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Within the academic context, the concept of totalitarianism has been applied to several regimes, with much debate and disagreements, most notably about the Soviet Union, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, the Empire of Japan under Kokkashugi, Francoist Spain, and Ba’athist Iraq. Totalitarianism represents an extreme version of authoritarianism.[1][2] Western theories of totalitarianism generally center upon a specifically “utopian” and “revolutionary” ideology seeking to completely transform a society.[3][4]

Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet Union

Main articles: October Revolution § Historiography, Russian Revolution § Historiography, and Soviet and Communist studies

The Encyclopaedia Britannica Online and various academics observed that the policies of Vladimir Lenin, the first leader of the Soviet Union, contributed to the establishment of a totalitarian system in the USSR.[5][6] While some historians, such as Leszek Kołakowski, believed Stalinist totalitarianism to be a continuation of Leninism,[6] and directly called Lenin’s government the first totalitarian regime to appear,[7] others including Hannah Arendt argued that there was rupture between Stalinist totaliarianism and Leninism, and that Leninism offered other various outcomes besides Stalinism, including “a mere one-party dictatorship as opposed to full-blown totalitarianism”. Arendt believed Stalinist totalitarianism to be a part of a hypernational historically specific phenomenon that also included Nazism.[6]

The debate on whether Lenin’s regime was totalitarian is a part of a debate between the totalitarian or traditionalist and neo-traditionalist schools rooted in the early years of the Cold War and also described as “conservative” and “anti-Communist” by historian Ronald Suny; and the revisionist school, which is represented by such historians as Richard Pipes. To Pipes, not only Stalinism was a mere continuation of Leninism, but more to it, “the Russia of 1917–1924 was no less ‘totalitarian’ than the Russia of the 1930s”; Pipes compared Lenin to Adolf Hitler and described the former as a precursor of the latter, stating “not only totalitarianism, but Nazism and the Holocaust has a Russian and a Leninist pedigree”. The core idea of the “totalitarian approach” is that the Bolshevik Revolution was something artificial and imposed from above by a small group of intellectuals with brute force and “depended on one man”,[8][9] and that Soviet totalitarianism resulted from a “blueprint” of the ideology of the Bolsheviks, the violent culture of Russia, and supposedly deviant personalities of Bolshevik leaders.[10] The revisionists opposed such claims and put an emphasis on history from below and on the genuinely popular nature of the 1917 Russian Revolution, paid much more attention to social history as opposed to the traditional approach that centres on politics, ideology, and personalities of the leaders, and tended to see a discontinuity between Leninism and Stalinism, with the worst excesses of the latter being explained by the economic experiments of the late 1920s, the threat of war with Nazi Germany, and the personality of Joseph Stalin. In turn, the traditionalists and neo-traditionalists dismissed such approach emphasising social history as Marxist.[8][9]

Fascist Italy

Main articles: Fascist Italy and Italian fascism

According to Kei Hiruta, it is a popular yet contested position in historiography to exclude Fascist Italy from the list of totalitarian regimes. In The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Hannah Arendt disputed that Italy was a totalitarian state,[11] at least until 1938.[12]

Francoist Spain

Main articles: Francoist Spain and First Francoism

During the Spanish Civil War and the early years of its existence, the regime of Francisco Franco embraced the ideal of a totalitarian state propagated by the Italian fascists, the Nazis, and the Spanish Falangists the and applied the term “totalitarian” towards itself when Franco’s rhetoric was influenced by the one of Falangism. Franco stressed the “missionary and totalitarian” nature of the new state that was under construction “as in other countries of totalitarian regime”, these being Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany; the ideologues of Francoism formed a concept of totalitarianism as an essentially Spanish method of state organization. In 1942, Franco stopped using the term towards his regime and called for struggle with “Bolshevist totalitarianism”.[13]

