as in tyranny
a system of government in which the ruler has unlimited power
warned that forfeiture of civil liberties for the sake of security would only result in the terror of totalism
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Recent Examples of totalism
Common sense and a mania for systematization, logical thinking and ideological totalism, are constantly at war in the French character, as a belief in instant happiness and a paranoia about imaginary enemies are in the American.
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Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 11 Apr. 2022
Recent Examples of Synonyms for totalism
Noun
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Continue reading … 'HISTORIC DAY' – Venezuelan opposition leader celebrates January 3 as 'day that justice defeated tyranny' after Maduro capture.—
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In the past, a popular uprising or a coup could bring tyranny to an end.—
Noun
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Europe was collapsing under fascism.—
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This is likewise the thrust of Salò, based on the Marquis de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom, an orgiastic, disturbing carnival of torture, rape, and killing, reset by Pasolini in the town from which fascism reigned in the 1940s.—
Noun
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His socialist dictatorship, hostile to human life, crushed Venezuelans’ freedoms for years.—
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One of his uncles had been part of the resistance to the right-wing military dictatorship that controlled Greece between 1967 and 1974.—
Noun
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King wrote the 1982 action-adventure long before social media took over the world and, in an ironic twist, set his send-up of reality culture and totalitarianism in 2025.—
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Taut and well-acted as this queasy little thriller can be, its unflinching tale of corporate authoritarianism is much too streamlined to reflect the emotional truth of watching totalitarianism in motion.—
Noun
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At the Claremont Institute in California, the disciples of Leo Strauss, the intellectual guru to several generations of conservatives, combine Platonic philosophy, biblical teachings, and a reverence for the American founding into a politics of ethical and religious absolutism.—
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Lyra’s quest to understand Dust brings her into confrontation with human and other worldly forces who champion moral absolutism over imagination, ignorance over knowledge, authoritarianism over free will and cold, disinterested rationality over empathy.—
Noun
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The war from within The chronology of the last few months shows a troubling acceleration of aspirational authoritarianism.—
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The messy, vibrant democracy of my youth is a distant memory, snuffed out by a quarter century of ever harsher authoritarianism.—
Cite this Entry
“Totalism.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/totalism. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.
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