Positioning: Statement 1

1. Which Dictatorship-State has killed more people: The Nazis or the Soviets? Positioning: Statement 1

2. Positioning: Statement 2 • Where was the surveillance bigger: • In the GDR or in Nazi-Germany?

3. Positioning: Statement 3 • Did the Soviet-System act in the same way antisemitic then the Nazis?

4. Václav Havel,1990 • „We had all become used to the totalitarian system and accepted it as an unchangeable fact and thus helped to perpetuate it. In other words, we are all — though naturally to differing extents — responsible for the operation of the totalitarian machinery. None of us is just its victim. We are all also its co-creators.“

5. Darrell Anderson • „Somebody once declared that the only two political theories that are completely consistent are anarchy and totalitarianism. Anarchy fully embraces the concept of self, totalitarianism fully rejects that concept. Statism always degenerates into totalitarianism.“

6. Michael Parenti • „Both the Italian fascists and the Nazis consciously tried to imitate the left: youth organizations, mass mobilizations, rallies, parades, banners, symbols, slogans, uniforms. And I think for this reason, too, many mainstream writers treat fascism and communism as totalitarian twins. • But most workers and peasants could tell the difference. Industrialists and bankers could tell the difference. And certainly the communists and the fascists could tell the difference.“

7. Totalitarism I • The Concept of Totalitarianism was founded in the 1920s in Italy to describe the new fascist movement, that attempted to create a new absolute rule-system and the domination of humans in all kinds of live. • While the Antifascists wanted to advise against the new movement, the fascists adopted the term and tried to give it a positive meaning.

8. “Totalitarianism” a political concept • Later on the German right-wing Conservative Carl Schmitt used the term of a „total state“ for his vision of a state that should unite state, society, culture and religion • In Italy the term impacted the national political discussion and the Italian conservatives started to equate fascism with communism, because both rejected the parliamentary democracy.

9. “Totalitarianism” a political concept II • The Austrian historian and sociologist Franz Borkenau already in 1940 made a concept of totalitarianism comparing the NS and the Bolschewism in the SU. • Later Hannah Arendt became one of the most famous theoretic using the term in her book “the origins of totalitarianism”

10. “Totalitarianism” a political concept III • After the second world war, the term was only used with negative meaning. • The term became subject of the cold war scientific and political conflicts. • The totalitarianism-theories focus on the hegemonic structures of the states and try to compare and analyse them. • They show specific characteristics of totalitarian states like: • - Strong ideology • - submission under the community • - concentration of powers • - no civic freedom • - surveillance • …

11. Critics • The strongest critics against that concept says, that it's a product of the cold war to denounce the eastern states in the cold war and that it compares and equates systems without looking on their believe-systems and aims. The biggest danger from that point of view is to equate the Stalinism with the National Socialism of the Nazis. • This forces a historizationof the Holocaust/Shoa and doesn't notice the singularism of the German holocaust. This is heading to a relativization of the Holocaust and a reinterpretation of the German history. • Beside that there was a debate, if the GDR can be classified as a totalitarian state.