practically impossible to emerge alive. Even so, there were no extermination camps in the former USSR. Arendt also portrayed totalitarian states as impersonal machines in which individual responsibility was practically non-existent. 3 In fact, life in totalitarian regimes was endemic chaos. Terror was an integral partof the system but it did not happen without personal decisions. People became accomplices in Nazi crimes for the pettiest reasons – in the case of Eichmann, careerism. It would have been better to speak of the banality of the evildoers than of the banality of evil. The crimes they committed were not banal and flowed from beliefs that were integral to the regime in which they occurred. 4
The pursuit of Utopia need not end in totalitarianism. So long as it is confined to voluntary communities it tends to be self-limiting –though when combined with apocalyptic beliefs, as in the Jonestown Massacre in which around a thousand people committed mass suicide in Guyana in 1978, the end can be violent. It is when state power is used to remake society that the slide to totalitarianism begins. The fact that the utopian project can only be promoted by dismantling existing social institutions leads to a programme that goes well beyond anything attempted by traditional tyrannies. If totalitarianism does not result it is because the regime is overthrown or breaks down, or else utopian commitment wanes and the system lapses into authoritarianism. When a utopian ideology captures power in a democracy, as happened for a time during the Bush administration, there is a loss of freedom as the power of government is used to mask the failings of the utopian project. Unless a determined attempt is made to reverse the trend, some type of illiberal democracy is the result.
Many criteria have been used to mark off totalitarianism from other kinds of repressive regime. One test is the extent of state control of the whole of society, which is a by-product of the attempt to remake human life. Bolshevism and Nazism were vehicles for such a project, while – despite the fact that the term ‘totalitarian’ first came into use in Italy during the Mussolini era – Italian fascism was not. Nor – despite being at times extremely violent – was the clerical fascism of central and eastern Europe between the two world wars. There are plenty of very nasty regimes that cannot be described as totalitarian. Pre-modern theocracies used fear to enforce religious orthodoxy, but they did not aim to remodel humanity any more than did traditional tyrannies. Leninism and Nazism aimed to achieve such a transformation. Describing these regimes as totalitarian reflects this fact.
N AZISM AND THE E NLIGHTENMENT
Hitler and the Third Reich were the gruesome and incongruous consummation of an age which, as none other, believed in progress and felt assured it was being achieved.
Lewis Namier 37
Like Bolshevism, Nazism was a European phenomenon. This may seem obvious, but the implication – that the origins of Nazism are in western civilization – is still resisted. Yet the Nazis did not come from a faraway land. Developing in the chaos of the interwar years, they were driven by beliefs that had been circulating in Europe for many centuries. The crimes of Nazism cannot be explained (as some have tried to explain the crimes of communism) as products of backwardness.They emanated from some of Europe’s most cherished traditions and implemented some of its most advanced ideas.
The Enlightenment played an indispensable role in the development of Nazism. Nazism is often presented as a movement that was opposed to the Enlightenment, and it is true that many Nazis thought of themselves as its enemies. They claimed to have learnt lessons from a body of thinkers belonging to a movement Isaiah Berlin called the Counter-Enlightenment – a diverse group that included reactionaries such as Joseph de Maistre and Romantics such as J. G. Herder. 38 Nazi
The pursuit of Utopia need not end in totalitarianism. So long as it is confined to voluntary communities it tends to be self-limiting –though when combined with apocalyptic beliefs, as in the Jonestown Massacre in which around a thousand people committed mass suicide in Guyana in 1978, the end can be violent. It is when state power is used to remake society that the slide to totalitarianism begins. The fact that the utopian project can only be promoted by dismantling existing social institutions leads to a programme that goes well beyond anything attempted by traditional tyrannies. If totalitarianism does not result it is because the regime is overthrown or breaks down, or else utopian commitment wanes and the system lapses into authoritarianism. When a utopian ideology captures power in a democracy, as happened for a time during the Bush administration, there is a loss of freedom as the power of government is used to mask the failings of the utopian project. Unless a determined attempt is made to reverse the trend, some type of illiberal democracy is the result.
Many criteria have been used to mark off totalitarianism from other kinds of repressive regime. One test is the extent of state control of the whole of society, which is a by-product of the attempt to remake human life. Bolshevism and Nazism were vehicles for such a project, while – despite the fact that the term ‘totalitarian’ first came into use in Italy during the Mussolini era – Italian fascism was not. Nor – despite being at times extremely violent – was the clerical fascism of central and eastern Europe between the two world wars. There are plenty of very nasty regimes that cannot be described as totalitarian. Pre-modern theocracies used fear to enforce religious orthodoxy, but they did not aim to remodel humanity any more than did traditional tyrannies. Leninism and Nazism aimed to achieve such a transformation. Describing these regimes as totalitarian reflects this fact.
N AZISM AND THE E NLIGHTENMENT
Hitler and the Third Reich were the gruesome and incongruous consummation of an age which, as none other, believed in progress and felt assured it was being achieved.
Lewis Namier 37
Like Bolshevism, Nazism was a European phenomenon. This may seem obvious, but the implication – that the origins of Nazism are in western civilization – is still resisted. Yet the Nazis did not come from a faraway land. Developing in the chaos of the interwar years, they were driven by beliefs that had been circulating in Europe for many centuries. The crimes of Nazism cannot be explained (as some have tried to explain the crimes of communism) as products of backwardness.They emanated from some of Europe’s most cherished traditions and implemented some of its most advanced ideas.
The Enlightenment played an indispensable role in the development of Nazism. Nazism is often presented as a movement that was opposed to the Enlightenment, and it is true that many Nazis thought of themselves as its enemies. They claimed to have learnt lessons from a body of thinkers belonging to a movement Isaiah Berlin called the Counter-Enlightenment – a diverse group that included reactionaries such as Joseph de Maistre and Romantics such as J. G. Herder. 38 Nazi
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