Authoritarianism and
Totalitarianism
Definitions

Authoritarian – regime in which a small group of
individuals exercises power over the state with no
constitutional responsibility to the public

Totalitarian – centralized regime that possesses
some strong form of ideology that seeks to
transform and absorb ALL fundamental aspects of
the state, society, and economy to suit its ideology
or maintain its power base
Sources of Nondemocratic Rule

Economic

Wealthier society = greater desire to assert individual
political rights


Well distributed wealth, large middle class would undermine
nondemocratic regimes.
High level of poverty, inequality

Two possibilities
 Few in power resort to tyranny to defend their wealth-RIGHTArgentina under Pinochet, Cuba under Batista
 Regime emerges to forcibly redistribute wealth-LEFT
Cuba under Castro, Venezuela under Chavez
Sources of Nondemocratic Rule

Societal
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Political Culture
Religion

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Some religions are more prone to nondemocratic tendencies
than others in the modern post Enlightenment world
Ex., Islam and “Islamism”
 Religious codes are handed down from Allah
 Not designed to protect/advance individual rights
 View Western liberal democracy as egocentric, atomized,
ungodly, destructive, etc.
 Mussolini had Vatican support
Authoritarian Means of Control


Coercion – public obedience is forced through
violence and surveillance
Co-Optation – public is brought into a beneficial
relationship with the state or government

Corporatism – labor, businesses, other interest groups
bargain with the state over economic policy

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This occurs in democracies, too, but in authoritarian states,
only state sanctioned groups may participate
Clientelism – state provides specific benefits to a person
or group to elicit their support [the elite (right) or the
masses (left)]
Authoritarian Means of Control

Personality Cult – promotion of the image
of a leader as someone who embodies the
spirit of the nation. Godlike. Propaganda.
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Think Putin, Mao, Fidel, Saddam
Living Colour - Cult Of Personality – YouTube
euronews cinema - Documentary lays bare
Mussolini personality cult – YouTube
Triumph des Willens (1935) - Triumph of the Will
- YouTube
Types of Authoritarian Rule

Personal and Monarchical Rule


Rule by a single leader, no clear regime or rules to
constrain the ruler
Tools of control

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Patrimonialism – supporters benefit from alliance with the
ruler (corruption, clientelism)
Examples

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Saudi Arabian Royal Family
Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire (now DRC) from 1965 to 1997
 Used nation’s diamond and copper wealth to enrich followers
Types of Authoritarian Rule

Military Rule-JUNTA


Rule by one or more military officials, brought to power
through a coup d’etat
Tools of control

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Control of armed forces
Bureaucratic authoritarianism - alliances with business and
state elites
Examples

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Augusto Pinochet in Chile, 1973 to 1990
Nigeria, 1966 to 1999 (many successive coups)
Burma/Myanmar since 1990s
Types of Authoritarian Rule

One-Party Rule


Rule by one political party, other groups banned or
excluded from power (usually Communist Party)
Tools of control


Large party membership mobilizes and maintains control in
return for benefits
Examples

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Mexico’s PRI Party, 1929 -1999
Chinese Communist Party, 1949 - Present
Types of Authoritarian Rule

Theocracy

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“Rule by God,” with religious texts as the foundation of the regime and
politics
Tools of control

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Examples
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Religious leadership is fused with political leadership into one sovereign
authority
Iran, 1979 – Present
Afghanistan, 1996 – 2001
Elements of Saudi Arabian government, e.g., judicial matters must conform
to Islamic Sharia law, conversion from Islam is punishable by death
Iranian Revolution 1979 – YouTube
Iran hostage crisis – YouTube
History of Modern Iran: Rogue State | BBC Documentary - YouTube
Kite Runner - Taliban Speech - Stoning Scene - YouTube

Inside the Saudi Kingdom (BBC Documentary) - YouTube
Types of Authoritarian Rule

Illiberal Regimes


Rule by elected leadership, though procedures are of
questionable democratic legitimacy
Tools of control

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Vote rigging, harassment of opposition, propagandized
control of the media
Examples

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Nigeria in recent elections
Zimbabwe under Mugabe
Russia since Vladimir Putin’s election in 2000
Philippines
Malaysia
Authoritarianism
How are government actions that ignore
the will of the people justified?
Authoritarian Political Systems

Authoritarianism: A form of government that
vests authority in an elite group that may or
may not rule in the interests of the people.


