Mobutu's political system, inaugurated in 1965 and lasting more than three decades, met all the characteristics of totalitarianism. This study shows that the failures and misdeeds of Mobutu's system were clear evidence that it lacked an African-centered vision and did not put the interests of the African people of Congo (formerly, Zaire) at the center of this political project. Mobutu failed to promote the well-being of the African people of Congo.
Mobutu's political actions in the 90s, mostly as they related to the National Sovereign Conference, are critically analyzed and found to be a deliberate attempt to obstruct the momentum of democracy for the African people of Congo. From an Afrocentric standpoint, the obstruction is evidence of Mobutu's attempt to impede the search for harmony and peace of the Zairean people, to reject the African-centered truth that without Ma'at (harmony) there is no understanding, no harmony, and no possible restoration of balance. Mobutu's obstruction became an effort to preserve his totalitarian system's status quo.

By developing a long-term supranational perspective, this ambitious, multi-faceted work provides a new understanding of totalitarianism, the troubling common element linking Soviet communism, Italian fascism and German Nazism. The books original analysis of antecedent ideas on the subject sheds light on the common origins and practices of the regimes.
Through this fresh appreciation of their initial frame of mind, Roberts demonstrates how the three political experiments yielded unprecedented collective mobilization but also a characteristic combination of radicalization, myth-making, and failure.
Providing deep historical analysis, the book proves that 'totalitarianism' best characterizes the common features in the originating aspirations, the mode of action and even the outcomes of Soviet communism, Italian fascism and German Nazism.
By enhancing our knowledge of what totalitarianism was and where it came from, Roberts affords important lessons about the ongoing challenges, possibilities, and dangers of the modern political experiment.

Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany provides a succinct and provocative introduction to Italian fascism and German nazism. Incorporating recent historical research together with original and challenging arguments, Alexander J. De Grand examines:
* the similarities and differences in the early development of the two regimes
* the exercise of power by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini
* the relationship between the two regimes
* policies towards women, youth and culture.
Revised throughout, the second edition of this respected book takes account of recent historical research and includes an expanded discussion of the role of the military in the two regimes.

'Clear-eyed and illuminating.' Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor 'A rich, superbly researched, balanced history of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.' General David Petraeus, former Commander U.S. Central Command and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency 'Destined to be the best single volume on the Kingdom.' Ambassador Chas Freeman, former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Assistant Secretary of Defense 'Should be prescribed reading for a new generation of political leaders.' Sir Richard Dearlove, former Chief of H.M. Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Something extraordinary is happening in Saudi Arabia. A traditional, tribal society once known for its lack of tolerance is rapidly implementing significant economic and social reforms. An army of foreign consultants is rewriting the social contract, King Salman has cracked down hard on corruption, and his dynamic though inexperienced son, the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, is promoting a more tolerant Islam. But is all this a new vision for Saudi Arabia or merely a mirage likely to dissolve into Iranian-style revolution? David Rundell - one of America's foremost experts on Saudi Arabia - explains how the country has been stable for so long, why it is less so today, and what is most likely to happen in the future. The book is based on the author's close contacts and intimate knowledge of the country where he spent 15 years living and working as a diplomat. Vision or Mirage demystifies one of the most powerful, but least understood, states in the Middle East and is essential reading for anyone interested in the power dynamics and politics of the Arab World.

This volume examines the causes, consequences, and dynamics of that style of governance by force that has come to be known as state terror. The collection deals with theoretical issues and examines case applications as well. The editors distinguish among the study of oppression, repression, and state terror systems. State terrorism in the form of enforcement terrorism, economic repression, military control, and the "legal" oppression of apartheid in Latin America, Argentina, the Philippines, and South Africa is discussed. One chapter explores American containment policy. Theoretical chapters on state terrorism include editor George Lopez's scheme for the analysis of government terror, editor Michael Stohl's discussion of the international dimensions of this problem, and an agenda for continued investigation.

A FINANCIAL TIMES, ECONOMIST AND NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020 'The most important non-fiction book of the year' David Hare In the years just before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, people from across the political spectrum in Europe and America celebrated a great achievement, felt a common purpose and, very often, forged personal friendships. Yet over the following decades the euphoria evaporated, the common purpose and centre ground gradually disappeared, extremism rose once more and eventually - as this book compellingly relates - the relationships soured too. Anne Applebaum traces this history in an unfamiliar way, looking at the trajectories of individuals caught up in the public events of the last three decades. When politics becomes polarized, which side do you back? If you are a journalist, an intellectual, a civic leader, how do you deal with the re-emergence of authoritarian or nationalist ideas in your country? When your leaders appropriate history, or pedal conspiracies, or eviscerate the media and the judiciary, do you go along with it? Twilight of Democracy is an essay that combines the personal and the political in an original way and brings a fresh understanding to the dynamics of public life in Europe and America, both now and in the recent past.

