The totalitarian systems that arose in the twentieth century presented themselves as secular. Yet, as the author of this book argues, they themselves functioned as religions. The author presents an intellectual history of the rise of these political religions, tracing a set of ideas which include the belief that a certain text contains impeccable truths; notions of infallible, charismatic leadership; and the promise of human redemption through strict obedience, selfless sacrifice, total dedication, and unremitting labor. The book provides insight into the variants of Marxism, Fascism, and Nati ... More

The totalitarian systems that arose in the twentieth century presented themselves as secular. Yet, as the author of this book argues, they themselves functioned as religions. The author presents an intellectual history of the rise of these political religions, tracing a set of ideas which include the belief that a certain text contains impeccable truths; notions of infallible, charismatic leadership; and the promise of human redemption through strict obedience, selfless sacrifice, total dedication, and unremitting labor. The book provides insight into the variants of Marxism, Fascism, and National Socialism that dominated our immediate past. It explores the seeds of totalitarianism as secular faith in the nineteenth-century ideologies of Ludwig Feuerbach, Moses Hess, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Richard Wagner. The book follows the growth of those seeds as the twentieth century became host to Leninism and Stalinism, Italian Fascism, and German National Socialism—each a totalitarian institution and a political religion.