POL SCI 140L Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Totalitarianism, Sanctification
15 Feb 2018
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Total state where there is no independent civil society. Both presented themselves as models of new anti-liberal modernity. Used technology on a large scale to penetrate and dominate societies. Used organization and technology to destroy or exterminate large populations. Both political religions, but started from opposite sides of the spectrum. Nazism was an ideology of racial superiority, stalinism was about class superiority. Stalinism predicted an inevitable war launched against the soviet union from the capitalist world ( defensive) Scholars had trouble using the world totalitarianism about the ussr after 1953. But people were attached to the label! It fed into cold war rhetoric, was a political foothold. Some kept using the term but with mussolini"s definition (ie. lack of independent civil society) Not just a purge of jobs within the party . When you abolish rule of mass terror, fear of corruption is reduced. It quickly came to be viewed as unjustifiable.
