Editing Totalitarianism (section)

==Politics==
===Early usages===
====Self-description of autocracies====
The term "totalitarian" was used by leaders and senior officials of right-wing and far-right dictatorships and autocracies established during the [[interwar period]] and [[World War II]] to describe their regimes, most notably by [[Benito Mussolini]] of [[Fascist Italy]]. While in the triade of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, in the latter it became an official self-description, in the second it was also used but to a less extent, and in the first it was not used it all, this pattern of self-description was reversed by later theories of totalitarianism which regarded the USSR as an epitome of totalitarianism, projected this understanding on Nazi Germany and to a less extent on Fascist Italy. Thus, the meaning of the term used in self-descriptions of the Fascists and the one used after World War II were different.<ref name="saz"/>

[[File:Palazzo Braschi Fascist Poster, 1934.png|thumb|Facade of the [[Palazzo Braschi]] (Rome, 1934) with ''[[Il Duce]]'' [[Benito Mussolini]]'s face. As the leader of [[Fascist Italy (1922–1943)]], Mussolini and his ideologues used the term 'totalitarian' to characterize his government.]]
In 1923, in the early reign of Mussolini's government (1922–1943), the anti-fascist academic [[Giovanni Amendola]] was the first Italian public intellectual to define and describe Totalitarianism as a ''régime of government'' wherein the supreme leader personally exercises total power (political, military, economic, social) as ''Il Duce'' of The State. That [[Italian fascism]] is a political system with an ideological, utopian [[worldview]] unlike the [[Realpolitik|realistic politics]] of the personal dictatorship of a man who holds power for the sake of holding power.<ref name="regime">{{cite book |last=Pipes |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Pipes |year=1995 |title=Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime |location=New York |publisher=Vintage Books, Random House |isbn=0394502426 |page=[https://archive.org/details/russiaunderbolsh00rich/page/243 243] |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/russiaunderbolsh00rich/page/243}}</ref> The term "totalitarian" became used by the Fascists themselves: later, the theoretician of Italian Fascism [[Giovanni Gentile]] ascribed politically positive meanings to the ideological terms ''totalitarianism'' and ''totalitarian'' in defence of ''Duce'' Mussolini's legal, illegal, and legalistic social engineering of Italy. As ideologues, the intellectual Gentile and the politician Mussolini used the term ''totalitario'' to identify and describe the ideological nature of the societal structures (government, social, economic, political) and the practical goals (economic, geopolitical, social) of the new [[Fascist Italy (1922–1943)]], which was the "total representation of the nation and total guidance of national goals."<ref>{{cite book |last=Payne |first=Stanley G. |author-link=Stanley G. Payne |date=1980 |title=Fascism: Comparison and Definition |publisher=University of Washington Press |page=73 |isbn=978-0299080600}}</ref> In proposing the totalitarian society of Italian Fascism, Gentile defined and described a civil society wherein totalitarian ideology (subservience to the state) determined the [[public sphere]] and the [[private sphere]] of the lives of the Italian people.<ref name="doctrine"/> That to achieve the Fascist [[utopia]] in the imperial future, Italian totalitarianism must politicise human existence into subservience to the state, which Mussolini summarised with the epigram: "Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."<ref name="regime"/><ref>{{cite book |last=Conquest |first=Robert |author-link=Robert Conquest |date=1990 |title=The Great Terror: A Reassessment |publisher=Oxford University Press |page=249 |isbn=0195071328}}</ref>

Hannah Arendt, in her book ''[[The Origins of Totalitarianism]]'', contended that Mussolini's dictatorship was not a totalitarian regime until 1938.{{sfn|Arendt|1958|pp=256-257}} Arguing that one of the key characteristics of a totalitarian movement was its ability to garner [[mass mobilization]], Arendt wrote: <blockquote>"While all political groups depend upon proportionate strength, totalitarian movements depend on the sheer force of numbers to such an extent that totalitarian regimes seem impossible, even under otherwise favorable circumstances, in countries with relatively small populations.... [E]ven Mussolini, who was so fond of the term "totalitarian state," did not attempt to establish a full-fledged totalitarian regime and contented himself with dictatorship and [[one-party rule]]."{{sfn|Arendt|1958|pp=308–309}}</blockquote>
For example, [[Victor Emmanuel III]] still reigned as a [[figurehead]] and helped play a role in the [[Fall of the Fascist regime in Italy|dismissal of Mussolini]] in 1943. Also, the [[Catholic Church]] was allowed to independently exercise its religious authority in [[Vatican City]] per the 1929 [[Lateran Treaty]], under the leadership of [[Pope Pius XI]] (1922–1939) and [[Pope Pius XII]] (1939–1958).
[[File:Una patria, un estado, un caudillo.jpg|thumb|A 1937 propaganda image featuring [[Francisco Franco]] and his motto ''Una patria! Un estado! Un caudillo!'' resembling the Nazi motto ''Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer''. During the [[Spanish Civil War]], Franco proclaimed that his [[Francoist Spain|Spanish State]] would be modelled after "other countries of totalitarian regime", these being Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.]]
As the Nazis rose to power in 1933, they began using the concept of totalitarian state propagated by Mussolini and Schmitt to characterize their regime. [[Joseph Goebbels]] stated in his 1933 speech: "Our party has always aspired to the totalitarian state. […] the goal of the revolution [National Socialist] has to be a totalitarian state that penetrates into all spheres of public life."<ref name="franco"/> However, the concept of totalitarianism was downplayed among the Nazis who preferred the term ''Volksstaat'' ("people's state" or "racial state") to describe their regime.<ref name="trav2"/>

[[José María Gil-Robles y Quiñones]], the leader of the historic Spanish [[reactionary]] party called the [[CEDA|Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right]] (CEDA),<ref>{{cite book|last=Mann|first=Michael|author-link=Michael Mann (sociologist)|year=2004|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eTE7ytbtp_cC|title=Fascists|location=New York|publisher=Cambridge University Press|page=331|isbn=978-0521831314|access-date=2017-10-26|archive-date=2020-08-19|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200819062157/https://books.google.com/books?id=eTE7ytbtp_cC|url-status=live}}</ref> declared his intention to "give Spain a true unity, a new spirit, a totalitarian polity" and went on to say: "Democracy is not an end but a means to the conquest of the new state. When the time comes, either [[Cortes Generales|parliament]] submits or we will eliminate it."<ref>{{cite book |last=Preston |first=Paul |author-link=Paul Preston |date=2007 |title=The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution and Revenge |edition=3rd |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |page=64 |isbn=978-0393329872}}</ref> General [[Francisco Franco]] was determined not to have competing right-wing parties in Spain and CEDA was dissolved in April 1937. Later, Gil-Robles went into exile.<ref>{{cite book|last=Salvadó|first=Francisco J. Romero|year=2013|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=i5e7wRi-HGcC&pg=PA149|title=Historical Dictionary of the Spanish Civil War|publisher=Scarecrow Press|page=149|isbn=978-0810880092|access-date=2019-04-27|archive-date=2020-08-19|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200819120937/https://books.google.com/books?id=i5e7wRi-HGcC&pg=PA149|url-status=live}}</ref>

General Franco began using the term 'totalitarian' towards his regime during the [[Spanish Civil War]] (1936–1939). On 1 October 1936, he announced his intention to organize Spain "within a broad totalitarian concept of unity and continuity", and practical realization of this intention began with the forced unification of all parties of the Nationalist zone into [[FET y de las JONS]], the sole ruling party of the new regime; after that, he and his ideologues stressed the "missionary and totalitarian" nature of the new state that was under construction "as in other countries of totalitarian regime", these being Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and totalitarianism was described as an essentially Spanish way of government. In December 1942, as [[World War II]] progressed, Franco stopped using the term, and it received a negative connotation as Franco called for a struggle with "Bolshevist totalitarianism."<ref name="franco">{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RdWLDwAAQBAJ | isbn=978-1-78672-300-0 | title=Franco: Anatomy of a Dictator | date=18 December 2017 | publisher=Bloomsbury }}</ref><ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=14RJCAAAQBAJ | isbn=978-0-19-028148-9 | title=Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War | date=20 March 1997 | publisher=Oxford University Press }}</ref>

[[Ioannis Metaxas]], the leader of the [[4th of August Regime]] in Greece which took some inspiration from Fascism, wrote in his diary that he established "an anti-communist, anti-parliamentary state, a totalitarian state, a state based on agriculture and labour, and therefore anti-plutocratic"; after the Italian and German invasions of Greece, he wrote that by "by beating Greece, they were beating what their flag stood for."<ref>https://brill.com/view/journals/fasc/11/2/article-p315_8.xml</ref> Although Metaxas did not create the governing single party, he believed that "the whole of the Greek people, the nation, constituted if any, such a political party, excluding of course the Communists and reactionary old political parties or factions.<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lClpAwAAQBAJ | title=Popular Autocracy in Greece, 1936-1941: A Political Biography of General Ioannis Metaxas | isbn=978-1-134-72926-5 | last1=Vatikiotis | first1=P. J. | date=23 April 2014 | publisher=Routledge }}</ref>

