Confession, straight-up: I think of Trump and his followers as wannabe fascists and much of the U.S. left as wannabe totalitarians. Not there yet, but inclined in that direction. I’m not assuming I’m right, but it does feel right. So I asked Google AI why. Here’s the exchange:
Dear AI,
Why is totalitarianism more likely to be associated with the left while fascism is more likely to be associated with the right?
AI Overview:
Totalitarianism is often linked in popular discourse to the left because its most famous early theoretical and practical models emerged from 20th-century communist regimes like the Soviet Union, whereas fascism is placed on the right because of its core reliance on social hierarchy, ultranationalism, and the preservation of traditional or ethnic order.
Political scientists and historians, such as Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism, emphasize that totalitarianism is a structural method of total state control rather than an exclusive property of one side of the ideological spectrum.
Why Totalitarianism is Associated with the Left
Communist Precedents: The term "totalitarianism" and its absolute enforcement of social, economic, and political life became widely analyzed through the lens of Stalin's Soviet Union. [
State-Directed Engineering: Left-wing totalitarian models (like Soviet communism) sought to radically re-engineer society by abolishing private property and eliminating class distinctions from the top down.
The Scale of Intervention: Because left-wing ideologies explicitly rely on collective economic planning and state management of resources, critics and theorists tie the vast administrative apparatus required for this overhaul directly to totalitarian control.
Why Fascism is Associated with the Right
Hierarchies and Inequality: Scholars place fascism on the far right because it explicitly rejects egalitarianism, instead championing natural social hierarchies, racial supremacy (as in Nazism), and national or ethnic dominance.
Preservation vs. Abolition: Unlike revolutionary left-wing movements that sought to destroy traditional class structures, historical fascist movements in Italy and Germany often allied with traditional elites, industrialists, and military leaders to preserve social order against the left, while subverting them to the state.
Ultranationalism: Fascist ideology focuses on a mythic rebirth of the nation or racial purity, which aligns historically with reactionary and ultraconservative rejections of Enlightenment universalism.
The Overlap of Totalitarianism and the Spectrum
Method vs. Goal: Political analysts note that totalitarianism is a method of absolute governance, while left and right represent different ultimate goals (classless equality vs. national/racial supremacy).
Horseshoe Theory: Both extremes of the political spectrum utilize total surveillance, terror, propaganda, and the destruction of individual liberties to achieve their divergent ideological ends.
Verified Sources:
The Rise of Fascism /Fiveable
Fascism vs Totalitarianism & Authoritarianism / ThoughtCo
Nazi Fascism and the Modern Totalitarian State Remember.org
More on totalitarianism from James Reynolds / Philosophy Now:
In The Origins of Totalitarianism [Hannah Arendt] struggles with the idea of a mob unable to see its wrongdoing, unable to frame its victims as thinking, living human beings…A central worry is that these conditions emerge by our own hand. It is, for Arendt, the failure to engage critically with our own ideas that draws us into an echo chamber of isolation, detached from the world, and so paving the way for radical ideology.
Better to engage intellectually with our opponents, to try to understand the root of conflicting narratives… Even in today’s social media culture wars, we might worry that a lack of proportionality in ‘cancelling’ those who ‘get it wrong’ gives offenders no way back into the conversation, forcing them instead to develop their views in the mobbish worlds of underground internet forums,
How to contain the will to ever more power in our political system? How to prevent one of our political factions from vanquishing all serious opposition? How to ensure that the U.S. has at least two viable political parties, that neither the left nor the right simply take over?
to be continued…