Luis Eduardo Mella (2008-5678).

Cause and effect essay: Causes and effects of totalitarism in Europe.

One of the effects of totalitarism is the destruction of personal liberty and the erosion of freedom
but what are the causes behind that socio-political phenomena? Some historians and some people
are behind talks about the effects of totalitarism in the XX century, but trying to talk about the real
causes can create a harsh debate between historians, philosophers, and social scientists. Some
changes in the geopolitical arena and the deformation of our nations states are behind this
phenomenon.

First of all is that every nation state, after First World War they changed their citizenships laws
and creates a lot of new laws regarding the creation of different penal institutions (Agamben,
2001). As nationalism was rising after the destruction that held upon Europe during the FWW, this
ideological movements (specially in Italy and Germany that where the most affected countries in
Europe), new laws and polarization set fruit to a deep transformation of their Nation States

Also, the way politics is handled and understood un our Western civilization has conditioned the
way that a Nation States relates in situations of extreme necessity, specially the relationship
between life and politics. The Nation State has incorporated the biological life -that can be refered
as bare life according to Agamben (1999)- as a form of exclusion. This means that life in our
public-politic spaces, as the object of modern politics, is managed, produced, and can be also
executed (Foucault, 2008). So, the Nation-State not also has the power to manage life, to expand
it (as the history of welfare states in first world countries shows to us), but also has the power of
giving death (thanatopolitics) (Agamben, 2005), so the way is seen the biological life in the Nation
State is not as subject of power, but as object of power, is included in the political community as
something to be excluded from the political life.
An effect that this phenomenon, after the WW2 has caused is that the same procedures and
tragedies (special police like the SS in Germany, concentration camps and public executions of
people, including Jews, Germans, and any person that a lot of self-proclaimed chieftain that started
to gain popularity in Europe during the time of reconstruction) started to rise again (Lowe, 2012).
So in the end, there’s a lot of causes and effects that totalitarism had cause to Western and Eastern
Europe, millions of deaths, inhuman and violent episodes that shows us the hollow and dark side
of human condition. It can shows us that institutions (like the Nation State) aren’t bulletproof when
it comes to fall into the tempting idea of trading freedom for security.
References:
Foucault, M. (2008). The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979 (G.
Burchell, Trans.). New York, NY: Picador.

Lowe, K., & Cifuentes, I. (2012). Continente Salvaje: Europa después de la Segunda Guerra
Mundial. Galaxia Gutenberg.
Agamben, G. (1998). Homo sacer: Sovereign power and bare life. Stanford University Press.
Agamben G. (2005). Homo Sacer II: Estado de excepción. Adriana-Hidalgo Editores.