[[Ion Antonescu]], the [[Axis of World War II|Axis]]-aligned dictator of the [[Kingdom of Romania]] during [[World War II]], described his regime as "ethnocratic", "ethnic Christian" and as "the national-totalitarian regime, the regime of
national and social restoration", devoted to the ideology of extreme Romanian nationalism, springing from the Romanian heritage. It enacted antisemitic and racial legislation and was active in perpetrating the [[Holocaust]]; however, in 1941, Antonescu dissolved the ruling party, the [[Iron Guard]], denounced its terrorist methods, and continued his rule without the single-party system; the regime also spared half of the Jews during its existence.<ref>https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/pdf-drupal/en/report/english/1.5-the-holocaust-in-romania.pdf</ref><ref>https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Romania/twelve.pdf</ref>

In 1940, the foreign minister of the [[Empire of Japan]] [[Matsuoka Yosuke]] expressed in an interview the ideological assumptions prevailing within the [[Statism in Shōwa Japan|Shōwa statist]] government of Japan: "In the battle between democracy and totalitarianism the latter adversary will without question win and will control the world. The era of democracy is finished and the democratic system bankrupt... Fascism will develop in Japan through the people's will. It will come out of love for the Emperor."<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-FgMS9xpeV4C | title=Antitrust and Global Capitalism, 1930–2004 | isbn=978-1-139-45558-9 | last1=Freyer | first1=Tony A. | date=9 October 2006 | publisher=Cambridge University Press }}</ref> A document produced by the government's cabinet planning board pointed out that "since the founding of our country, Japan has had an unparalleled totalitarianism... an ideal totalitarianism is manifest in our national polity... Germany's totalitarianism has existed for only eight years, but Japanese [totalitarianism] has shone through 3,000 years of ageless tradition".<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=k7q6BwAAQBAJ | title=The Oxford Illustrated History of World War II | isbn=978-0-19-960582-8 | last1=Overy | first1=R. J. | date=2015 | publisher=Oxford University Press }}</ref>

==== Criticism and analysis ====
[[File:Leon Trotsky, 1930s.jpg|thumb|left|upright|[[Leon Trotsky]] formulated a concept of totalitarianism in his analysis of the USSR in the 1930s.]]
In the interwar period ''totalitarianism'' emerged as a term used in criticism and analysis of dictatorships of the time. In this critical period, the term began to be used to describe fascism and later became a ground of comparison of fascist states and the Soviet Union, but was not understood as an element of a single liberal-totalitarian dychotomy and as something opposite to liberal democracy.<ref name="trav2"/>

In the 1930s, left-wing critics of Stalinism began applying the term to the Soviet state and use it to compare it to fascist states. [[Leon Trotsky]] was one of the first<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DAxVjDG4p_0C | title=Power: Its Forms, Bases, and Uses | isbn=978-1-4128-3165-9 | last1=Wrong | first1=Dennis Hume | publisher=Transaction Publishers }}</ref> to do so, thus producing perhaps most famous example of such usage of the term by a left-wing anti-Stalinist dissident.<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RF3LFMID9k8C | title=The Lost Debate: German Socialist Intellectuals and Totalitarianism | isbn=978-0-252-06796-9 | last1=Jones | first1=William David | date=1999 | publisher=University of Illinois Press }}</ref> It seems that the first to use the term towards the USSR was the writer and left-wing activist [[Victor Serge]], who did it shortly before his arrest in the USSR in a letter published in France. The same year, Trotsky compared fascist and Soviet bureaucracies, describing both as parasitic, and later stated that "in the last period the Soviet bureaucracy has familiarised itself with many traits of victorious fascism, first of all by getting rid of the control of the party and establishing the cult of the leader." In ''[[The Revolution Betrayed]]'' (1936), Trotsky began using the term "totalitarian" to analyse the USSR and compare it with Fascism, attributing to totalitarianism, rooted in "the dilatoriness of the world proletariat in solving the problems set for it by history", such features as concentration of power in the hands of a single individual, the abolition of popular control over the leadership, the use of extreme repression, and the elimination of contending loci of power; later he included "the suppression of all freedom to criticize; the subjection of the accused to the military; examining magistrates, a prosecutor and judge in one; a monolithic press whose howlings terrorize the accused and hypnotize public opinion"; Trotsky wrote that the USSR "had become "totalitarian" in character several years before this word arrived from Germany." However, his concept was much less defined than the one of the Cold War theorists, and he would have disagreed with their core points: that 'central control and direction of the entire economy' was applicable to fascism, and would have rejected their tendency to depict 'totalitarian' societies as politically monolithic and inherently static, as well as their anti-communist perspective and their description of Lenin as a totalitarian dictator;<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3o2fAwAAQBAJ | title=Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy | isbn=978-90-04-26953-8 | last1=Twiss | first1=Thomas M. | date=8 May 2014 | publisher=BRILL }}</ref> scholars even argued that for him it was a pejorative, not a sociologal concept based on equating Fascism and socialism, like it was for Cold War theorists.<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Kc1oAAAAMAAJ | title=The Trotsky Reappraisal | isbn=978-0-7486-0317-6 | last1=Brotherstone | first1=Terry | last2=Dukes | first2=Paul | date=1992 }}</ref>
[[File:Carriers of the New Black Plague.jpg|thumb|1938 satirical illustration "Carriers of the New Black Plague" by [[William Cotton (artist)|William Cotton]]; the caption mentions "Totalitarian Eclipse" threatening democracy.]]
One of the first people to use the term ''totalitarianism'' in the English language was Austrian writer [[Franz Borkenau]] in his 1938 book ''The Communist International'', in which he commented that it united the Soviet and German dictatorships more than it divided them.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Nemoianu |first=Virgil |date=December 1982 |title=Review of ''End and Beginnings'' |journal=Modern Language Notes |volume=97 |issue=5 |pages=1235–1238}}</ref> The label ''totalitarian'' was twice affixed to Nazi Germany during [[Winston Churchill]]'s speech of 5 October 1938 before the [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|House of Commons]], in opposition to the [[Munich Agreement]], by which France and Great Britain consented to Nazi Germany's annexation of the [[Sudetenland]].<ref>{{cite speech |last=Churchill |first=Winston |author-link=Winston Churchill |title=The Munich Agreement |date=5 October 1938 |location=[[House of Commons of the United Kingdom]] |publisher=International Churchill Society |url=http://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1930-1938-the-wilderness/the-munich-agreement |access-date=7 August 2020 |language=English |quote=We in this country, as in other Liberal and democratic countries, have a perfect right to exalt the principle of self-determination, but it comes ill out of the mouths of those in totalitarian states who deny even the smallest element of toleration to every section and creed within their bounds. Many of those countries, in fear of the rise of the Nazi power, ... loathed the idea of having this arbitrary rule of the totalitarian system thrust upon them, and hoped that a stand would be made. |archive-date=26 June 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200626193227/https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1930-1938-the-wilderness/the-munich-agreement/ |url-status=live }}</ref> Churchill was then a [[backbencher]] MP representing the [[Epping (UK Parliament constituency)|Epping constituency]]. In a radio address two weeks later, Churchill again employed the term, this time applying the concept to "a Communist or a Nazi tyranny."<ref>{{cite speech |last=Churchill |first=Winston |author-link=Winston Churchill |title=Broadcast to the United States and to London |date=16 October 1938 |publisher=International Churchill Society |url=http://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1930-1938-the-wilderness/the-defence-of-freedom-and-peace |access-date=7 August 2020 |archive-date=25 September 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200925195010/https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1930-1938-the-wilderness/the-defence-of-freedom-and-peace/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

The concept gained legitimacy in 1939 with the [[Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact]], after which it became accepted, at least until 1941, to present Stalin and Hitler as "twin dictators" and call Nazism "brown Bolshevism" and Stalinism "red Fascism". The same year, scholars of various disciplines held the first international symposium on totalitarianism in Philadelphia.<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jmeBDwAAQBAJ | title=The New Faces of Fascism: Populism and the Far Right | isbn=978-1-78873-046-4 | last1=Traverso | first1=Enzo | date=29 January 2019 | publisher=Verso Books }}</ref><ref name="trav"/> The concept was abandoned in 1941, as the Third Reich [[Operation Barbarossa|invaded the USSR]], and the latter became depicted in Western propaganda as "valiant freedom-loving" ally in the war;<ref name="dos">{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MeKzEAAAQBAJ | isbn=978-1-6669-3090-0 | title=Stalinism and the Dialectics of Saturn: Anticommunism, Marxism, and the Fate of the Soviet Union | date=20 March 2023 | publisher=Rowman & Littlefield }}</ref> among the major productions of pro-Stalinist Western propaganda was the film ''[[Mission to Moscow]]'' (1943), based on the 1941 book of the same name.<ref name="suny"/>

