is not asserting individual though, he is just doing what he has been told, this moves on to the aspect of terror.
Ideology makes you comfortable through the use of a higher authority's responsibility; it frees you from common sense and allows you to be blissful?
This breakdown of the stable human world means loss of the institutional and psychological barriers that normally set limits to what is possible.
Hannah Arendt believed that the first move for the Nazis was the deny Jews citizenship, which was a decision made as part of the "final solution". The Nazis actually saw the Jews as a great rival race that must be overtaken; hence the mass extermination. Arendt highlights that civilisation is fragile and decency of people can very quickly break down (train station example), we need to have structure and laws and rights in order for civilisation to not break down.
Totalitarianism in Germany was, in the end, about megalomania and consistency, not eradicating Jews.
-Control Language-
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.” (1984)
Orwell was horrified by the capacity of totalitarian regimes in order to control minds through manipulating language.
Here is an example of how language can influence the meaning produced and control what people think about it.
In 1984 these ministries changed their names to the following:
Ministry of Peace – organises war
Ministry of Love – organises the police
Ministry of Plenty – gathers taxes
However, the descriptions show that the ministries focus on more negative aspects of society not what the words used suggest.
-What is your personal responsibility in a dictatorship?-
This refers to if you would contribute to such events like the execution of a mass number of Jews?
Eichmann trial - Adolf Eichmann was a German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer (lieutenant colonel) and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust. He had the task of facilitating and managing the logistics of mass deportation of Jews to concentration camps. He was taken to Israel to face trial in an Israeli court on 15 criminal charges, including crimes against humanity and war crimes. He was found guilty and executed by hanging in 1962. He is the only person to have been executed in Israel on conviction by a civilian court. However, he did not kill any Jews with his own hands. He is guilty?
This is a good example of how you don't have to 'evil' to do evil things; Eichmann was just an ordinary man who was responsible for the transportation of Jews to a place in which they were murdered.
For Arendt, Eichmann is guilty because he did not think; he simply followed the system and did not choose his own fate. Choice is crucial to the existentialist, but Eichmann must have followed Kant because he did not choose he followed his duty, just like everyone else.
"The only thing I cannot escape is the need to choice" - Sartre
Arendt believed that even though millions of other Germans were doing the same sort of thing, Eichmann was still guilty; he could have followed his own choice (personal judgement) and chosen not to be a part of it at all.
-Ideology and Terror - A Novel Form of Government-
Totalitarianism differs from any other form of political oppression, and is an extreme version of authoritarian regime; it developed a new way and new political institutions whilst destroying all legal, social and political traditions of the country. Totalitarian government always transformed classes into masses and supplanted the party system entirely, it shifted the centre of power from the army and police and established a foreign policy openly directed toward world domination. It is a modern form of tyranny and is based on a lawless government where power and control is wielded by one man.
Totalitarian lawfulness pretends to have found a way to establish the rule of justice on earth, something which the legality of positive law admittedly could never attain.
'Natural laws' - governing whole universe
'Divine laws' - revealed in human history
Totalitarian lawfulness:
-defying legality and pretending to establish the direct reign of justice on earth.
-Executes the law of history or of nature - it applies the law directly to mankind without bothering with the behaviour of men.
Totalitarian policy claims to transform the human species into an active and unfailing carrier of the law, to which humans otherwise would only passively and reluctantly be subjected to. The policy does not replace one set of laws with another set of laws, it also doesn't establish its own consensus iuris, or create a new form of legality (by one revolution). However, it does believe that it can do without any consensus iuris and still not resign itself to tyrannical state of lawlessness, fear. It also promises to release the fulfilment of law from all action and will of man; it promises justice on earth because it claims to make mankind itself the embodiment of the law.
Terror in the totalitarian government has ceased to be a mere means for the suppression of opposition.
Law - was only there to tell people what not to do and no what people could do.
