On the other hand, Putin’s Chechnya indoctrination combined methods from both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia to teach children to respect Putin and his government. In classroom setting, children are …show more content…
Making use of a variety of information gathering techniques and a dedicated, militaristic police force, government leaders can identify and eliminate threats to their regime while simultaneously making others think they could be next. Pervasive worry over the future and the possibility of prison or death makes it unlikely that citizens will openly speak out against the government (Canovan). The art of terror was practiced best in Germany, first during Hitler’s reign, and then again in the decades …show more content…
However, literature allows a look at totalitarian regimes designed to maximize their full potential, without the many flaws that often cause the downfall of real totalitarian governments. In dystopian literature, totalitarian governments are readily defined by five major characteristics (Zuckerman).
For one, they have a governmental monopoly of information. Without access, citizens cannot erect worldviews that run counter to the established government (Zuckerman). Examples include 1984, where The Party stays in power by spreading lies and rewriting history so that no one is able to challenge their version of events; Animal Farm, where the pigs manage to enslave the other animals because they cannot read the constitution and thus can’t challenge their authority; and Fahrenheit 451, where the government bans books so that people are unable to gain knowledge for themselves (Orwell,