In the aftermath of the Second World War (1939–1945), in the lecture series (1945) and book (1946) titled ''The Soviet Impact on the Western World'', the British historian [[E. H. Carr]] said that "the trend away from [[individualism]] and towards totalitarianism is everywhere unmistakable" in the [[Decolonization|decolonising]] countries of [[Eurasia]]. That [[proletarian revolution|revolutionary]] Marxism–Leninism was the most successful type of totalitarianism, as proved by the USSR's [[Industrialization in the Soviet Union|rapid industrialisation]] (1929–1941) and the [[Great Patriotic War]] (1941–1945) that defeated Nazi Germany. That, despite those achievements in social engineering and warfare, in dealing with the countries of the [[Communist bloc]] only the "blind and incurable" ideologue could ignore the Communist régimes' trend towards police-state totalitarianism in their societies.<ref>{{cite book |last=Laqueur |first=Walter |author-link=Walter Laqueur |date=1987 |title=The Fate of the Revolution |location=New York |publisher=Scribner |page=131 |isbn=0684189038}}</ref>

Politically matured by having fought and been wounded and survived the Spanish Civil War, in the essay "[[Why I Write]]" (1946), the socialist George Orwell said, "the Spanish war and other events in 1936–37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for [[democratic socialism]], as I understand it." That future totalitarian régimes would spy upon their societies and use the mass communications media to perpetuate their dictatorships, that "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever."<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Orwell |first=George |author-link=George Orwell |date=1946 |title=Why I Write |url=http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part47 |magazine=[[Gangrel (magazine)|Gangrel]] |access-date=7 August 2020 |archive-date=25 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200725130413/http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part47 |url-status=live }}</ref>

===Cold War===
[[File:Hannah Arendt 1933.jpg|thumb|upright|Anti-totalitarian: Hannah Arendt thwarted the ''totalitarian model'' Kremlinologists who sought to co-opt the thesis of ''The Origins of Totalitarianism'' (1951) as American anti–Communist propaganda that claimed that every [[Warsaw Pact|Communist state]] was of the totalitarian model.]]

In ''[[The Origins of Totalitarianism]]'' (1951), the political scientist [[Hannah Arendt]] said that, in their times in the early 20th century, corporate [[Nazism]] and [[Ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|soviet Communism]] were new forms of totalitarian government, not updated versions of the old [[Tyrant|tyrannies]] of a military or a corporate dictatorship. That the human emotional comfort of ''political certainty'' is the source of the mass appeal of revolutionary totalitarian régimes, because the totalitarian [[worldview]] gives psychologically comforting and definitive answers about the complex socio-political mysteries of the past, of the present, and of the future; thus did Nazism propose that all history is the history of [[ethnic conflict]], of the survival of the fittest race; and Marxism–Leninism proposes that all history is the history of [[class conflict]], of the survival of the fittest social class. That upon the believers' acceptance of the ''universal applicability'' of totalitarian ideology, the Nazi revolutionary and the Communist revolutionary then possess the simplistic moral certainty with which to justify all other actions by the State, either by an appeal to [[historicism]] (Law of History) or by an [[appeal to nature]], as expedient actions necessary to establishing an authoritarian state apparatus.<ref>{{cite book |last=Villa |first=Dana Richard |date=2000 |title=The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt |publisher=Cambridge University Press |pages=2–3 |isbn=0521645719}}</ref>

;True belief
In ''[[The True Believer|The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements]]'' (1951), [[Eric Hoffer]] said that political mass movements, such as [[Italian Fascism]] (1922–1943), German [[Nazism]] (1933–1945), and Russian [[Stalinism]] (1929–1953), featured the common political praxis of negatively comparing their totalitarian society as [[Cultural imperialism|culturally superior]] to the [[Decadence|morally decadent]] societies of the democratic countries of Western Europe. That such [[mass psychology]] indicates that participating in and then joining a political mass movement offers people the prospect of a glorious future, that such membership in a community of political belief is an emotional refuge for people with few accomplishments in their real lives, in both the [[public sphere]] and in the [[private sphere]]. In the event, the true believer is assimilated into a collective body of true believers who are mentally protected with "fact-proof screens from reality" drawn from the official texts of the totalitarian ideology.<ref>{{cite book |last=Hoffer |first=Eric |author-link=Eric Hoffer |date=2002 |title=[[The True Believer|The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements]] |publisher=Harper Perennial Modern Classics |pages=61, 163 |isbn=0060505915}}</ref>

;Collaborationism
In "European Protestants Between Anti-Communism and Anti-Totalitarianism: The Other Interwar Kulturkampf?" (2018) the historian Paul Hanebrink said that Hitler's assumption of power in Germany in 1933 frightened Christians into anti-communism, because for European Christians, Catholic and Protestant alike, the new postwar '[[culture war]]' crystallized as a struggle against Communism. Throughout the [[Interwar period|European interwar period]] (1918–1939), right-wing totalitarian régimes indoctrinated Christians to demonize the Communist régime in Russia as the apotheosis of [[Dialectical materialism|secular materialism]] and [as] a militarized threat to worldwide Christian social and moral order".<ref>{{cite journal |last=Hanebrink |first=Paul |date=July 2018 |title=European Protestants Between Anti-Communism and Anti-Totalitarianism: The Other Interwar Kulturkampf? |journal=Journal of Contemporary History |volume=53 |issue=3 |page=624 |doi=10.1177/0022009417704894|s2cid=158028188 }}</ref> That throughout Europe, the Christians who became anti-communist totalitarians perceived Communism and communist régimes of government as an existential threat to the moral order of their respective societies; and [[Collaborationism|collaborated]] with Fascists and Nazis in the idealistic hope that anti-communism would restore the societies of Europe to their root Christian culture.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Hanebrink |first=Paul |date=July 2018 |title=European Protestants Between Anti-Communism and Anti-Totalitarianism: The Other Interwar Kulturkampf? |journal=Journal of Contemporary History |volume=53 |issue=3 |pages=622–643 |doi=10.1177/0022009417704894|s2cid=158028188 }}</ref>

====Totalitarian model====
In the U.S. geopolitics of the late 1950s, the Cold War concepts and the terms ''totalitarianism'', ''totalitarian'', and ''totalitarian model'', presented in ''Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy'' (1956), by Carl Joachim Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski, became common usages in the foreign-policy discourse of the U.S. Subsequently established, the ''totalitarian model'' became the analytic and interpretational paradigm for [[Kremlinology]], the academic study of the monolithic police-state USSR. The Kremlinologists analyses of the internal politics (policy and personality) of the [[politburo]] crafting policy (national and foreign) yielded [[strategic intelligence]] for dealing with the USSR. Moreover, the U.S. also used the totalitarian model when dealing with fascist totalitarian régimes, such as that of a [[banana republic]] country.<ref name="Brzezinski & Friedrich 1956">{{cite book |last1=Brzezinski |first1=Zbigniew |author-link1=Zbigniew Brzezinski |last2=Friedrich |first2=Carl |author-link2=Carl Joachim Friedrich |date=1956 |title=Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy |publisher=Harvard University Press |page= |isbn=978-0674332607}}</ref> As anti–Communist political scientists, Friedrich and Brzezinski described and defined totalitarianism with the monolithic totalitarian model of six interlocking, mutually supporting characteristics:

# Elaborate guiding ideology.
# [[One-party state]]
# [[State terrorism]]
# Monopoly control of weapons
# Monopoly control of the [[Mass media|mass communications media]]
# Centrally directed and controlled [[planned economy]]<ref>Brzezinski & Friedrich, 1956, p.22.</ref>

====Criticism and evolution of the totalitarian model====
[[File:Zbigniew Brzezinski, 1977.jpg|thumb|upright|The American political scientist [[Zbigniew Brzezinski]] popularised 'combating left-wing totalitarianism' in U.S. foreign policy<ref name="Connelly 2010"/> and served as National Security Advisor to the United States President [[Jimmy Carter]].<ref name="suny"/>]]
As traditionalist historians, Friedrich and Brzezinski said that the totalitarian régimes of government in the USSR (1917), Fascist Italy (1922–1943), and Nazi Germany (1933–1945) originated from the political discontent caused by the socio-economic aftermath of the First World War (1914–1918), which rendered impotent the government of [[Weimar Germany]] (1918–1933) to resist, counter, and quell left-wing and right-wing revolutions of totalitarian temper.<ref>Brzezinski & Friedrich 1956, p. 22.</ref> Revisionist historians noted the historiographic limitations of the totalitarian-model interpretation of Soviet and Russian history, because Friedrich and Brzezinski did not take account of the actual functioning of the Soviet social system, neither as a political entity (the USSR) nor as a social entity (Soviet civil society), which could be understood in terms of socialist class struggle among the professional élites (political, academic, artistic, scientific, military) seeking upward mobility into the ''[[nomenklatura]]'', the ruling class of the USSR. That the political economics of the politburo allowed measured executive power to regional authorities for them to implement policy was interpreted by revisionist historians as evidence that a totalitarian régime adapts the political economy to include new economic demands from civil society; whereas traditionalist historians interpreted the politico-economic collapse of the USSR to prove that the totalitarian régime of economics failed because the politburo did not adapt the political economy to include actual popular participation in the Soviet economy.<ref>{{cite book |last=Laqueur |first=Walter |author-link=Walter Laqueur |date=1987 |title=The Fate of the Revolution: Interpretations of Soviet History from 1917 to the Present |location=New York |publisher=Scribner's |pages=186–189, 233–234 |isbn=978-0684189031}}</ref>