The Franco regime was commonly defined as totalitarian and as a Spanish variation of fascism until 1964, when Juan Linz challenged this model and instead described Francoism as “authoritarian” because of its “limited degree of political pluralism” caused by struggle between Francoist families such as Falangists and Carlists within the sole legal party FET y de las JONS and the Movimiento Nacional and by other such features as lack of totalitarian ideology. The definition proposed by Linz became an object of a major debate among sociologists, political scientists, and historians; some critics felt that this revision could be understood as a form of acquittal of the Franco regime as it focused on the more benevolent character of the regime in its developmental phase and did not concern its early phase (often called “First Francoism”). Later debates focused on fascism rather than arguing whether Francoism was totalitarian; some historians wrote that it was a typical conservative military dictatorship, and contemporary historians stress its fascist component and describe it as para-fascist or a regime of unfinished fascistization that evolved to a merely authoritarian regime during the Cold War. While Enrique Moradiellos contends that “it is now increasingly rare to define Francoism as a truly fascist and totalitarian regime” even if he also writes that the debates on Francoism have not finished yet,[14][15] Ismael Saz notes that “it has also begun to be recognised that” Francoism underwent a “totalitarian or quasi-totalitarian, fascist or quasi-fascist” phase.[16]

The contemporary historians who describe Francoism as totalitarian usually limit such description to the early ten to twenty years of the “First Francoism”. Stephen J. Lee limits the totalitarian phase of Francoism to 1939–1949, which he describes as “functionally – but not ideologically – totalitarian”, and calls Franco “the closest of authoritarian dictators” to “being totalitarian”.[17] Julián Sanz Hoya refutes Linz’s model of “limited pluralism” as “lame” and “practically inherent to all political systems”, and writes that “considering the totalitarian vocation, it is more than evident that Franco’s regime in the first twenty years had totalizing pretensions in relation to social control (including private life, morality, and customs), the monopoly of politics and public space, and even the control of the economy (think of the strong interventionism of autarky).”[18]

Among the arguments introduced by Linz was the reliance of the Franco regime on Catholicism. He writes: “The heteronomous control of the ideological content of Catholic thought by a universal church and specifically by the Pope is one of the most serious obstacles to the creation of a truly totalitarian system by nondemocratic rulers claiming to implement Catholic social doctrine in their states.[19] This argument is also debated on the grounds that “frequent and saturated references to Francoist Catholic humanism, to the primordial sense of human dignity or to the centrality of the person, all coming from Christian theology, could hardly conceal the fact that the individual was only understood as a citizen to the extent of his adherence to the Catholic, hierarchical and economically privatist community that the military uprising had saved”,[20] and that “Catholic values that permeated the conservative ideological substratum” were “precisely what was wielded by the Francoist Spanish political doctrine of the late thirties and early forties to justify the need for the constitution of a totalitarian State at the service and expansion of the Catholic religion.”[21]

Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union

Main article: Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, the Soviet Union during the Stalinist era, along with Nazi Germany, was a “modern example” of a totalitarian state, being among “the first examples of decentralized or popular totalitarianism, in which the state achieved overwhelming popular support for its leadership”. This contrasted with earlier totalitarian states that were imposed on the people,[22] as “every aspect of the Soviet Union’s political, economic, cultural, and intellectual life came to be regulated by the Communist Party in a strict and regimented fashion that would tolerate no opposition”.[5] According to Peter Rutland writing in 1993, with the death of Stalin, “this was still an oppressive regime, but not a totalitarian one.”[23] This view was echoed in 1995 by Igor Krupnik who wrote, “The era of ‘social engineering’ in the Soviet Union ended with the death of Stalin in 1953 or soon after; and that was the close of the totalitarian regime itself.”[24] According to Klaus von Beyme writing in 2014, “The Soviet Union after the death of Stalin moved from totalitarianism to authoritarian rule.”[25]

Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin are the two main exemplary cases, on the grounds of comparison of which the concept of totalitarianism was founded.[26] The historians who claim that these dictatorships were not totalitarian often reject or doubt the concept of totalitarianism itself. For example, Eric Hobsbawm rejects the description of Stalinism as a totalitarian dictatorship because of its operation, although he concedes that Stalin wanted to achieve total control of the population, and this conclusion, as he says, “throws considerable doubt on the usefulness of the term”.[27] Such revisionist historians as Sheila Fitzpatrick openly rejected both the description of Stalinism as a totalitarian dictatorship and the term “totalitarianism”.[28] The historian Robert Service in his biography of Stalin wrote that “this was not a totalitarian dictatorship as conventionally defined because Stalin lacked the capacity, even at the height of his power, to secure automatic universal compliance with his wishes.”[29]

