Quotes About Authoritarianism

Robert Conquest once suggested that 'a curious little volume might be made of the poems of Stalin, Castro, Mao and Ho Chi Minh, with illustrations by A. Hitler.

Nazism did not destroy civil society. Bolshevism did destroy civil society. This is one of the reasons for the "miracle" of German recovery, and for the continuation of Russian vulnerability and failure. Stalin did not destroy civil society. Lenin destroyed civil society.

we took the simple step of illegalising all opposition. And the autobahn to autocracy lay clear.

I hate the Army," Eberly said. "The Army wants you to hate it," Joe said. "It's the Army system. It's what bonds us all together into a fighting unit.

The deterioration of the intelligentsia is as much a symptom of disease as the corruption of the ruling class or the sleeping sickness of the proletariat.

You, Comrade Rubashov, have just used the same arguments as this women's delegation from Manchester. You, of course, know better than these women. So one may wonder at your using the same arguments. But then, you have something in common with them: you were given a watch as a child….

Does a country fall into fascism the way a person falls in love? Or, more accurately, in hate?

Normalcy was declared. (Normalcy was always a declaration.)

In an unconscious gesture of television-enforced democracy

You do not rush to obey those who seek to command you. Your independence makes people puzzle over you.

You are damned, and we wish to share your damnation.

the subordinates had to behave that way; they were hiding from the victims in the hatred of them, but the hatred could not be produced in themselves except through acts of brutality.

Had Schleicher been successful in his leadership of the German government at the end of 1932, he would probably have headed a very moderate, essentially anti-Nazi form of nationalist authoritarianism that would have avoided a sharp break with the republican constitution and promoted a reflationary, reformist economic policy along Keynesian or New Deal lines to revive the economy and conciliate German society.

There is simply no limit to the tyrannical snobbery that otherwise decent people can descend into when it comes to music.

We have also an edition of The Trial, by the notorious Jew, Kafka. Berlin would appreciate it, I am thinking, if this too was added to the bonfire. Also the works of that decadent lesbian Bolshevik, Jane Austen.

In any decent police state, they'd be a lot more efficient. In Red Spain, for example, toward the end, the discipline we had achieved was phenomenal. The Spaniards made excellent secret policemen.

In the anti-Communist atmosphere of the Cold War, U.S. support of right-wing military dictatorships -Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Manuel Odria in Peru, and Marcos Pérez Jiménez in Venezuela - at the expense of outspoken nationalists or left-wing regimes, was rationalized in the name of national security.

The elevation of unity as the highest social value is a core tenet of fascism and all leftist ideologies.

Because there is something about tyranny, monarchy, and authoritarianism that "works," by which I mean there is something in our wiring that finds such systems natural.

In other words, every effort to do away with liberal democratic capitalism is reactionary, because they all attempt to restore the unity of purpose that defines the premodern or tribal mind. Socialism, nationalism, communism, fascism, and authoritarianisms of every stripe are forms of tribalism.

Yet punish we do, and our propensity to punish turns out to be one of the keys to large-scale cooperation.

Once available, the inquisitorial toolbox could be put to use by any authoritarian regime with the will and the means to unpack and use it.

The greater threat lies in our letting down our guard against ourselves: in high-mindedly embracing authoritarianism in the name of fairness and compassion, as the Marxists did. Having been at last rousted out of politics and economics by the disaster of communism, the authoritarian Rasputin has now come calling on liberal science, and he already has his foot in the door.

People who like authoritarianism always picture themselves running the show. But no one stays on top for long.