The historian of Nazi Germany, [[Karl Dietrich Bracher]] said that the ''totalitarian typology'' developed by Friedrich and Brzezinski was an inflexible model, for not including the ''revolutionary dynamics'' of bellicose people committed to realising the violent revolution required to establish totalitarianism in a sovereign state.<ref name="Kershaw, Ian page 25">{{cite book |last=Kershaw |first=Ian |author-link=Ian Kershaw |date=2000 |title=The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation |location=London; New York |publisher=Arnold; Oxford University Press |page=25 |isbn=978-0340760284 |oclc=43419425}}</ref> That the essence of totalitarianism is total control to remake every aspect of civil society using a universal ideology—which is interpreted by an authoritarian leader—to create a collective national identity by merging civil society into the State.<ref name="Kershaw, Ian page 25"/> Given that the supreme leaders of the Communist, the Fascist, and the Nazi total states did possess government administrators, Bracher said that a totalitarian government did not necessarily require an actual supreme leader, and could function by way of [[collective leadership]]. The American historian [[Walter Laqueur]] agreed that Bracher's totalitarian typology more accurately described the functional reality of the politburo than did the totalitarian typology proposed by Friedrich and Brzezinski.<ref>{{cite book |last=Laqueur |first=Walter |author-link=Walter Laqueur |date=1987 |title=The Fate of the Revolution: Interpretations of Soviet History from 1917 to the Present |location=New York |publisher=Scribner's |page=241 |isbn=978-0684189031}}</ref>

{{multiple image
| total_width       = 350
| image1            = HafezalAssadspeech1_(cropped).jpg
| image2            = Bashar2000.png
| footer            = Dynasty of totalitarians: [[Ba'athist Syria]] was ruled by the generational dictatorships of [[Hafez al-Assad]] (r. 1971–2000) and his son [[Bashar al-Assad]] (r. 2000 – 2024) between the late Cold War in the 1970s<ref>{{Cite book |last=Khamis, B. Gold, Vaughn |first=Sahar, Paul, Katherine |title=The Oxford Handbook of Propaganda Studies |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-19-976441-9 |editor-last=Auerbach, Castronovo |editor-first=Jonathan, Russ |location=198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 |pages=422 |chapter=22. Propaganda in Egypt and Syria's "Cyberwars": Contexts, Actors, Tools, and Tactics}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Wedeen |first=Lisa |title=Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria |publisher=University of Chicago Press |year=2015 |isbn=978-0-226-33337-3 |location=Chicago |pages= |chapter= |doi=10.7208/chicago/978022345536.001.0001|doi-broken-date=1 November 2024 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Meininghaus |first=Esther |title=Creating Consent in Ba'thist Syria: Women and Welfare in a Totalitarian State |publisher=I. B. Tauris |year=2016 |isbn=978-1-78453-115-7 |pages= |chapter=}}</ref> until 2024.<ref name="fall">{{cite news |title=Syrian rebels topple President Assad, prime minister calls for free elections |url=https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/syria-rebels-celebrate-captured-homs-set-sights-damascus-2024-12-07/ |access-date=8 December 2024 |publisher=Reuters |date=8 December 2024}}</ref>
}}

In ''[[Democracy and Totalitarianism]]'' (1968) the political scientist [[Raymond Aron]] said that for a régime of government to be considered totalitarian it can be described and defined with the totalitarian model of five interlocking, mutually supporting characteristics:

# A one-party state where the ruling party has a monopoly on all political activity.
# A state ideology upheld by the ruling party that is given official status as the only authority.
# A state monopoly on information; control of the mass communications media to broadcast the official truth.
# A state-controlled economy featuring major economic entities under state control.
# An ideological police-state terror; criminalisation of political, economic, and professional activities.<ref>{{cite book |last=Aron |first=Raymond |author-link=Raymond Aron |date=1968 |title=[[Democracy and Totalitarianism]] |publisher=Littlehampton Book Services |page=195 |isbn=978-0297002529}}</ref>

In 1980, in a book review of ''How the Soviet Union is Governed'' (1979), by J.F. Hough and Merle Fainsod, William Zimmerman said that "the Soviet Union has changed substantially. Our knowledge of the Soviet Union has changed, as well. We all know that the traditional paradigm [of the totalitarian model] no longer satisfies [our ignorance], despite several efforts, primarily in the early 1960s (the directed society, totalitarianism without police terrorism, the system of conscription) to articulate an acceptable variant [of Communist totalitarianism]. We have come to realize that models which were, in effect, offshoots of totalitarian models do not provide good approximations of post–Stalinist reality [of the USSR]."<ref name="Zimmerman 1980"/> In a book review of ''Totalitarian Space and the Destruction of Aura'' (2019), by [[Ahmed Saladdin]], [[Michael Scott Christofferson]] said that Hannah Arendt's interpretation of the USSR after [[Stalinism|Stalin]] was her attempt to [[intellect]]ually distance her work from "the Cold War misuse of the concept [of the origins of totalitarianism]" as anti-Communist propaganda.<ref name="Saladdin 2019">{{cite book |last=Saladdin |first=Ahmed |date=2019 |title=Totalitarian Space and the Destruction of Aura |location=Albany |publisher=SUNY Press |page=7 |isbn=978-1438472935}}</ref>{{cn|date=March 2025|reason=The text cites the book review not the book, but current note only references the book}}

===Kremlinology===
During the Russo–American Cold War (1945–1989), the academic field of [[Kremlinology]] (analysing politburo policy politics) produced historical and policy analyses dominated by the ''totalitarian model'' of the USSR as a [[police state]] controlled by the absolute power of the supreme leader [[Stalin]], who heads a monolithic, centralised hierarchy of government.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Davies |first1=Sarah |last2=Harris |first2=James |year=2005 |chapter=Joseph Stalin: Power and Ideas |title=Stalin: A New History |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |page=3 |isbn=978-1139446631 |quote=Academic Sovietology, a child of the early Cold War, was dominated by the 'totalitarian model' of Soviet politics. Until the 1960s it was almost impossible to advance any other interpretation, in the USA at least.}}</ref> The study of the internal politics of the [[Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|politburo]] crafting policy at the Kremlin produced two schools of historiographic interpretation of Cold War history: (i) traditionalist Kremlinology and (ii) revisionist Kremlinology. Traditionalist Kremlinologists worked with and for the ''totalitarian model'' and produced interpretations of Kremlin politics and policies that supported the police-state version of ''Communist Russia''. The revisionist Kremlinologists presented alternative interpretations of Kremlin politics and reported the effects of politburo policies upon Soviet society, civil and military. Despite the limitations of police-state historiography, [[Historical revisionism|revisionist]] Kremlinologists said that the old image of the [[Stalinism|Stalinist USSR]] of the 1950s—a totalitarian state intent upon world domination—was oversimplified and inaccurate, because the death of Stalin changed Soviet society.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Lenoe |first=Matt |date=June 2002|title=Did Stalin Kill Kirov and Does it Matter?|journal=The Journal of Modern History |volume=74 |issue=2 |pages=352–380 |doi=10.1086/343411 |issn=0022-2801 |s2cid=142829949}}</ref> After the Cold War and the dissolution of the [[Warsaw Pact]], most revisionist Kremlinologists worked the national archives of ex–Communist states, especially the [[State Archive of the Russian Federation]] about Soviet-period Russia.<ref name="Davies & Harris 2005, pp. 4–5"/><ref>{{cite journal |last=Fitzpatrick |first=Sheila |author-link=Sheila Fitzpatrick |date=November 2007 |title=Revisionism in Soviet History |journal=History and Theory |volume=46 |issue=4 |pages=77–91 |doi=10.1111/j.1468-2303.2007.00429.x |issn=1468-2303 |quote= . . . the Western scholars who, in the 1990s and 2000s, were most active in scouring the new archives for data on Soviet repression were revisionists (always 'archive rats') such as Arch Getty and Lynne Viola.}}</ref>

====Totalitarian model as an official policy====
In the 1950s, the political scientist [[Carl Joachim Friedrich]] said that [[Communist state]]s, such as [[USSR|Soviet Russia]] and [[China|Red China]], were countries which were systematically controlled by a supreme leader who used the five features of the ''totalitarian model'' of government: (i) an official [[dominant ideology]] that includes a [[cult of personality]] about the leader, (ii) control of all civil and military weapons, (iii) control of the public and the private [[mass media|mass communications media]], (iv) the use of [[state terrorism]] to police the populace, and (v) a political party of mass membership who perpetually re-elect The Leader.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Davies |first1=Sarah |last2=Harris |first2=James |year=2005 |chapter=Joseph Stalin: Power and Ideas |title=Stalin: A New History |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |pages=3–4 |isbn=978-1139446631 |quote=In 1953, Carl Friedrich characterised totalitarian systems in terms of five points: an official ideology, control of weapons and of media, use of terror, and a single mass party, 'usually under a single leader.' There was, of course, an assumption that the leader was critical to the workings of totalitarianism: at the apex of a monolithic, centralised, and hierarchical system, it was he who issued the orders which were fulfilled, unquestioningly, by his subordinates.}}</ref>

