ABSTRACT
Taking off from some clarifications concerning “totalitarianism” and “authoritarianism”, “theocracy” and “integralism”, and briefly commenting on the history of these terms, this chapter engages critically with leading members of the so-called Political Religion School. The governing idea of this influential school of scholarship is the notion that totalitarian ideologies and regimes – may they be of the fascist, Nazi, communist or Islamist variety – are driven by “religious enthusiasm”. Totalitarianism is conceived as residual politicised religious stances transforming in modern, secular societies into new and ominous forms. Not unexpectedly, the following critical discussions move towards a discussion of the understanding of “religion” among the school members and its background in Émile Durkheim’s theory of religion. Through a historical contextualisation of Durkheim, the chapter then demonstrates how the disclosure of the Political Religion School – i.e. exposing totalitarian politics as in essence a form of religion, in fact to a high degree – only repeats what members of totalitarian ideologies, especially nineteenth century communists/socialists, have previously openly declared. This historical observation draws our attention to the very elementary – but in diverse sorts of studies of religion, all-too-often neglected or confused – distinction between etic and emic use of “religion”.