The historian Gordon A. Craig disputed that the Third Reich was a totalitarian state, unless “in a limited measure”, writing, “Except for the Jews, toward whom Hitler had an obsessive hatred, and former and potential dissidents, and homosexuals and Gypsies, most people, at least until the war years, remained surprisingly unrestrained by state control.”[27] Such historians as Hans Mommsen and Ian Kershaw openly rejected the concept of totalitarianism in analysis of the Third Reich.[26] Stanley Payne argues that “totalitarianism in terms of total control of institutions is a construct that accurately describes only the most extreme Stalinist type of socialist dictatorships (and possibly the final phase of Nazi Germany).”[30]

Empire of Japan

Main article: Kokkashugi

Totalitarianism has been one of the suggested descriptions for the one-party system that ruled the Empire of Japan during World War II.[31] S. J. Lee believes that the ideological base “was traditional”, as opposed to “revolutionary” ideologies required by the Western theories of totalitarianism, “even if the methods of communication and control were modern and European”, and that the traditional society of Japan was “to a large degree differential”, while its institutions remained too elitist and conservative to follow such practices as a “democratic mass mobilization” characteristic of totalitarianism, so he defines this system as authoritarian as opposed to totalitarian.[32]

Michael Lucken calls Japan “the highly peculiar form of totalitarianism”. According to Lucken, “scholars today are hesitant to describe the regime as totalitarian” and “only a handful of scholars specializing in Japan continue somewhat disparately to use the term, while others reject it entirely”. He connects it to the policies of the United States during the occupation of Japan after World War II. While the American authorities labelled Germany “totalitarian” and thus authorizing the term, they never officially did it to Japan since this would make Hirohito responsible for the war and war crimes, which contradicted the plans of Douglas MacArthur; Arendt further contributed to the exclusion of Japan from the list of totalitarian regimes by formulating the mainstream criterion of totalitarianism unapplicable to Japan. As her theories gained less influence, the Japanese historians find the term applicable, which creates a discrepancy between Japanese and Western historiographies. According to Lucken, “The concept of totality in Japanese wartime thinking did not refer to an enclosed whole, like a set of marbles in a bag. On the contrary, it was an open and organic whole that resists any narrow definition. Consequently, if we are able to speak of Japanese totalitarianism, it was all the more total for having consistently resisted such a label.”[33]

Ba’athist Iraq

Main articles: Ba’athist Iraq and Saddamism

Academics such as Kevin Woods and others have described Ba’athist Iraq as a repressive totalitarian state.[34][35][36] Saddam’s regime was notorious for its repressive tactics. These included widespread surveillance, torture, and extrajudicial killings.[37][38] Numerous cases of human rights abuses committed by his government were documented by human rights organizations.[39] Saddam’s regime suppressed political opposition through a combination of violence, intimidation, and censorship.[38] Freedom of speech and freedom of the press were severely curtailed, and political opponents were often executed or imprisoned.[40] He initiated three military conflicts, including the Iran–Iraq War, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and the Gulf War.[41] These actions led to heavy casualties and widespread regional instability.[42] Saddamism has been described by critics as a mix of “Sunni Arab nationalism, confused Stalinism, and fascist zeal for the fatherland and its leader”.[43] Although Saddam is often described as a totalitarian leader, Joseph Sassoon notes that there are important differences between Saddam’s repression and the totalitarianism practiced by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, particularly with regard to freedom of movement and freedom of religion.[34]

The Islamic State (IS)

Main articles: Territory of the Islamic State and Ideology of the Islamic State

The Islamic State held significant territory in Iraq and Syria during the course of the Third Iraq War and the Syrian civil war from 2013 to 2019 under the dictatorship of its first Caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who imposed a strict interpretation of Sharia law.[44][45][46][47] Which has been described as a totalitarian regime as the group espouses a totalitarian ideology that is a fundamentalist hybrid of Global Jihadism, Wahhabism, and Qutbism. Following its territorial expansion in 2014, the group renamed itself as the “Islamic State” and declared itself as a caliphate[a] that sought domination over the Muslim world.

