Totalitarianism: A Regime of Terror and Ideology
Totalitarianism is not only more radical but also different from other known forms of political oppression since it has created completely new institutions and destroyed all social traditions of the countries in which it came to power. Beyond its ideological form, both in the Stalinist and Hitler forms, it has transformed classes into masses, has replaced the party system with a new mass movement, transferred the center of army power to the police, and pursued a foreign policy openly directed to world domination. Arendt wonders whether the totalitarian regime is simply a fallback solution inspired by tyranny and which owes its existence only to the failure of traditional political forces, or whether it is to be considered as a form of government with its nature.
Distinction Between Legal and Illegal Government
Totalitarianism demolishes the distinction between legal and illegal government, between legitimate and arbitrary power. According to Ms. Arendt, a rule of law is defined as a political body in which positive laws are necessary for human coexistence. In the totalitarian regime, on the other hand, the law of history or nature is destined to be translated into reality through the use of the standards of total terror. The latter is the essence of the regime. In a totalitarian regime, terror is not enough to inspire human behavior. In fact, the most appropriate instrument to prepare the subjects of a totalitarian regime for the roles of victim or performer is ideology, which replaces traditional principles of action. According to Arendt, therefore, every ideology is by its nature totalitarian since it deprives man of the freedom to think if not in its categories, and if racism and communism have become the determining ideologies of the 20th century, it was because the premises on which they were based were found to be politically more important than those of other ideologies.
Ideology as Movement
They conceive history exclusively as a movement, emancipating themselves from experience through the methods of demonstration which order the facts in an absolutely logical mechanism that is not reflected in reality. This last point is the most important one, because, unlike their predecessors, Hitler and Stalin had not been attracted by the original content of the ideology, but rather to the logical process that could develop from it. It is, in fact, through the latter that they have turned ideologies into weapons with which to force each of their subjects to step up with the movement of terror. So, if the coercion of total terror isolates individuals and deprives them of any kind of contact with each other, the force of logical deduction prepares each individual for such isolation.
The Experience of Isolation and Estrangement
Arendt raises an important question: From what experience of human coexistence was born a form of government that has its essence in terror and its principle of action in the logic of ideological thought? According to Arendt, this experience is found in isolation on the one hand and estrangement on the other. Terror can only be total if it applies to isolated individuals. Isolation consists of a situation in which the individual cannot act because there is no one else willing to act with him, and therefore his fundamental characteristic is impotence because power always comes from men acting together. In fact, estrangement is the situation in which the individual feels abandoned by the human consortium, and for this reason, he loses his capacity for experience and thought. Isolation becomes unbearable when the main values of the world are linked to fatigue, when all human activities are transformed into fatigue. In that moment, isolation becomes estrangement. Then, it is no longer tyrannical, but totalitarian.