Donal goes the Adorno route to explain, or perhaps to frame, the question of totalitarianism. One might as well go the Fromm route or the Colin Wilson route.
In his course on the Biology of Human Behavior, Sapolsky stresses that no human behavior can be explained by putting all explanations in a single "bucket" (his term). Using his thesis, one would have to explain totalitarianism by developmental psychology, evolutionary biology, environmental stresses, neurobiology, neuroendocrinology, and a host of others factors operating in individuals and groups.
The frontal cortex, for example, is in its operation, a part of the limbic system. (See _Descartes' Error_ by A. Damasio.) Therefore species-dependent emotional centers as well as socialization come into play in the way people vote. And people do seem to vote their self-idealization or vote their emotional defense of a symbolic self.
Yet to postulate a "personality" prone to totalitarianism seems unnecessary. Rather one can look at kinship and "pseudo-kinship" in shaping aggression in groups.
The first standing armies arose in pastoral societies, where the need to protect herds from robbery or to protect empty villages from attack created the warrior class. Warriors usually undergo initiation ceremonies to create a "band of brothers" (pseudo-kinship) who will fight and die for each other as they would for genetic kin.
One can see pseudo-kinship in Hitler Youth, al-Qaeda, the US army, and even Peace rallies where, again, species-dependent emotional centers as well as socialization overtake the supposedly rational mind.
That doesn't mean there isn't a qualitative difference between the groups, or that al-Qaeda shouldn't be exterminated, just that social mammals are social mammals...complex and not explained by any one "bucket."
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