Definitions of Totalitarianism

The dictators … took their ideologies very seriously.

Definitions of Totalitarianism

Surprisingly, there has been a greater agreement among historians about how to define “totalitarianism” than there has been about whether the definition actually fits any of the states usually described as totalitarian. Advocates of the term stress: (1) the extraordinary powers of the leader; (2) the importance of an exclusionist ideology; (3) the existence of a single mass party; (4) a secret police prepared to use terror to eradicate all domestic opposition; (5) a monopoly of the communications media as well as over the educational systems; (6) a determination to change basic social, artistic, and literary values; and (7) an insistence that the welfare of the state be placed above the welfare of its citizens.

--Bruce F. Pauley, Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century, 4th ed. (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 1.