Pre-Modernity, Totalitarianism and the Non-Banality of Evil

A Comparison of Germany, Spain, Sweden and France

Steven Saxonberg

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9783030281946
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030281953
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

This book provides a comparative and historical analysis of totalitarianism and considers why Spain became totalitarian during its inquisition but not France; and why Germany became totalitarian during the previous century, but not Sweden. The author pushes the concept of totalitarianism back into the pre-modern period and challenges Hannah Arendt's notion of the banality of evil. Instead, he presents an alternative framework that can explain why some states become totalitarian and why they induce people to commit evil acts.

© The Author(s) 2019

S. SaxonbergPre-Modernity, Totalitarianism and the Non-Banality of Evilhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28195-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Steven Saxonberg^{1, 2}

(1)

Department of European Studies and International Relations, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia

(2)

Center for Social and Economic Strategies, Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

Steven Saxonberg

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

State-BuildingLegitimacyBanality of evilexistential threatsOutgroupDehumanizationModernityPre-modernityMethod of differenceMethod of agreementPolitical religion

End Abstract

“Nothing could be more totalitarian,” I thought to myself as a student of economics while attending the Berliner film festival. No, the film was not about the horrors of Nazi Germany or the Stalinist Soviet Union; instead, it was about the Portuguese Inquisition, which in reality was an extension of the Spanish Inquisition. Of course, studying in what was then West Berlin, I was well-aware of the Nazi atrocities; and specializing in East European economies, I was well-aware of the great repression that people had suffered under Stalin . I never thought the Spanish Inquisition was more ruthless or “evil” than Hitlerism or Stalinism, but it still felt more totalitarian. In my view, the essence of totalitarianism is summed up in the statement that Janos Kádár , the Hungarian communist ruler, made to mark his break with totalitarianism: “[W]hereas the Rákosites [i.e., supporters of the previous totalitarian ruler] said that someone who is not on our side is against us, we say, those who are not against us, are with us” (Linz and Stepan 1996: 298). In other words, a totalitarian regime is not satisfied if the population merely accepts its rule passively; it demands that the population support it actively. Totalitarian regimes want your heart and “soul.”

What struck me in the film is that it was not enough for the protagonists to be members of the Catholic Church and to attend mass; they had to convince the inquisitors that they truly believed in Church dogma. To prove their dedication to the one “true” doctrine, they had to tell the inquisitors when the last time was that they prayed (and the answer had better be “today” or at least “yesterday”!); they had to tell them exactly which prayer they said; and they had to show them that they knew these prayers by heart. By contrast, no inquisitors forced people under the rule of Stalin to prove they had memorized sections of works from Marx, Lenin or Stalin , even if they had to join Party organizations (trade unions, student associations, women’s associations, etc.), and even if they had to attend some demonstrations (such as the First of May) or in the case of students to pass exams in Marxism-Leninism. In fact, other than the university exams in Marxism-Leninism—which one only had to barely pass with a low grade—there was little control on what people actually thought, as long as they proved loyal to the Party in their actions. One reason why the communist system could fall so rapidly is that it was common for people to live double lives, in which they pretended to have one opinion publicly while harboring another one privately (e.g., Kuran 1991). Obviously, totalitarianism is an ideal-type, and no rulers can ever gain total control over everyone’s thoughts. There will always be agnostics and nonbelievers.¹ Nevertheless, it seems to me that the Spanish Inquisition at least tried harder than other totalitarian regimes to ensure that the population truly believed in the dogma.

Having received my PhD in political science and my professorship in sociology, now I am able to return to the topic of totalitarianism. This is a topic that my original studies in economics allowed little time for contemplating. The more I have read about the Inquisition, the more I have been struck by how much modern totalitarian regimes seem to have borrowed from it. For example, the earliest mentions I have found about a “holocaust ” were not criticisms aimed at Nazi Germany, but rather words of praise from Catholic priests, who savored the glorious “holocaust ” that occurred when heretics in France were burned at the stake. Thus, the chronicler Albericus gleefully wrote that a “holocaust , very great and pleasing to God” took place on Friday, May 13, 1239, in which more than 180 Cathars were burned (Haskins 1902: 635–6). Yet, even though this inquisition in France had some totalitarian attributes, it did not create a totalitarian regime. However, it served as a model for the Spanish Inquisition, which did lead to the creation of a totalitarian regime. Moreover, since the inquisition in France was not the French Inquisition, but rather an inquisition that took place in that country, I do not capitalize the term. I do capitalize the Spanish Inquisition, however, because that is the name of the specific inquisition in question.

In addition, the manner in which agents of the Inquisition interrogated their victims shows remarkable similarities with how Stalin’s secret police interrogated theirs. An example comes from Menachem Begin (1957), later Israeli Prime Minister, who describes his detention by the Stalinist secret police (after the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939) as a process that was very similar to that used by the Spanish Inquisition . As with his counterparts under the Inquisition, he was not officially arrested; nor was he charged with any crime. As under the Inquisition, he was not told who his accusers were. And as under the Inquisition, he was told that if he confessed and told them everything he knew, he would be set free.

