Introduction.
Before starting to deal with the theme of totalitarianism and its forms that took place during the 1900s, we need to give a unique and valid definition to distinguish it from other self-styled totalitarian regimes, such as the various fascisms - which between the 1920s and 1930s. took hold in Europe and the world - or today's democracies, which we will discuss later.
Historically speaking, great examples of totalitarian regimes are Nazism and Stalinism, declined in all its forms, such as the Albanian regime of Enver Hoxha (1908 - 1985) or the Cambodian regime of Pol Pot (Saloth Sar, 1925 - 1998). What these dictatorships managed to do was not possible, however tempting, either to Mussolini, or to Franco, nor to the other fascisms: to transform the social classes into homogeneous masses of non-politicized individuals; to break any family ties - by violating human natural and legal rights - and above all to create a climate of mutual distrust, so that all the efforts of the individual and all his loyalty were addressed to the party. Exemplary of this is Himmler's phrase, which later became one of the motto of the SchulzStaffen (SS): "my honor is called loyalty".
Mussolini, in fact, was never able to erase intermediate bodies such as the family and various institutions, such as the Catholic ones linked to Catholic Action, etc., nor institutions such as the Monarchy and the Church, however effectively it was in its intentions, especially after 1938. In fact, these subjects were too deeply rooted in Italian society. On the contrary, it was not impossible for Hitler and Stalin to release these constraints. The education of children took place in schools and youth party organizations, thus weakening ties with their parents; class and class constraints were practically canceled in favor of unique identities in the name of an ideology, while bureaucratic structures multiplied in order to break up the centers of power; all methods, together with others that will be discussed later, to manage totalitarian power.
For Stalin and Hitler it was far from impossible to centralize and obtain full power. Stalin boasted a stable regime already before 1930 and a very solid ideological background, such as Leninist Communism, while his "colleague" Hitler unified the post of Chancellor and President in 1934 following the death of Paul Von Hindenburg. This resulted in a nazification of the armed forces, the police and the Lutheran Church, monopolizing all power in the hands of the party.
We will now analyze the main and common elements of totalitarian regimes:
- Propaganda and the ideological apparatus
- The alliance between people and elites in the dissolution of class bonds;
- Family, education and repression;
- The elimination of internal alternatives and the multiplication of bureaucracy
Propaganda and the ideological apparatus
Propaganda played a non-secondary role in totalitarianism. Both Hitler (1889 - 1945) and Stalin made use of any means to increase their power and influence, enhancing the spread of the new ideals of the "New Aryan Man" in the case of the "little Austrian corporal" and the "Man". new communist ”in the case of Stalin (Iosif Vissarionovič Džugašvili, 1878 - 1953). Both used special newspapers, magazines and radio bodies - which Fascism indeed did - to permeate their ideological message into the masses, trying to attract even that large group of people who are normally defined as "apolitical"; and it is on these masses that totalitarianists rely, who relate with contempt towards democratic systems, and instead put themselves in the hands of the charismatic leader, accepting the totalitarian drift of his movement, often resorting to violence, especially against minorities ethnic, political or religious.
Afterwards, once absolute control is obtained, the propaganda turns into indoctrination, also through extra-curricular educational institutions.
In the case of National Socialism, the violence was justified by the effort to shape and make the Germans aware of belonging to a superior race, destined to dominate the world and threatened with extinction by racial and cultural "mestizo". This same violence was justified in the affirmation of being in service and obeying the laws of nature, to which the new Man can be traced; as the jurist and hierarch of the Third Reich Hans Frank explained, writing in his essays to follow the moral law within himself, namely the Führer.
As for Stalinism, this use of such violence was, however, motivated by the development of "Historical Materialism", which made the imposition of Communism inevitable throughout history. The revolutionary impetus would soon overwhelm the entire globe. But, in the construction of Socialism, it was necessary to forge a type of "new man", capable of breaking all cultural, as well as political, ties with the old bourgeois world and its institutions: family, state, social and religious rites. At the heart of this process was "revolutionary violence", which, as Lenin said, is the "midwife of history".
The essential features of this propaganda were simple, but very effective and have a tremendously scientific nature, presenting themselves as predictions of the future and bearers of absolute truths, therefore guided by an infallible leader, who, precisely because of his apparent infallibility, exerts a great fascination on masses.
