Authoritarian States

Stalin. Mao Mussolini. Hitler

Authoritarian States - Case study I - Chicago, 1968

Chicago, 1968

Authoritarian States - Case study II - North Korea

- What does N Korea look like?

- How does the government treat the foreign visitors?

- What concerns does the journalist have about his minders?

- What is your impression about what life is really like in N Korea?

- In your opinion, what has caused this to happen?.......

Powerpoint on North Korean history and how it works today

Class feedback from BBC Panorama documentary on N Korea...

Q - Why do these types of states exist?

- Who would want to establish them and why?

A - Political ideologies are ideas people have about how to

organise people living in communities. Different ideologies

provide different systems depending how they see our nature

and what we need to work well when living together in groups.

Q - So why do some political ideologies end up organising systems that no-one really wants to live in?

A - Ideologies start off with certain ideas as their base. However, when put into practise, these ideas can soon be proved to be too idealistic and unpractical to work as intended.

When applied to reality they often produce results that either don't match the ideas, or which take the ideas to extremes, or which have been too easily misinterpreted to help justify an position...

Looking at the ideas that either led to Marxism, or have been associated with Fascism, gives us a good example of this

Research task - access the google doc above left and complete one of the tables about the German Idealists of the 19thC...

Marx's original ideology ended up with people in a social utopia cooperating - taking what they needed and giving what

they could.....

Access the Khan Academy video on the right hand side to research how

Marx argued his position and complete the questions in the Word document..

What does the narrator say about Marx?

How do you think the narrator feels about Karl Marx and Communism?

Why do you think this?

What reasons can you think of that would explain the narrator's opinion....

However when put into practice these ideas more often than not led to authoritarian and totalitarian regimes....

Marx - BBC Radio In Our Time debate

Marx - BBC Genius of Our Time doc

Q - so how were these ideologies supposed to survive even if they somehow managed to get themselves into a position of power?

A - these ideologies were underpinned by and associated with economic theories that challenged the existing capitalist system that had emerged from the 19thC largely unchallenged. The horrors of WWI had seen this radically shift with widespread opposition to the establishment and their ideas emerging - both Communisma nd Fascism emerged at his time. However, to understand how their challenges came to be successful, we must investigate what the economic systems of capitalism and socialism are and where they came from

Please read the Word document below on the left and use the highlighted sections to complete the copy with blanks on that you have been given in class (a copy of this can also be found below - click on the Word doc in the centre)

Then access the digital link by clicking on the right-hand book icon to complete the section on corporatism as an alternative to capitalism...

Click on the left hand whiteboard photo to access googledoc feedback on how 20thC history helped transform ideologies into authoritarian regimes...whilst accessing the videos below will give you some insights into how to compare and contrast authoritarian regimes such as Hitler's Germany + Lenin's USSR

Click on the image on the left to access the googledoc class judgement on the nature of Stalin's USSR..........