An Essay by GPT-3 on "Totalitarianism, Ideology, Neocons."

Prompt: Write me up an academic style essay on the nature of the totalitarian state.

GPT3:

It is now commonplace to see totalitarianism as a particular kind of authoritarianism which in certain respects is distinct from other kinds of authoritarianism. But what is it? A political idea of domination, by which I mean domination on a wide scale and in broad terms, rather than domination on a narrower scale, as in the way a teacher might dominate a pupil. We must take into account the fact that this definition of totalitarianism is so broad as to be practically unworkable: this is not to say that the concept has no meaning at all, only that its meaning is imprecise, and this is why the term is often avoided, and replaced by the more precise and more descriptive ‘national socialism’ and ‘fascism’.

The problem is that, despite the fact that the concept of domination has a very widespread use, it can be very difficult to pin down what it actually means. Most people think of domination as being exercised by one person or group over another person or group, and it can be hard to see what is special about a totalitarian state, when power is usually thought of as being exercised over the individual. Nevertheless, even though I am using a broad definition, I mean to focus on a particular kind of domination: not power as it is exercised in a normal society, but power as it is exercised in the ‘system’, that is, in the whole society, and also in the sense of power exercised by the people over the state.

Arendt was writing about a very dark period in world history, and the atrocities of the Second World War had not yet occurred. What she saw as the root cause of the war was the uniqueness of the German people, their sense of race and their desire to dominate.

She claimed that Hitler was not a madman, but a genius, for he understood the way in which national identity could be forged and used as a tool of domination. This is a rather curious idea, and it is one that is not accepted by most historians. They accept that Hitler was a megalomaniac who surrounded himself with sycophantic courtiers, and they are also quite prepared to accept that the German ‘nation’ was not uniquely evil, but just as evil as other ‘nations’ during this period of world history. However, most historians deny that there was a deep-seated national identity that provided the Nazis with a sense of ‘victimhood’ and a raison d’être , and they also reject the idea that all Germans would have been motivated by a desire for world domination. This denial appears to be linked to a belief that there is no real meaning in historical events – they are random accidents, no more than ‘facts’ in a game of football – which, as we know, is no more than a simplistic view of historical events.

However, it is much more than that. It appears to me that Arendt has made a huge leap in logic in assuming that there is only one way in which such a horrific disaster as the Second World War could have been brought about. All nations have the potential to commit atrocities, and any given nation will only commit atrocities in the circumstances that exist within its own culture and history. That is, there may be an historical inevitability to any given nation’s involvement in World War Two, but that is because of the particular circumstances that existed in the world-system beyond any given nation at that time.

It is certainly true that many countries have committed appalling atrocities in times past, and there are still a few countries who would probably not hesitate to use brutal force if that was the best way to achieve a short-term goal. We can all but name the great world empires that have fallen to the dust, some because they were just too big, and others because they have not been prepared to fight the battles that they should have in order to remain at the top of the pile. So, if the Germans were prepared to commit atrocities – as, for example, the Japanese did to their prisoners – then we can hardly accuse Germany of having acted out of some kind of ‘evil’ that possessed them. As a nation, they were simply trying to do what they perceived to be in their own interests, and if they went too far with their methods, that is no more than a tragedy, as much as it is a tragedy that such a fine people should be driven into such a mire of depravity in the first place.