Cuba

Professor Paul C. Sondrol described Fidel Castro as a “totalitarian dictator”,[51] and suggested that in leading “a political system largely [of] his own creation and bearing his indelible stamp”, Castro’s leadership style warranted comparisons with totalitarian leaders like Mao Zedong, Hideki Tojo, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Saddam Hussein.[51]

Other states

Other governments which have been described as totalitarian include China under Mao Zedong,[52][53][54] Democratic Kampuchea under Pol Pot,[55] North Korea under the Kim family,[56][57][58] Afghanistan under the Taliban,[59] and Ba’athist Syria under the rule of the Assad family.[60] According to Steven Saxonberg, “all Marxist-Leninist regimes have totalitarian ambitions”, even though they do not always succeed in consolidation of their power and establishment of totalitarianism.[61] It has also been suggested that the beginning of Songun politics under Kim Jong Il in 1994 marked the transition of North Korea to post-totalitarianism: while it did not lead to the regime achieving more political or social pluralism, it transformed the party-dominant totalitarian system to a one where the party competes with the army.[62]

European satellites of the USSR which were established and became a part of the Warsaw Pact organization after World War II may also be regarded as totalitarian during their Stalinist phases. Thus, Czechoslovakia becomes totalitarian from 1948, when the Stalinist coup d’état overthrew the republican government.[63][64] and the Prague Spring of 1968;[65][66] Stalinist Hungarian People’s Republic under Mátyás Rákosi from 1949 to 1953 is widely regarded as totalitarian,[67][68][69][70] the same label is used to the People’s Republic of Bulgaria.[71] However, according to the Czech political scientist Michal Kubát, who relies on the mainstream theories of Juan Linz, these countries along with East Germany were only quasi-totalitarian. Kubát distinguishes these regimes from the Polish People’s Republic, which he describes as authoritarian and similar to Titoist Yugoslavia;[72] similarly, Saxonberg describes Poland as not totalitarian, noting that it made significant concessions to the civil society.[61] Yugoslavia has also been described as totalitarian by some authors,[73][74][75] but the applicability of the label has been contested.[76][77]

The Mongolian People’s Republic, the only “communist state” other than the USSR established prior to the Cold War, has also been described as totalitarian.[78]

Notes

  1. ^ Caliphate claim of “Islamic State” group is disputed and declared as illegal by traditional Islamic scholarship.[48][49][50]

