The device of totalitarianism in its fascist and nazi variables as an inherent condition of democracy

Abstract

This text is the result of investigations based on works by Giorgio Agamben that are dedicated to criticizing Western political ontology articulated from devices of inclusion of animals in the polis and exclusion of humans from the open, from animality, as well as from the dialogue with other works and authors related to the theme analyzed. Thus, human life is constituted from fractures, divisions and subdivisions that underlie the operationality of the political, legal and oikonomic machine, in which we find ourselves inserted in the spectacularized mass societies, in contemporary times. Under such prerogatives, the violence of the language device is inherent to the legal machine in its ontological foundation, which manifests itself socially and historically in the most diverse regimes of government of the polis - the modern States. In this context, what we seek to demonstrate is that totalitarian phenomena that manifested themselves socially and historically in the first decades of the 20th century, such as fascism and Nazism, are inherent to the foundations of democracy, including: the right to speak, to engage in public discourse, to organize and to express one's opinion publicly. Under such assumptions, the defense of democracy today is presented based on positions and opinions that flirt with totalitarian variables of fascist and Nazi origin. Or, in other words, and in the company of Agamben, we do not know what we are talking about when we talk about democracy. It is by recognizing this condition and the need to desecrate the publicity and spectacularized forms assumed by language, returning it to common use, that we may be able to prevent a repetition of Auschwitz.