The Old Is New Again in the Analysis of Modern Authoritarian Regimes…

Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman: “From the Peru of Alberto Fujimori to the Hungary of Viktor Orban, illiberal regimes have managed to consolidate power without fencing off their countries or resorting to mass murder….

New forms of dictatorship based on manipulating information rather than on mass violence… can survive… in the face of moderate economic underperformance… [via] an increase in censorship and propaganda…”

I read this, and I say: Wait a minute! All the classic analyses of Naziism and Stalinism–from Franz Neumann, Behemoth, to Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, and Eric Fromm, Escape from Freedom–placed great stress on the fact that the totalitarian regimes were popular with the great masses of those who were not purged, in large part because of their successful and psychologically shrewd use of mass communications-driven propaganda…

• Hannah Arendt: Origins of Totalitarianism
• Franz Neumann: Behemoth
• Erich Fromm: Escape from Freedom