Totalitarianism as a Political Religion

This article presents our research on the religious elements that appear in totalitarian regimes, on the relation between religion and totalitarian regimes and on the fundamental differences between religious faith and totalitarian ideologies through analysis and critical comparison of the theses of eminent political theoreticians such as Hannah Arendt, Raymond Aron, Emilio Gentile, Juan J. Linz, Eric Voegelin. The aim is to clarify some basic notions in relation with the issues above and to shed light on totalitarianism as a quasi-religious system. At the same time the article establishes a clear distinction between totalitarianisms (and their ideological systems) and traditional religions, which leads us to explicitly oppose any attempts to place (totalitarian) ideologies and religions on a common denominator.