Author: Timur Mustafin

Cause of totalitarianism: need for a ‘strong’ government

The totalitarian regimes, developed for historical-cultural reasons in the twentieth century, if on the one hand they showed the repressive face of the power of other forms of state, have very specific peculiarities. First of all, to exploit worries and anxieties spread among the population: especially in times of political and economic crisis, when the idea spreads not only of the unpredictability of the future but of a real attack on the status quo. Totalitarianism offers to interpret the anxieties and the common feeling and to offer protection and a solution as easy as illusory. Furthermore, there is the tampering of information, a real cultural brainwashing in order to feed prejudices and fears and obtain public consent.

totalitarianism promotes uniformity: all must be aligned with the thought of the majority, homologation and disappearance of individual distinctions is indispensable. It is no coincidence that there is an exaltation of uniforms, especially military ones. The philosopher Hannah Arendt emphasized this inversion of the ethical principle for which not the Man but the plurality of men inhabit the earth: in the absolute truth of the totalitarian cause emerges the desubjective and alienating nature of the identification of the mass, where uniformity and uniqueness are required of thoughts and behaviors.