DEMOCRACY AND TOTALITARIANISM: AN APPROACH TO THE ANGOLAN REALITY

Abstract

This text aims to propose a broad discussion about democracy and totalitarianism, based on an approach to the Angolan reality. We also seek to highlight democracy as a value, as a process of legitimacy over intellectual intolerance and social exclusion. Democracy, since its appearance in ancient Greek societies, has consisted of people-based power. Thus, it can be said that in each society power belongs to the people. One of the fundamental characteristics of the present stage of modernity is the legitimacy of democracy as a form of political organization in today's societies. Therefore, democracy has the double character of an ideal that brings equality, freedom, and the participation of citizens in public life. Some other concerns that we intend to discuss concern the analytical and historical approach to the relationship between democracy and totalitarianism. Communism is pointed out as a totalitarian, authoritarian, and dictatorial system, so, in the contemporary period, the study of totalitarianism is essential for the understanding of current phenomena, since there is no totalitarian system that is not contemporary and authoritarian. dictatorial. Our approach allows us to identify in Angola the existence of a process with democratic rules, but which coexists with a totalitarian substantive content, social exclusion, and violence.