Political religion/political violence: reconceptualizing totalitarianism and fascism

In this paper I begin the discussion on the nexus of religion, politics, and violence through an examination of modern fascism and modern totalitarianism as viewed by Hannah Arendt in her various works including The Origins of Totalitarianism and On Violence. For Arendt, the conflation and equivalency of the Holocaust and the Gulag was fundamental to understanding modern politics. Arendt’s view, similar to a later view taken up by a diverse group of thinkers and writers from Zygmunt Bauman to Imre Kertesz, sought to demonstrate the capacity with which modern systems of politics had built, rather than inherited, homo sacer. Here, I am looking for the sacred and the profane in fascism and totalitarianism. I am thinking about how they might be different from or the same as similar occurrences or ideas in liberal democracies