References

  1. ^ Voegelin, Eric (1953). “The Origins of Totalitarianism”. The Review of Politics. 15: 68–85. doi:10.1017/S0034670500007439.
  2. ^ Sondrol, Paul C. (October 1991). “Totalitarian and Authoritarian Dictators: A Comparison of Fidel Castro and Alfredo Stroessner”. Journal of Latin American Studies. 23 (3): 599–620. doi:10.1017/S0022216X00015868.
  3. ^ Tismaneanu, Vladimir (14 March 2014). The Devil in History: Communism, Fascism, and Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century. Univ of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-28220-9.
  4. ^ https://www.omnifoo.info/images/Linz_Stepan-Modern_Nondemocratic_Regimes.pdf
  5. ^ a b “Leninism”. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 21 August 2021.
  6. ^ a b c Roberts, David (2006). The Totalitarian Experiment in Twentieth Century Europe. doi:10.4324/9780203087848. ISBN 978-0-203-08784-8.[page needed]
  7. ^ Riley, Alexander (October 2019). “Lenin and His Revolution: The First Totalitarian”. Society. 56 (5): 503–511. doi:10.1007/s12115-019-00405-1.
  8. ^ a b Mawdsley, Evan (2011). The Russian Civil War. Birlinn. ISBN 9780857901231.
  9. ^ a b Ronald Suny. Red Flag Unfurled: History, Historians and the Russian Revolution (Verso Books, 2017).
  10. ^ Ryan, James (2012). Lenin’s Terror: The Ideological Origins of Early Soviet State Violence. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-67396-9.[page needed]
  11. ^ Hiruta, Kei (21 November 2023). Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin: Freedom, Politics and Humanity. Princeton University Press. p. 91. ISBN 978-0-691-22612-5. Retrieved 24 April 2025.
  12. ^ Badie, Bertrand; Berg-Schlosser, Dirk; Morlino, Leonardo (2011). International Encyclopedia of Political Science. SAGE. ISBN 978-1-4129-5963-6.[page needed]
  13. ^ Gleason, Abbott (1997). Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War. Oxford University Press. p. 55. ISBN 978-0-19-028148-9.
  14. ^ Sangster, Andrew (2018). Probing the Enigma of Franco. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 978-1-5275-2014-1.[page needed]
  15. ^ Moradiellos, Enrique (2017). Franco: Anatomy of a Dictator. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78672-300-0.[page needed]
  16. ^ Saz, Ismael (2004). Fascismo y Franquismo (in Spanish). València: Universitat de València. ISBN 978-84-370-5910-5.[page needed]
  17. ^ Lee, Stephen J. (2016). European Dictatorships 1918-1945. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-29422-1.[page needed]
  18. ^ Hoya, Julián Sanz (2020). La construcción de la dictadura franquista en Cantabria. Ed. Universidad de Cantabria. ISBN 978-84-8102-695-5.[page needed]
  19. ^ Linz, Juan José (2000). Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes (PDF). Lynne Rienner Publishers. p. 77. ISBN 978-1-55587-890-0.
  20. ^ Portilla Contreras, Guillermo (2022). El derecho penal bajo la dictadura franquista. Bases ideológicas y protagonistas (PDF). Editorial Dykinson. ISBN 978-8411221184 – via University of Jaén.
  21. ^ González Prieto, Luis Aurelio (28 June 2021). “La voluntad totalitaria del Franquismo”. Revista del Posgrado en Derecho de la UNAM (14): 44. doi:10.22201/ppd.26831783e.2021.14.170.
  22. ^ “Totalitarianism”. Encyclopædia Britannica. 2018.
  23. ^ Rutland, Peter (1993). The Politics of Economic Stagnation in the Soviet Union: The Role of Local Party Organs in Economic Management. Cambridge University Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-0-521-39241-9. after 1953 …This was still an oppressive regime, but not a totalitarian one.
  24. ^ Krupnik, Igor (2016). “Soviet Cultural and Ethnic Policies towards Jews: A Legacy Reassessed”. In Ro’i, Yaacov (ed.). Jews and Jewish Life in Russia and the Soviet Union. doi:10.4324/9781315036205. ISBN 978-1-135-20510-2. p. 70: The era of ‘social engineering’ in the Soviet Union ended with the death of Stalin in 1953 or soon after; and that was the close of the totalitarian regime itself.
  25. ^ von Beyme, Klaus (2014). On Political Culture, Cultural Policy, Art and Politics. Springer. p. 65. ISBN 978-3-319-01559-0. The Soviet Union after the death of Stalin moved from totalitarianism to authoritarian rule.
  26. ^ a b Kershaw, Ian; Lewin, Moshe (28 April 1997). Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-56521-9.
  27. ^ a b Zubok, Vladislav (2017). Totalitarian Societies and Democratic Transition: Essays in memory of Victor Zaslavsky. Central European University Press. ISBN 978-963-386-130-1.[page needed]
  28. ^ Riasanovsky, Nicholas Valentine; Steinberg, Mark D. (2011). A History of Russia (8th ed.). New York Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 468. ISBN 978-0-1953-4197-3.