Inevitable and essential in this propaganda are, above all, the "scapegoats", on which to pour the hatred of the masses, who go hand in hand with conspiracy theories and with apocalyptic warnings, to expose the falsehoods and lies of democratic regimes; so the social democracy of the hated and Jewish Weimar Republic became the absolute evil, they say, friend of the French, who would prefer to see Germany on her knees, without taking any notice of the misery in which the lower social classes lived and, not only , of Germany. A similar speech can be made for Soviet Russia, which accused the "bourgeois" western democracies of having supported the Tsar first and the interim government L'Vov-Kerenskij and of dreaming of the definitive collapse of the Soviet regime, so as to be able to annihilate the dreamed of "revolution" once and for all and to be able, according to them, to continue to oppress workers and workers, in favor of the exploiting bourgeois power. A not dissimilar speech could be made for anti-Semitic politics and propaganda.
The "False Zion Protocols", a pamphlet already created in the time (mid-19th century) by the Tsarist police, became in all respects the greatest proof of the Jewish conspiracy against the world and, for the Nazis, against the purity of the Aryan blood . The pluto-Judaic-Masonic conspiracy theory actually exerted a great fascination on the masses and on a large part of the world population, fomenting an anti-Semitism far from absent in twentieth-century society. In addition to the various conspiracy theories, just mentioned, there is the most important of these, namely the story of the "stab in the back", which spread in Germany, due to the defeat in the First World War, already in October 1918 and fed later of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, signed by Jews. And not entirely free from blame for anti-Semitism was Stalin, who, before and during the great purges, to get rid of the old leadership of the Communist party, composed largely of Jews such as Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin and many others, he also spoke of this Jewish plot to bring down the Stalinist power.
The Jews, therefore, the greatest internal enemy of the totalitarian regimes, which allied themselves with those who, according to the two dictators, supported the parties and political organizations of the opposition, becoming a threat not only to the homeland, but to the same ideal of "New Man", carried out by both.
Democracy, Judaism and too moderate political lines represented an obstacle to the creation of a new world order and a new splendor for Humanity. The propaganda machine was to carry on these new ideals, also resorting to mythology, such as Rosenberg in the "Myth of the twentieth century" and in the "Stachanov myth" for the USSR. In particular, the Nazi ideologue in the book, mentioned above, creates a real mythological framework, carrying out a reading of history, centered on apocalyptic warnings and deadly clashes, to combat the "ethnic chaos", with the aim of legitimizing the National Socialist party.
In fact, if Stalin already had a strong ideology, well rooted and already wanted to put what Marxism was behind him, the National Socialist party was simply a small party of the German right, not unlike many other pangermanist parties such as the "Elmi of iron". Therefore, to legitimize and unite all the parties of the German right and beyond, they needed to specify that what they thought had their roots in the "mists of time" and that represented the arrival point for the creation of a new world prosperity .
It is no coincidence that many ideologists and party theorists of Nazism trace the theories of race superiority and "biological racism", that is linked to the "blut und boden" ("blood and soil") to ancient Greece or to the myth of Atlantis. Thus also the same philosophy and mythology already much loved and appreciated by Germans of any social background, were used to strengthen the propaganda of radios, magazines and newspapers.
Thus philosophy, myth, art and media contributed to strengthening anti-democratic and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, further strengthening the power of the party and of the ideology itself, carried out by it, creating powerful machinery of attraction for each individual, finally breaking a once and for all, the class ideology and creating that homogeneous mass of equal and indistinct people, strengthening their sense of belonging to the party.
Contrary to popular belief, however, ideology does not play the predominant role in totalitarian regimes; rather, its aim is to ensure that the majority of the population becomes depoliticized and identifies, rather than with ideas, with the leaders. In other words, what prevails is not political belief, but conformism. In this reasoning, Hanna Arendt once again meets us: “Totalitarian fanaticism, unlike any form of idealism, crumbles when the movement, in the hindrances, erasing in them any belief, capable of surviving the ruin of the movement himself […] In this regard, post-war Germany offered a series of instructive examples. It amazed that the American black troops were not greeted with hostility, despite the massive racial indoctrination carried out by the Nazis. " In essence, what made the most cult was the cult of the personality, towards the leaders and the identification of the masses with them.