Such governments are often an expression of
collectivism over individualism.
Many such governments feel they are
serving the best interests of the people.
Oligarchies

Oligarchy: A form of government in which
political power rests with a small elite segment
of society.

Iron Law of Oligarchy: Any political system will
eventually evolve into an oligarchy.


USA: Third party candidates have virtually no chance of
winning (Bush, Clinton, Kennedy)
Canada? Regan, McKay, Trudeau, Savage, Ghiz: These
same names keep coming up…
Military Dictatorships-Juntas

A military dictatorship is a
form of government in which
political power resides with
the military leadership.



Often come to power through a
coup d'état.
Often portray themselves as
interim governments during
turmoil.
Bananas (1971) - Trailer
(english) - YouTube
Techniques of Authoritarian
Governments


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Vision
Propaganda
Directing Public Discontent
Terror

Propaganda: The use of
a set of messages
designed to influence
the opinions or
behaviours of large
numbers of people.


Nazi and Soviet
propaganda.
WW2 propaganda.
Controlled Participation

The population is allowed to fell that it is
participating in the economy in some way in order
to convince them to buy into the accepted
ideology.


Example: Rallies, spies for the Party etc…
Red Guard: Youth recruited in China to carry the
message of communism around the county (ands
to undermine old ways of thought)
Directing Public Discontent

The people are provided with an enemy on
which they can safely unleash their
frustrations.


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Show trials, foreign threat, or internal threat.
Hitler: Anti-Semitism.
Stalin: Trials against dissidents.
Terror

Brutal and arbitrary violence in order to control the population.
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Disappearances, beatings, property damage…
Enforce state will and negate individual freedoms.
SECRET POLICE, KGB, BROWNSHIRTS, STORMTROOPERS, DEATH
SQUADS
CIA and Chilean dictator Pinochet – YouTube
Crime and Punishment Pinochet and international war criminals
U2 - Mothers of the Disappeared - Live Popmart Santiago 1998 – YouTube
Sting - They Dance Alone (Cueca Solo) – YouTube
LA MUERTE DE PINOCHET - Trailer Eng Subt. – YouTube
The Killing Fields Trailer – YouTube
Former Khmer Rouge soldier faces up to past – YouTube
Coercion and Surveillance
 Observation
of, violence against people
 Targeted harassment, torture, killings,
disappearing, PUBLIC EXECUTIONS
 Kite Runner - Taliban Speech - Stoning Scene
- YouTube
 Widespread purges (Stalin, Mugabe)
indiscriminate terror (disappearances)
 Creation of fear necessary. Secret police as tool
to enforce
Nondemocratic Rule Beyond the West
Non-Western
cultures less receptive to
democracy?
Islam: tight connection between religion
and state
“Asian Values:” Confucian emphasis on
community over individual
Western democracy may appear
anarchic, selfish in comparison
Personality Cults
 Promotion
of image of leader above mortal qualities
 Extraordinary wisdom and power
 Quasi-religious qualities
 Use of media to portray this image
 All failings ascribed to “lesser” people below him or
her
 Terror: no one willing to state that leader is fallible
Military Rule
 Relatively
recent development
 Military seizes control of state: coup d’etat-JUNTA
 Often justified as a temporary move
 Often lacks a specific ideology
 Bureaucratic authoritarianism: state bureaucracy and
military support “rational” authoritarian rule as opposed to
“emotional” democracy
 Many of these nondemocratic regimes transitioned to
democracy, but not all.
Augusto Pinochet-Fascist Dictator of
Chile

SALVADOR ALLENDE: LEFT LEANING DEMOCRATICALLY
ELECTED. USA DISLIKED. C.I.A. HELPED INSTALL
PINOCHET- CHILE’S-AUGUSTO PINOCHET 48 MIN-1:16

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeHzc1h8k7o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuFMoWV1cns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS_bN5ECJTI


Illiberal/Hybrid RegimesEXAMPLES? Russia, Venezuela,
Zimbabwe
 Possess
democratic mechanisms, but weakly
institutionalized
 Executives typically hold tremendous power
 Democratic processes not respected
 Sudden changes, arbitrary withdrawal
 Media under state control
 State institutions under direct control of
government (politicized)
 “Halfway house”—will become more democratic
over time?
Is Nondemocratic Rule in Retreat?
Expectation
over much of past
century that democracy had failed
Opposite has taken place
Dramatic expansion of democracy,
especially in past two decades
Figure 6-2 AUTHORITARIANISM IN DECLINE, 1977–2007
The End of Nondemocratic Rule?
Is
nondemocratic rule on its way out?
Will democracy eventually spread around
the world?
Will new ideologies or ideas come to
revitalize authoritarianism?
CHINA? RUSSIA? ECONOMIC
FREEDOM…HUMAN RIGHTS?



