They are all about placing the entire country behind the state, but they achieve this in a number of different ways. Love one with extremist vigour or hate them all none can deny they wouldn't mind commanding their own totalitarian nightmare! So which one resonates with you the most? Military dictatorship. The simplest form of totalitarianism, a group of thugs organised under a general for mutual gain, taking what they want. Monarchy. A small militaristic aristocracy with strong codes of conduct, King and nominated heirs aimed at preventing endless military coups between powerful rivals. Empire. An international military juggernaut that allows it's provinces the freedom to oppress their inhabitants in their own way in exchange for taxes. Fascism. Structured like a monarchy except the elites are not part of a rigid aristocracy and the dictator is always absolutist. The oligarchy really don't bother hiding the fact that they're the bad guys, no codes of conduct here, fascists idealise amoral behaviour and the belief that sacrificing everything for the state and it's dictator is the best thing ever. Communism. Communism is more of an ideal used to prop up a military dictatorship than a system of government itself, whether communism is actually possible or not is up to debate. After frictions begin to develop between generals and the military dictatorship it usually evolves into something resembling fascism except with fascist amoral idealism replaced by communist ideals. Theocracy. Similiar to communism in that an ideal is used to justify tyranny, the state does the interpreting and enforcement of it's religious laws and takes extreme measures to ensure people believe they are legitimate and believe in their religion, people are indoctrinated into believing only the state's notions of what is right and wrong are true. The nation's despot is not considerred the greatest thing ever, their god is, and of course the despot interprets the word of god. Other. There is a whole world out there still with many new avenues to form a totalitarianism, if you have any ideas please feel free to share!
A totalitarian state usually looks pretty much the same as a free state, at least superficially. The closed societies still have elections, they're just not fair elections. They still have courts and laws and judges and written guarantees of freedom of speech- but judges are politically-controlled and rule unfairly. They have intellectuals and professors, they just know what not to say. They have a "free press" but they know what not to print. So any of them would be "just fine."
I disagree, I think there are some defining differences between a free and totalitarian society. For instance how likely you are to be executed for disagreeing with the government.
I disagree, I think there are some defining differences between a free and totalitarian society. For instance how likely you are to be executed for disagreeing with the government. Not disagreeing with that as a good general measure, but even in very repressive states, people are usually free to disagree with the government. As long as they don't actually do anything about those thoughts, they'll be left alone. People in such societies are likely to believe that only the "trouble-makers" are ever actually arrested and imprisoned, and often react with glee when police attack "troublemakers." Naomi Wolf researched the exact measures that dictators use to dismantle progressive democracies, and found that there's a plan that works reliably, and she describes it in a book that she talks about here: http://youtube.com/results?search_query="naomi+wolf"+the+end+of+america&search=Search