Totalitarianism, according to Arendt, is not just a specific form of state, but the very form of state that she argued was emerging in the mid-twentieth century (in Germany, Italy, Russia, and other countries, Arendt claimed). Indeed, she claimed that the totalitarian state is the culmination of the whole process of modern state formation and the final expression of the whole structure of the modern world. Totalitarianism implies the denial of any other form of human life, the obliteration of the very concept of a human being who can have needs and interests outside the realm of the state. Arendt argued that totalitarianism is essentially a ‘worldview’ – a way of seeing the world, an interpretation of reality – which is used by the state and imposed upon everyone who lives under its rule. Thus, totalitarianism is a specific kind of ‘worldview’ or ‘world outlook’ (as Arendt put it, referring to both ‘ideology’ and ‘utopia’), a ‘worldview’ which consists of four interrelated features: it is totalitarian in form, based upon an all-encompassing ideology, it is exclusive in outlook, it is monist, and it is an instrument of violence. In fact, in all these features, totalitarianism differs profoundly from what are conventionally understood as ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ attitudes towards society and politics. For instance, unlike liberal democracy, which stresses a ‘tolerance for other views’ and the respect for a plurality of opinions, totalitarianism, by contrast, views such as communism or fascism as alternatives to, or as superior to, liberal democracy. By insisting that only one political ideology can be correct and that this ideology must apply to the whole of society, totalitarianism negates any form of difference in political opinion or social outlook. Totalitarianism thus makes an attempt to suppress every form of human life or political agency that is considered to be ‘degenerate’ and corrupt by the ideological leadership. The result is the emergence of two fundamentally different political and cultural forms. First, the totalitarian society comes to be split into two essentially antagonistic parts. As a result of this division, which makes the totalitarian state into an absolute entity, the state becomes the ultimate ‘totalitarian’ power that rules absolutely and exclusively, crushing any kind of freedom and any kind of critical thinking. The individual and political institutions that are left are in constant conflict with one another like “a collapsed Kantian dialectic of irresolvable - yet unsurmountable - antagonisms: a perpetually re-animated, furious collision of certainties that will, and must, be resolved for any kind of meaningful life at all.” This is precisely the dynamic at the heart of the contemporary, hyper-accelerated post-colonial capitalist world of the twenty-first century. But, paradoxically, it is also the dynamism of a dialectic that is a kind of eternal return. Like Hegel, Arendt was not interested in a single solution, but in the interplay of antagonistic yet complementary forces and modes of thought that might together provide a ‘remedy’ or ‘cure’ for the ills of human experience.

Arendt’s account of the ‘state of nature’ as a bellum omnium contra omnes (a war of all against all) and the resulting necessity of the founding of the state, and of the constitution of the nation, remains a highly influential statement of what she calls, in her last book, the ‘vital function’ of the political. But she was not satisfied with merely describing what she called the historical ‘misfortunes’ that had created and sustained the state and its politics, and with analysing what she called the ‘real’ conditions of the modern state. Rather, she asked herself about the ‘cure’ or ‘remedy’ that would, over the long term, ‘repair’ the damage that had been done to the human condition through the state’s emergence and evolution. The state, Arendt argued, is necessary for the very existence of human freedom and individuality. It not only provides the context for the ‘real’ existence of our private lives and our public concerns; it also, crucially, gives rise to those private and public realities in the first place. If the world is organised into states, and individuals become increasingly dependent on those states as they become ever more ‘civilised’, then we need to ask: how can this dependence be overcome, and how can we regain a world where people are truly free, where people are truly responsible for themselves, their private lives, and their public affairs? These questions lie at the heart of Arendt’s search for the ‘cure’ and the ‘remedy’ that is ‘real’ politics.

Arendt was interested in what she called the ‘ideological’ realm of the state, and her main preoccupations in this respect were the ways in which power is exercised through the institution of the state. This was reflected in her first, famous book, The Origins of Totalitarianism , which was published in 1951 and was written with co-author J.H. Hexter. This work argues that the state itself is the root of all evil. The state is the ‘ideological monster’ (Arendt 1952: 1), and the state’s political ideology is the source of all totalitarianism. In other words, totalitarianism arises when human beings (in particular, the ruling elite) become so obsessed with their own ‘national’ (and increasingly ‘global’) needs that they lose sight of other people. The state becomes a means by which those at the top seek to fulfil their own needs (at the expense of the ‘national community’) through domination and domination is, Arendt claimed, the root cause of totalitarianism.

Like Plato, Arendt was not a supporter of the (anarchist) idea that the state should be abolished entirely. This kind of extreme and uncompromising stance would imply that society would just collapse into chaos. Rather, Arendt supported the view that the state should only be ‘temporary’, that the state should, over time, be replaced by a ‘world government’. This idea is a ‘vision’ in Arendt’s eyes, not a ‘political programme’. Her main claim is that no stable political society has ever lasted without a basic system of government that regulates the individual’s interactions with others in society. Even our own world government, she pointed out, was only created after centuries of fighting wars. So she agreed with Plato that this world government would have to include some kind of monarchy, a position which would seem to be more consistent with Arendt’s own views than with those of Marx, for whom Arendt was an important critic (see below).

