Western Civ

Western Civilazation
Totalitarian rule, more commonly referred to as totalitarianism, refers to the leadership scenario where the state holds complete control over its populace and seeks to control all aspects of public as well as private life in a bid to ensure that it remains in control. There have been various leaders who have utilized totalitarian rule to keep themselves in power and their people under control. Benito Mussolini was one such leader. He effectively installed fascism in the Italian administration in 1920. While in power, he exercised totalitarian control over his people through his Fascist Party of Italy. He stifled any form of resistance or dissidence against him, exemplified when his supporters stormed the Milan newspaper Avanti’s offices and destroyed their presses for speaking out against his administration.
Adolf Hitler also exhibited total control of his own people. When he was made the German Chancellor in 1933, he had the German parliament burned and blamed the communists for it, effectively removing them from his way. He then forced the most important people to join the Nazi party, bringing them under total control of the state. Showing any type of dissent against the Nazi Party or its ideals was enough to land people in jail for a long time. Joseph Stalin also used totalitarianism as a tool for controlling the masses. He used his post as Secretary General of the Communist party in the Soviet Union to promote people whom he believed were allied to him and demote those who spoke out against him. He was also notorious for using murder and torture to ensure that he got his was, as well as arbitrary arrests and imprisonments to keep his opponents away from the people.
In Mussolini’s Italy, propaganda first served as a way to uphold the people then turned into a tool for controlling them. He used propaganda to push his policies and agendas to the people, such as to convince them that his projects to transform the marshes into agricultural...