Exposing Totalitarianism — The Enemies of Open Society
Investigating Karl Popper’s critique of totalitarianism
“Soldiers! don’t give yourselves to brutes — men who despise you — enslave you — who regiment your lives — tell you what to do — what to think and what to feel! Who drill you — diet you — treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men — machine men with machine minds and machine hearts!” — (Excerpt from) The Great Dictator
Totalitarianism, as the word is commonly used, refers to a form of government in which individual rights and freedoms are sacrificed on the altar of the whole (the community, the tribe, or the nation). In other words, the common view seems to be that in a totalitarian system, the good of an individual means little while the good of the collective whole means everything.
This is the first of a series on the subject. In each, I dive deeper into the meaning of totalitarianism. In what follows, I will offer three philosophical perspectives, originally presented by three philosophers in the 20th-century. For many 20th-century philosophers, the topic of totalitarianism was of great importance. Especially as they had witnessed the rise and consequences of fascist regimes in the west and communist regimes in the east.