Similarly, one could argue that the Nazi dogma about Jews’ constituting a dangerous race has its equivalent in the Spanish “purity -of-blood” statutes ( limpieza ). Moreover, even if the Nazi idea of forcing Jews into ghettos was not part of the Spanish Inquisition (since the Jews were instead all expelled in the Spanish case), there was nonetheless a Catholic tradition of forcing Jews to dress differently than Christians and of forcing them to live in separate ghettos. As will be discussed in later chapters, rulers in certain parts of Spain prior to the expulsion tried to implement these types of policies.

Finally, it is even possible to see parallels between how Stalin organized the Soviet Party-state system and how the Catholic Church tried to organize society. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that Stalin had originally studied to be a priest in the Orthodox Church. Of course, the Orthodox Church is not organized as hierarchically as the Catholic Church is. For example, it does not have an “infallible” pope. Nevertheless, anybody studying to be an Orthodox priest must have been well-aware of how the Catholic Church is organized. Thus, Stalin replaced the “infallible” pope with the “infallible” General Secretary and the Bible with the works of Marx and Lenin. Instead of priests, he had Party leaders, who had the right to “interpret” Truth for the “ignorant” masses. Moreover, as I have argued previously (Saxonberg 2001, 2013), under communist rule the state was not a mere tool of the Party. Instead, there were always tensions between the Party and state, even though many people went from positions in the one institution to positions in the other or held positions in both simultaneously. From this perspective, the tensions between the Catholic Church and the Spanish Catholic monarchs can be seen as paralleling the tensions between the Party and the state under communist dictatorships.

This chapter proceeds as follows: first it makes clear the main argument of the book; then it discusses the comparative approach; and finally, it defines totalitarianism.

Main Argument of the Book

Of course, showing some similarities between the regime in Spain during the Inquisition and modern totalitarian regimes like the Nazi and Stalinist ones is not the same as showing that modern totalitarian leaders consciously borrowed methods developed during the Inquisition. Nonetheless, these parallels strengthen my belief that Spain during the Inquisition was indeed totalitarian. Of course, even if all inquisitions had totalitarian elements, and even if there are parallels between Stalin’s regime and the Catholic Church, this does not mean the Catholic Church always supports totalitarianism, or that all countries harboring inquisitions were in fact totalitarian. In fact, I argue in this book, the inquisition in France did not lead to a totalitarian regime, while the one in Spain did.

Since my main argument emphasizes the importance of state-building or at least country-building, I will also present a similar paired comparison of two modern cases—Sweden and Germany—in an attempt to explain why the one Germanic country became totalitarian but not the other. I will argue that the rulers of Germany and of Spain had much greater incentives to use totalitarian methods in order to unify their newly created states, whereas the rulers of France and of Sweden—countries that had existed for centuries—faced a very different situation.

My argument goes against mainstream thinking, which links totalitarianism to modernity (e.g., Agamben 1995; Bauman 1991; Giddens 1991; Heller 2010; Horkheimer and Adorno 1944). One could even argue I am guilty of “concept-stretching,” inasmuch as the pre-modern, late-medieval societies in France and Spain differed greatly from modern societies in Germany and Sweden. However, any kind of theorizing about political-sociological phenomena requires some amount of abstraction, as well as a degree of reliance on ideal-types that emphasize similarities; and the similarities in question concern features which are found in both modern and pre-modern societies.

The usefulness of different kinds of ideal-types depends on what we want to explain. For example, in order to explain why dictatorships arose in the last century in such countries as Italy, Germany and Russia—in which the state tried to gain total control over the population in a manner qualitatively different from the control sought by other kinds of authoritarian regimes (such as monarchies)—scholars grouped these regimes together under the ideal-type of “totalitarian.” Yet, it has always been widely recognized that important differences existed, such as between National Socialism in Germany and Stalinist rule in the Soviet Union (e.g., Kershaw 2000). National Socialism sees race as the main social division, while communist doctrine sees class as the main one (e.g., Aharony 2010; Fritzsche and Hellbeck 2009; Lefort 1998; Stanley 1987); National Socialism claims to be nationalist, while Marxism-Leninism claims to be internationalist; National Socialism seeks the dominance of one people over another, while at least in theory Marxism-Leninism seeks equality and progress for all humans (e.g., Ehret 2007); National Socialist doctrine is purely totalitarian, while Marxism has had democratic interpretations and has inspired democratic movements that played a major role in democratizing Europe and Latin America (e.g., Rueschemeyer et al. 1992). In addition, Kershaw (2008: 35ff.) argues that, while Stalinism was based on creating institutional structures and could “settle down” and become conservative after Stalin died, Hitlerism was based on charismatic leadership and the avoidance of any bureaucratic or institutional brakes on its radicalism. Despite these differences, however, both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin have served as model cases of totalitarianism; and if we want to find out how and why regimes in the twentieth century were able to carry out policies aimed at gaining total control ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Cases of Totalitarianism
• 3. Explaining Evilness
• 4. France and the Non-Totalitarian Inquisition
• 5. Spain: Pre-Modern Totalitarianism
• 6. Sweden
• 7. Nazi Germany and Non-Banal Evilness
• 8. The End?
• Back Matter