Totalitarianism

“ From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than 30 years to establish their legitimacy. But none — not one regime — has yet been able to risk free elections. ”

“ Let historians not record that when America was the most powerful nation in the world we passed on the other side of the road and allowed the last hopes for peace and freedom of millions of people to be suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism.
And so tonight - to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans - l ask for your support. ”

“ We've seen such changes in the world in 7 years. As totalitarianism struggles to avoid being overwhelmed by the forces of economic advance and the aspiration for human freedom, it is the free nations that are resilient and resurgent. ”

“ Wherever the oppressed are more wicked than the oppressor, they attack and overthrow them whenever they are able; or else—and this is more frequently the case—they enter the ranks of the oppressors and take part in their tyranny.
Thus the dangers of which the defenders of State rights make a bugbear—that if authority were overthrown the wicked would prevail over the good—potentially exist at all times. The destruction of State violence, in fact, never can, for this very reason, lead to any real increase of violence on the part of the wicked over the good. ”

“ The oppressed would be another set of people, and coercion would take some new form; but the violence and oppression would be unchanged or even more cruel, since hatred would be intensified by the struggle, and new forms of oppression would have been devised. So it has always been after all revolutions and all attempts at revolution, all conspiracies, and all violent changes of government. Every conflict only strengthens the means of oppression in the hands of those who happen at a given moment to be in power. ”

“ People feel that their unhappy position is the result of violence, and are dimly aware that to get rid of their misery they need freedom ; but, strange to say, to get rid of violence and gain freedom, they seek, invent and use all sorts of measures: mutiny, change of rulers, alterations of Government all kinds of Constitutions, new arrangements between different States, Colonial policies, enrolment of the unemployed, trusts, social organisations — everything but the one thing that would most simply, easily, and surely free them from all their distresses : the refusal to submit to power. ”

“ And how is it possible to extirpate crime by violence in the midst of communities where the same act, regarded by the government as criminal, is transformed into an heroic exploit by public opinion?
Nations and races may be destroyed by violence—it has been done. They cannot be subdued.
The power transcending all others which has influenced individuals and nations since time began, that power which is the convergence of the invisible, intangible, spiritual forces of all humanity, is public opinion. ”

“ So it has been with abolition of corporal punishment, of trial by torture, and of slavery, as well as with the establishment of the liberty of the press and the right of public meeting. In our day governments not only fail to encourage, but directly hinder every movement by which people try to work out new forms of life for themselves. Every attempt at the solution of the problems of labor, land, politics, and religion meets with direct opposition on the part of government. ”

“ The governments of our day—all of them, the most despotic and the liberal alike—have become what Herzen so well called "Ghenghis Khan with the telegraph" that is to say, organizations of violence based on no principle but the grossest tyranny, and at the same time taking advantage of all the means invented by science for the peaceful collective social activity of free and equal men, used by them to enslave and oppress their fellows. ”

“ The establishment of a totalitarian dictatorship in any country results in the suppression of all opposition to the party in power, the subordination of the rights of individuals to the state, the denial of fundamental rights and liberties which are characteristic of a representative form of government, such as freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, and of religious worship, and results in the maintenance of control over the people through fear, terrorism, and brutality. ”

“ That is the totalitarian doctrine which reduces the individual to nonexistence save by the race and for the race, without freedom of action or any definite aim; totalitarian doctrine which excludes every other concept, every other aspiration or requirement save those connected with the race, totalitarian doctrine which eliminates from the individual every other thought save that of the interest of the race. ”

“ It seems rather incongruous at this point in the world's history that we find totalitarian states becoming more like our free society while we in this nation are taking on their former trappings of suppressed liberties and freedoms. ”

“ The system of government known as a totalitarian dictatorship is characterized by the existence of a single political party, organized on a dictatorial basis, and by substantial identity between such party and its policies and the government and governmental policies of the country in which it exists. (4) The direction and control of the world Communist movement is vested in and exercised by the Communist dictatorship of a foreign country. ”

“ So that the days of State violence are already numbered, and the liberation, not only of conquered nations, but of the crushed working-people, is by this time near, if only we ourselves will not delay the time of liberation, by sharing with deed and word in the violent measures of governments. The approval of patriotism of any kind as a good quality, and the incitement of the people to patriotism, are chief hindrances to the attainment of those ideals which rise before us. ”

“ They are the very men who live on the labour of the people, and, conscious of their sin, fear its exposure, and hope that the Government (being bound to them by unity of interest) will protect their wrong-doing by force. For these men, the Government is very necessary, but not for you — the peasantry. For you the Government has always been simply a burden; and now, that it has by its evil rule provoked riots, and brought it to pass that there are two rival Governments, it has become an evident misfortune and a great sin, which you must repudiate for your bodily and spiritual welfare. ”

“ After my talk with them, I saw clearly that all the crimes the Government is now committing in order to crush the Revolution, not only fail to crush it, but inflame it the more; and that if the Revolutionary movement appears for a time to die down under the cruelties of the Government, it will not be destroyed, but will merely be temporarily hidden, and will inevitably spring up again with new and increased strength. ”