Authoritarian Government Major Epic Colossal Assessment Piece
Name:
pp 156-230
Part One: Define the following. Give an example if possible
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Junta
Totalitarian
Fascism
Oligarchy
Despot
Coup d’etat
Authoritarian Personality
Soviet
Bolsheviks
Crisis Theory
Great Man Theory
Tsar
Duma
Poltiburo
National Socialists
Blackshirts/squadristi
Il Duce
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DeStalinization
Five Year Plan
Collective Farm
The Great Purges
Glasnost
Perestroika
Weimar Republic
Dictatorship and its Roman Origin
Pharaoh
Shi Huang Ti
Plato’s ideal leadership
Autocracy/autocrats
March To Rome
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KGB
SS
SA
Pinochet/Allende in Chile
Crisis Theory
Charismatic Leadership
Iran’s Theocracy
Fascists’ “worldview”
Neo-Fascists
Divine Right of Kings
Guerrilla War
Puppet Dictatorship
Propaganda
Mein Kampf
Reichstag
Enabling Act
Nuremburg Laws

Part Two: Name four traits common to successful coup d’etats and
give three examples where they have happened.

Part three: In point form, trace the evolution of Russia from Tsar
Nicholas II to the current era. Be sure to mention the government
structures and their degree of authoritarianism or democracy. Why
did the U.S.S.R. and Soviet Bloc fail in the late 1980s?

Part Four: Which societal crises existed in Germany after the 1920s
that led Hitler gain to power? What government structures did he use
to maintain power? What was the use of symbolism, mass rallies,
education (prayers), youth and propaganda (Joseph Goebbels and
Leni Riefenstahl) and who led this for Hitler?

Part Five: Create study notes on Mao’s rise and time in power. Be
sure to mention the role of the peasantry in Maoism, the Great Leap
Forward and its failures, the Hundred Flowers Campaign and its
hypocrisy, the Civil War with the Kuomintang, the Great Cultural
Revolution and the role of young people and the “Little Red Book”
and the Long March. On the Internet, look up Dr. Norman Bethune.

Part six: Discuss why Mussolini was able to seize power. How
did he evolve philosophically and why did he change so
much?
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Part seven: What is a country’s “Founding Myth” and
“Sustaining Myth?”
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Part eight: Copy the figure on p177. Then copy figure on p178
to show the reforms that Gorbachev made. Look at p 181’s
chart and describe what changed again.
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Part nine: Look at the map on p183 and explain why to call the
Soviet Union “Russia” is not really correct.
Part ten: Describe the “coup” on p184.
Part eleven: Describe the changes after the Fall of Communism using the
map on p185.
Part twelve: Do case study on p188.
Part thirteen: do #1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14 on p189, #*-10 on p190, #2,3 on
p191.
Part fourteen: explain map on p194s and p214
Part fifteen: Sum up Mao’s instructions on p200.
Part sixteen: Sum up the main points of the Cuban Revolution including
the leaders, what was replaced and the key events.
Part seventeen: Sum up Hitler’s views and law on pp218-9

Apple 1984 Super Bowl Commercial
Introducing Macintosh Computer (HD) YouTube

Winston Smith is a low-ranking member of the ruling Party in
London, in the nation of Oceania. Everywhere Winston goes,
even his own home, the Party watches him through
telescreens; everywhere he looks he sees the face of the
Party’s seemingly omniscient leader, a figure known only as
Big Brother. The Party controls everything in Oceania, even
the people’s history and language. Currently, the Party is
forcing the implementation of an invented language called
Newspeak, which attempts to prevent political rebellion by
eliminating all words related to it. Even thinking rebellious
thoughts is illegal. Such thoughtcrime is, in fact, the worst of
all crimes.

As the novel opens, Winston feels frustrated by
the oppression and rigid control of the Party,
which prohibits free thought, sex, and any
expression of individuality. Winston dislikes the
party and has illegally purchased a diary in which
to write his criminal thoughts. He has also
become fixated on a powerful Party member
named O’Brien, whom Winston believes is a
secret member of the Brotherhood—the
mysterious, legendary group that works to
overthrow the Party.

