totalitarianism
noun
Forms totalitarianisms
- noun A system of government in which the people have virtually no authority and the state wields absolute control, for example, a dictatorship.
Synonyms
dictatorship absolutism authoritarianism Caesarism despotism monocracy one-man rule shogunate Stalinism tyranny totalism
Etymology
1938, from totalitarian + -ism, modeled after Italian totalitarismo (1923, by Giovanni Amendola) and German terms such as Totalstaat (1927, The Concept of the Political, by Carl Schmitt).
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 — from the Wiktionary entry “totalitarianism”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details