This phenomenon is also known to Erich Fromm, who, in his best known work, "Escape from freedom, of 1941, sees how" in examining the psychological basis and success of Nazism it is necessary to make a preliminary distinction: a part of the population without resisting, but also without admiring Nazi ideology and political practice, she bowed to the Nazi regime. " (E. Fromm, "Escape from freedom", p.182). The German psychoanalyst starts from the analysis of the condition of modern man, as it has come about since the Renaissance. The individual has achieved a freedom never before experienced, but, at the same time, has left him alone in the face of this freedom. As we have seen in other areas (eg existentialism), this freedom becomes an unbearable burden, it is here that that "escape from freedom" takes place, which manifests itself as a desire for submission to an overwhelming power and hatred for the weak it is nothing but the projection of his desperate fear of freedom and individuality.
The cancellation of social classes
In Germany and Russia, the same idea of belonging to a social class began to fade in the aftermath of the First World War and the various internal struggles. In fact, many of the future leaders of the totalitarian regimes had become politicized in the trenches where individuals of different social ranks were mobilized in the ranks of the armies of the belligerent nations; in the trenches, nobles - albeit to a lesser extent -, bourgeois, peasants and workers found themselves side by side fighting for the common homeland.
It is no coincidence therefore that, under totalitarian regimes, there was a sort of commonality of ideas between the elites and the plebs, both daughters of a difficult historical period that both Germany and Russia were going through.
In the case of Germany, the defeat and the disastrous outcome of the Great War, before hitting the Germans for material damage, wounded the pride of a people who had felt invincible from Hegel onwards; with a historical mission to accomplish, because they bear a morality superior to other peoples (Herder). Not to mention the faith and security in their military machine.
How was it possible that the compatriots of Fichte, Hegel, Schiller, etc., found themselves on the side of the losers, humiliated by the policy of "repairs"? German soil had not been touched by the enemy and until October 1918 not a single battle had been lost by Ludendorff and Hindenburg's troops. There was no other explanation than that of the stabbing behind him, of the fifth column that he plotted against Germany; who is none other than Jews, social democrats and liberals in general. Hence the narration of a Weimar Republic produced by the internal enemies of the German people, allies of France and England. Narration that, within fifteen years, will lead to the rise of National Socialism and Hitler.
As is well known, this party brought together members of the high nobility like Von Papen, as well as simple peasants like Himmler, and members of the bourgeoisie like Joseph Goebbels. All these classes were attracted to the same ideal, albeit for different reasons. On the one hand, the intellectual elites were amused by the collapse of the old world and the old system, on the other the plebs hoped for a social redemption that both Hitler and Stalin apparently guaranteed. Not to mention that the First World War had provided Germany with such a sense of national unity and patriotism that the harsh social contrasts that crossed the German nation from 1871 onwards were almost forgotten, until they were temporarily canceled.
After the definitive defeat of the Kaiser in the world war, the mass that had been mobilized at the front was in a situation of total bewilderment and desolation, not to mention the shock caused by a completely unexpected defeat. Most of them had spent a good part of their youth at the front, consequently finding themselves unable to reintegrate old civilian life. But the biggest problem of all was the fact that these veterans felt outside the traditional party system that even the Weimar republic itself had adopted. The various initial alliances between the Communists and the National Socialists are not surprising, especially in 1932, with the transport strike. Furthermore, the conditions imposed by the Versailles Treaty had not attenuated German nationalism, on the contrary they had fomented it, increasing Germany's desire for revenge on France and other western powers.
And if, on the one hand, the desire for a revenge prevailed, on the other, that of bewilderment increased: “In our world there was public order: there was always someone ready to take us by the hand and show us the right path, teachers , priests, officers, sovereigns. We knew where our place was and we knew what was the difference between good and evil. We were not free, but we were free of fear. For us, the order of things seemed to be permanently fixed until the summer of 1914. " (Ernst Jünger). What the German writer Ernst Jünger intends to explain is that by now the old order had collapsed and with them the certainties that had characterized the European optimism of the late 1800s. The great war had destroyed every point of reference for the individual and for mass society.