Winston works in the Ministry of Truth, where he alters
historical records to fit the needs of the Party. He notices a
coworker, a beautiful dark-haired girl, staring at him, and
worries that she is an informant who will turn him in for his
thoughtcrime. He is troubled by the Party’s control of history:
the Party claims that Oceania has always been allied with
Eastasia in a war against Eurasia, but Winston seems to
recall a time when this was not true. The Party also claims
that Emmanuel Goldstein, the alleged leader of the
Brotherhood, is the most dangerous man alive, but this does
not seem plausible to Winston. Winston spends his evenings
wandering through the poorest neighborhoods in London,
where the proletarians, or proles, live squalid lives, relatively
free of Party monitoring.

One day, Winston receives a note from the dark-haired girl
that reads “I love you.” She tells him her name, Julia, and
they begin a covert affair, always on the lookout for signs of
Party monitoring. Eventually they rent a room above the
secondhand store in the prole district where Winston bought
the diary. This relationship lasts for some time. Winston is
sure that they will be caught and punished sooner or later
(the fatalistic Winston knows that he has been doomed since
he wrote his first diary entry), while Julia is more pragmatic
and optimistic. As Winston’s affair with Julia progresses, his
hatred for the Party grows more and more intense. At last, he
receives the message that he has been waiting for: O’Brien
wants to see him.

Winston and Julia travel to O’Brien’s luxurious apartment. As
a member of the powerful Inner Party (Winston belongs to
the Outer Party), O’Brien leads a life of luxury that Winston
can only imagine. O’Brien confirms to Winston and Julia that,
like them, he hates the Party, and says that he works against
it as a member of the Brotherhood. He indoctrinates Winston
and Julia into the Brotherhood, and gives Winston a copy of
Emmanuel Goldstein’s book, the manifesto of the
Brotherhood. Winston reads the book—an amalgam of
several forms of class-based twentieth-century social
theory—to Julia in the room above the store. Suddenly,
soldiers barge in and seize them. Mr. Charrington, the
proprietor of the store, is revealed as having been a member
of the Thought Police all along.


Torn away from Julia and taken to a place called the Ministry of Love,
Winston finds that O’Brien, too, is a Party spy who simply pretended to be
a member of the Brotherhood in order to trap Winston into committing an
open act of rebellion against the Party. O’Brien spends months torturing
and brainwashing Winston, who struggles to resist. At last, O’Brien sends
him to the dreaded Room 101, the final destination for anyone who
opposes the Party. Here, O’Brien tells Winston that he will be forced to
confront his worst fear. Throughout the novel, Winston has had recurring
nightmares about rats; O’Brien now straps a cage full of rats onto
Winston’s head and prepares to allow the rats to eat his face. Winston
snaps, pleading with O’Brien to do it to Julia, not to him.
Giving up Julia is what O’Brien wanted from Winston all along. His spirit
broken, Winston is released to the outside world. He meets Julia but no
longer feels anything for her. He has accepted the Party entirely and has
learned to love Big Brother.
George Orwell- “1984”

(John Hurt) - Official Trailer – YouTube

Pink Floyd-THE WALL
Pink Floyd - The Wall Movie - In The Flesh –
YouTube
run like hell- the wall - YouTube
Roger Waters - In The Flesh, Pt. 2 [HD+HQ] Live
8 4 2011 Gelredome Arnhem Netherlands YouTube



GEORGE Orwell’s Classic 1984


“Orwellian" is an adjective describing the situation, idea, or societal
condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the
welfare of a free and open society. It connotes an attitude and a
policy of control by propaganda, surveillance, misinformation, denial
of truth, and manipulation of the past, including the "unperson" — a
person whose past existence is expunged from the public record
and memory, practiced by modern repressive governments. Often,
this includes the circumstances depicted in his novels, particularly
Nineteen Eighty-Four. Nineteen Eighty-Four uses themes from life
in the Soviet Union and wartime life in Great Britain as sources for
many of its motifs.
Its hero Winston Smith lives a solitary life questioning Big Brother’s
control and longing for freedom and a return to a forgotten free past
that no longer officially exists.

