Part 3 (2/2)
what they want from the system, then the model of plebiscitary democracy is substantially equivalent to the model of totalitarian rule.
-Robert Dahl.
Within minutes of the strikes [of 9/11], U.S. law-enforcement and intelligence-gathering authorities mobilized to find the culprits and prevent another attack. They ramped up the tapping of Americans' phone calls and voice-mails. They watched Internet traffic and e-mails as never before. They tailed greater numbers of people and into places deemed off-limits, such as mosques.
They clandestinely accessed bank accounts and credit
card transactions and school records. They monitored travel.
And they broke into homes without notice, looking for
signs of terrorist activity and copying entire file cabinets
and computer hard drives.
Authorities even tried to get inside peoples' heads, using
supercomputers and ”predictive” software to a.n.a.lyze
enormous amounts of personal data about them and
their friends and a.s.sociates in an effort to foretell who
might become a terrorist, and when.
-Josh Meyer, Los Angeles Times 13.
Unlike cla.s.sical totalitarian regimes, which boasted of their totalitarian character, inverted totalitarianism disclaims its ident.i.ty. Doubtless most Americans would indignantly protest that their political inst.i.tutions and Const.i.tution are the ant.i.thesis of a totalitarian regime. The contrast-at one extreme my claim that a species of totalitarianism is coming into being and, at the other, a claim by the putative totalitarians and the citizenry that theirs is an exemplary democracy; or, stated differently, the polarity between my denial that ours is a democracy and their denial that that system is totalitarian-may be too stark. Perhaps the actuality is a combination of both elements, which suggests that they are not mutually exclusive.
While robust democratic practices would be in contradiction to imperial power and its basic principle of domination and exploitation, democratic myths that have become detached from democratic practice may prove useful to inverted totalitarians. Plausibly, democratic mythology might linger on after democratic practices have lost substance, thereby enabling mythology, pa.s.sivity, and empty forms to serve a type of totalitarian regime.
Whether democracy and totalitarian rule are necessarily incompatible might depend upon what kind of democracy and what kind of totalitarianism are combined. Recent studies have argued that democracy contributed importantly to the rise of the n.a.z.is and the Fascists, and even served as a preparation. ”[F]ascism,” according to one prominent scholar of the subject, ”is the product of democracies gone wrong, that had working const.i.tutional systems which they gave up voluntarily.”14 To expand that interpretation: Hitler and Mussolini did not instantly ”overthrow” parliamentary systems but, while cultivating a ma.s.s following, exploited popular elections to gain office and, once in power, proceeded to eviscerate the system of parliamentary governance, party compet.i.tion, and the rule of law.15 Democracy, according to this line of a.n.a.lysis, signified not an active citizenry but a politically disenchanted and alienated ”ma.s.s” whose support was useful for conferring legitimacy on dictators.h.i.+p and extending its control over the population. An artful combination of propaganda flattered the ma.s.s, exploited its antipolitical sentiments, warned it of dangerous enemies foreign and domestic, and applied forms of intimidation to create a climate of fear and an insecure populace, one receptive to being led. The same citizenry, which democracy had created, proceeded to vote into power and then support movements openly pledged to destroy democracy and const.i.tutionalism. Thus a democracy may fail and give way to antidemocracy that, in turn, supplies a populace-and a ”democratic” postulate-congenial to a totalitarian regime.
Eventually the dictators.h.i.+ps of Mussolini and Hitler were toppled, not by popular revulsion but by military defeats. Was it democracy that failed, or, instead, was it a failure of certain parliamentary systems to effectively translate democracy into actual practice? One line of argument, aimed at exonerating democracy's complicity in totalitarian regimes, contends that prior to the totalitarian seizure of power there was a thin democracy that included little beyond voting rights and formal legal guarantees. Democracy failed because of the superficial democratic civic culture in both societies. At the turn into the twentieth century monarchs were still important political actors in both societies. Germany's Weimar const.i.tution had been in existence for a mere dozen years; Italy's parliamentary monarchy, while a creation of the nineteenth century, was notoriously corrupt and lacking in public support. Neither country could draw on a fund of democratic political experience or a tradition of partic.i.p.atory politics; its citizenry was prepolitical. The shallowness of democracy's hold in those countries was underscored by the astonis.h.i.+ng rapidity with which Hitler and Mussolini consolidated their dictators.h.i.+ps and opposition collapsed.16 The ”democracy” that failed in Italy and Germany was primarily an electoral democracy, the most easily managed and transformed into plebiscitary democracy. Ma.s.s partic.i.p.ation was simulated through appeals to patriotism and nationalism, and satisfied by ma.s.s rallies and members.h.i.+p in various auxiliaries (e.g., Hitler-Jugend) created by the regime. Fascist and n.a.z.i totalitarianism was made possible by the methodical transformation of pa.s.sive citizens into ardent followers, uncomplaining patriots, willing executioners, and, finally, cannon fodder.
V.
Paradoxically, while totalitarian regimes had a strong popular element, their princ.i.p.al inst.i.tutions were self-consciously antidemocratic. They were notorious for trumpeting the ”leaders.h.i.+p principle” (Fuhrerprinzip), legitimizing the predominance of elites, and elevating the status of the ”loyal follower.” Power was monopolized, not shared. In addition to unflinching loyalty a strict orthodoxy was required of those who aspired to powerful positions in the hierarchy; as we would say today, they had ”to stay on message.” Further, in both Italy and Germany the most powerful social and economic cla.s.ses, as well as many of the members of the political elites, were hostile to democracy and, at best, lukewarm toward liberalism. Especially potent was the combination of a prepolitical demos and highly self-conscious, resentful elites convinced of their natural right to rule. Unlike the political elites of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the elites who gravitated toward totalitarianism were less fearful of the ma.s.s than contemptuous of its gullibility.
