Every year, the specter of totalitarianism looms increasingly large over Ukraine. Totalitarianism is, so to speak, the ultimate form of the state—one in which there are effectively no restrictions whatsoever on the authorities’ ability to apply violence at their discretion. This capability is achieved primarily through the totalitarian idea.
In essence, totalitarianism is a method for driving down the value of human life and property to absolute minimum, through the “idea”—that is, by assigning hyperbolic value to non-existent entities like “nation” or “class,” in whose name totalitarians act. As a result, for someone infected with the “idea,” people are evaluated exclusively as representatives of these mythical categories, which allows replacing the human intuition “he is the same as me” (meaning: he cannot be robbed or killed) with the totalitarian calculation “he is a zhyd and a moskal” (therefore, he can be killed or robbed).
Perhaps the totalitarian form of government can arise “on its own,” and the European Union and the United States, with their totalitarian political correctness, juvenile justice, feminism, and so on, do seem to demonstrate a possible path of gradual degeneration. But historically, totalitarianism has always come to power through political means—either through coups or through elections. And political parties have always been involved in these processes.
In this column, I want to draw attention to the errors people make when discussing these parties and their leaders. Of course, mountains of literature have been written on the subject; I only want to highlight four common misconceptions that people have been repeating for about a hundred years. Clearly, they serve well for self-comfort.
Totalitarians are unserious clowns. External attributes, ritualism, and theatricality are indispensable features of totalitarianism—one of the means of propagating the “idea,” a demonstration of “ours” versus “theirs.” Those who dismiss totalitarians as clowns apparently assume that evil must be done in secret, in quiet offices, by calculating villains. Such things probably happen too, but in this case, evil is committed by people who warmly love their homeland and who experience a genuine euphoria in crowds of their own kind.
Totalitarians “work for money” in someone’s interests. This is a very strange observation, in my view. For some reason, no one speaks of a dancer or singer in a negative sense as someone who “works for money.” On the contrary, it is obvious that if someone is paid for something, it is only because they do that “something” well. And this rule applies not only to dancing and singing but to politics as well. Totalitarians are paid because their talents are expected to serve their patrons’ purposes—that is all. But they do not become lesser totalitarians because of it. Those who comfort themselves and others by saying that totalitarians are merely “fulfilling an order” seem to hope, secretly, that if the clients stop paying, everything will end happily and “it will pass on its own.” It will not end. It will not pass.
Totalitarians will help us against (insert whatever you wish). Always and everywhere, totalitarians fight against some evil. In peacetime and quiet times, totalitarian parties have no prospects. Their element is struggle. And when we speak of the peaceful arrival of totalitarians to power, they have always been presented as a temporary means to fight some evil. In Germany, for example, that evil was considered to be the communists. The fascists were supposed to help “us” defeat the communists. The opposite happened. It turned out that “we” helped the fascists, not the other way around. And this is not a coincidence but a pattern, explained by the following point.
Totalitarians are stupid. In politics, this is not a disadvantage but a tremendous advantage. The more developed a person is, the more aspects of human life matter to them. Consequently, such people cannot agree with each other on all positions—if only because there are too many positions to consider. However, if you have only one idea rattling around in your head, this greatly simplifies your political life, because you have only one point to discuss. If you succeed in implanting one idea in such people, you get a manageable mass of well-trained units. This is why the totalitarian idea is maximally simple; in essence, it is always the same idea of “beat-save,” with the only differences being exactly whom to beat and whom to save. It is worth recalling Hitler’s directive prioritizing the admission of former communists to the NSDAP. Basically, they only needed to pour in the correct idea, and since the main requirement—having a single slot for ideas—the communists already possessed, they had precisely the value the Hitlerite party sought. Totalitarians always begin as a minority, but because of their simplicity, they are the most organized minority. Usually, they exploit those who hope to use them in order to deal with everyone else. There are never many totalitarians, especially at the beginning. Contrary to the common misconception, Hitler did not receive a majority in the elections. The NSDAP achieved a majority only in a bloc with the “German Nationalists.” And then, as we remember, all other parties “self-dissolved,” having recognized the happiness of the national revolution. Or take the Bolsheviks with their leader, Comrade Lenin. The Bolsheviks changed slogans and allies like gloves. And then former allies easily became “enemies of the people.” By the way, I recommend Lenin to everyone—very entertaining and relevant reading.