Professor Kozlowski Lectures Fascism and Totalitarianism
Today, Professor Kozlowski tackles the preeminent development in political philosophy of the twentieth century - and spectre overhanging the twenty-first: Fascism and Totalitarianism. We'll examine Italian Fascism with Mussolini's own "The Doctrine of Fascism" as well as Umberto Eco's 2001 essay "Ur-Fascism"; Nazism with the Extra History video series Nazi Occultism and Folding Ideas' video essay "Triumph of the Will and the Cinematic Language of Propaganda"; and, finally, we'll read an excerpt of Hannah Arendt's compendious The Origins of Totalitarianism. Along the way we'll discuss how to recognize signs and symptoms of Fascism (including those in the Trump administration), its allure and its techniques for staying in power, its reliance on irrationality, mythology, and mysticism, its fundamental flaws as a system of government and its tendency toward self-destructiveness, as well as what we might do to fight it when it arises.
Additional readings include:
- Quotations from Chairman Mao
- Arendt - Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
- Stanley - How Propagada Works
- Koestler - Darkness at Noon
- Orwell - 1984
- Zamyatin - We
- Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita
- Liu - The Three-Body Problem
- The Great Dictator (1940)
- Papers, Please
If you're considering dedicating your whole life and well-being to my charismatic leadership, why not start by visiting my website: professorkozlowski.wordpress.com?