/lit/ - Literature

>>21757171
Why do utopianism and totalitarianism interconnect? Can utopia exist w/o being totalitarian?

>liberal democracy
Are you referring to social democracy? That problem with this type of regime is the petty bourgeoisie, which like exerting authority over the proletarian.

It’s a great book. Absolutely worth reading if you’re interested in the subject. Probably the greatest attempt at objectivity on the subject a Jew will ever be capable of writing. It’s really, really good. So “objective” in fact that other Jews regularly call her an antisemite and have for 40 years or more.

Lots of criticisms directed at this book but they are by no means decisive on its value.

Mao: a Revolution Derailed by Andrew Walder is also really good, and looks at the mechanisms of Maoist China.

>>21757219
No, it's acultural problem. Someone is always going to exert authority.

>>21757171
>books that delve into the politics and "mechanics" behind totalitarian regimes
>a work like that can't be unbiased
Yes, because the work is necessarily self-centered and hypocritical.

>reading a book written by a jewess trying to gaslight you into thinking that no countries are allowed to be nationalistic (except israel of course!)

>>21757274
>reading a book written by an eleutheromaniac
Could've saved you a bit of time and character space.

>>21757171

>totalitarianism isn't the answer
>liberal democracy is a mistake
There is a third path my son. Come home to the truth.

>>21757283
Anarchism is retarded lol

>>21757171
>I don't think totalitarianism is the answer to our current problems but I also think liberal democracy is a mistake
the form of government is largely inconsequential on a person's everyday life when in isolation (no geo-political affects from choosing one vs the other). Most people's grievances come from lived experience which is what they want to change, hence the constant KulturKampf. All systems of government are totalitarian in nature and show their hand when their legitimacy or existence is threatened. Liberalism is an iron-dildo slipped in a silk pink sock. It is just as totalitarian as anything else there's ever been. Maybe start with The Republic or with fascist literature/Mein Kampf, the true third position philosophy endorses a quasi-cultural totalitarianism that's organic to a people at a place in time while also endorsing the idea of organic growth and change. I don't think you'll find real engagement with it anywhere else because "totalitarianism" is the great antagonist of the modern world.

>>21757171
>totalitarian
Read Sheila Fitzpatrick *now*

>>21757307

It's actually not. Whatever retarded political ideology you believe in is though. Left wing, right wing, doesn't matter. Humans were not meant to be governed. It goes against nature and any attempt made by retards who think they know better to control people always fails, whether dictatorship or democracy. All kinds of government have some kind of variation of a core flaw in them that prevents them from reaching their full potential, i.e. the aforementioned fact that people weren't meant to be governed. Totalitarianism is retarded because there is nothing on earth more cringe than someone trying to tell me what to do, as if he is smarter than me. Democracy is also dumb because it means that normies and NPCs are guiding the ship of state. The only government that would even come close to working is a meritocracy or something like Plato's philosopher kings, but even then, the subjective definition of who has merit or who is entitled lead will eventually be corrupted and bastardized until we end up with trannies and niggers again.

Then of course, you'll mention how we need laws or we'll devolve into chaos or something like that. But we have laws, and how's that going?

>>21757343
No, he's right. Any conception of anarchism that doesn't consist of a bunch of Mexican drug cartel types, Oil sheiks, and oligarchs running around butt-fucking anything they want to is about as delusional as it gets. It's essentially modernity on steroids. You will always be "governed" by something or someone, even on the tribal level. This is part of the human condition, not some ideology that's imposed on you.

>>21757343
Anarchism would be good if it weren't for the fact that a non-anarchist state immediately btfo's an anarchist one. It's idealistic but completely impractical.

Hannah Arendt is a spectacular writer

>>21757368
for me to poop on

>>21757358
Why would you exclude plutocrats (like Elon Musk) out of your list of bad influence?

