inverted totalitarianism and managed democracy

Low electoral turnouts are favorably received as an indication that the bulk of the population has given up hope that the government will ever help them. The only type of political activity expected or desired from the citizenry is voting. While the Nazi regime aimed at the constant political mobilization of the population, with its Nuremberg rallies, Hitler Youth, and so on, inverted totalitarianism aims for the mass of the population to be in a persistent state of political apathy.This is considered “normal” rather than corrupt.

Whereas in Nazi Germany the state dominated economic actors, in inverted totalitarianism, corporations through political contributions and lobbying, dominate the United States, with the government acting as the servant of large corporations.

It is Nazism turned upside-down, “inverted totalitarianism.” While it is a system that aspires to totality, it is driven by an ideology of the cost-effective rather than of a “ master race” ( Herrenvolk), by the material rather than the “ideal.”Īccording to Wolin, there are three main ways in which inverted totalitarianism is the inverted form of classical totalitarianism. While the versions of totalitarianism represented by Nazism and Fascism consolidated power by suppressing liberal political practices that had sunk only shallow cultural roots, Superpower represents a drive towards totality that draws from the setting where liberalism and democracy have been established for more than two centuries.

Wolin believes that the United States (which he refers to using the proper noun “Superpower”, to emphasize the current position of the United States as the only superpower) has been increasingly taking on totalitarian tendencies as a result of the transformations that it underwent during the military mobilization required to fight the Axis powers, and during the subsequent campaign to contain the Soviet Union during the Cold War [ Inverted totalitarianism and managed democracy Wolin believes that the United States is increasingly turning into an illiberal democracy, and he uses the term “inverted totalitarianism” to illustrate the similarities and differences between the United States governmental system and totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union. Inverted totalitarianism is a term coined by political philosopher Sheldon Wolin to describe the emerging form of government of the United States.