Kenan Camurcu

When the COVID-19 pandemic swept across Europe, Věra Jourová, Vice-President of the European Commission for Values and Transparency, expressed concern about the extent to which strict measures would expand. She stated, "Dictatorships have shown in history that they are against the people and created too many victims. That is why we must uphold democracy to limit extraordinary powers in member states."

The justified apprehension among Europeans about the curtailment of freedoms, even with the most valid reasons, is undoubtedly rooted in the nightmare of Nazism and the fascist totalitarian experience that marked the modern era. Although Hannah Arendt optimistically noted that totalitarian leaders and their regimes are surprisingly quickly forgotten once they end—even struggling to be remembered within current Neo-Nazi movements—the crater Nazism left in Europe's memory keeps a deep fear and anxiety alive. This is because totalitarianism is "radical evil."

Totalitarianism is Not Merely a Political Issue

Arendt, widely acknowledged as the thinker who best analyzed Europe's experience with totalitarianism, asserted in The Origins of Totalitarianism (Turkish translation: İletişim, 2014) that the existential core of totalitarian leaders lies in "mass support." In doing so, she cautioned that the issue cannot be considered solely political; rather, its cultural aspect is decisive. Throughout the book, she repeatedly cites Hitler and Stalin as examples, arguing that without the trust of the masses, these leaders could neither sustain the leadership of large populations, nor survive numerous internal and external crises, nor withstand the countless dangers of fierce intra-party struggles.

It's significant that Arendt, who placed such importance on the individual as a political subject, abandons this emphasis once the individual is swept up in mass movements, and doesn't get sidetracked by populist flattery that sanctifies the voter.

Indifference of Supporters Makes Totalitarianism Successful

According to Arendt, a disturbing factor that enables totalitarianism—a frightening ghost that can emerge from anywhere at any moment, even for developed democracies—is the indifference of its supporters. Even when the monster begins to prey on its own children, its followers remain disengaged as long as their own positions are untouched. They may even be willing to assist in orchestrating their own death sentences.

We don't know why Arendt, having fled Nazi occupation in France to seek refuge in America, didn't qualify this analysis by noting that individualistic indifference was a cultural code prevalent in liberal democracies. Perhaps she was confident that totalitarianism was not an immediate threat in that sociopolitical context. Yet, she was aware of the situation and made a confession: "The fact that individualization and culture did not prevent the formation of mass attitudes was such an unexpected phenomenon that the nihilism of the modern intellectual class was often blamed for this obvious fact." There is also the typical self-hatred of the intellectual and the soul's enmity towards life, its opposition to vitality.

Mass Organization of Isolated Individuals

It's useful to dwell on the contradiction between Arendt's definition of totalitarian movements—which she sees as possible wherever there are masses who have acquired a desire for political organization for one reason or another, implying depoliticization—and her celebration of political behavior that creates the public sphere.

According to Arendt, totalitarian movements are mass organizations of atomized and isolated individuals. These movements need the specific conditions of a disintegrated and individualized mass no less than they need an unformed mass society. To transform Lenin's revolutionary dictatorship into a totalitarian regime, Stalin first had to artificially create the disintegrated society that historical conditions had prepared for the Nazis in Germany.

Social Atomization Instead of Governance by Monopoly of Violence

Social atomization is an indispensable tool that totalitarian leaders use to avoid governing the people solely through the state's monopoly on violence, instead establishing internal domination and intimidating them. In this way, to the extent that the leader relies on the will of the masses they embody, the masses will also rely on them. This is the moment when the distance between the ruler and the ruled collapses to zero. While it might initially appear to be a stage to rejoice in for democratic development, in reality, the totalitarian leader is meticulously weaving their dictatorship.

In Loving the World in the Present (Metis, 2012), Fatmagül Berktay argues that the totalizing tendency distorts and diminishes politics, threatening to obliterate the public person. Berktay reminds us that Arendt explained the corruption of politics as the replacement of authentic politics by pseudo-political forms. Therefore, we must embark on a search for genuine politics, based on plurality, and the conditions of freedom it would bring. If freedom is to transcend being merely a philosophical concept and become a reality of the lived world, people must act together in collective political action.

However, we return once more to the question of how to ensure that collective (mass?) activity will not create the conditions for totalitarianism. Can Arendt's distinction between "collective (together)" action and mass political behavior provide sufficient assurance? Or can the promise of plurality—which she makes "a characteristic of the shared world" and imbues with the meaning of "the principle of the earth"—avert the aforementioned threat?

Berktay notes that plurality is an inherent human potential, but this potential can only be realized within political togetherness. Such togetherness would offer humanity the opportunity to transcend its generic human condition and reveal its uniqueness. However, it is beneficial to challenge the high and exalted meaning attributed to political togetherness and to qualify this belief.

How Do Millions Dedicated to Obedience to an Autocratic Leader Emerge?

Berktay highlights Arendt's view that totalitarianism is a product of mass society, which emerged with the collapse of classes and nation-states. Nationalism and imperialism also contribute to this. So, how did populations in Europe, with its full belief in modernization, become susceptible to totalitarian currents? The reason is radical and structural: A series of pathologies eroded, and eventually eliminated, the public sphere as a space of freedom. The sufficient condition was met with the conquering tendency of imperialist capital that brought colonial rule, and the bourgeoisie's seizure of the state to use it as a tool for their partial interests.

But Berktay poses another crucial question: How did millions of people emerge whose fundamental characteristic and essence were obedience to the leader, the ideology, and the order on which totalitarianism relied?

The answer to this astonishing situation is hoped to be found in specific historical circumstances: the collapse of the relatively orderly and stable contexts of life before World War I. The war, the Great Depression, and the spread of revolutionary upheavals made people open to reductionist and comprehensive, total solutions offered by ideas and movements that could link their difficulties and sufferings to capitalism, Jews, privileged classes, etc.

Does this sound familiar for the political adventures experienced in this land? It should. It must, so that an entirely different environment can emerge where even the massiveness that caused this destructive historical experience will need to seek an exit.

When Stable Public Life Disappears, Connection to Reality is Severed

According to Berktay's interpretation, the psycho-politics of totalitarianism involves this: The radical alienation, loneliness, and rootlessness created by the modern age give people the feeling of having no place in the world, while also depriving them of identity and common sense (a sense of responsibility towards the world). Due to the disappearance of a vibrant and stable public sphere, individuals lose their connection with others and with the reality around them, their ability to think independently and act; thus, they become susceptible to the allure of totalitarian constructs.

The summary of this interpretation holds that totalitarianism's essence is a combination of immeasurable, arrogant hubris and determinism. The transformation of hubris into nemesis (retribution) is only a matter of time. Berktay notes that Arendt here draws a striking connection between nuclear physics and totalitarianism. Both involve stories of people who set out to gain freedom and power, but ultimately unleash natural or semi-natural processes that lead to the destruction of boundaries meant to protect humanity.

Totalitarianism Seeks to Eradicate Plurality

Totalitarianism seeks to eradicate plurality from the face of the earth, condemning people to a desert of singularity by destroying their uniqueness. This is why Arendt calls evil "radical." In this desert, there is no place for dialogue and discussion with others, nor for thinking in the sense of a dialogue within oneself. This is because both the self and the world, the faculty of thought and experience, are lost simultaneously.

Evil is undoubtedly human, and there is no vaccine to immunize against it. What can save the world are only the daily actions of those who love it and work with others to recreate and protect it.