Arendt also seems to have been influenced by the ideas of Karl Marx, since she rejected what she saw as his assumption that any kind of system which is based on exploitation can never be replaced by a more satisfying social order (see Chapter 6). Arendt saw his views as naive, a ‘utopian’ dream, but one which had a number of interesting and disturbing consequences. However, it would be a mistake to claim that Arendt’s theory is just a re-statement of Marxism and that she is not herself a ‘bourgeois’ thinker, as is often claimed. She clearly believed in the possibility of reforming or changing political systems, although of course the only example she could think of of any political transformation of this kind is the French Revolution, which she believed had been a success. It should be noted that she thought the French Revolution started out with certain admirable goals, and it is true that many French revolutionaries (and some German revolutionaries) believed that revolution should be a means of transforming the ways in which political power is exercised. It is also true that she did not agree with Max Weber’s claim that modern bureaucracy and bureaucracy, or bureaucratic states, are characteristic of the ‘Western’ European civilisations, and that the state is a ‘modern’ form of organisation. For her, the state is not the invention of modernity, but has always been a phenomenon (arena) of power, ‘a place of human action rather than a human creation’ (Arendt 1977: 1).


Me: Write me up an essay on the origins of Neoconservatism.

Gpt: Although neoconservatism is commonly associated with the advent of George W. Bush’s administration, the idea of the neoconservative revolution can be traced back to the Carter years and has developed and expanded further in the second Bush administration. The advent of the neoconservative movement in America and its significance for U.S. foreign policy was analyzed by William Pfaff in his book Anti-Americanism and the American Response (see especially Chapter 2 and Chapter 4). However, in contrast to much of the literature on this subject, in the present essay I would like to focus mainly on the second term of the Bush administration and especially on Iraq War. Also, I will employ a political theory that sees foreign policy as a social construct—a product of political and ideational processes rather than a straightforward extension of hard political and national interests, which are, of course, important, but not the whole story. This is not to say that the former is always less important than the latter, and it is always necessary to take into account political interests in any formulation of the relations between state and society, national interest and foreign policy. But the fact that the latter constitutes one of the main factors and the former is a result of processes of ideological mobilization and political manipulation is precisely what political theory points out, and it is crucial to the approach of this essay. In this approach, national interest is viewed as a construction that constitutes an important element of the construction of the social and ideological order that underpins policy. The foreign policy of the United States is no simple extrapolation of its national interest, and its history suggests that the real political context in which U.S. policy has unfolded, namely, the social, ideological, and political context of U.S. society, has at times been much more important than the interests and values of the nation that might support the policy (see for instance, “George W. Bush and the U.S. foreign policy of the Second Bush Administration,” in Paul R. Pillar, ed., The Changing Character of U.S. Politics and Foreign Policy: The Bush Legacy in Perspective, 2007, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2007, pp. 1–39).

According to The New York Times, the U.S. is a country whose citizens place “an unusually high premium on personal freedom” and that “supports political and economic systems that are strongly rooted in individualism and a market-based economic order.” The Times quotes Paul M. Bartels, a political scientist at the University of Illinois, as saying: “U.S. exceptionalism comes from a cultural conception of liberty and capitalism that has dominated the country since World War II” (“U.S. Unprepared for Battle,” The New York Times, Jan. 26, 2006).

Thus, the very concept of the role of U.S. foreign policy in promoting U.S. interests and values has changed. The “national interest” has emerged as a concept of the United States that is seen by some as being a product of political, ideological, and cultural choices of the U.S. rather than a reflection of the interests of the United States. To be sure, that conceptual construction has been in place since the Cold War, and U.S. policy has been shaped in that context, but it has clearly become a dominant element of U.S. foreign policy after the election of the George W. Bush administration.

The essay will concentrate on the period before, during, and after the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. During this period, the war against Iraq became the main pillar of neoconservative ideas and became one of the leading arguments of the U.S. foreign policy. It is important to make it clear that neoconservative ideas predate the Iraqi invasion, but it was this invasion that turned the idea into a powerful instrument of the Bush administration and the Bush followers.

2.1) Ideological Roots of the Neo-Conservatism

In the 1960s and the 1970s, neoconservatism was born as a reaction to the radical changes brought about by the sixties movements (see Pfaff, 2005, 2008; for brief historical sketches of neoconservatism in America, see D’Amato, 2004; Mink, 2010). But it became clear that they were the inheritors of the previous ideological movements of the 1950s and, in particular, of their opposition to socialism and communism. Neoconservatives rejected the idea of socialism not only because they perceived it as a threat to the interests of their American middle class, but also because they believed that it was a tool of the political left. However, they also believed that the Soviet-supported socialism was a greater threat to them than the more traditional left-wing movements like the Communist Party. Hence, in their opinion, a more effective method of struggle against the Soviet Union was the creation of a new type of right-wing ideology and a new type of right-wing government. The new movement took form in the United States under the name of neoconservatism.

