187 Quotes About Totalitarianism

Totalitarian politics—far from being simply antisemitic or racist or imperialist or communist—use and abuse their own ideological and political elements until the basis of factual reality, from which the ideologies originally derived their strength and their propaganda value—the reality of class struggle, for instance, or the interest conflicts between Jews and their neighbors—have all but disappeared.

There has never been a humane communist regime. Marxism is inherently totalitarian. It recognizes no moral limits on the state. It’s the most convenient ideology for aspiring tyrants; it also retains its appeal for intellectuals, who have proved equally skillful at rationalizing abuses of power and at exculpating themselves.

{Stalin} took care always to say the opposite of what he did, and do the opposite of what he said.

...no people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National Will... When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys and he will stand for everything traditionally American.

Totalitarianism is patriotism institutionalized.

Prävention, die das Recht konsumiert, hat den Zug zu Totalität und Exzessivität.

Nazism is a psychological problem, but the psychological factors themselves have to be understood as being molded by socio-economic factors; Nazism is an economic and political problem, but the hold it has over a whole people has to be understood on psychological grounds.

Instead of seeing sense there is a major tendency to 'make sense.

Machines like objectives and not other perspectives.