#totalitarianism

#totalitarianism

Considering Tarantino's penchant for championing Asian cinema and his taste for stylized hyper-violence, the pick certainly didn't come out of nowhere. But for many of those watching him chat about his favorites, the movie was as much of a myth as an actual product. Battle Royale hadn't been officially released on home video in the United States, so if you'd missed its few theatrical showings, you were left scrabbling for a bootleg version

At necessary moments in my life, Tom Stoppard, the preeminent British playwright who died last Saturday, has popped up like one of his frenetic characters, spouting enigmatic lines and leaving me thrilled, confused, and somehow heartened. The first time, I was in graduate school, reading Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, his breakthrough homage to Hamlet; I was surely thinking grad-school thoughts when I came across the line "the toenails, on the other hand, never grow at all"-the best bad joke ever.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in The Running Man faces a totalitarian regime by competing in a deadly television show where the disadvantaged are hunted down, ultimately overthrowing his captors with physical prowess and humor.

Mussolini led Italy into a highly authoritarian regime and contributed to the spread of totalitarianism across Europe between the two world wars, becoming a model for other movements.

Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) jail terms are overbearing and unfair as he urged his successor...to look carefully at fresh proposals to end the historic wrong.

The suspense is simply in waiting for the totalitarian machinery to grind into place.

Charlotte Beradt, a German Jewish journalist who experienced Hitler's rise, found the messages in her friends' dreams irresistibly interesting, reflecting the psyche under totalitarian rule.