They had to be rebuilt, and who could do it if not a totalitarian regime, in which both the elites and the plebs tried to find their identity, feeling part of a group, led by a person, capable of responding to their needs.
And, if Germany represents a particular case in the first post-war period, it must be said that this common feeling between elites and plebs affects a large part of the world panorama. The wounds of the great war were very evident throughout Europe, not only in Germany; on the contrary, just think of Belgium, the battlefield and theater of the greatest war clashes, as well as the symbol par excellence of the chemical war, or in Reims, or in Verdun, places of terrible carnage and devastation, just to name a few. All this means that, after 1918, the myths, which the industrial revolution had produced and which positivist thought had propagated, suffered a severe blow. Progress and technical innovation, which until 1914 were synonymous with hope and trust, become the symbol of a failure, not only momentary, of all western civilization.
All the cultural production of this period is particularly rich in works that testify to this new way of reading history. Think of Oswald Spengler, with his "Sunset of the West" (1918) to Josè Ortega, who in 1930 will publish an essay entitled "The rebellion of the masses" or Julien Benda, who, in 1927, will write a controversial book, entitled "The Betrayal of the Clerics". The crisis of the democratic system is, without doubt, the most visible sign of that western sunset, of which Spengler spoke. This choir is joined by the same "Myth of the twentieth century" by Alfred Rosenberg, with his reading of Germany in an apocalyptic key.
In the case of the German nation, it must be said that the Weimar culture had been conceived outside schools and universities and never managed to penetrate the academic establishment, where, from the beginning, the vast majority assumed an anti-republican position, as Walter notes Laqueur. It is here, therefore, that the temporary alliance between the elites and the plebs, of which Hanna Arendt speaks, takes place: “more than by the unconditional loyalty of the militants of the totalitarian movements and of the popular support enjoyed by their regimes, they remain troubled by the undisputed attraction that these movements exercise on the elites [...] for the understanding of totalitarian movements, this attraction is an equally important key to their relationship with the waste of society "(Hanna Arendt," The origins of totalitarianism, pp. 451- 452).
This alliance is also true for the other anti-system movement, which shares most of the criticisms, reported above on Western civilization, but of a different sign, namely the communist movement. This trust in the triumphant liberal system, above all, in the western world had already been questioned by Karl Marx, who had collected his philosophical-political-economic reflections in the corpus "Das Kapital" (1867-1883), then developed by Vladimir Il 'ič Ul'janov in “Imperialism. Supreme phase of capitalism ”, written in Zurich in 1916.
Therefore, a different discourse should be made, instead, for Stalin's Russia. Before talking about it, it is good to analyze the amount of population lost by Russia between 1914 and 1946. Note the incredible demographic decreases recorded between 1911 and 1920, in which it passes from 167 million inhabitants to 137 and the other decline between 1941 and 1946 of 26 million inhabitants. It is also known that during the great purges (1936-1938) he eliminated 800,000 political or presumed adversaries to which is added the million deaths in the civil war between the red and white armies. Much of the Russian population had, in short, been decimated and considerably reduced in number.
This reference to demography is of some importance in reasoning, which Arendt develops on the strong correlation between mass society and totalitarianism. In fact, the functioning of the Stalinist system, characterized by frequent purges, induced famines and other methods of decimating the population, aimed at bending the masses, which included both social classes and nationalities, there was a need for an overabundant population. Stalin did not miss what Lenin had said about Russia, or the ease with which it was possible to achieve power and the extreme difficulty in maintaining it.
The old aristocrats were almost all killed or sent into exile or in the Gulag, massacred by all these wars and purges. With Stalin, therefore, there was an almost complete massification of the individual and consequent disappearance of social classes. This completes one of the number 1 goals of totalitarianism: the extinction of the social classes and the very idea of them with all that follows.
This gives reason to Hanna Arendt when she says that totalitarian movements tend to organize the masses and not the classes, like the old parties. There have been other men in history who tried to abolish the concept of class in favor of the mass one as example Pol Pot.
