Totalitarianism

Wikipedia coverage: Read the full Wikipedia article, including its references. The material below is the existing Deep Politics Wiki article.

Totalitarianism link (political system,loaded language)

{{#subobject: |Has superobject=Totalitarianism |Has objectClass=Quotation |Has author=George Orwell|+sep=, |Has text=“Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable. It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands.” |Is about=Totalitarianism,schizophrenia, literature, totalitarianism, ruling class, violence, tolerance|+sep=, |Has wikipediaPage= |Has location=|+sep=, |Has publicationDate= |Sourced from=1946 |Has sourceDetails= |Has sourceTitle=The Prevention of Literature |Has sourceName=1946 |Has sourceURL=https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/prevention/english/e_plit

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“Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable. It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands.”
George Orwell The Prevention of Literature

Official narrative

File:COVID-19-84.jpg

The official narrative for most of the world is that "Since we live in a democracy, it could never happen here..." From a global perspective, this has never looked less convincing than in 2021, reviewing a year in which most nation states experienced a sudden lurch towards authoritarianism, simultaneously restricting freedom of movement, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, nominally a response to the threat posed by COVID-19.

Characteristic practices

{{#subobject: |Has superobject=Totalitarianism |Has objectClass=Quotation |Has author=C. J. Hopkins|+sep=, |Has text=“One of the hallmarks of totalitarian systems is the criminalization of dissent. Not just the stigmatization of dissent or the demonization of dissent, but the formal criminalization of dissent, and any other type of opposition to the official ideology of the totalitarian system. Global capitalism has been inching its way toward this step for quite some time, and now, apparently, it is ready to take it.” |Is about=Totalitarianism,criminalization, dissent, ideology, fascism|+sep=, |Has wikipediaPage= |Has location=|+sep=, |Has publicationDate=5 May 2021 |Sourced from=Off Guardian |Has sourceDetails= |Has sourceTitle= |Has sourceName=Off Guardian |Has sourceURL=https://off-guardian.org/2021/05/05/the-criminalization-of-dissent/

}}

“One of the hallmarks of totalitarian systems is the criminalization of dissent. Not just the stigmatization of dissent or the demonization of dissent, but the formal criminalization of dissent, and any other type of opposition to the official ideology of the totalitarian system. Global capitalism has been inching its way toward this step for quite some time, and now, apparently, it is ready to take it.”
C. J. Hopkins (5 May 2021) 

Scapegoating

Scapegoating, a psychologically method of reaffirming group identity and allaying death anxiety (see Ernest Becker) is a common practice in authoritarian governments. This is an important part of the permanent wars within society, such as the "war on terror" and the "war on drugs".

Culture

{{#subobject: |Has superobject=Totalitarianism |Has objectClass=Quotation |Has author=Azar Nafisi|+sep=, |Has text=“The first thing every totalitarian regime does, along with confiscation and mutilation of reality, is confiscation of history and confiscation of culture. I think they all happen almost simultaneously."” |Is about=Totalitarianism,culture, reality, history, totalitarianism|+sep=, |Has wikipediaPage= |Has location=|+sep=, |Has publicationDate= |Sourced from=Zero Hedge |Has sourceDetails= |Has sourceTitle= |Has sourceName=Zero Hedge |Has sourceURL=https://www.zerohedge.com/political/america-playing-fire

}}

“The first thing every totalitarian regime does, along with confiscation and mutilation of reality, is confiscation of history and confiscation of culture. I think they all happen almost simultaneously."”
Azar Nafisi

Mental health

Repressive governments have a long history of equating dissent with mental illness.

"Conspiracy theories"

Full article: Conspiracy theory

Following the CIA's efforts of the late 1960s to undermine criticism of the Warren Commission report, the phrase "conspiracy theorist" became a focus of such efforts. This was stepped up in the 1980s by the commercially-controlled media as a more general purpose project to smear dissent and discourage investigation of the large scale conspiracies that the US deep state was undertaking.

Academic research

Full article: Conspiracy theory/Academic research

In the 1990s, the academic community joined big media in an effort to promote the concept; academic research into "conspiracy theories" was carried out. For over a quarter of a century, this research has avoided discussion of the content of theories, but focused instead on the theorists. After proving by assumption that no large scale conspiracy was possible, academics inferred that those who subscribed to such beliefs were mentally deficient in some way and exerted a pernicious influence on society. {{#subobject: |Has superobject=Totalitarianism |Has objectClass=Quotation |Has author=Bruno Castanho Silva, Federico Vegetti, Levente Littvay|+sep=, |Has text=“the mind of the conspiracy theorist can hardly be changed, and surely not on mere logical grounds. These two elements, namely the ideation of hidden plots behind social events and the suspiciousness with which alternative accounts are regarded, have prompted historians to define conspiracy thinking as a form of collective paranoia.” |Is about=Totalitarianism,conspiracy mentality, paranoia|+sep=, |Has wikipediaPage= |Has location=|+sep=, |Has publicationDate=2017 |Sourced from=The Elite Is Up to Something: Exploring the Relation Between Populism and Belief in Conspiracy Theories |Has sourceDetails=Political Psychology, Vol. 37, No. 5, 2016 |Has sourceTitle= |Has sourceName=The Elite Is Up to Something: Exploring the Relation Between Populism and Belief in Conspiracy Theories |Has sourceURL=

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“the mind of the conspiracy theorist can hardly be changed, and surely not on mere logical grounds. These two elements, namely the ideation of hidden plots behind social events and the suspiciousness with which alternative accounts are regarded, have prompted historians to define conspiracy thinking as a form of collective paranoia.”
Bruno Castanho Silva, Federico Vegetti, Levente Littvay (2017) 

Problems with official narrative

In the summer of 1945, after the victory in Europe, the US an UK deep states needed a renewed enemy image of the former war ally the Soviet Union when they decided to start the Cold War. The Soviets were viewed positively in Western public opinion for their war effort. The reinvigoration of totalitarianism applied to the USSR served to switch powerful anti-German sentiments into the growing anti-communist movement. It also allowed recruitment of former German collaborators and allies, especially from Eastern Europe, no matter how dubious their war history, in the new fight against Soviet totalitarianism. This "amalgam of distortions, omissions and pure invention" continued after the Cold War, with books such as Bloodlands by Bilderberger historian Timothy Snyder.

The academic Jeanne Kirkpatrick developed a distinction between authoritarian and totalitarian rule, where "authoritarian" was a way to distinguish between right-wing dictatorships that for reasons of convenience or necessity the United States supports. These are distinguished from left-wing ones that were dangerous to western capitalist interests and so are classified as totalitarian. So, the United States could classify alliances with theocracies like Saudi Arabia or Pinochet's Chile as "authoritarian", even though they may have more characteristics that are totalitarian. Conversely, Venezuela is classified as totalitarian.

References