In the 1960s, the revisionist Kremlinologists researched the organisations and they also studied the policies of the relatively autonomous [[bureaucracy|bureaucracies]] that influenced the crafting of high-level policy for governing Soviet society in the USSR.<ref name="Davies & Harris 2005, pp. 4–5">{{cite book |last1=Davies |first1=Sarah |last2=Harris |first2=James |year=2005 |chapter=Joseph Stalin: Power and Ideas |title=Stalin: A New History |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |pages=4–5 |isbn=978-1139446631 |quote=Tucker's work stressed the absolute nature of Stalin's power, an assumption which was, increasingly, challenged by later revisionist historians. In his ''Origins of the Great Purges'', Arch Getty argued that the Soviet political system was chaotic, that institutions often escaped the control of the centre, and that Stalin's leadership consisted to a considerable extent in responding, on an ''ad hoc'' basis, to political crises as they arose. Getty's work was influenced by political [the] science of the 1960s onwards, which, in a critique of the totalitarian model, began to consider the possibility that relatively autonomous bureaucratic institutions might have had some influence on policy-making at the highest level.}}</ref> Revisionist Kremlinologists, such as [[J. Arch Getty]] and [[Lynne Viola]], transcended the interpretational limitations of the totalitarian model by ''recognising'' and ''reporting'' that the Soviet government, the communist party, and the civil society of the USSR had greatly changed upon the death of Stalin. The revisionist [[social history]] indicated that the [[sociology|social forces]] of Soviet society had compelled the Government of the USSR to adjust [[public policy]] to the actual [[political economy]] of a Soviet society composed of pre–War and post–War generations of people with different perceptions of the utility of [[Communist economics]] for all the Russias.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Lenoe |first=Matt |date=June 2002|title=Did Stalin Kill Kirov and Does It Matter?|journal=The Journal of Modern History |volume=74 |issue=2 |pages=352–380 |doi=10.1086/343411 |issn=0022-2801 |s2cid=142829949}}</ref> Hence, Russian modern history had outdated the ''totalitarian model'' that was the post–[[Stalinism|Stalinist]] perception of the police-state USSR of the 1950s.<ref name="Zimmerman 1980">{{cite journal|last=Zimmerman|first=William|date=September 1980|title=Review: How the Soviet Union is Governed|publisher=Cambridge University Press|journal=Slavic Review|volume=39|issue=3|pages=482–486|doi=10.2307/2497167|jstor=2497167}}</ref>

===Post–Cold War===
[[File:Ambassador Nura Abba Rimi & President Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea (cropped).jpg|thumb|upright|President [[Isaias Afwerki]] has ruled [[Eritrea]] as a totalitarian dictator since the country's independence in 1993.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Saad|first=Asma|date=21 February 2018|url=https://mjps.ssmu.ca/2018/02/21/eritreas-silent-totalitarianism/|title=Eritrea's Silent Totalitarianism|journal=McGill Journal of Political Studies|issue=21|access-date=7 August 2020|archive-date=7 October 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181007040952/https://mjps.ssmu.ca/2018/02/21/eritreas-silent-totalitarianism/|url-status=live}}</ref>]]
[[File:AQMI Flag asymmetric.svg|thumb|Flag of the [[Islamic State]], which is a self-proclaimed [[caliphate]] that demands the religious, political, and military obedience of [[Ummah|Muslims worldwide]]]]
In ''Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?: Five Interventions in the (Mis)Use of a Notion'', [[Slavoj Žižek]] ironically described the concept of totalitarianism as an "ideological antioxidant" similar to the "[[Celestial Seasonings]]" green tea that, according to its advertisement, "neutralizes harmful molecules in the body known as free radicals" and wrote that "[t]he notion of 'totalitarianism', far from being an effective theoretical concept, is a kind of stopgap: instead of enabling us to think, forcing us to acquire a new insight into the historical reality it describes, it relieves us of the duty to think, or even actively prevents us from thinking".<ref>{{cite book |last=Žižek |first=Slavoj |author-link=Slavoj Žižek |date=2002 |title=Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?: Five Interventions in the (Mis)Use of a Notion |location=London and New York |publisher=Verso |page=169 |isbn=9781859844250}}</ref>

Saladdin Ahmed criticizes the concept of totalitarianism as formulated by Brzezinski and Friedrich, and to less extent, Arendt, in ''Totalitarian Space and the Destruction of Aura'' (2019) and notes that their definition of totalitarianism can be invalidated by questioning whether the term 'totalitarian' is applicable to a regime which lacks "any one" of criterion formulated by them: "this was the case in General August Pinochet's Chile", yet it would be absurd to exempt it from the class of totalitarian regimes for that reason alone", since while Pinochet did not adopt an "official" ideology, but "ideological hegemony, whereby the dominant ideology becomes internalized and normalized, is far more effective than imposing an official ideology." Saladdin posited that while [[Military dictatorship of Chile|Chile under Pinochet]] had no "official" ideology, there was one man who ruled Chile from "behind the scenes", "none other than [[Milton Friedman]], the godfather of [[neoliberalism]] and the most influential teacher of the [[Chicago Boys]], was Pinochet's adviser". To Saladdin, such hegemonic yet not "official" ideology is much a more effective means of "totalitarian" control of society than an "official" ideology openly imposed by the state, what is exemplified by comparing Chile to [[Nicolae Ceaușescu]]'s Romania, which collapsed within a short period: "No one defended them; no masses poured onto the streets to mourn their deaths. Ceausescu's Romania, as an exemplary Stalinist state, met all of Friedrich and Brzezinski's criteria of a totalitarian state, but it was nowhere close to achieving total domination." In this sense, Saladdin criticised the concept of totalitarianism because it was only being applied to "opposing ideologies" and it was not being applied to liberalism. He also criticized the other criterion of totalitarianism formulated by Brzezinski, Friedrich and Arendt. "In sum, a regime that does not meet all of Friedrich and Brzezinski's criteria would not necessarily be nontotalitarian or even less totalitarian, if we agree that totalitarianism ultimately amounts to total domination. If anything, realizing a greater degree of domination would necessarily require going beyond each of Friedrich and Brzezinski's criteria. Even without empirical cases which can always be dismissed to spare the proposed criteria – we could, with little difficulty, imagine a system that demonstrates none of the six criteria but is nonetheless more efficient as a totalitarian system. This will become clearer over the course of the rest of this chapter, but it should already be evident that the pioneers of the Cold War definition of totalitarianism molded their conception on the least developed of totalitarian systems... Tailored to Stalinism, [totalitarianism] aimed to predetermine that the negation of liberal capitalism would logically and empirically lead to a horrific system of total and arbitrary terror"; "Philosophically, their account of totalitarianism is invalid because it stipulates "criteria" that amount to an abstracted description of Stalin's USSR, rendering the notion predeterministic."<ref name="Saladdin 2019"/>

In the early 2010s, Richard Shorten, [[Vladimir Tismăneanu]], and Aviezer Tucker posited that totalitarian ideologies can take different forms in different political systems but all of them focus on [[utopia]]nism, [[scientism]], or [[political violence]]. They posit that Nazism and Stalinism both emphasised the role of specialisation in modern societies and they also saw [[polymath]]y as a thing of the past, and they also stated that their claims were supported by statistics and science, which led them to impose strict ethical regulations on culture, use psychological violence, and persecute entire groups.<ref>{{cite book |last=Shorten |first=Richard |date=2012 |title=Modernism and Totalitarianism: Rethinking the Intellectual Sources of Nazism and Stalinism, 1945 to the Present |publisher=Palgrave |isbn=978-0230252073}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Tismăneanu |first=Vladimir |date=2012 |title=The Devil in History: Communism, Fascism, and Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0520954175}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Tucker |first=Aviezer |date=2015 |title=The Legacies of Totalitarianism: A Theoretical Framework |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1316393055}}</ref> Their arguments have been criticised by other scholars due to their partiality and anachronism. [[Juan Francisco Fuentes]] treats totalitarianism as an "[[invented tradition]]" and he believes that the notion of "modern [[despotism]]" is a "reverse anachronism"; for Fuentes, "the anachronistic use of totalitarian/totalitarianism involves the will to reshape the past in the image and likeness of the present".<ref>{{cite journal |last=Fuentes |first=Juan Francisco |date=2015 |title=How Words Reshape the Past: The 'Old, Old Story of Totalitarianism |journal=Politics, Religion & Ideology |volume=16 |issue=2–3 |pages=282–297 |doi=10.1080/21567689.2015.1084928|s2cid=155157905 }}</ref>

