ABSTRACT
Totalitarianism is, broadly speaking, a form of domination that erodes the pluralism intrinsic to society by means of the discretionary exercise of violence or what has the same effect in its consequences, the persistent and plausible threat of its exercise. Totalitarianism offers a diagnosis of the social order in terms of agony and degeneration, as well as a route to a dream-up social order, to a racial and/or social utopia conveyed by the movement or regime in question. Totalitarianism is based on an organicist vision of society in which each individual serves a greater whole to which they are subordinate, performing functions of asymmetrical value in keeping with their ethnicity, gender, social class and devotion or degree of commitment to the ideology of the movement or regime in question. Totalitarianism advances through binary opposing elements whereby one pole embodies the highest “Good” and the other the absolute “Evil”.