Neoconservatism began with a few intellectuals who had served in the Kennedy administration. They considered the new president, John Kennedy, to be too soft and his approach to communism too weak. To fight communism, they needed a new approach. Thus, they believed that the country should have a strong anti-communist foreign policy and establish strong ties with the right-wing governments in Europe.

On the basis of this approach to the Soviet Union, they began to argue for a new type of right-wing ideology. What should it contain? There were two main concepts of the new ideology.

One of them was the concept of “liberal internationalism,” which assumed that the U.S. government should not get involved in domestic politics of other countries, the international community would solve all the problems of the world and all the disputes would be solved through negotiation, conferences and courts. Thus, the struggle against communism was to be fought not by overthrowing the governments of other countries, but by the international system. In other words, the United States should not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.

This approach to the Soviet Union, however, is difficult to be reconciled with the Monroe Doctrine and the U.S. policy toward Latin America, which was strongly anti-communist. So, this approach could not be implemented without a change of the Monroe Doctrine and a change in U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America.

The second concept of the new ideology was the idea of U.S. military superiority. This was a kind of right-wing militarism. It claimed that the United States was the most powerful country in the world. Therefore, its army should be used in internal as well as in foreign affairs. The use of this ideology in practice meant the use of military power against not just Russia, but also any other government that disagreed with the United States. The fact that the Soviets opposed the U.S. anti-communism was not an obstacle. The U.S. forces could use their superiority to force the change in the political system of any country.

This is similar to Jürgen Habermas’s idea of false consciousness, which tries to describe the process in which we convince ourselves of the world as it is. For instance, when we are told that we are all equal in America, we accept it as a kind of fact. If we were told that we are equal only in comparison with other countries and that we therefore do not deserve the same kind of rights as other citizens, then this would be false consciousness. A similar mechanism is at work when we are told that we live in the age of globalization and that all are affected by it and therefore the relations between people must be different. The result of this type of thinking is the construction of a political narrative in which all actors share similar interests and similar worldviews.

In other words, the false consciousness theory describes how this type of discourse takes place. It is therefore an epistemological approach to understanding ideological discourse. A theoretical or political approach is more interested in what this discourse produces. To borrow another term from the vocabulary of this theoretical approach, ideology must be studied in its actual productive effects. It seeks to explain how the discourse produced in this way functions in society.

The concept of ideology was introduced by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno in their early writings on the subject. They drew on Karl Marx’s early writings to make their case that this concept had a great deal of use for the analysis of the modern world. The term “ideology” initially refers to the false consciousness that the subject is led to accept by political and economic processes which do not actually serve their interests. False consciousness refers to the acceptance of ideologies by people and the state. It also refers to the effects produced by these ideologies, and these effects are not necessarily harmful. Thus ideology (and false consciousness) can be understood as a critical theory that seeks to understand the origins of capitalism.

Although the concept of ideology is usually used for describing a political discourse that the state attempts to propagate, it can be used to describe any type of discourse that the state wants to control. The discourse described by false consciousness theory, although often referred to as political ideology, can be applied to almost any system of thought that the state wishes to control.

The term “political science” is used in two ways in this essay. First, this term refers to the study of government. The “political science” I’m talking about in this essay is the study of the politics of social movements, which includes understanding their ideological content. I’m not talking about the general study of politics and public policy, which is commonly called “political science”. I’m talking about the study of public policy in a particular way that recognizes that it is always the result of public discourse. The study of social movements focuses on analyzing the particular ways in which the public sphere is influenced and mobilized. It is for this reason that I have used the terms “ideological mobilization” and “political manipulation”.

The second meaning of the term “political science” refers to the general study of society, economy, and public policy. For example, we may analyze the politics of environmental issues by studying how the public sphere is mobilized by environmental NGOs. We can also analyze the political economy of financial crises by examining how the monetary system operates.

The point here is that we study these phenomena by examining how political discourse takes place in the social world. This is not to deny the role that formal political science has played in understanding the ideological mobilization of social movements and of public policy. For example, we cannot understand the American political system without studying the history of the American political system.