Word: totalitarianisms
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...ability of dictators such as Iraqi President Sadam Hussein to produce weapons of mass destruction would be seriously degraded. The Saudi monarchy is already contending with a young and restive populace that sees little opportunity in a sclerotic oil-based economy. Without a steady flow of oil money, the totalitarian governments in the Middle East would be forced to reform themselves or risk popular revolt. The recent anti-Israel demonstrations in countries such as Egypt and Jordan have shaken the leaders of those countries and shown just how fragile their grip on power is. Without oil dollars flowing into...
...second type of Arab despotism is the secular totalitarian state. Iraq and Syria are good examples of these. These states ensure their own survival by brutally oppressing their people and by encouraging a cult of personality around the local strongman, be it a Hussein or an Assad...
Opponents claim that the BCC is “totalitarian in its control of members’ behavior.” RightCyberUp argues that discipling partners often dictate dating standards for advisees, pressuring members to enter or exit certain relationships, outlining the extent of physical contact that may be had on dates and even forcing members to report details of dates. Marriages are subject to the same scrutiny, with spouses reporting on one another. Members report being instructed by their discipler on which college to attend, which classes to take and how many hours of sleep...
Like Ross G. Douthat ’02, I am disturbed that the Graduate School of Design has appointed “an apparatchik from a totalitarian state [Castro’s Cuba]” to be a visiting professor. However, the existence of a double standard that forgives the collaboration of leftists while anathemizing rightists is not at all obvious to me. During the Cold War, scholars who collaborated with right-wing dictatorships were welcome at Harvard. (Tellingly, in 1968, the University granted an honorary doctorate to Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, the shahanshah of Iran...
Ultimately, though, the double standard is a problem for another day—and the specifics of Coyula-Cowley’s politics matter less than the fact that he is a willing, life-long functionary of a totalitarian state, and is therefore complicit in its crimes. If he is not directly responsible for them—well, in 1937, an architect named Albert Speer was not directly responsible for Nazi atrocities; indeed, he would always claim ignorance of them. But no one offered him a position at Harvard...