News these days is the anniversary of the founding of the PNV. Reviewing some photos of El Pais see Josep Antoni Duran i Lleida, Sabino Arana in paying homage to the anniversary of a couple of years ago. I find it interesting to recall what Sabino Arana think about the essence of Catalonia Arana in an article published in 1895 by La Patria – Letter to Don J. M. ‘ – Catalonia concluded that, unlike the Basque Country, is an ‘ethnic region of Spain. If we try to establish the genealogy of the concept of totalitarianism, it is necessary to go back to the early days of Italian Fascism, in fact, is the reflection arises after the arrival of Italian fascism when used for the first time the adjective “totalitarian” before the noun. It seems that they were political opponents of Mussolini who used the adjective for the first time during the 20s to the stigmatization of the Mussolini regime. The Italian dictator is not going to take to use the term, with clearly positive connotations. A much-quoted phrase of a text made by Mussolini and his main idelogo Giovanni Gentile says: “to fascism, all this within the state and nothing human or spiritual exists or has value outside the state, in this sense Fascism is totalitarian .
The term finds its pejorative connotations in the pen of the German intellectuals opposed to Hitler, to highlight Franz Neumann and Herbert Marcuse, a little later, in 1941 first appeared in writing the word “totalitarianism”.
The term will be migrating to Italy and Germany the main host of political opponents, mostly United States and France. Similarly, the term “totalitarianism” begins to circulate in political opposition to Stalin, mostly in the mouth of intellectuals such as Victor Serge and Boris Souvarine.
Although “totalitarian” and “totalitarianism” are terms that emerged from the political struggle, will quickly make the jump to the academic world as many of the opponents who use it are intellectuals, one can cite examples such as Catholic author’s book Jacques Maritain ” Integral Humanism “(1936) and Gurian’s work (1935-39) and also the work of Hayes’ The novelty of totalitarianism in the history of the West,” published in the U.S.
Of course, the use of the term totalitarianism will depend on the political context of the moment, comes from a 1941 alliance between Western countries and the Soviet Union to fight Nazism, that alliance limits the use of the term “totalitarianism” to Nazi Germany, the dichotomy between democracy / totalitarianism is obscured by the division fascism / anti-fascism.
Parentheses after the Second World War, during the cold war is going to see a scientific theory of totalitarianism, it is in those years when the capital works of Hannah Arendt “The origins of totalitarianism”, this book will be the consolidation of the theory of totalitarianism.
In the Cold War, anticommunist organizations, many of them subsidized by the capitalist bloc will construct a building on ideological totalitarianism with an anticommunist, this approach will find opposition in the community, while these European intellectuals hostile to the theory of totalitarianism.