Other studies try to link modern technological changes to totalitarianism. According to [[Shoshana Zuboff]], the economic pressures of modern [[surveillance capitalism]] are driving the intensification of connection and monitoring online with spaces of social life becoming open to saturation by corporate actors, directed at the making of profit and/or the regulation of action.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Zuboff|first1=Shoshana|title=The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power|publisher=PublicAffairs|year=2019|isbn=978-1610395694|location=New York|oclc=1049577294}}</ref> [[Toby Ord]] believed that George Orwell's fears of totalitarianism constituted a notable early precursor to modern notions of anthropogenic existential risk, the concept that a future catastrophe could permanently destroy the potential of Earth-originating intelligent life due in part to technological changes, creating a permanent [[technological dystopia]]. Ord said that Orwell's writings show that his concern was genuine rather than just a throwaway part of the fictional plot of ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]''. In 1949, Orwell wrote that "[a] ruling class which could guard against (four previously enumerated sources of risk) would remain in power permanently".<ref>{{cite book|last=Ord|first=Toby|year=2020|chapter=Future Risks|title=The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing|isbn=978-1526600196}}</ref> That same year, [[Bertrand Russell]] wrote that "modern techniques have made possible a new intensity of governmental control, and this possibility has been exploited very fully in totalitarian states".<ref>{{cite journal|last=Clarke|first=R.|year=1988|title=Information Technology and Dataveillance|journal=[[Communications of the ACM]]|volume=31|number=5|pages=498–512|doi=10.1145/42411.42413|s2cid=6826824|doi-access=free}}</ref>

In 2016, ''[[The Economist]]'' described China's developed [[Social Credit System]] under [[Chinese Communist Party]] [[General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party|general secretary]] [[Xi Jinping]]'s [[Xi Jinping Administration|administration]], to screen and rank its citizens based on their personal behavior, as ''totalitarian''.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.economist.com/briefing/2016/12/17/china-invents-the-digital-totalitarian-state|title=China invents the digital totalitarian state|newspaper=The Economist|date=17 December 2017|access-date=14 September 2018|archive-date=14 September 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180914200819/https://www.economist.com/briefing/2016/12/17/china-invents-the-digital-totalitarian-state|url-status=live}}</ref> Opponents of China's ranking system say that it is intrusive and it is just another tool which a one-party state can use to control the population. Supporters say that it will transform China into a more civilised and law-abiding society.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Leigh |first1=Karen |last2=Lee |first2=Dandan |date=2 December 2018 |title=China's Radical Plan to Judge Each Citizen's Behavior |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/chinas-radical-plan-to-judge-each-citizens-behavior/2018/12/02/0a281258-f69b-11e8-8642-c9718a256cbd_story.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190102090447/https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/chinas-radical-plan-to-judge-each-citizens-behavior/2018/12/02/0a281258-f69b-11e8-8642-c9718a256cbd_story.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=2 January 2019 |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |access-date=23 January 2020}}</ref> Shoshana Zuboff considers it instrumentarian rather than totalitarian.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Lucas |first=Rob |date=January–February 2020 |title=The Surveillance Business |url=https://newleftreview.org/issues/II121/articles/rob-lucas-the-surveillance-business |journal=[[New Left Review]] |volume=121 |issue= |pages= |doi= |access-date=23 March 2020 |archive-date=21 June 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200621022016/https://newleftreview.org/issues/II121/articles/rob-lucas-the-surveillance-business |url-status=live }}</ref>

In ''Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism'' (2022), the political scientists [[Steven Levitsky]] and Lucan Way said that nascent revolutionary régimes usually became totalitarian régimes if not destroyed with a military invasion. Such a revolutionary régime begins as a [[social revolution]] independent of the existing social structures of the state (not political succession, election to office, or a military ''coup d'état''). For example, the [[Soviet Union]] and [[History of the People's Republic of China (1949–1976)|Maoist China]] were founded after the years long [[Russian Civil War]] (1917–1922) and [[Chinese Civil War]] (1927–1936 and 1945–1949), respectively, not merely state succession. They produce totalitarian dictatorships with three functional characteristics: (i) a cohesive [[ruling class]] comprising the military and the political élites, (ii) a strong and loyal coercive apparatus of police and military forces to suppress dissent, and (iii) the destruction of rival political parties, organisations, and independent centres of socio-political power. Moreover, the unitary functioning of the characteristics of totalitarianism allow a totalitarian government to perdure against economic crises (internal and external), large-scale failures of policy, mass social-discontent, and political pressure from other countries.<ref>{{cite book |first1=Steven|last1=Levitsky|last2=Way|first2=Lucan|date=13 September 2022 |title=Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism |publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-0691169521}}</ref> Some totalitarian [[one-party state]]s were established through [[Coup d'état|coups]] orchestrated by military officers loyal to a vanguard party that advanced [[socialist revolution]], such as the [[Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma]] (1962),<ref>{{cite book |last1=Rummel |first1=R.J. |title=Widening circle of genocide |date=1994 |publisher=Transaction Publishers |editor1-last=Charney |editor1-first=Israel W. |page=5 |chapter=Democide in Totalitarian States: Mortacracies and Megamurderers.}}</ref> [[Ba'athist Syria|Syrian Arab Republic]] (1963),<ref>Sources:
* {{Cite book |last=Wieland |first=Carsten |title=Syria and the Neutrality Trap: The Dilemmas of Delivering Humanitarian Aid Through Violent Regimes |publisher=I.B. Tauris |year=2018 |isbn=978-0-7556-4138-3 |location= London |pages=68 |chapter=6: De-neutralizing Aid: All Roads Lead to Damascus}}
* {{Cite book |last=Meininghaus |first=Esther |title=Creating Consent in Ba'thist Syria: Women and Welfare in a Totalitarian State |publisher=I. B. Tauris |year=2016 |isbn=978-1-78453-115-7 |location=London|pages=69, 70}}
* {{Cite journal |last=Hashem |first=Mazen |date=Spring 2012 |title=The Levant Reconciling a Century of Contradictions |url=https://www.academia.edu/51919018 |journal=AJISS |volume=29 |issue=2 |pages=141 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240305093704/https://www.academia.edu/51919018/The_Levant_Reconciling_a_Century_of_Contradictions |archive-date=5 March 2024 |via=academia.edu}}</ref> and [[Democratic Republic of Afghanistan]] (1978).<ref>Sources:
* {{Cite book |last=Tucker |first=Ernest |title=The Middle East in Modern World History |publisher=Routledge |year=2019 |isbn=978-1-138-49190-8 |edition=2nd|location=New York|page=303 |chapter=21: Middle East at the End of the Cold War, 1979–1993 |lccn=2018043096 |quote=}}
* {{Cite journal |last=Kirkpatrick |first=Jeane J |date=1981 |title=Afghanistan: Implications for Peace and Security |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/20671902 |journal=World Affairs |volume=144 |issue=3 |pages=243 |jstor=20671902 |quote=}}
* {{Cite book |last=S.Margolis |first=Eric |title=War at the top of the World |publisher=Routledge |year=2005 |isbn=0-415-92712-9 |location=29New York |pages=14, 15 |chapter=2: The Bravest Men on Earth}}</ref>

[[North Korea]] is the only country in East Asia to survive totalitarianism after the death of [[Kim Il-sung]] in 1994 and handed over to his son [[Kim Jong-il]] and grandson [[Kim Jong-un]] in 2011, as of today in the 21st century.<ref name="Cinpoes"/>

Other emerging technologies that could empower future totalitarian regimes include [[brain-reading]], [[contact tracing]], and various applications of [[artificial intelligence]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Brennan-Marquez |first=K. |date=2012 |title=A Modest Defence of Mind Reading |url=https://yjolt.org/modest-defense-mind-reading |journal=[[Yale Journal of Law and Technology]] |volume=15 |issue=214 |pages= |doi= |access-date= |archive-date=2020-08-10 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200810195039/https://yjolt.org/modest-defense-mind-reading |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Pickett |first=K. |date=16 April 2020 |title=Totalitarianism: Congressman calls method to track coronavirus cases an invasion of privacy |url=https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/totalitarianism-congressman-calls-method-to-track-coronavirus-cases-an-invasion-of-privacy |work=[[Washington Examiner]] |access-date=23 April 2020 |archive-date=22 April 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200422082819/https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/totalitarianism-congressman-calls-method-to-track-coronavirus-cases-an-invasion-of-privacy |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Helbing2019">{{cite book |last1=Helbing |first1=Dirk |last2=Frey |first2=Bruno S. |last3=Gigerenzer |first3=Gerd |last4=Hafen |first4=Ernst |last5=Hagner |first5=Michael |last6=Hofstetter |first6=Yvonne |last7=van den Hoven |first7=Jeroen |last8=Zicari |first8=Roberto V. |last9=Zwitter |first9=Andrej |title=Towards Digital Enlightenment |chapter=Will Democracy Survive Big Data and Artificial Intelligence? |date=2019 |pages=73–98 |doi=10.1007/978-3-319-90869-4_7 |isbn=978-3-319-90868-7 |s2cid=46925747 |chapter-url=https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/111453647/Helbing2019_Chapter_WillDemocracySurviveBigDataAnd.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220526083948/https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/111453647/Helbing2019_Chapter_WillDemocracySurviveBigDataAnd.pdf |archive-date= 2022-05-26}} (also published in {{cite book |last1=Helbing |first1=D. |last2=Frey |first2=B. S. |last3=Gigerenzer |first3=G. |display-authors=etal |date=2019 |chapter=Will democracy survive big data and artificial intelligence? |title=Towards Digital Enlightenment: Essays on the Dark and Light Sides of the Digital Revolution |location= |publisher=Springer, Cham. |pages=73–98 |isbn=978-3319908694}})</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Turchin|first1=Alexey|last2=Denkenberger|first2=David|s2cid=19208453|title=Classification of global catastrophic risks connected with artificial intelligence|journal=AI & Society|date=3 May 2018|volume=35|issue=1|pages=147–163|doi=10.1007/s00146-018-0845-5|url=https://philarchive.org/rec/TURCOG-2}}</ref> Philosopher [[Nick Bostrom]] said that there is a possible trade-off, namely that some existential risks might be mitigated by the establishment of a powerful and permanent [[world government]], and in turn the establishment of such a government could enhance the existential risks which are associated with the rule of a permanent dictatorship.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Bostrom|first1=Nick|title=Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority|journal=Global Policy|date=February 2013|volume=4|issue=1|pages=15–31|doi=10.1111/1758-5899.12002}}</ref>

