Hannah Arendt Totalitarianism

When Hannah Arendt completed her work The Origins of Totalitarianism, she essentially took a historical approach for her analysis. The stories of Nazism and Stalinism exhibited the power of reorienting the mass for political purpose. However, her work foreshadowed what happened 15 years later in China -- The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The key elements reappeared and constituted another experiment of pushing the regime to be totalitarian. I argue that the influence of mass and the strategy of manipulating the mass are indeed inseparable from the construction of totalitarianism. The only puzzle is, nevertheless, if there is any relationship between a political religion, and totalitarianism.
Arendt characterized the most significant factor of totalitarianism as the “mass support.” Only through mass support could Hitler and Stalin maintain their authority. This “mass” should be as large as possible. Yet, the momentum of population was more easily found in Asian countries rather
than European ones, thus reducing some of the countries to dictatorship from a totalitarian point of departure. The mass should possess specific elements: 1) they inclined to be politically indifferent and without affiliation to parties or existing political superstructure; 2) they were classless and structureless; 3) they could be atomized as being lack of social bond. The less politically interested population was very much convertable, and when people were completely detached from each other, they would be organized to fulfill the ideals of the mob-style leader. When the mass acquired the appetite for political organization, the total loyalty of them towards the regime can be generated and regenerated. With the aid of propaganda and the installation of ideology, the visions of future and present can strengthen the centralized political power of the totalitarian leader.
China had 0.8 billion people right at the start of the Cultural Revolution, securing the foundation of a massive support. A majority of them were not party members nor registered in the Youth League. The de facto political neutrality marked the sentiment of the population. Mao targeted, at first, at the educated youths and transformed them into “red guards” that were chiefly mobilized to destruct the so-called “capitalist rightists.” The propaganda preached to those once indifferent youths and young adults and reorganized them into the vanguards of the movements. Meanwhile, the bureaucracy began to be cracked down by internal purges and redefinition of many high-profile officials as counter-revolutionaries. Purges incurred terror, and it wiped out those who were in the “class” that threatened the stability of the regime. In the general sphere, many ordinary citizens whose relatives or ancestors showed a capitalist background were forced to renounce their relationships with such members within their families or private circles. The terror among the “elite” group (officials) as well as in the general public enhanced the loneliness of individuals, which, as Arendt describes, is a symptom associated when one is with others, in contrast to solitude. Coupled with heroizations of key Communist revolutionary figures and the personal cult of Mao, the extent of propaganda reached the peak in around 1970. Red, definitive loyalty was created for the remaining population after the purges, and a classless, seemingly socialist society was the result. In the case of China, Arendt insightful observations that lonely, politically neutral, classless, and massive population could actually be turned into loyal subjects that suit a totalitarian regime: all the elements manifested in Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and in turn, China in the 60s and 70s could be defined as having totalitarianism.
Nevertheless, when Arendt tries to link the functions of ideology with totalitarianism, she did not take into account the Messianic features of ideologies, either in Nazi Germany or Cultural-Revolutionary China.
In Germany, the charismatic leader -- Hitler -- himself declared his faith in Christianity, and worded the Nazi ideology as of it had transcendent power. In China, the idea of pure Communism was held as a truth and was advocated to be believed by all. In both cases, the propaganda of “truth” occupied yet another central position, and the regimes required not only obedience but also belief. These politically religious elements mingled with totalitarianism. Therefore, could political religion be seen as one of the displays of totalitarianism? Was there any totalitarianism without religious interventions? Or, are totalitarianism and political religion mutually exclusive? If these two major concepts can merge one way or another, the importance of ideology itself may be
expanded.