Editing Totalitarianism (section)

===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>