>>21757399
see "oligarchs", and it's not about "bad" or "good" influence, it's just saying you're going to be ruled by them to an even greater extent than we are now. The only check to their power is through the power of a state

>>21757370
>for me to poop on
hey fuck off Triumph

The biggest lie ever told was not to judge a book by its cover. You should absolutely judge anyone and everything at face value. Seeing how genuinely disgusting and subhuman the average anarchist is is enough to discard that ideology forever. Freak ideologies attract freak ideologues, it's how it always worked.

>>21757171
people who have no capacity to inspire and lead other people without force, but still insist upon being leaders, will turn into totalitarians. western liberalism is already becoming totalitarian. covid shutdowns, mandates and mania are a precursor.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UQYTb9DwKjQ

>>21757415
Anarchism doesn’t means no political organisation at all (because that’s impossible and central power(s) will simply emerge back, as you pointed out). It means a political organisation where there is as little hierarchy as possible.

>>21757505
>Anarchism doesn’t means no political organisation at all
Literally what does the word "anarchy" come from?

Bump for good thread

Also when I tried reading parts of the origins of totalitarianism Arendt came off as a very neurotic jew, but I do need to give it a deeper read

>>21757171
>the mechanics of unstopable unaccountable god kings hiding behind imaginary friends and using them as scapegoats

tldr: mass media/survilence technology

>>21757415
>The only check to their power is through the power of a state
Then, plutocracy is even worse than oligarchy— the government doesn’t control Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates.

Paul Gottfried once called this book a trotskyite apology for communism pretending to be something different than what it actually is lol.

>>21757222
>So “objective” in fact that other Jews regularly call her an antisemite and have for 40 years or more.

Do they, really?

Milan Kundera, Arthur Koestler, all of Orwell's nonfiction

>>21757812
Was she a Trot?

>>21757764
The current state doesn't, but it has the ability to. The point is a state has immense power and is the only avenue to control elites by threat of violence

>>21757891
>The point is a state has immense power
True.

>>21757812
Retarded opinion when the communist position is that she's a liberal and totalitarism is just trying to equate fascism and communism.

>>21757171
It al stems from Plato's Republic. The origin of all modern day attempts at totalitarian Utopias.

Hannah Arendt, a German-born Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, became an American citizen in 1950. A year later, her book The Origins of Totalitarianism catapulted her into intellectual stardom. Her own personal experience surviving fascism gave her unassailable credibility and helped secure its place in the canon. But her criticism was not reserved for fascism alone. In the book, she denounced fascism and communism in roughly symmetrical terms, as different expressions of the long-term danger posed by the “mass man”:

"What will happen once the authentic mass man takes over, we do not know yet, although it may be a fair guess that he will have more in common with the meticulous, calculated correctness of Himmler than with the hysterical fanaticism of Hitler, will more resemble the stubborn dullness of Molotov than the sensual vindictive cruelty of Stalin."

Elsewhere in the same work, she took pains to distinguish settler-colonialism in South Africa from “totalitarianism”:

"[Natives] were, as it were, “natural” human beings who lacked the specifically human character, the specifically human reality, so that when European men massacred them they somehow were not aware that they had committed murder. Moreover, the senseless massacre of native tribes on the Dark Continent was quite in keeping with the traditions of these tribes themselves."

Regardless of whether they were more “fanatical” or “clinical,” the totalitarians were “aware that they had committed murder,” whereas colonizers were relatively in the clear, as their “senseless massacres” were carried out against creatures who “lacked the specifically human character.” This formulation essentially updates John Seeley’s infamous 19th-century apologia for the British Empire (“We seem, as it were, to have conquered half the world in a fit of absence of mind”) for a new era in which independent states were becoming powerful enough to challenge the hegemony of the North Atlantic powers. Arendt takes up Seeley’s claim and turns it into the key difference between (forgivable) colonialism and (criminal) fascism and socialism: colonization was accidentally inflicted on savages, whereas fascism deliberately enslaved people, and socialism deliberately expropriated capitalists. The rise of the West is imagined as a natural project, rendering the socialist and fascist projects both anti-natural by contrast. On this view, it hardly matters whether the radicals’ intentions were good or evil, or what outcomes were achieved — all that matters is that they are radical, that they’re challenging something that was meant to be.

