How to Use totalitarianism in a Sentence

totalitarianism

noun
  • For Ruff, the theme of totalitarianism fed into both his work and daily life.
    — Clive Martin, CNN, 5 July 2017
  • Without us, the world would be mired in the darkness of totalitarianism rather than the light of liberty.
    — Marc A. Thiessen, The Mercury News, 10 July 2019
  • The moment at which a totalitarianism gets serious is the moment at which the army fires into the crowd.
    — Jackie Mansky, Smithsonian, 14 Apr. 2017
  • In the end, though, freedom is reduced to mainly what totalitarianism is not.
    — Andy Lewis, Los Angeles Times, 20 Apr. 2021
  • So Russian totalitarianism comes from the grassroots, not from the top down?
    — Simon Shuster, Time, 9 Oct. 2017
  • America is the shining city on a hill, a beacon of hope against the darkness of totalitarianism.
    — Tara Kavaler, The Arizona Republic, 28 Sep. 2022
  • By its nature, totalitarianism conspires to keep the conscience in a state of slumber.
    — Sam Sacks, WSJ, 15 June 2018
  • But its detractors view it as another giant step on the road back to totalitarianism.
    — Fred Weir, The Christian Science Monitor, 11 Oct. 2022
  • The first step in the march toward totalitarianism is discontent, folks.
    — Fox News Staff, Fox News, 11 Sep. 2022
  • The real menace now is not communism but the rise of totalitarianism.
    — Erin Corbett, Fortune, 27 June 2019
  • There was idealism in the protests but also cynicism and a touch of totalitarianism.
    — Ted Van Dyk, WSJ, 18 Oct. 2018
  • If creeping totalitarianism is your worry, such work is not a form of acquiescence but a form of resistance.
    — Christopher Beha, Harper's magazine, 10 May 2019
  • Our memories of totalitarianism were too fresh to discount gut feeling in favor of opinion polls.
    — The New York Review of Books, 8 Apr. 2019
  • What made communism so dangerous was the theory of totalitarianism, which turned out to be wrong, but it was believed.
    — How To Save A Country, The New Republic, 4 May 2023
  • Few images of totalitarianism are as powerful as the vision of a regime trying to conceal the demise of its cherished leader.
    — Ankit Panda, The New Republic, 23 Apr. 2020
  • On the right, some think the pandemic is wildly overblown and being used to introduce totalitarianism.
    — TheWeek, 6 Aug. 2020
  • No matter what country, what system, there is always a risk of totalitarianism and of human rights being questioned.
    — Georg Szalai, The Hollywood Reporter, 13 Mar. 2025
  • The United States claimed to be waging a war against tyranny and totalitarianism.
    — Gary Younge, The New York Review of Books, 28 Sep. 2023
  • The greengrocer, under totalitarianism, doesn’t and can’t have an opinion; the putting up of the sign doesn’t appear to be subject to debate.
    — Masha Gessen, The New Yorker, 24 June 2020
  • To Zuboff, this represents the threat of soft totalitarianism.
    — Isaac Cheifetz, Star Tribune, 8 Aug. 2020
  • People on the left see fascism as the endpoint of right-wing reactionary thinking, and people on the right see fascism as nanny-state totalitarianism.
    — Sean Illing, Vox, 15 Dec. 2018
  • In this form of partial totalitarianism, people have had time to adjust and experience each step in the decline from their previous way of life as a new normal.
    — Andrei Kolesnikov, Foreign Affairs, 7 Apr. 2023
  • And yet, though unseen by even his own son for years, Lai has become the global face of conscience rights in its perpetual struggle against totalitarianism.
    — Ashley McGuire, National Review, 22 Nov. 2024
  • The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century.
    — Claude Malhuret, The Atlantic, 8 Mar. 2025
  • This is really the essence of totalitarianism, and The Death of Stalin satirizes the hell out of it.
    — Sean Illing, Vox, 27 Mar. 2018
  • The horrific negation of those rights — by the agents of totalitarianism — threatened the fabric of world civilization.
    — Joseph Loconte, National Review, 16 Dec. 2021
  • Gradually, the society of the resettled succumbed to the seduction of totalitarianism, like the surface of a lake caught in a cold spell.
    — Jiayang Fan, The New Yorker, 17 June 2019
  • At times — as when a soldier under the new regime rapes a bride in her wedding dress — the movie flirts with a false equivalence, suggesting that postrevolutionary life is just as cruel as totalitarianism.
    — Ben Kenigsberg, New York Times, 2 June 2016
  • American freedom was the antidote to the icy grip of totalitarianism, whether from Nazis or Communists.
    — Peter S. Canellos, The Atlantic, 10 Apr. 2026
  • Another totalitarianism, so recently an ally, was already on the march.
    — Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, Sun Sentinel, 1 May 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'totalitarianism.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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