The most common sense of Orwellian is that of the allcontrolling "Big Brother" state, used to negatively describe a
situation in which a Big Brother authority figure — in concert
with "thought police" — constantly monitors the population to
detect betrayal via "improper" thoughts. Orwellian also
describes oppressive political ideas and the use of
euphemistic (PATRIOT ACT), seemingly harmless political
language in public discourse to camouflage morally
outrageous ideas and actions. In this latter sense, the term is
often used as a means of attacking an opponent in political
debate, by branding his or her policies as Orwellian. When
used like this in political rhetoric if it is not sincere, it is
interesting to note as it can be a case of a hypocritical
Orwellian strategist denouncing Orwellian strategies.
He who controls the past controls the future.
He who controls the present controls the
past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine
a boot stamping on a human face—for
ever.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“If you want to keep a secret, you must also
hide it from yourself.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Doublethink means the power of holding
two contradictory beliefs in one's mind
simultaneously, and accepting both of
them.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Until they became conscious they will
never rebel, and until after they have
rebelled they cannot become conscious.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks
power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others;
we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you
will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past
in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who
resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis
and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but
they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They
pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power
unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a
paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like
that. We know what no one ever seizes power with the intention of
relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish
a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution
in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is
persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
Now you begin to understand me.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces
and putting them together again in new
shapes of your own choosing.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“The choice for mankind lies between
freedom and happiness and for the great
bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Being in a minority, even in a minority of
one, did not make you mad. There was
truth and there was untruth, and if you
clung to the truth even against the whole
world, you were not mad.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“You are a slow learner, Winston."
"How can I help it? How can I help but see
what is in front of my eyes? Two and two
are four."
"Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are
five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes
they are all of them at once. You must try
harder. It is not easy to become sane.”
― George Orwell, 1984

We do not merely destroy our enemies; we
change them.”
― George Orwell, 1984

Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your
nervous system. At any moment the
tension inside you was liable to translate
itself into some visible symptom.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“What can you do, thought Winston,
against the lunatic who is more intelligent
than yourself, who gives your arguments a
fair hearing and then simply persists in his
lunacy?”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Nothing was your own except the few
cubic centimetres inside your skull. ”
― George Orwell, 1984

“We know that no one ever seizes power
with the intention of relinquishing it.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“If you can feel that staying human is worth
while, even when it can't have any result
whatever, you've beaten them.”
― George Orwell, 1984

In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or
politics, two and two might make five, but
when one was designing a gun or an
aeroplane they had to make four.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“But it was alright, everything was alright,
the struggle was finished. He had won the
victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with
war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the
Ministry of Love with torture and the
Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These
contradictions are not accidental , nor do
they result from from ordinary hypocrisy:
they are deliberate exercises in
doublethink”
― George Orwell, 1984

“So long as they (the Proles) continued to work
and breed, their other activities were without
importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned
loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had
reverted to a style of life that appeared to be
natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern...Heavy
physical work, the care of home and children,
petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer
and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of
their minds. To keep them in control was not
difficult.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“The masses never revolt of their own
accord, and they never revolt merely
because they are oppressed. Indeed, so
long as they are not permitted to have
standards of comparison, they never even
become aware that they are oppressed.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Don't you see the whole aim of Newspeak
is to narrow the language of thought? In the
end we shall make thoughtcrime literally
impossible because there will be no words
in which to express it”
― George Orwell, 1984

“And if all others accepted the lie which the
Party imposed—if all records told the same
tale—then the lie passed into history and
became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran
the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who
controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“In a way, the world−view of the Party imposed itself most
successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They
could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of
reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what
was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested
in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of
understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed
everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm,
because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will
pass undigested through the body of a bird.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“To the future or to the past, to a time when
thought is free, when men are different
from one another and do not live alone— to
a time when truth exists and what is done
cannot be undone: From the age of
uniformity, from the age of solitude, from
the age of Big Brother, from the age of
doublethink — greetings! ”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air.
His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and
not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully
constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out,
knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic
against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that
democracy was impossible and that the party was the guardian of
democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it
back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then
promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the
process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce
unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act
of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word
“doublethink” involved the use of doublethink.”
― George Orwell, 1984


Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich –
YouTube
“To thine own self, be true!”
IN LIFE…
https://www.youtube.c
om/watch?v=AnpTWK
KWQ1o
https://www.youtube.c
om/watch?v=VHbzRYjj
Kto
https://www.youtube.c
om/watch?v=qtimSbH
MppY
Vladimir Putin-Modern Autocrat

http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/episodes/20142015/putins-long-shadow
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/putins-way/