Except for Israel, the Middle East remains largely untouched by the democratic revolution that swept across Eastern Europe and the former USSR. This book aims to explain and analyze the reasons why despotism or religious fundamentalism continue to control the Middle Eastern countries.

Stalinism, that particularly brutal phase of communism, came to an end in most of Eastern Europe with the death of Josef Stalin in 1953 or at least with the Khrushchev reforms that began in the Soviet Union in 1956. However, in one country - Albania - Stalinism survived virtually unscathed until 1990. The regime that the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha led from the time of the communist takeover in 1944 until his death in 1985, and that continued unabated under his successor Ramiz Alia until 1990, was incomparably severe. Such was the reign of terror that no audible voice of opposition or dissent ever arose in the Balkan state, a European country that became as isolated from the rest of the world as North Korea is today. When the Albanian communist system finally imploded, it left behind a weary population, frightened and confused after decades of purges and political terror. It also left behind a country with a weak and fragile economy, a country where extreme poverty was the norm. In the decades since Hoxha's death, Albania has made substantial progress in political and economic terms, yet the spectre of Hoxha still lingers over the country. Despite this, many people - inside and outside Albania - know little about the man who ruled the country with an iron fist for so many decades. This book provides the first biography of Enver Hoxha available in English, from his birth in GjirokastEr in southern Albania, then still under Ottoman rule, to his death in 1985 at the age of 76. Using archival documents and first-hand interviews, Albanian journalist Blendi Fevziu pieces together the life of this tyrannical ruler, in a biography which will be essential reading for anyone interested in Balkan history and communist studies.

This book analyzes how AKP's embedded intellectuals operate as media spin doctors, exploring their transformation from passionately engaged intellectuals into apparatchiks. This project adapts a post-Soviet geography approach to the media, intelligentsia, and political discourse as derivative of authoritarian regimes to the Turkish context. It offers a fresh look at the Turkish political and intellectual scene and a comparative study of the populist-authoritarian politics of Turkey. Situated in the literature on the post-Soviet authoritarian regimes and their ways of governing, as well as their manipulation of public opinion, the book analyzes AKP-aligned intellectuals as apparatchiks. Gurpinar explores the different constellations of pro-AKP intellectuals vindicating the AKP regime from various angles, including: liberal/progressive intellectuals who initially supported the party for its liberal vistas but continued their support by twisting their progressive rhetoric; Islamist intellectuals blending their Islamism with populism; and national security intellectuals who joined after the AKP came to propagate a national security agenda. The book also provides an overview of the mechanisms of political technology, including the media landscape and its running by the AKP, intellectuals themselves as operators of political technology, and the problem of "cultural power." The book will be of interest to those studying comparative authoritarian politics, populism, political communication, and scholars of Middle East and Eastern Europe.

From 1967 to 1974, the military junta ruling Greece attempted a dramatic reshaping of the nation, implementing ideas and policies that left a lasting mark on both domestic affairs and international relations. Bringing together leading scholars from a range of disciplines, The Greek Military Dictatorship explores the junta's attempts to impose authoritarian rule upon a rapidly modernizing country while navigating a complex international landscape. Focusing both on foreign relations as well as domestic matters such as economics, ideology, religion, culture and education, this book offers a fresh and well-researched study of a key period in modern Greek history.

On April 12, 1980, a group of soldiers led by Master Sergeant Samuel K. Doe executed a bloody coup that put an end to the Americo-Liberian minority regime in Liberia, transforming Africa's first republic into a military dictatorship. In Liberia under Samuel Doe, 1980-1985: The Politics of Personal Rule, Yekutiel Gershoni examines the evolution and effects of Samuel K. Doe's reign in Liberia. Gershoni shows Doe's path to absolute power, corruption, and dictatorship and the economic crises and political turmoil that ensued, even after his murder in 1990. Liberia under Samuel Doe also examines the role of the United States as Liberia's closest ally, detailing how Doe managed to attract American diplomatic and military support due to U.S. interests in the Cold War. Through in-depth research, primary sources, and interviews with diplomats, politicians, and activists, Gershoni carefully details the timeline of Doe's rise to power and the lasting effects of his dictatorial legacy.