>>21757333
blessed trips
>start with the Republic
I have read the Republic, it's correct? Like I'm having a hard time figuring out how anyone could argue against a lot of what is said.

>>21757343
>Calling people NPC's and normies
Wow that alone automatically makes me think your opinion is fucking stupid.

Anarchism isn't the worst political idealogy to have (that goes to authoritative regimes and Nazi's) but man it's so fucking stupid to think about how many people can get exploited. The system can be dictated by who can be the most aggressively evil in actions and get away it the most often. Doesn't matter how great a small anarchy village can be when 10 guys with heavy weaponry can kill everyone on sight and plunder whatever they want, rinse and repeat with the possibility of being hundreds of groups like this.

>>21758506

>as their “senseless massacres” were carried out against creatures who “lacked the specifically human character.”

Had to chuckle a bit about that particular viewpoint ... :D

>>21757415
>The only check to their power is through the power of a state
lmao the delusion
btw Gates, Bezos and Musk have no power over me, unlike the state

>>21757171
>I don't think totalitarianism is the answer to our current problems but I also think liberal democracy is a mistake so I'm looking to understand more about both.

Check out classical republicanism. Some consider Arendt a classical republican because of her book The human condition

>>21757171
>origins of
Isn't it the default state for us?

Quick question on the Kotkin trilogy. Can you jump right in on vol. 2, or do you really need to read 1? Heard vol. 1 is mostly the buttlicking of Lenin.

>>21761429
What's the point of reading a biography of someone and not starting at their birth?

>>21761859
Read review where Kotkin's work is more about the state than the man. And that each volume can stand alone. Hearing that volume 1 contains little information about the life of Stalin. That's why I asked. Curious if anyone had read them.

>>21758506
Who wrote the critique in the last quote? Sounds like nazbol

>>21758506
>On this view, it hardly matters whether the radicals’ intentions were good or evil, or what outcomes were achieved — all that matters is that they are radical, that they’re challenging something that was meant to be.
Ironically this is about as far as Arendt's mass man (and woman) typically gets

>>21757171
Do people make a distinction between modern totalitarianism and historical kinds? like there is a rough point in developments where you can point towards totalitarianism (in the modern sense), since methods are advanced enough to potentially enforce things with hard power more wholisticly?

Because there was shit like England enforcing all non nobles to wear wool hats on non holidays so as to stimulate the wool industry in like the 1600s, but that seems like a different sort of totalitarianism where its done by the soft power of broadly recognized authority and a lack of a true opposition on principle. Can modern totalitarianism only exist if their are established reconvictions of enlightenment liberalism that give people a fundamental opposition to seemingly cohesive and arbitrary imposition of policy?

>>21762167
No, because totalitarianism is purely a 21st-century thing...

End sarcasm.exe process.

>>21757171
Modern terminology is so fucking retarded. It's tiring. People don't want to learn anything for themselves, they only want lies. OP, get your own brain and stop using words if your definitions of them came from retarded political zealots.

>>21762167
The typical answer is that totalitarianism was enabled by technological advancement giving centralized national or supernational states the ability to control people by the millions. You’re right about the reconvictions part though for sure, a super common complaint about NS Germany was that it was “a civilized people that chose barbarism” i.e. a rejection of enlightenment liberalism on principle not out of ignorance. Still there is definitely a pejorative and Anglocentric bias here i.e. “it is never totalitarianism when we do it”. Imagine telling a medieval peasant that in the future the state was going to forcibily conscript their children into workforce training camps 8 hours a day every day and that if you refused the state would take your children. Sounds totalitarian but that’s public school, there are probably tons of things people from the past would see as totalitarian overreach but to us they’re just normal.

>>21762186
>He needs to clarify his sarcasm
this isnt reddit.

anyways, my point was, is there a discursive distinction in the concept of totalitarianism between modern and premodern times that may be contingent on ideological developments.

>>21762091
Volume 1 is like the first 50 years of his life. You're missing a huge chunk of the story if you skip it I imagine, but your call.

bump

>>21757171
Start with Fichte, it's just Fichte taken to its conclusion.