  29. ^ Service, Robert (2005). Stalin: A Biography. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-01697-2.[page needed]
  30. ^ Payne, Stanley G. (2011). The Franco Regime, 1936–1975. University of Wisconsin Pres. p. 626. ISBN 978-0-299-11073-4.
  31. ^ Martel, Gordon (7 February 2002). Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered. Routledge. p. 163. ISBN 978-1-134-71418-6.
  32. ^ Stephen J. Lee. European Dictatorships 1918-1945. 4th edition, 2016. pp. 364-365.”
  33. ^ Lucken, Michael (2013). The Japanese and the War: Expectation, Perception, and the Shaping of Memory. Columbia University: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-54398-9..
  34. ^ a b Sassoon, Joseph (February 2017). “Aaron M. Faust, The Ba’thification of Iraq: Saddam Hussein’s Totalitarianism [Book Review]”. International Journal of Middle East Studies. 49 (1). Cambridge University Press: 205–206. doi:10.1017/S0020743816001392. S2CID 164804585. First, Faust totally ignores the economy in his analysis. This oversight is remarkable given his attempt to trace how the regime became totalitarian, which, by definition, encompasses all facets of life. … Second, the comparison with Stalin or Hitler is weak when one takes into consideration how many Iraqis were allowed to leave the country. Although citizens needed to undergo a convoluted and bureaucratic procedure to obtain the necessary papers to leave the country, the fact remains that more than one million Iraqis migrated from Iraq from the end of the Iran–Iraq War in 1988 until the US-led invasion in 2003. Third, religion under Stalin did not function in the same manner as it did in Iraq, and while Faust details how the Shi’a were not allowed to engage in some of their ceremonies, the average Iraqi was allowed to pray at home and in a mosque. … it is correct that the security services kept a watch on religious establishments and mosques, but the Iraqi approach is somewhat different from that pursued by Stalin’s totalitarianism.
  35. ^ Blaydes, Lisa (2018). State of Repression: Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-9032-3. OCLC 1104855351.
  36. ^ *Makiya, Kanan (1993). Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising, and the Arab World. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 19. ISBN 978-0-393-31141-9.
  37. ^ “The Complex Legacy of Saddam Hussein”. Imperial War Museums. Retrieved 16 March 2024.
  38. ^ a b “State of Repression: Iraq under Saddam Hussein”. Political Science. Retrieved 16 March 2024.
  39. ^ Alfadhel Ahmad; Hayder Al-Shakeri. “The long shadow of Saddam’s dictatorship in Iraq”. Al Jazeera. Retrieved 16 March 2024.
  40. ^ Waterbury, John (16 October 2018). “State of Repression: Iraq Under Saddam Hussein”. Foreign Affairs. Vol. 97, no. 6. ISSN 0015-7120. Retrieved 16 March 2024.
  41. ^ “The Gulf War”. Miller Center. 11 May 2020. Retrieved 16 March 2024.
  42. ^ Kelidar, Abbas (1 October 1992). “The wars of Saddam Hussein”. Middle Eastern Studies. 28 (4): 778–798. doi:10.1080/00263209208700928. ISSN 0026-3206.
  43. ^ MacDonald, Michael (2014). Overreach: Delusions of Regime Change in Iraq. Harvard University Press. pp. 212–215. ISBN 978-0-674-72910-0.
  44. ^ Winter, Charlie (27 March 2016). “Totalitarianism 101: The Islamic State’s Offline Propaganda Strategy”. Lawfare.
  45. ^ Filipec, Ondrej (2020). The Islamic State From Terrorism to Totalitarian Insurgency. Routledge. ISBN 9780367457631.
  46. ^ Peter, Bernholz (February 2019). “Supreme Values, Totalitarianism, and Terrorism”. The Oxford Handbook of Public Choice. Vol. 1.
  47. ^ Haslett, Allison (2021). “The Islamic State: A Political-Religious Totalitarian Regime”. Scientia et Humanitas: A Journal of Student Research. Middle Tennessee State University. Islamic State embraces the most violent, extreme traits of Jihadi-Salafism. the State merged religious dogma and state control together to create a political-religious totalitarian regime that was not bound by physical borders
  48. ^ Yusuf al-Qaradawi stated: “[The] declaration issued by the Islamic State is void under sharia and has dangerous consequences for the Sunnis in Iraq and for the revolt in Syria”, adding that the title of caliph can “only be given by the entire Muslim nation”, not by a single group. – Strange, Hannah (5 July 2014). “Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi addresses Muslims in Mosul”. The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 6 July 2014.
  49. ^ Bunzel, Cole (27 November 2019). “Caliph Incognito: The Ridicule of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi”. www.jihadica.com. Archived from the original on 2 January 2020. Retrieved 2 January 2020.
