BOOK REVIEW - PETER BERNHOLZ, TOTALITARIANISM, TERRORISM AND SUPREME VALUES. HISTORY AND THEORY CHAM, SPRINGER, 2017, 160 PP.
BOOK REVIEW - PETER BERNHOLZ, TOTALITARIANISM, TERRORISM AND SUPREME VALUES. HISTORY AND THEORY CHAM, SPRINGER, 2017, 160 PP.

Summary/Abstract: The book written by Peter Bernholz represents the culmination of a process, serving to refine his theory on the lexicographic preference for supreme values and its fundamental role in the ideologies of totalitarian regimes. As the author mentions in the preface, he developed his theory on ideocracies characterised by supreme values, and of totalitarianism and terrorism, over a number of works since 1988, when he first presented it. While basing his own ideas on the classic works on totalitarianism, such as those of Hannah Arendt, Carl J. Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Bernholz seeks to go beyond what he describes as the “static nature” of totalitarianism theory, doing so in a manner somewhat similar to the important work on ideocracy authored by Piekalkiwicz and Penn. Indeed, it is mostly on this underresearched, but always important and increasingly visible concept of ideocracy that Bernholz anchors his effort. Thus, the existence of an ideology with supreme values and an ideological movement led by what one may define here as a charismatic epistemarch is considered a necessary precondition for the transformation of non-totalitarian systems into totalitarian ones, which, in turn, may lead to a mature ideocracy. And while the book itself has a number of shortcomings – one of the most important being the way in which the case studies are spread out and treated far too briefly – the overall ideas and results are often intriguing and certainly worth further investigation.

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