The essential difference between totalitarian state and military junta seems to be popular support. With junta, you can trust that almost nobody is loyal directly to the dictator, they just want money and stay alive. So you can bribe anybody. In totalitarian state you can never be sure who will take &quot;cause of the party&quot; as his own. So lives of normal people are affected in totally different way.<p>There has been two types of totalitarian popular movements so far: nationalistic and international. Fascism falls in the first category, Communism in the second. The problem of communist is that it never has been able to spread the revolution as originally intended. So they have fallen back to &quot;Socialism in one state&quot; policies everywhere.<p>Given the similarities, it&#x27;s not surprising that the left usually tries to paint fascism as &quot;far right&quot; or &quot;ultra nationalist&quot;. The first is simply incorrect, the latter on the other hand is kinda misleading. Nationalism is also the basis for all systems of <i>national</i> governance, so you can be ultra nationalist while supporting democracy, monarchy or pretty much anything else. Even Stalinism when that dude was still alive.