  50. ^ Hamid, Shadi (1 November 2016). “What a caliphate really is—and how the Islamic State is not one”. Brookings. Archived from the original on 1 April 2020. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  51. ^ a b Sondrol, Paul C. (1991). “Totalitarian and Authoritarian Dictators: A Comparison of Fidel Castro and Alfredo Stroessner”. Journal of Latin American Studies. 23 (3): 599–620. doi:10.1017/S0022216X00015868.
  52. ^ “The Roles of the Monolithic Party Under the Totalitarian Leader”. The China Quarterly. 40: 39–64. 1969. doi:10.1017/S0305741000044544.
  53. ^ The Cultural Revolution and the History of Totalitarianism
  54. ^ Gleason, Abbott (20 March 1997). Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-028148-9.
  55. ^ Crimes Against Humanity-Klas-Göran Karlsson and Michael Schoenhals
  56. ^ “North Korea: Freedom in the World 2024 Country Report”.
  57. ^ Fifield, Anna (17 November 2017). “Kim Jong Un’s North Korea: Life inside the totalitarian state”. Washington Post. Retrieved 6 November 2025.
  58. ^ Suh, Jae Jean (1998). “The Second Society in North Korea”. Korean Studies. 22: 15–40. doi:10.1353/ks.1998.0014. JSTOR 23719382.
  59. ^ *Sakhi, Nilofar (December 2022). “The Taliban Takeover in Afghanistan and Security Paradox”. Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs. 9 (3): 383–401. doi:10.1177/23477970221130882. S2CID 253945821. Afghanistan is now controlled by a militant group that operates out of a totalitarian ideology.
  60. ^ Sources describing Ba’athist Syria as a totalitarian state:
    • Khamis, Sahar; Gold, Paul B.; Vaughn, Katherine (2013). “Chapter 22: Propaganda in Egypt and Syria’s ‘Cyberwars’: Contexts, Actors, Tools, and Tactics”. In Auerbach, Jonathan; Castronovo, Russ (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Propaganda Studies. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. p. 422. ISBN 978-0-19-976441-9.
    • Wieland, Carsten (2018). “6: De-neutralizing Aid: All Roads Lead to Damascus”. Syria and the Neutrality Trap: The Dilemmas of Delivering Humanitarian Aid Through Violent Regimes. London: I.B. Tauris. p. 68. ISBN 978-0-7556-4138-3.
    • Meininghaus, Esther (2016). “Introduction”. Creating Consent in Ba’thist Syria: Women and Welfare in a Totalitarian State. I.B. Tauris. pp. 1–33. ISBN 978-1-78453-115-7.
    • Sadiki, Larbi; Fares, Obaida (2014). “12: The Arab Spring Comes to Syria: Internal Mobilization for Democratic Change, Militarization and Internationalization”. Routledge Handbook of the Arab Spring: Rethinking Democratization. Routledge. p. 147. ISBN 978-0-415-52391-2.
    • Kosyakova, Yuliya; Kanas, Agnieszka, eds. (2024). Migration and integration: Tackling policy challenges, opportunities and solutions. Frontiers Media SA. p. 120. ISBN 9782832547168.
  61. ^ a b Saxonberg, Steven (14 February 2013). Transitions and Non-Transitions from Communism: Regime Survival in China, Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-02388-8.
  62. ^ Asian Military Evolutions:Civil–Military Relations in Asia. Bristol University Press. 2024. p. 232. ISBN 9781529229325. The third assessment of the post-Kim Il-sung North Korea is the ‘post-totalitarian state’ thesis, which suggests that Songun politics transformed North Korea from a party-dominant totalitarian system to a post-totalitarian state… The outcome was increasing institutional (but not social) pluralism… In post-totalitarian North Korea, the party and the military become equal peer institutions that compete for political and policy influence…
  63. ^ Balík, Stanislav; Hloušek, Vít; Kopeček, Lubomír; Holzer, Jan; Pšeja, Pavel; Roberts, Andrew Lawrence (17 July 2017). Czech Politics: From West to East and Back Again. Verlag Barbara Budrich. ISBN 978-3-8474-0974-8.
  64. ^ Dijk, Ruud van; Gray, William Glenn; Savranskaya, Svetlana; Suri, Jeremi; Zhai, Qiang (13 May 2013). Encyclopedia of the Cold War. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-92310-5.
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  69. ^ Körösényi, András; Tóth, Csaba; Török, Gábor (2007). “A kommunista korszak tradíciója” [The tradition of the communist era]. A magyar politikai rendszer [The Hungarian Political System] (in Hungarian). Budapest: Osiris Kiadó. p. 21. ISBN 978-963-389-963-2. OCLC 1088039656. A politikai hatalom totális jellegűvé vált … A rendszer totalitárius jellege abban ragadható meg, hogy a pártállami kontroll a politikai szférán messze túlmenően minden létszférára – a gazdaságtól a kultúrán keresztül egészen az iskolai és ifjúsági szocializációig – kiterjedt. [Political power has become total in nature … The totalitarian nature of the system can be grasped in the fact that party-state control extended far beyond the political sphere to all spheres of existence, from the economy through culture to school and youth socialization.]
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