'The young dictator comes under close scrutiny in this intelligent account' Sunday Times When Kim Jong Un became the leader of North Korea in 2011, many expected his rule to be short. Years later, he remains the unchallenged dictator of a nuclear rogue state with weaponry capable of threatening the West. In this behind-the-scenes look, former CIA analyst and North Korea expert Jung H. Pak reveals the explosive story of Kim Jong II's third son: the spoilt and impetuous child, the mediocre student, the ruthless murderer, the shrewd grand strategist.

The province of Grosseto in southern Tuscany shows two extremes in the treatment of Italian and foreign Jews during the Holocaust. To the east of the province, the Jews of Pitigliano, a four hundred-year-old community, were hidden for almost a year by sympathetic farmers in barns and caves. None of those in hiding were arrested and all survived the Fascist hunt for Jews. In the west, near the provincial capital of Grosseto, almost a hundred Italian and foreign Jews were imprisoned in 1943-1944 in the bishop's seminary, which he had rented to the Fascists for that purpose. About half of them, though they had thought that the bishop would protect them, were deported with his knowledge by Fascists and Nazis to Auschwitz. Thus, the Holocaust reached into this provincial corner as it did into all parts of Italy still under Italian Fascist control. This book is based on new interviews and research in local and national archives.

Studies of the right and radical right have proliferated since the rise of European nationalist and populist parties in the 1980s. Yet, the literature on the right and the radical right has a largely Euro-American bias and has been limited by partisan academics that focus on the left. The Right and Radical Right in the Americas hopes to be a pioneering work that examines the history and contemporary manifestations of the right and radical right throughout the Americas. From interwar Canada to contemporary Chile, the right and radical right have come in diverse ideological currents. Those ideological currents have undergone historical changes and the strategies of the right and radical right need to be contextualized in respect of country and region. The right and radical right also have distinctive meanings throughout the Americas and in different epochs.

The death of authority figures like fathers or leaders can be experienced as either liberation or loss. In the twentieth century, the authority of the father and of the leader became closely intertwined; constraints and affective attachments intensified in ways that had major effects on the organization of regimes of authority. This comparative volume examines the resulting crisis in symbolic identification, the national traumas that had crystallized around four state political forms: Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and East European Communism. The defeat of Imperial and Fascist regimes in 1945 and the implosion of Communist regimes in 1989 were critical moments of rupture, of "death of the father." What was the experience of their ends, and what is the reconstruction of those ends in memory?

This volume represents is the beginning of a comparative social anthropology of caesurae: the end of traumatic political regimes, of their symbolic forms, political consequences, and probable futures.

John Borneman, Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University, specializes in political and legal anthropology. He has written widely on national identification and symbolic form in Germany and on the relation of culture to international order. His most recent work is on accountability and the use of retributive justice in preventing cycles of violence.

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** 'A sort of survival book, a sort of symptom-diagnosis manual in terms of losing your democracy and what tyranny and authoritarianism look like up close' Rachel Maddow 'These 128 pages are a brief primer in every important thing we might have learned from the history of the last century, and all that we appear to have forgotten' Observer History does not repeat, but it does instruct. In the twentieth century, European democracies collapsed into fascism, Nazism and communism. These were movements in which a leader or a party claimed to give voice to the people, promised to protect them from global existential threats, and rejected reason in favour of myth. European history shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary people can find themselves in unimaginable circumstances. History can familiarise, and it can warn. Today, we are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to totalitarianism in the twentieth century. But when the political order seems imperilled, our advantage is that we can learn from their experience to resist the advance of tyranny. Now is a good time to do so.

Despite decades of Putin, it is too simplistic to assert that authoritarianism has eliminated Russian activism, especially in relation to everyday life. Instead, we must build an awareness of diverse efforts to mobilize citizens to better understand how activism is shaped by and, in turn, shapes the regime.   Varieties of Russian Activism focuses on a broad range of collective actions, from labor unions to housing renovation, religion, electoral politics, minority language rights, and urban planning. Contributors draw attention to significant forms of grassroots politics that have not received sufficient attention in scholarship, or that deserve fresh examination. The volume shows that Russians find novel ways to redress everyday problems and demand new services. Together, these essays interrogate what kinds of practices can be defined as activism in a fast-changing, politically volatile society.   An engaging collection, Varieties of Russian Activism unites leading scholars in the common aim of approaching the embeddedness of civic activism in the conditions of everyday life, connectedness, and rising society-state expectations.