The denial that democracy could have sp.a.w.ned a totalitarian regime a.s.sumes that a ”healthy” democracy would abhor a n.a.z.i-style dictators.h.i.+p and resist being its accomplice. In one sense, a definitional or conceptual one, a true democracy and a dictators.h.i.+p are mutually exclusive. Our thesis, however, is this: it is possible for a form of totalitarianism, different from the cla.s.sical one, to evolve from a putatively ”strong democracy” instead of a ”failed” one. A weak democracy that fails, such as that of Weimar, might end in cla.s.sical totalitarianism, while a failed strong democracy might lead to inverted totalitarianism. The latter possibility becomes greater if the strong democracy is shallower than advertised-and greater still if, historically, that democracy was acknowledged rather than embraced by elites.
VI.
America must be able to fight Iraq and North Korea,
and also be able to fight genocide in the Balkans and
elsewhere without compromising its ability to fight two
major regional conflicts. And it must be able to
contemplate war with China or Russia some considerable
(but not infinite) time from now.
-Frederick W. Kagan.
Twentieth-century totalitarian systems aspired to total control over every aspect of society and to the elimination or neutralization of all possible forms of opposition. In the German version this served the allconsuming purpose of waging war and expanding beyond established boundaries. In practice control was extended over family life and reproduction, education, economy, all forms of cultural expression, the courts, bureaucracy, and military. By imposing a single ideology the n.a.z.is created a self-justifying regime. The complete rearrangement of German society was the preliminary to their rearranging the world by taking over and administering other countries, using their populations as slave laborers, resettling some peoples and liquidating others. For our purposes the crucial question is, how did both n.a.z.ism and fascism, as well as Soviet communism, invent systems of power that, by the standards of the last century, were awesome and incomparable, and, by any standard, lethal?
The answer is this: by forced organization, coordination of power centers, and imposed mobilization and disciplining of the general population, not least by introducing a measure of economic improvement and an atmosphere of fear. In Germany these techniques were accompanied by an official ideology that promised Germans a superior place in a New Order; in Soviet Russia citizens were told to expect a future society of abundance and equality. From today's perspective, colored as it is by postmodern sensibilities, these older ideologies both demanded, and exacted, severe sacrifices from present generations, raising the question of how such ideologies of postponed and nebulous rewards were able to generate a dynamic instead of provoking widespread active or pa.s.sive resistance. A short answer might invoke the potency of calibrated doses of fear, combined with excitement at being a part of a great undertaking and expectations about opportunities in the present-a present that, despite its dangers and shortcomings, offered greater hope of advancement than did the dreary existence in the depressed economy of Weimar or the premodern, rigid cla.s.s society of tsarist Russia.
Unlike the Bolsheviks, n.a.z.is, and Italian Fascists, inverted totalitarianism does not require as the condition of its success the overthrow of the established system. It has no overt plan to suppress all opposition, impose ideological uniformity or racial purity, or seek the traditional form of empire. It allows free speech, venerates the Const.i.tution, and operates within a two-party system that, theoretically, secures a role for an opposition party. Rather than revolting against an existing system, it claims to be defending it. This suggests that a different kind of dynamic is at work, one that for the most part does not depend upon resentments against the prevailing form of government or social system.
Inverted totalitarianism has learned how to exploit what appear to be formidable political and legal constraints, using them in ways that defeat their original purpose but without dismantling or overtly attacking them. One strategy is to exploit inst.i.tutions to facilitate certain favored forms of power while checking rival ones. Thus it will accept reform of campaign financing that prohibits contributions from trade unions and corporations, knowing that in practice it is relatively easy for corporations to evade such prohibitions. Besides, the same interests that have invested in the political campaigns of senators who sit on the Judiciary Committee receive ”returns” on their investment when the politicized courts decide that campaign reforms violate the rights of free speech guaranteed to corporations. Which is one more application of the doctrine that for legal purposes corporations are to be considered persons-except in those cases where the ”persons” agree to a ”settlement” whereby the wrongdoers avoid prison terms by paying a large sum to the government while, according to the formula, not ”admitting any wrongdoing.” As numerous corporate and political scandals have revealed, corruption is systemic to inverted totalitarianism as it had been with cla.s.sical totalitarianism.
Our totalizing system, nonetheless, has evolved its own methods and strategies. Its genius lies in wielding total power without appearing to, without establis.h.i.+ng concentration camps, or enforcing ideological uniformity, or forcibly suppressing dissident elements so long as they remain ineffectual.18 However, the parallel lines of cla.s.sic totalitarianism and inverted totalitarianism occasionally intersect. It is true that aliens, and even some citizens, who are suspected of having ”links” to terrorists have been hauled away, kept incommunicado, and even transported abroad to countries with more cost-effective, less tender methods of interrogation, yet such practices are meant more as object lessons than as standard procedures. In the same vein the United States has established only a few extrajudicial courts (e.g., so-called military tribunals) and does not have concentration camps, only some ”detention centers” and ”brigs” where, under harsh conditions, prisoners may be held without being charged with a specific crime. The point is to preserve an economy of fear and not to saturate the ”market.” For what is most revealing of totalitarian tendencies in our inverted regime are not the publicized denials of due process to enemy nationals or to misguided ”freedom fighters.” The more important consideration is ensuring domestic tranquillity. But, specifically, against whom?
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