Totalitarianism has penetrated our lives in the form of fear, but we mustn’t ignore the forms of resistance thousands are practicing.
By Silvio Prado (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES – Totalitarianism is an extreme form of dictatorship that, according to Hannah Arendt, sets out to achieve “the permanent domination of each individual in every sphere of life.”
I propose here a simple exercise: check the social media profiles of each one of the people who’ve been banished from Nicaragua in the past four years, with an eye towards the above definition of totalitarianism. You’ll easily conclude that it’s no exaggeration when I affirm that we’re enduring, suffering and resisting a regime bent on complete totalitarian domination.
Among the latest group of 135 released and banished political prisoners is a university professor who “liked” a photo of Miss Universe; a young woman who printed a photo of an imprisoned priest; Protestant pastors, muralists, a member of a church choir. We could continue delineating a long list of people who merely behaved as anyone might in their daily life. None of them were taken by the police for belonging to an armed organization, or for robbing banks, or killing someone. Nor were they found in possession of weapons or explosives. Each one was simply imprisoned for living in the spheres of their private life.
These are the extremes that totalitarianism reaches – the domination of every person, in every arena of their lives, at every moment. In other words, everything – all of life, all the human activities of everyone. Hence the origin of the name: totalitarianism. To get there, totalitarianism radically and incessantly works to pulverize every expression of human rights.
As Hannah Arendt recalls, the Declaration of the Rights of Man at the end of the 18th century implied centering human beings as the primary source of the law, not the gods nor the historical customs. Since this transformation meant the protection of individuals in the face of “the new sovereignty of the government and the new arbitrariness of society,” the totalitarian hierarchy did away with that protective barrier.
This has been the road the Ortega regime has followed. First, it crushed the right to choose and be elected, with the successive electoral frauds of 2006, 20