===Religious totalitarianism===
====Islamic====
[[File:Flag of the Taliban.svg|thumb|[[Flag of Afghanistan|Flag of the Taliban]]]]
The [[Taliban]] is a totalitarian [[Sunni Islam]]ist militant group and political movement in [[Afghanistan]] that emerged in the aftermath of the [[Soviet–Afghan War]] and the end of the Cold War. It governed most of Afghanistan from [[Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (1996–2001)|1996 to 2001]] and [[2021 Taliban offensive|returned to power in 2021]], controlling the entirety of Afghanistan. Features of its totalitarian governance include the imposition of [[Pashtunwali]] culture of the majority [[Pashtuns|Pashtun]] ethnic group as religious law, the exclusion of minorities and non-Taliban members from the government, and extensive [[Treatment of women by the Taliban|violations of women's rights]].<ref>*{{cite journal |last1=Sakhi |first1=Nilofar |title=The Taliban Takeover in Afghanistan and Security Paradox |journal=Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs |date=December 2022 |volume=9 |issue=3 |pages=383–401 |doi=10.1177/23477970221130882 |s2cid=253945821 |quote=Afghanistan is now controlled by a militant group that operates out of a totalitarian ideology.}}
* {{cite web |last1=Madadi |first1=Sayed |title=Dysfunctional centralization and growing fragility under Taliban rule |url=https://www.mei.edu/publications/dysfunctional-centralization-and-growing-fragility-under-taliban-rule |website=[[Middle East Institute]] |access-date=28 November 2022 |date=6 September 2022 |quote=In other words, the centralized political and governance institutions of the former republic were unaccountable enough that they now comfortably accommodate the totalitarian objectives of the Taliban without giving the people any chance to resist peacefully.}}
* {{cite web |last1=Sadr |first1=Omar |title=Afghanistan's Public Intellectuals Fail to Denounce the Taliban |url=https://www.fairobserver.com/region/central_south_asia/omar-sadr-afghanistan-taliban-rule-totalitarianism-human-rights-news-2441/ |website=Fair Observer |access-date=28 November 2022 |date=23 March 2022 |quote=The Taliban government currently installed in Afghanistan is not simply another dictatorship. By all standards, it is a totalitarian regime.}}
* {{cite web |title=Dismantlement of the Taliban regime is the only way forward for Afghanistan |url=https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/southasiasource/dismantlement-of-the-taliban-regime-is-the-only-way-forward-for-afghanistan/ |website=[[Atlantic Council]] |access-date=28 November 2022 |date=8 September 2022 |quote=As with any other ideological movement, the Taliban's Islamic government is transformative and totalitarian in nature.}}
* {{cite web |last1=Akbari |first1=Farkhondeh |title=The Risks Facing Hazaras in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan |url=https://extremism.gwu.edu/risks-facing-hazaras-taliban-ruled-afghanistan |website=[[George Washington University]] |access-date=28 November 2022 |date=7 March 2022 |quote=In the Taliban's totalitarian Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, there is no meaningful political inclusivity or representation for Hazaras at any level. |archive-date=14 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230114164914/https://extremism.gwu.edu/risks-facing-hazaras-taliban-ruled-afghanistan |url-status=dead}}</ref>

The [[Islamic State]] is a [[Salafi jihadism|Salafi-Jihadist]] militant group that was established in 2006 by [[Abu Omar al-Baghdadi]] during the [[Iraqi insurgency (2003–2011)|Iraqi insurgency]], under the name "[[Islamic State of Iraq]]". Under the leadership of [[Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi]], the organization later changed its name to the "Islamic State of Iraq and Levant" in 2013. The group espouses a totalitarian ideology that is a [[Islamic fundamentalism|fundamentalist]] hybrid of [[Jihadism|Global Jihadism]], [[Wahhabism]], and [[Qutbism]]. Following its [[Northern Iraq offensive (June 2014)|territorial expansion in 2014]], the group renamed itself as the "Islamic State" and declared itself as a [[caliphate]]{{efn|Caliphate claim of "Islamic State" group is disputed and declared as illegal by traditional [[Ulema|Islamic scholarship]].<ref>[[Yusuf al-Qaradawi]] stated: "[The] declaration issued by the Islamic State is void under [[sharia]] and has dangerous consequences for the Sunnis in Iraq and for the revolt in Syria", adding that the title of caliph can "only be given by the entire Muslim nation", not by a single group. – {{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10948480/Islamic-State-leader-Abu-Bakr-al-Baghdadi-addresses-Muslims-in-Mosul.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220112/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10948480/Islamic-State-leader-Abu-Bakr-al-Baghdadi-addresses-Muslims-in-Mosul.html |archive-date=12 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|title=Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi addresses Muslims in Mosul|last=Strange|first=Hannah|date=5 July 2014|work=[[The Daily Telegraph]]|access-date=6 July 2014}}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref name=":8">{{Cite web|url=http://www.jihadica.com/caliph-incognito/|title=Caliph Incognito: The Ridicule of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi|last=Bunzel|first=Cole|website=www.jihadica.com|date=27 November 2019 |language=en-US|access-date=2 January 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200102184946/http://www.jihadica.com/caliph-incognito/|archive-date=2 January 2020|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2016/11/01/what-a-caliphate-really-is-and-how-the-islamic-state-is-not-one/|title=What a caliphate really is—and how the Islamic State is not one|last=Hamid|first=Shadi|date=1 November 2016|website=Brookings|language=en-US|access-date=5 February 2020|archive-date=1 April 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200401231616/https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2016/11/01/what-a-caliphate-really-is-and-how-the-islamic-state-is-not-one/|url-status=live}}</ref>}} that sought domination over the [[Muslim world]] and established what has been described as a "''political-religious totalitarian regime''". The [[quasi-state]] held [[Territory of the Islamic State|significant territory]] in Iraq and Syria during the course of the [[Third Iraq War]] and the [[Syrian civil war]] from 2013 to 2019 under the dictatorship of its first Caliph, [[Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi]], who imposed a strict interpretation of Sharia law.<ref>{{cite web |last=Winter |first=Charlie |date=27 March 2016 |title=Totalitarianism 101: The Islamic State's Offline Propaganda Strategy |work=Lawfare |url=https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/totalitarianism-101-islamic-states-offline-propaganda-strategy}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Filipec |first=Ondrej |title=The Islamic State From Terrorism to Totalitarian Insurgency |publisher=Routledge |year=2020 |isbn=9780367457631}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Peter |first=Bernholz |date=February 2019 |chapter=Supreme Values, Totalitarianism, and Terrorism |title=The Oxford Handbook of Public Choice |volume=1}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Haslett |first=Allison |date=2021 |title=The Islamic State: A Political-Religious Totalitarian Regime. |url=https://libjournals.mtsu.edu/index.php/scientia/article/download/2075/1251/5752 |journal=Scientia et Humanitas: A Journal of Student Research |publisher=[[Middle Tennessee State University]] |quote="Islamic State embraces the most violent, extreme traits of Jihadi-Salafism. the State merged religious dogma and state control together to create a ''political-religious totalitarian regime'' that was not bound by physical borders"}}</ref>

===== Criticism of the classification of Islamism as totalitarianism =====
[[Enzo Traverso]], a critic of totalitarianism as a theoretical concept of historical and political sciences, is also critical of the usage of it in relation to [[Islamism|Islamist]] movements like [[Islamic State|ISIS]] and the [[Taliban]] and their state formations: according to Traverso, such notion contradicts the very theoretical concept of totalitarianism. Systems which are commonly described as totalitarian, fascism and communism, sought to create a [[utopia]]n "New Man" and as a result, they set their projects toward the future, not to revive old forms of [[Absolutism (European history)|absolutism]], as noted by [[Tzvetan Todorov]]. "The [[reactionary modernism]] of [[Islamic terrorism]], on the contrary, employs modern technologies in order to return to the original purity of a mythical Islam. If it has utopian tendencies, they look to the past rather than the future." More to it, totalitarianism has been applied to secular movements which have been described as irrational "political religions" which seek to abolish traditional religions, liturgies and symbols and replace them with their own liturgies and symbols, while [[Islamic fundamentalism]], on the contrary, is a politicized religion and a reaction to secularization and modernisation. Besides that, as a form of violence, [[terrorism]] is usually described as antipodal to state violence; while fascism was a reaction to democracy, Islamism arose in authoritarian, but weak states. "Speaking of a "theocratic" totalitarianism makes this concept even more flexible and ambiguous than ever, once again confirming its essential function: not critically interpreting history and the world, but rather fighting an enemy". Traverso writes that the usage of the term began after [[9/11]] by Western propaganda, which previously used it against the other enemies while maintaining the geopolitical interests of the West. He notes that the Islamic state which most resembles the concept of totalitarianism, [[Saudi Arabia]], is an ally of the West and as a result, it cannot be considered a part of the "[[Axis of Evil]]", and for that reason, as he believes, Saudi Arabia is rarely described as "totalitarian", unlike [[Iran]].<ref name="trav2"/>

