A recent article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy reviews several theories of totalitarian states and totalitarianism. One goal is to understand the conditions and ways in which a state becomes totalitarian. It begins with a brief but useful characterization: “Totalitarianism is best understood as any system of political ideas that is both thoroughly dictatorial and utopian.”
The applicability of some of these theories to contemporary America is very noticeable. Hannah Arendt’s analysis struck me in particular as raising notable warnings:
“In her seminal 1951 book, Hannah Arendt attempted to show how totalitarianism emerged as a distinctly modern utopian problem in the twentieth century, growing out of a lethal combination of imperialism, anti-Semitism and extreme statist bureaucracies.”
America has the utopian tendency, the imperialism and the statist bureaucracies. The intelligence agencies are certainly extreme. America doesn’t have the anti-Semitism. It has had instead a set of other demons and enemies it has focused on. The more that domestic elements, groups, movements and ideas are seen as enemies, the greater becomes the totalitarian threat.
7:47 am on May 31, 2015
