Totalitarianism

Qualities of totalitarianism:

• Fear of the regime.

• A total disregard for the law. The regime does not abide or seek to change the law to suit them, they just flaunt it. This feeds back into the first point: fear. When anyone can be apprehended for any reason - or without any reason - a culture of fearful obedience emerges.

• Obedience to the regime, even if the acts are perceptively evil. "I was just carrying out orders" was an excuse used by nazis after the war. This facet is explored in Milgram's famous experiment. The volunteer would be led into a room where a man in a white labcoat instructed them to deliver electric shocks of increasing intensity to a person (actor), and told they could stop at any time. The shocks would eventually reach deadly levels, and the actor would fake a painful death. The volunteer was told they could stop at any time, and the experimenter never told them they had to deliver shocks, but as it was suggested, and as they were reassured that the result of the experiment fell solely on the experimenter and not them, they did so. It was found that the vast majority of people would electrocute the man into at least intense pain if not death, and it was the minority who stopped early on. The experiment was controversial at home in the US, where the public believed they would be incapable of committing the crimes of the Germans. It is evident that the average person can easily become an unthinking follower of the regime, especially when there is no morality.

• An aim to destroy history, culture and beliefs that are not a part of the regime's image. There is no 'before totalitarianism' under such a regime.

• An 'Us vs Them' mentality. There is an enemy and an expected attack always just a moment away. This dichotomy is a powerful force as it unites the entire population of the regime as a single entity, with a sense of belonging. This belonging leads to a fear of this unity's severance by an enemy. Wanting to be a part of the regime and wanting to preserve their part of the regime feeds back into their obedience to it.

• The promise that a great future awaits. Hegelian improvement of the human race, or at least of the regime's people. This provides a justification for what might otherwise be considered immoral or inhumane.

Nazi Germany and Stalinism were the great totalitarian regimes, though there are others - North Korea being one of if not the last remaining, complete with the propaganda, war with America and South Korea ever expected and fear.

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of totalitarianism is the destruction of morality, which ceases to exist. There is no good or bad, there is only the regime, and what the regime rewards and punishes - not what the regime allows, mind, as it is a lawless state. Totalitarian states are unafraid of the destruction of everything but themselves, wrapped in a purely selfish ideology without even the pretensions of, for example, the colonial state that claim to spread civilisation.