In his dictionary “Colorful and Totalitarian”, Bremen-based sociologist Prof. Rudolph Bauer, with foresight, combines the two terms “colorful” and “totalitarian” to describe contemporary totalitarianism and, at the same time, to denounce it before it is too late. In a world where violence, militarism, restriction of freedoms, surveillance, racism, discrimination, and utter indifference and lack of empathy are on the rise, the terms Bauer cites in his critical dictionary shake us awake to think independently and critically, without letting ourselves be blinded by the colorful hues of this contemporary fascism. Dr. Rampoldi from ProMosaik interviewed the author. The critical dictionary has already been published in English. This dictionary saves us the trouble of reading many other works. It teaches us to critically question a world that, due to its diversity, appears anti-fascist but is in reality structured in a totalitarian manner.
Please explain to us the choice of the title of your book.
The title identifies the overall political trend of the countries of the Western world towards a totalitarian rule disguised as colorful. "Colorful" and "totalitarian" seem to contradict each other. Indeed, classical totalitarianism was uniform: with one party, one ideology, one leader, one people, one race, one collective, and one single destiny, namely, to rule the world. However, the contemporary totalitarianism that is emerging in front of our eyes seems to be the opposite. It is diverse and colorful like the rainbow: gender-diverse, migrant, anti-fascist and anti-racist, "self-determined", diverse and woke. It shows itself as liberal, cosmopolitan, freedom-oriented and democratic. From an external point of view, it separates itself from the ideology of retro-fascism. But the crucial element of this system of rule is totalitarianism. It censors and suppresses, segregates and demarcates, imprisons and locks out. And it is militaristically oriented towards the conquest as well as the domination of the world. By its colorfulness on the surface, the emerging totalitarian regime deceives about its true character and deeper core.
What are the main topics of the terms that appear in your dictionary?
The keywords refer to institutions, organizations, people and not least to terms and their meaning or their confusing variety of meanings. On the one hand, the keywords are related to each other by cross-references. This creates a grid of connections making us realize that we live behind the bars as if we were in captivity. In other words, there is a dense network of links in which we are involved and which we, as consumers of the daily news, are not aware of. Our ordinary thinking is parceled out. We only ever see one side of the fate cube of reality. We always see only the day-to-day events, not the general, comprehensive context. Nor do we recognize the historical contexts which have an impact up to the present and then continue into the future. The dictionary reveals present-day relationships at the horizontal level. Furthermore, the dictionary shows both vertical references to the totalitarian past and lines of development into a totalitarian future.
