The history of totalitarianism6/26/2023 ![]() ![]() The concept entered the public consciousness still more fully with the opening of the Cold War, as Truman used the rhetoric of totalitarianism to sell the Truman Doctrine to Congress. The idea of totalitarianism came to possess novelists such as Arthur Koestler ( Darkness at Noon) and George Orwell (whose Nineteen Eighty-Four was interpreted by conservatives as an attack on socialism in general, and subsequently suffered criticism from left-leaning critics). Gleason's account takes us through the debates of the early postwar years, as academics in turnĪdopted the term-most notably Hannah Arendt. He follows the growth and expansion of the concept as it was picked up in the West and applied to Hitler's Germany and the Soviet Union. Created by Mussolini's enemies, the word was appropriated by the Fascists themselves to describe their program in what turned out to be one of the less totalitarian of the European dictatorships. Interweaving the story of intellectual debates with the international history of the twentieth century, Gleason traces the birth of the term to Italy in the first years of Mussolini's rule. ![]() Totalitarianism offers a penetrating chronicle of the central concept of our era-an era shaped by our conflict first with fascism and then with communism. ![]()
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