Joining the two notions – logicality and solipsism – it now becomes possible to understand why Arendt came to describe totalitarianism as a logocracy:
I think that if we have to rename totalitarianism, the word ‘logocracy’ would be better than ‘ideocracy.’ There is no longer any rule of an ‘idea,’ no matter how perverted it may be, but of the logical process itself which could be deduced from the idea as its logical premise.34
In short, ideas no longer matter. Only process does. And emphasizing process over ideas totalitarian leaders can legitimate whatever idea they choose to promote, because they can lay claim to having gone through the “reasonable” steps required to reach their conclusion and find little in the way of opposition to carry such out.
This definition of totalitarianism is much more extensive in scope than the double-speak identified by Orwell. It is also much more than the “authenticism” identified by Mark Thompson, which first began “as a reaction to the Enlightenment program to recast language to conform to the notion of Reason.” As Thompson noted, Kant’s friend Johann Georg Hamann was “one of the first to make that case that, if you take ideas and words out of their behavioral and cultural context, ideas would lose their meaning and relevance.”35
This is a very disturbing notion, because in its drive to become justifiable a totalitarian system must destroy all foundations of ideas to allow for the free movement of logic itself wherein anything can be justified. Invoking terror to break the ties between ideas and reason, the totalitarian can rationalize the irrational and thereby accomplish anything, including the control and, if need be, the destruction of bodies. It is about nothing but process and processes, about a logic run wild that does not involve thinking or thought. It is both radical in the sense of no longer being tethered to the world (again, the etymology of the words “radical” and of “uprootedness” suggests ‘being torn up by the roots’) and banal (it is not only common but commonplace). Interestingly, they are the two sides of the same evil coin.
How Does Such a Theory Contextualize Russian Aggression in the Ukraine?
Understanding totalitarianism to be a way of thinking and governing reveals that the invasion of Ukraine has nothing to do with national policies, western aggression, protecting the sovereignty of Russia, or reconstituting the boundaries of the former Soviet Union. What it has to do with is Putin’s mind and way of thinking. Putin is engaging with the world through a solipsistic lens and using terror – as would any totalitarian – to realize his vision.
Invading a sovereign nation, killing innocent people by bombing civilian targets and humanitarian corridors, engaging anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi tropes, threatening the use of chemical and nuclear weapons, etc., Putin and his cronies not only physically destroy humane living conditions, but – by isolating individuals through invasion, displacement, and outrageousness – he attacks peoples’ mental ability to engage their common sense. Terror and the logocracy are intertwined. Just listen to recent rationale of Lavrov: ""We didn't invade Ukraine." We declared a special military operation because we had absolutely no other way of explaining to the West that dragging Ukraine into Nato was a criminal act."36
Anne Applebaum, writing recently for The Atlantic, in a piece entitled “They’re Not Human Beings;’ Ukraine and the Words that lead to mass murder,” has documented how terroristic tactics played out not only Stalin’s Soviet Union but today in Putin’s Russia. In speaking specifically to the Ukraine, she notes:
From the first days of the war, it was evident that the Russian military had planned in advance for many civilians, perhaps millions to be killed, wounded or displaced from their homes in the Ukraine. Other assaults on cities throughout history – Dresden, Coventry, Hiroshima, Nagasaki – took place only after
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