'The most important book of 2022.' Dr. Robert Malone Desmet's work on mass formation theory was brought to the world's attention on The Joe Rogan Experience and in major alternative news outlets around the globe. Read this book to get beyond the sound bites! In The Psychology of Totalitarianism, world-renowned Professor of Clinical Psychology Mattias Desmet deconstructs the societal conditions that allow collective hypnosis to take hold. By analysing the global pandemic, he identifies the phenomenon of 'mass formation' and illustrates how humanity is being forcibly, unconsciously led into a reality of technocratic totalitarianism, which aggressively excludes alternative views and relies on destructive groupthink, vilifying non-conformist thought as 'dissident.' Building on Hannah Arendt's essential work on totalitarianism, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Desmet offers a sharp critique of the cultural 'groupthink' that existed pre-pandemic but has steadily and inexorably advanced during the Covid crisis. He cautions against the dangers of our current societal landscape, media consumption, and reliance on manipulative technologies, offering simple solutions - both individual and collective - to prevent the willing sacrifice of our ability to think critically. The Psychology of Totalitarianism serves as an indispensable and fundamental guide to understanding this key moment in history. 'Mattias Desmet's [theory of mass formation hypnosis] is great. . . . Once I kind of started to look for it, I saw it everywhere.' Eric Clapton

The book addresses authoritarian legacies of politically motivated justice and its unwritten practices that have re-emerged in the recent trials related to both political and ordinary criminal charges against prominent opposition leaders in many former Soviet republics. Taking into account that in any country all trials are more or less related to politics, the author differentiates between trials on political issues (political trials that are not necessarily arbitrary) and politicized partisan trials (arbitrary trials against political opponents). The monograph, thus, adopts a broad definition of a political trial, which includes all trials that are related to politicians and political matters such as elections, regime change, activities of parties and other political organizations. The focus lies on a separate group of partisan trials that are politicized (i.e. politically motivated) and which are used by governments to restrain political opposition and dissent. Primarily aimed at legal practitioners such as human rights lawyers, prosecutors, and judges, as well as postgraduates, researchers, teaching assistants and university law professors, readers can gain from the book information that is useful in assessing the interdisciplinary phenomenon of politically motivated criminal justice in transitional and authoritarian post-Soviet republics. Additionally, the volume is indispensable to readers that are interested in Eastern European Studies, Transitional Justice, Law and Society, Slavic Studies, and Theory and History of State and Law. Artem Galushko is a post-doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Germany.

The collective work deals with the problems of if, how, and why the histories of German Nazism and Soviet Communism should and could be situated within one coherent narrative. As historical phenomena, can Communism and Nazism fruitfully be compared to each other? Do they belong to the same historical contexts? Have they influenced, reacted to or learned from each other? Are they interpreted, represented and used together by posterity? The background of the book is twofold. One is external. There is an ongoing debate about the historical entanglements of Communism and Nazism, especially about Auschwitz and Gulag, respectively. Our present fascination with the evil history of genocide has situated the Holocaust as the borderline event in Western historical thinking. The crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Soviet Communist regime do not have the same position but are considered more urgent in the East and Central European states that were subdued by both Nazi and Communist regimes. The other, internal background is to develop an analytical perspective in which the "comnaz" nexus can be understood. Using a complex approach, the authors investigate Communist and Nazi histories as entangled phenomena, guided by three basic perspectives. Focusing on roots and developments, a genetic perspective highlights historical, process-oriented connections. A structural perspective indicates an attempt to narrow down "operational" parallels of the two political systems in the way they handled ideology to construct social utopia, used techniques of terror, etc. A third perspective is genealogical, emphasizing the processing and use of Communist and Nazi history by posterity in terms of meaning and memory: What past is worth remembering, celebrating, debating-but also distorting and forgetting? The chapters of the book address phenomena such as ideology, terror, secular religion, museum exhibits, and denial.

