The Roots of Totalitarianism

“The totalitarian movements offered the promise of not just belonging, but total belonging. The individual would be swallowed into the movement, becoming a single homogenous mass with one’s fellows.”

Introduction

“’My dear young friend,’ said Mustapha Mond, ‘civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism. These things are symptoms of political inefficiency. In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic. Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise. Where there are wars, where there are divided allegiances, where there are temptations to be resisted, objects of love to be fought for or defended-there, obviously, nobility and heroism have some sense. But there aren’t any wars nowadays. The greatest care is taken to prevent you from loving any one too much. There’s no such thing as a divided allegiance; you’re so conditioned that you can’t help doing what you ought to do. And what you ought to do is on the whole so pleasant, so many of the natural impulses are allowed free play, that there really aren’t any temptations to resist. And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there’s always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your mortality about in a bottle.’”

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

The two great dystopian novels of the twentieth century were 1984 and Brave New World by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley respectively. The first and more optimistic book depicts a world where everything that we hate destroys us. Totalitarian governments rule over the world with brutal force and a hunger for absolute power. The more pessimistic book depicts a world where everything we love destroys us. For Huxley, though a totalitarian government is in power, it is not especially malicious or evil. Instead, it controls the population through a hedonistic combination of drugs, entertainment, and the elimination of all complexity and works of spiritual depth. In Huxley’s world, the population surrenders its freedom willingly in exchange for comfort—a chilling prospect when one looks at the history of mass movements undergirding support for their masters.

These literary themes are echoed in the theoretical works of the great commentators of totalitarianism, from Hannah Arendt to Erich Fromm. Their interest was not simply in the horrors inflicted by totalitarian regimes against their unlimited victims but, also, why so many people would willingly flock to them, knowing the consequences. These arguments resonate now more than they should, given the retreat of democracy in many areas of the globe and its replacement by new forms of authoritarianism.