totalitarianism
Sign in to savethumb|350px|Two versions of the World War II U.S. propaganda poster "Your Lot in a Totalitarian State" depicting a process of compulsory sham election which took place in totalitarian states, the flags of which – [[Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the Soviet Union – are presented below. In the version on the right, produced after Operation Barbarossa, the flag of the Soviet Union (Allied member) is replaced with that of the Empire of Japan (Axis member), which is not always regarded as totalitarian by Western scholars. In regards to the USSR, the label has also received some criticism.]]
AI overview
Totalitarianism is a form of government in which the state exercises extreme control over citizens' lives, including staged elections that lack genuine choice, as illustrated by World War II-era examples like Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and the Soviet Union. It matters because understanding totalitarianism helps people recognize and resist systems that eliminate political freedom and citizen participation in decision-making.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Article
30 sectionsContents
- Definitions
- Contemporary background
- Historical background
- Historiography
- "Totalitarians" and "Revisionists"
- Leninism and the October Revolution
- Revisionists on Stalinism
- Nazism and Fascism
- Further debates
- 1980s - 1990s
- After the 1990s
- Politics
- Early usages
- Self-description of autocracies
- Criticism and analysis
- Cold War
- Totalitarian model
- Criticism and evolution of the totalitarian model
- Kremlinology
- Totalitarian model as an official policy
- Post–Cold War
- Religious totalitarianism
- Islamic
- Criticism of the classification of Islamism as totalitarianism
- Christian
- See also
- Notes
- References
- Further reading
- External links
thumb|350px|Two versions of the World War II U.S. propaganda poster "Your Lot in a Totalitarian State" depicting a process of compulsory sham election which took place in totalitarian states, the flags of which – [[Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the Soviet Union – are presented below. In the version on the right, produced after Operation Barbarossa, the flag of the Soviet Union (Allied member) is replaced with that of the Empire of Japan (Axis member), which is not always regarded as totalitarian by Western scholars. In regards to the USSR, the label has also received some criticism.]]
Totalitarianism is a political system and a form of government that prohibits opposition from political parties, disregards and outlaws the political claims of individual and group opposition to the state, and completely controls the public sphere and the private sphere of society. In the field of political science, totalitarianism is the extreme form of authoritarianism, wherein all political power is held by a dictator. This figure controls the national politics and peoples of the nation with continual propaganda campaigns that are broadcast by state-controlled and state-aligned private mass communications media.