“ But how to abolish it, and how, when it is abolished, to arrange things so that, without the existence of power, men should not return to the savage state of coarse violence towards each other?
All anarchists—as the preachers of this teaching are called—quite uniformly answer the first question by recognising that if this power is to be really abolished it must be abolished not by force but by men's consciousness of its uselessness and evil. To the second question, as to how society should be organized without power, anarchists answer variously. ”

“ On the basis of its detailed investigations Congress has found that there exists a world Communist movement, foreign-controlled, whose purpose it is by whatever means necessary to establish Communist totalitarian dictatorship in the countries throughout the world, and which has already succeeded in supplanting governments in other countries. ”

“ Deprived of basic human rights, their peoples are the victims of ruthless regimes run according to totalitarian ideologies. These are the nations held captive by forces hostile to freedom, independence, and national self-determination. ”

“ Without the aggrandizement of self and the abasement of others, without hypocrisies and deceptions, without prisons, fortresses, executions, and murders, no power can come into existence or be maintained.
"If the power of government is suppressed the more wicked will oppress the less wicked," say the champions of state authority. ”

“ I said, "oppression is advantageous to the oppressor, and if he finds that he can oppress with impunity and that nobody resists, when is he likely to stop oppressing? It seems to me that the peaceable submission to injustice which you advocate would simply divide society into two classes : tyrants, who find tyranny profitable, and who therefore will continue it indefinitely ; and slaves, who regard resistance as wrong, and who will therefore submit indefinitely." ”

“ If socialists and communists believe that the possession of individual capital is a pernicious influence in society, and anarchists regard government itself as an evil, there are, on the other hand, monarchists, conservatives, and capitalists who look upon the social and communal state as an evil order of society, no less than anarchy itself; and all these parties have nothing better to offer by way of reconciling mankind than violence. ”

“ Freedom from the evil which torments and corrupts men will be attained, not by strengthening and preserving the existing regimes, monarchies, republics or whatever, nor by suppressing the existing order and instituting better Socialist or Communist ones; indeed not in any instance by a few people inventing a particular social system they consider an improvement and imposing it on others by violence. ”

“ There is no more insuperable barrier at the present time to the progress of humanity, and to the establishment of a system that shall be in harmony with its present conception of life, than this erroneous argument.
Those holding positions of authority are fully convinced that men are to be influenced and controlled by force alone, and therefore to preserve the existing system they do not hesitate to employ it. And yet this very system is supported, not by violence, but by public opinion, the action of which is compromised by violence. ”

“ The socialists, the communists, the anarchists, with their bombs and riots and revolutions, are not nearly so much dreaded by governments as these disconnected individuals coming from different parts, and all justifying their non-compliance on the grounds of the same religion, which is known to all the world.
Every government knows by what means and in what manner to defend itself from revolutionists, and has resources for doing so, and therefore does not dread these external foes. ”

“ The first and the oldest expedient is intimidation. It consists in representing the actual organization of the State, whether it be that of a liberal republic or of an arbitrary despotism, as something sacred and immutable, which therefore punishes by the most cruel penalties any attempt at revolution. This expedient has been put into practice recently wherever a government exists: in Russia against the so-called nihilists, in America against the anarchists, in France against the imperialists, monarchists, communists, and anarchists. ”

“ All revolutions are but the result of the appropriation of power by the wicked and their rule over the good. When the rulers say that if their power were to be destroyed the evil-doers would tyrannize over the innocent, what they really mean is that the tyrants in power are reluctant to yield to those other tyrants who would fain wrest from them their authority. When they protest that this authority of theirs, which is actually violence, is necessary to defend the people against the possible tyranny of others, [19] they are simply [227] denouncing themselves. ”

“ If they had been revolutionists, advocating and practicing violence and murder, their suppression would have been an easy matter; some of them could have been bought over, some could have been duped, some could have been overawed, and these who could not be bought over, duped, or overawed would have been treated as criminals, enemies of society, would have been executed or imprisoned, and the crowd would have approved of the action of the government. ”

“ And therefore it is obvious that greater and greater freedom of people is never achieved by introduction of new forms of violence, as revolutionaries do, trying by this new violence to destroy the former one, but only by the means of spreading among human beings of the consciousness of illegality and criminality of violence, of the possibility of its replacement by the persuasion of reason, and by lesser and lesser use of violence or taking advantage of it by each individual. ”

“ And it cannot be proved, as the champions of the state maintain, that the destruction of government involves a social chaos, mutual spoliation and murder, the destruction of all social institutions, and the return of mankind to barbarism. Nor can it be proved as the opponents of government maintain that men have already become so wise and good that they will not spoil or murder one another, but will prefer peaceful associations to hostilities ”

“ If they are sufficiently distorted by their suffering to forget the consequences to their family and friends of an attack on the tyrant, they are too enfeebled to move. Fear paralyzes them. The modern totalitarian tyranny, as the German and Russian, by reason of the ideology of the ruling party and superior organization of its police force, ferrets out, identifies, and disciplines a larger percentage of its opponents than any tyranny was ever able to do in the past. The ideology of the party makes an ex-officio police agent out of every Communist in Russia and every Nazi in Germany. ”

“ In a society in which the state has withered away, after an enormous expansion in the subject-matter of its control,40 the totalitarian state is succeeded by the totalitarian [pg 038] tradition, if—and the qualification is an important one—the indoctrination has been so effective that the ideology can maintain itself in the minds of men without the continuing coercive power of the state to uphold it. ”