For centuries, the Spanish state has proved to be an expert system for repressing political dissent and any threat that could jeopardize the maintenance of the status quo. It has done so using all the institutions and all the areas of power that were necessary, for the end has always justified the means. Carles Mundo, Catalan Minister of Justice, 20162017. There is no book in Spain that talks about lawfare. Nor is there a book that deals with the system of judicial repression of political dissidence deployed by the Franco regime. Nor is there a book that denounces the judicial system inherited from the dictatorial regime and that was later embodied in the 1978 Constitution. Lawfare (the combination of law and warfare) thus fills a void to the extent that it penetrates the authoritarian judicial system and highlights the democratic deficits of the Spanish judiciary. The politicization of justice began with the appointment, as president of the Constitutional Court, of a prominent member of the Peoples Party (Partido Popular PP) in 2013. Thereon started a process of judicialization of politics via reform of the Organic Law of the Court Constitutional. The referendums of November 9, 2014 and October 1, 2017 entailed the criminalization of the Catalan independence movement and a drastic reduction in fundamental rights linked to the exercise of political choice. This was confirmed by the judgment handed down by the Supreme Court in 2019, culminating in a lawfare strategy that has led to the criminal conviction of two presidents of the Generalitat Artur Mas and Joaquim Torra and the exile of a third president, Carles Puigdemont. Lawfare is the first book to link in a broad way the thinking of German jurists of the Nazi period to the training of judges in Spain both up to and during the Franco regime, and beyond. Published in collaboration with the Department of International History, London School of Economics

The events related to the 1964 coup and the military dictatorship (1964-85) have become common currency in the recent public debate in Brazil. The issue is especially strategic to the extreme right-wing groups surrounding Jair Bolsonaro, the president elected in 2018. For them, the 1964 coup is cherished and celebrated, marking defeat of the left and the beginning of a political regime oriented towards order and progress. The political project built around Bolsonaro is an attempt to impose a distorted and Manichean view of recent history, both by discourse and attempts of censorship. According to that view, 1964 was not a coup detat, but a revolution that saved Brazilians from communism. In Brazil, history is being manipulated to convince people that the military were good rulers, an image that connects to the present authoritarian (albeit elected) government supported by the Armed Forces. Right-wingers, nostalgic for the 1960s dictatorship, promote initiatives to discredit academic researchers and historians who disagree with their mind set. A Present Past offers a well-founded approach to the history of the military dictatorship. Chapters are dedicated to analysing the most controversial topics of the current debate. The primary aim is to disseminate knowledge about the prevailing dictatorship circumstances, with a firm eye on how the past military regime impacts on the present. The purpose is to prevent peddlers of fake news and the ultra-right negationists from winning over the Brazilian public with their authoritarian versions of history. In sum, this is a book committed to democracy. This commitment does not imply any disrespect for the academy, or for opposing points of view, but at its heart it defends historiography via scientific method to counter authoritarian imposition of a historical narrative that supports dictatorship in any form and its leaders, political and military, remaining in power through coercion.

Kyoto School Philosophy in Comparative Perspective: Ideology, Ontology, Modernity presents the thought of the Kyoto School, the most famous Japanese philosophical movement of the twentieth century, by comparing the philosophy of its most representative members-Nishida and Nishitani-with some better known thinkers in the West: Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, and Michel Henry. Bernard Stevens highlights the proximity of this movement of thought to the European phenomenological current that influenced it. However, the book also addresses an eminently problematic reality: the affiliation of some of its members with the militarism of the 1930s and 1940s. The political philosophers Arendt and Maruyama provide useful guidance here, in clarifying one of the central issues of this episode: the ideology of "overcoming modernity", supported by some of the younger disciples of Nishida. This book proposes intellectual conditions for both critical and appreciative receptions of one of the most fascinating philosophical adventures of the twentieth century.

This book, first published in 1983, illustrates the domestic and internal dimension of appeasement and explores the political options open to the western powers in the run up to the Second World War. It looks at the factors pointing in the direction of a general settlement with the dictators: limitation of resources and strategic over-commitment by Britain; economic decline and financial exhaustion of France; lack of support from the United States and the Soviet Union.

The province of Grosseto in southern Tuscany shows two extremes in the treatment of Italian and foreign Jews during the Holocaust. To the east of the province, the Jews of Pitigliano, a four hundred-year-old community, were hidden for almost a year by sympathetic farmers in barns and caves. None of those in hiding were arrested and all survived the Fascist hunt for Jews. In the west, near the provincial capital of Grosseto, almost a hundred Italian and foreign Jews were imprisoned in 1943-1944 in the bishop's seminary, which he had rented to the Fascists for that purpose. About half of them, though they had thought that the bishop would protect them, were deported with his knowledge by Fascists and Nazis to Auschwitz. Thus, the Holocaust reached into this provincial corner as it did into all parts of Italy still under Italian Fascist control. This book is based on new interviews and research in local and national archives.