====Christian====
{{See also|National Catholicism|Christian fascism|Clerical fascism}}
[[File:RETRATO DEL GRAL. FRANCISCO FRANCO BAHAMONDE (adjusted levels).jpg|thumb|upright|Portrait of [[Francisco Franco]]]]
[[Francoist Spain]] (1936–1975), under the dictator [[Francisco Franco]], had been commonly characterized as totalitarian until 1964, when [[Juan Linz]] challenged this characterization and instead described Francoism as "authoritarian" because of its "limited degree of political pluralism" caused by the struggle between 'Francoist families' (Falangists, Carlists, etc.) within the sole legal party [[FET y de las JONS]] and the ''[[Movimiento Nacional]]'' and by other such features as, according to Linz, lack of 'totalitarian' ideology, as Franco relied on [[National Catholicism]] and traditionalism. Such revision caused a major debate, some critics of Linz felt that his concept may be a form of acquittal of Francoism and did not concern its early phase (often called "[[First Francoism]]"). Later debates focused on whether the regime could be described as 'fascist' rather than whether it was totalitarian; some historians stressed the traits of a military dictatorship, while the others emphasized the Fascist component, calling the regime a [[Para-fascism|para-fascist]] or 'fascistized' dictatorship. While [[Enrique Moradiellos]] notes that "it is now increasingly rare to define Francoism as a truly fascist and totalitarian regime", although he writes that the debates on Francoism haven't finished yet,<ref name="franco"/> [[Ismael Saz]] notes that "it has also begun to be recognised that" Francoism underwent a "totalitarian or quasi-totalitarian, fascist or quasi-fascist" phase.<ref name="saz">{{Cite book |last=Saz |first=Ismael |author-link=Ismael Saz |title=Fascismo y Franquismo |publisher=Universitat de València |year=2004 |isbn=978-84-370-5910-5 |location=València |language=es}}</ref> The historians who continue to criticize Linz and describe the regime as totalitarian usually limit such characterization to ten to twenty years of the "[[First Francoism]] ."<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=D32PCwAAQBAJ | isbn=978-1-317-29422-1 | title=European Dictatorships 1918-1945 | date=12 February 2016 | publisher=Routledge }}</ref><ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JzAKEAAAQBAJ | isbn=978-84-8102-695-5 | title=La construcción de la dictadura franquista en Cantabria | date=20 November 2020 | publisher=Ed. Universidad de Cantabria }}</ref><ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=angGEAAAQBAJ | isbn=978-84-95886-89-7 | title=El Franquismo y la apropiación del pasado: El uso de la historia, de la arqueología y de la historia del arte para la legitimación de la dictadura | date=2 July 2016 | publisher=Editorial Pablo Iglesias }}</ref><ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=F5MXzFIHWmMC | isbn=978-84-259-1008-1 | title=Estado y derecho en el franquismo: El nacionalsindicalismo. F. J. Conde y Luis Legaz Lacambra | date=1996 | publisher=Centro de Estudios Constitucionales }}</ref>
[[File:Pla y Deniel marzo 1942.jpg|thumb|[[Francoist Spain|Francoist]] minister [[Esteban Bilbao]] (left) and Catholic archbishop [[Enrique Pla y Deniel]] (center) doing the Roman salute in [[Toledo Cathedral]], Spain, March 1942]]
Linz wrote that "the heteronomous control of the ideological content of Catholic thought by a universal church and specifically by the Pope is one of the most serious obstacles to the creation of a truly totalitarian system..."<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8cYk_ABfMJIC | isbn=978-1-55587-890-0 | title=Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes | date=2000 | publisher=Lynne Rienner Publishers }}</ref> This argument is also debated: "The frequent and saturated references to Francoist Catholic humanism... coming from Christian theology, could hardly conceal the fact that the individual was only understood as a citizen to the extent of his adherence to the Catholic, hierarchical and economically privatist community that the military uprising had saved";<ref name="fr3">{{cite book |last1=Contreras |first1=Guillermo Portilla |title=El derecho penal bajo la dictadura franquista: Bases ideológicas y protagonistas |date=2022 |publisher=Editorial Dykinson, S.L. |location=[[Madrid]] |url=https://ruja.ujaen.es/server/api/core/bitstreams/1ff15109-4ea2-4949-967c-2183fc8000c8/content |access-date=17 January 2025 |language=es}}{{page needed|date=March 2025}}</ref> "Catholic values that permeated the conservative ideological substratum... were precisely what was wielded by the Francoist Spanish political doctrine of the late thirties and early forties to justify the need for the constitution of a totalitarian State at the service and expansion of the Catholic religion."<ref name="fr4">{{cite journal | url=https://revistaderecho.posgrado.unam.mx/index.php/rpd/article/view/170/330 | doi=10.22201/ppd.26831783e.2021.14.170 | title=La voluntad totalitaria del Franquismo | date=2021 | last1=González Prieto | first1=Luis Aurelio | journal=Revista del Posgrado en Derecho de la Unam | issue=14 | pages=44 | doi-access=free }}</ref>

Franco was portrayed as a fervent Catholic and a staunch defender of [[Catholic Church in Spain|Catholicism]], the declared [[state religion]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Viñas |first=Ángel |url=https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/libro?codigo=511206 |title=En el combate por la historia: la República, la guerra civil, el franquismo |year=2012 |publisher=Pasado y Presente |isbn=978-8493914394 |language=es |access-date=2020-09-15 |archive-date=2020-10-05 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201005174834/https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/libro?codigo=511206 |url-status=live }}</ref> [[Civil marriage]]s that had taken place in the Republic were declared null and void unless they had been validated by the Church, along with divorces. Divorce, [[Birth control|contraception]] and abortions were forbidden.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Franco edicts |url=http://search.boe.es/datos/imagenes/BOE/1954/198/A04862.tif |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080626065607/http://search.boe.es/datos/imagenes/BOE/1954/198/A04862.tif |archive-date=26 June 2008 |access-date=16 December 2005}}</ref> According to historian [[Stanley G. Payne]], an opponent of describing Francoism as a totalitarian system, Franco had more day-to-day power than [[Adolf Hitler]] or [[Joseph Stalin]] possessed at the respective heights of their power. Payne noted that Hitler and Stalin at least maintained rubber-stamp parliaments, while Franco dispensed with even that formality in the early years of his rule. According to Payne, the lack of even a rubber-stamp parliament made Franco's government "the most purely arbitrary in the world."<ref name="Payne1987">{{cite book |last1=Payne |first1=Stanley G. |title=The Franco Regime, 1936–1975 |year=1987 |publisher=Univ of Wisconsin Press |isbn=978-0-299-11070-3 |pages=323–324 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mgDWLYcTYIAC&pg=PA323}}</ref> However, from 1959 to 1974 the "[[Spanish Miracle]]" took place under the leadership of [[technocrats]], many of whom were members of [[Opus Dei and politics#Opus Dei members in Franco's government|Opus Dei]] and a new generation of politicians that replaced the old [[Falangist]] guard.<ref>Jensen, Geoffrey. "Franco: Soldier, Commander, Dictator". Washington D.C.: Potomac Books, Inc., 2005. p. 110-111.</ref> Reforms were implemented in the 1950s and Spain abandoned [[autarky]], reassigning economic authority from the isolationist [[Falangism|Falangist movement]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/timreuter/2014/05/19/before-chinas-transformation-there-was-the-spanish-miracle/#f5da6133b3e1 |title=Before China's Transformation, There Was The 'Spanish Miracle' |work=Forbes Magazine |access-date=22 August 2017 |date=19 May 2014 |first=Tim |last=Reuter |archive-date=24 December 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191224061157/https://www.forbes.com/sites/timreuter/2014/05/19/before-chinas-transformation-there-was-the-spanish-miracle/#f5da6133b3e1 |url-status=live }}</ref> This led to massive economic growth that lasted until the mid-1970s, known as the "[[Spanish miracle]]". This is comparable to [[De-Stalinization]] in the Soviet Union in the 1950s, where [[Francoist Spain]] changed from being openly totalitarian to an authoritarian dictatorship with a certain degree of [[economic freedom]].<ref>[[#Payne2000|Payne (2000)]], p. 645</ref>{{full citation needed|date=February 2025}}{{failed verification|date=January 2025}}