Totalitarianism
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The term totalitarian was coined during the Cold War to designate regimes deemed most threatening: most communist regimes and the extinct fascist regime in Germany. Other fascist regimes like Franco's Spain and Salazar's Portugal, Chile under Pinochet, as well as a raft of other pro-Western tyrannies were given a pass as "merely" authoritarian. Thanks for that?
Consistent with the Cold War construction of the term is the following: authoritarianism reflects a political ethos valuing the authority of the state over the individual freedoms of its citizens. A totalitarian state usually requires a defining ideology with which to justify its appropriation of the levers of power: extreme nationalism was the driving force behind Nazism; Marxism in the case of the Soviet Union; and a puritanical form of Islam in the case of a theocracy such as Iran. China offers an interesting example of a totalitarian regime that has abandoned the practical ramifications of its ideology, whilst retaining the power structures thus derived. Ba'ath regimes in Syria and Iraq have also been termed totalitarian.
Such states are characterised by the extent of their subversion of the rule of law, with the police and judiciary acting as direct instruments of control and providing no meaningful check or balance upon the ruling elite. Media outlets are subordinated to faithful promotion of the defining ideology and, as the state matures, this tends to be reinforced with coordinated programmes of indoctrination within the education system. Dissent is often brutally repressed and extra-judicial are common. Other common features include the fostering of a cult of personality around the head of state and rampant corruption due to the arbitrary enforcement of laws and statutes.
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[edit] Examples
[edit] Rightist
- Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler
- Italy under Benito Mussolini and the PNF
- Spain under Francisco Franco and the Falange
- Militarist Japan under the Taisei Yokusankai
- Croatia under Ante Pavelić and the Ustaše
- Hungary under Ferenc Szálasi and the Arrow Cross Party
- Romania under Ion Antonescu and the Iron Guard
- Afghanistan under the Taliban
- Saudi Arabia under the House of Saud
- Iran, despite not technically being a single party state, is generally thought to be this under the Ayatollahs
[edit] Leftist
- The Soviet Union, especially under Stalin (they "lightened up" a bit after his death)
- Communist China, especially when ruled by Mao Zedong
- Multiple Soviet puppet regimes, such as Romania under Nicolae Ceaușescu, Mongolia under Khorloogiin Choibalsan and Poland under General Wojciech Jaruzelski[1]
- Albania under Enver Hoxha
- Fidel Castro's Cuba
- Cambodia under Pol Pot
- Ho Chi Minh's Vietnam
- Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe
[edit] Otherist
- Libya under Muammar Gaddafi, who was too batshit to decide where he was on a political spectrum
- Iraq under Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, which had both left-wing and right-wing elements before Hussein's right-wing took control in Iraq.[2]
- Syria under the Ba'ath Party, which is currently led by Bashar al-Assad. Like its Iraqi counterpart, the Syrian Ba'ath Party combines elements of both left-wing and right-wing totalitarianism.
- North Korea under the Kim family, as the Juche "philosophy" takes influences from both Japanese ethnic nationalism and Marxist-Leninist economics. In practice it is an absolute monarchy albeit one with a planned economy.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ↑ The only Soviet puppet who's title as "totalitarian" is debatable was Hungary under János Kádár with his "Goulash Communism" (Communism-lite), though this was still at the very least authoritarian and anti-democatic.
- ↑ Joseph Sassoon. Saddam Hussein's Ba'th Party: Inside an Authoritarian Regime. Cambridge University Press, 2011.