Totalitarianism Essay

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For a historian, the 20th century and all the historic events that it encompasses represents a utopia with endless sources of inspiration for the analysis of political figures, events and their consequences. Political figures such as Benito Mussolini of Italy, Adolf Hitler of Germany, Mao Zedong of China and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union are all names we are familiar with due to the time period that they influenced; this time period after the trauma and atrocities of World War I and the Great Depression led to completely new forms of government in Europe and beyond. These “manifestations of political evil”, commonly known as totalitarian states, should not be considered as mere extensions of already existing political systems, but rather as completely new forms of government built upon terror and ideological fiction. Therefore, this was also a time in which political philosophers such as Hannah Arendt, the author of the standard work on totalitarianism, “Origins of Totalitarianism”, could thrive. When looking at totalitarianism as a political philosophy, two initial questions have to be dealt with: what is totalitarianism and what kind of effect it had on countries ruled by totalitarian regimes. The reasons for its occurrence have briefly been mentioned above, although there are much deeper ideological, social and economic reasons including imperialism and anti-Semitism. In order to fully understand it, we must also contrast it to other political systems like authoritarianism and dictatorship, which are similar to a certain extent, but lack crucial elements that are in the core of totalitarian ideology. Out of the many examples of totalitarian regimes in the 20th century, Nazi Germany, Communist China and the Soviet Union stan... ... middle of paper ... ...929 and Germany in 1933. In short, Arendt’s goal in writing this book was searching for the intellectual roots of the movement that had displaced her and so many others from her native Germany, and many more in other totalitarian regimes such as the one of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union. In the book, Arendt also deals with other, more broad themes that are present in her political writings throughout her life. Some of these themes are the inquiry into the conditions of the possibility for a humane and democratic public life, the historical, social and economic forces that had come to threaten it, and the conflictual relationship between private interests and the public good. “The Origins of Totalitarianism” was published in 1951 and is divided into three sections: “Antisemitism”, “Imperialism” and “Totalitarianism”; the last two parts were revised in the 1958

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