The elimination of government alternatives and the multiplication of centers of power
Another common feature of the various regimes is that of the physical elimination not only of political opponents, but also of potential government alternatives, which, therefore, could bring down the personal and absolute power of the leaders. Both Hitler and Stalin, but also Enver Hoxha and Pol Pot themselves, as soon as they got the government, took care to eliminate, immediately, their former companions, who had accompanied them in the ascent. So the Führer in the same year of his rise to power took out his old friend and head of the Sturm Abteil (SA), Ernst Röhm and most of his followers on the "Night of the long knives". Stalin, on the other hand, had to eliminate his greatest internal enemy, Lev Davidovič Bronštejn (Lev Trockij) and all the old Leninist guard of the Bolshevik party, such as Lev Borisovič Kamenev and Grigorij Evseevič Zinov'ev and many other Bolsheviks of the first hour.
Another tool of power is that of the creation and multiplication of bureaucratic apparatuses, subject to frequent purges. This serves to fragment the skills and power of the bureaucrats, to prevent them from taking on an influence, which could undermine that of government leaders. Often, different entities deal with a single subject and this puts them in competition with each other. In Nazi Germany, the ministry of the interior, the organization of the SS, the department of the Jewish question contributed to dealing with "race problems", even going as far as the ministry of agriculture. Added to this is a continually fluctuating hierarchy, with the introduction of new layers of managers and officials, to make it practically impossible to decide definitively on issues of fundamental importance for the regime, making sure that the last word is had either the leader, or his collaborators, rewarding one or the other body or official in turn.
Conclusions
So far an attempt has been made to make an analysis and give a definition on the nature and form of totalitarian regimes. An attempt has been made to explain how totalitarianism differs from other forms of authoritarian and dictatorial states in terms of party methods and organization. As previously mentioned, the other dictators such as Salazar, Franco, Mussolini (etc.) were unable to completely and totally overwhelm the natural rights of Man or the other intermediate bodies of society and were unable to impose totally on the other institutional forms, present in other countries. Indeed, power was shared with other institutions such as the Church and monarchy. A similar argument could be made for many other forms of fascism of the time.
No wonder, therefore, if, for example, after the death of Franco and his "dolphin", Carrero Blanco, King Juan Carlos of Bourbon succeeded, through a smooth transition and without jolts, to restore democracy in Spain ; but, even more exemplary is the story of the Italian fascist regime, when on July 25, 1943, the Monarchy, faced with the disastrous conduct of the war operations, decided to remove the "Duce" from his position as prime minister. All this would have been unimaginable for the Russian and German events.
Therefore, these states, although they remain dictatorial forms of government, cannot be considered totalitarianisms, but rather, as Hanna Arendt defines them, as "single party dictatorships".
It is not enough, in fact, that one party or one man holds the reins of the whole nation to consider himself a regime similar to the Nazi or Stalinist one. The idea of belonging to a social class, as well as family and religious bonds, always remains firm.
Totalitarianism is the result of a response to the crisis, triggered by the new mass societies, within which the individual feels isolated and bewildered, dominated by uncertainty, while he saw all those who had been the pillars of nineteenth-century society collapse . We must "put the world back in order" to "save humanity". And who, if not a strong and charismatic leader, who took upon himself all the responsibilities of choice of other individuals, could do it? Certainly this has its own great charm, someone who gave answers, even if they were wrong. However, this process would have brought with it enormous sacrifices both in terms of human lives and in terms of rights. In addition to his freedom, the individual must also renounce all other social and religious bonds.
Today, often, one wonders if there are still real totalitarianisms such as those just discussed. Not exactly. There are, indeed, special and authoritarian regimes like Kim jong Un's North Korea, but the most widespread are the so-called "democracies", such as Putin's Russia or Erdogan's Turkey.
This term, coined for the first time by the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano and taken up by the American scholar, of Indian origin, Fareed Zakaria, refers to those governments which, supported by popular support, believe they have a superior mandate to act in any line, beyond the same constitutional limits. It is a way of governing that suffocates some fundamental freedoms, such as that of speech or assembly or of organizing non-governmental entities, making any type of opposition difficult. Leaders usually centralize their power over the government and their person. Often some prefer to use the term illiberal democracy or totalitarian democracy.
This mode of government is more similar to a classic dictatorship, where the figure of a single person or a single political party focuses all its powers on itself, rather than a totalitarian regime.
