Quotes About Authoritarianism

like Stalin, Franco pursued an intransigent political idea of "purifying" state and domestic order with extreme levels of brutality and coercion.

the story of how "Francoism" was built – bottom up as a repressive, carceral society – as well as top down as a political regime.

the fear-driven social purification underpinning Francoism,

League of Nations' "minority protection" which intimated that normality and assuring a "conflict-free condition" required ethnic homogeneity.

I resent this man. Why should the happiness of the whole civilised world depend on him?

We live in a time that demands a discourse of both critique and possibility, one that recognizes that without an informed citizenry, collective struggle, and viable social movements, democracy will slip out of our reach and we will arrive at a new stage of history marked by the birth of an authoritarianism that not only disdains all vestiges of democracy but is more than willing to relegate it to a distant memory.

It has been claimed at times that our modern age of technology facilitates dictatorship.

Fascism is a worldwide disease. Its greatest threat to the United States will come after the war, either via Latin America or within the United States itself.

Mao thought he was inscrutable you know. At least I think he did. it was hard to tell with him.

I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war on liberty, and that the democratic government is at least as bad as any of the other forms

War is the most painful act of subjection to the laws of God that can be required of the human will.

The Bund (Jewish) is free not to trust the party, but it cannot expect the party to vote no confidence in its own self.

What, actually, is the difference between communism and fascism? Both are forms of statism, authoritarianism. The only difference between Stalin's communism and Mussolini's fascism is an insignificant detail in organizational structure.

Under communism, there is collective ownership of property de jure. Under Nazism, there is the same collective ownership de facto.

Communism has ceased in general to be an intellectual problem, remaining simply a matter of governmental power and repression.

In a certain limited sense Chinese Communism is more egalitarian than the Soviet variety; not, however, because it is less totalitarian, but because it is more so.

I'm a product of a military dictatorship. Under a dictatorship, you cannot trust information or dispense it freely because of censorship. So Brazilians become very flexible in the use of metaphors. They learn to communicate with double meanings.

We have to stop the propaganda, the shameful propaganda used by Kremlin to rehabilitate these old types.

I am disgusted by Biden's brazen decision to ignore the law, embrace authoritarianism, and show a total disregard for our freedoms with his proposed vaccine mandate.

The principles and form of government that form the basis of democracy are compatible with Islamic values.

A "crisis" is not an objective state of affairs but a matter of interpretation. Populist will often eagerly frame a situation as a crisis, calling it an existential threat, because such a crisis then serves to legitimate populist governance.

Principled antipluralism and the commitment to "direct representation" explain another feature of populist politics

large societies cannot function with band organization and instead are complex kleptocracies.

I hate to admit it, but governmental deviousness is usually better explained by incompetence, vanity, and the need to protect one's job at all costs.