Totalitarianism

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 437.

Unit 7

Writing section

International Marriage

1. Would you marry someone of another nationality?

2. Are your parents of the same nationality?

3. What are some advantages of an international marriage?

4. What are some disadvantages?

5. Do you want to have an international marriage?

6. Do you know anyone who married someone from a different country? If yes, what is their experience like?

7. Do you think it is more difficult to marry someone from a different country?

8. How would your parents feel if you married someone from a different country?

9. Do you think that it is good for children to have parents from two different countries? Why? Why not?

The following question may be considered offensive or inappropriate in some situations.

10. Do you think that gay people should be allowed to marry?

11. Why do you think the bride's maids wear white?

Write an essay on the topic: "A Happy Family". Take a humorous approach, develop the following idea: A good marriage is between a blind wife and a deaf husband.

Totalitarianism is a form of government that theoretically permits no individual freedom and that seeks to subordinate all aspects of the in­dividual's life to the authority of the government. *

Totalitarianism is often distinguished from dictatorship, despot­ism, or tyranny by its supplanting of all political institutions with new ones and its sweeping away of all legal, social, and political traditions. The totalitarian state pursues some special goal, such as industrializa­tion or conquest, to the exclusion of all others. All resources are di­rected toward its attainment regardless of the cost. Whatever might further the goal is supported; whatever might foil the goal is rejected. This obsession spawns an ideology that explains everything in terms of the goal, rationalizing all obstacles that may arise and all forces that may contend with the state. The resulting popular support permits the state the widest latitude of action of any form of government. Any dis­sent is branded evil, and internal political differences are not permit­ted. Because pursuit of the goal is the only ideological foundation for the totalitarian state, achievement of the goal can never be acknowl­edged.

Under totalitarian rule, traditional social institutions and organiza­tions are discouraged and suppressed; thus the social fabric is weak­ened and people become more amenable to absorption into a single, unified movement. Participation in approved public organizations is at first encouraged and then required. Old religious and social ties are supplanted by artificial ties to the state and its ideology. As pluralism and individualism diminish, most of the people embrace the totali­tarian state's ideology. The infinite diversity among individuals blurs, replaced by a mass conformity (or at least acquiescence) to the belief and behaviour sanctioned by the state.

Large-scale, organized violence becomes permissible and sometimes necessary under totalitarian rule, justified by the overriding commit­ment to the state ideology and pursuit of the state's goal. In Nazi Ger­many and Stalin's Soviet Union, whole classes of people, such as the Jews and the kulaks (wealthy peasant farmers), respectively, were sin­gled out for persecution and extinction. In each case the persecuted were linked with some external enemy and blamed for the state's trou­bles, and thereby public opinion was aroused against them and their fate at the hands of the military and the police was condoned.

Police operations within a totalitarian state often appear similar to those within a police state, but one important difference distinguishes them. In a police state the police operate according to known, con­sistent procedures. In a totalitarian state the police operate without the constraints of laws and regulations. The actions are unpredictable and directed by the whim of their rulers. Under Hitler and Stalin un­certainty was interwoven into the affairs of the state. The German constitution of the Weimar Republic was never abrogated under Hit­ler, but an enabling act passed by the Republic in 1933 permitted him to amend the constitution at will, in effect nullifying it. The role of lawmaker became vested in one man. Similarly, Stalin provided a constitution for the Soviet Union in 1936 but never permitted it to be­come the framework of Soviet law. Instead, he was the final arbiter in the interpretation of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism and changed his interpretations at will. Neither Hitler nor Stalin permitted change to become predictable, thus increasing the sense of terror among the people and repressing any dissent.