The world of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials novels - and his new series, The Book of Dust - is similar to our world in many ways, but it’s also strikingly different. One difference is that in His Dark Materials the Church, or the Magisterium, as it is known - is a totalitarian organisation.

Calling it totalitarian is not just an atheist grumbling about organised religion. The Magisterium conforms to many aspects of totalitarianism as laid out by the 20th century’s greatest scholar of totalitarian regimes, Hannah Arendt.

In her seminal book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, first published in 1951, Arendt lays out precisely what totalitarianism is. One of the key aspects of totalitarianism, which makes it different from authoritarianism, is that totalitarian regimes seek not just power, but to control every aspect of their citizens existence. The Magisterium does this through its control of what knowledge is acceptable and what is blasphemous, especially through its suppression of knowledge about Dust.

A totalitarian movement

The Magisterium is not a nation, it’s a set of beliefs, groups of people and institutions. Collectively, The Magisterium is what Arendt would describe as a totalitarian movement. Movements, according to Arendt, go beyond nation and politics and seek to dominate the entire world. This is clearly how Marcel Delmar intends to use the plans of The Magisterium in The Secret Commonwealth. Movements are also not political parties, Arendt said that they go beyond parties and were for men of all parties, as is the Magisterium.

Arendt said that totalitarian movements divide the masses into two camps: sympathisers and members. The ones who support the movement and the ones who act on its behalf. No other form of person is recognised. The members are organised into layers of inner circles that get increasingly ideologically purer and increasingly shielded from the outside world. The most central of these layers is the secret police who enforce discipline. This is how the Magisterium is structured, not as a single institution, but layers of different institutions of increasing ideological purity.

Shifting institutions

We have said that the Magisterium is not just one institution, but a series of shifting different institutions. The different institutions of the Magisterium are shown in His Dark Materials and are gone into in more detail in The Secret Commonwealth. Similar to a totalitarian regime, the Magisterium being a complicated series of interlinked institutions masks the true sources of power and makes it obscure to those who are not members of the movement. Members of the movement can follow the subtle clues as to where power resides, but everyone else is confused.

As Arendt said of totalitarian regimes, the more visible the institution, the less power it will have. Conversely, the more shadowy the institution, the more power it will have. This is clearly the case for the Magisterium where obscure offices like the La Maison Juste, aka the League for the Instauration of the Holy Purpose, or the General Oblation Board have a great deal of power but are hidden from the public.

This structure allows for power to be moved from institutions as their significance rises and falls within the movement without anyone noticing. It’s the opposite the transparent and stable power relationships of democratic governments. There are no clear hierarchies between these institutions, as is the case for the Magisterium, but some clearly possess authority.

The secret police

I have mentioned a few times the important role of the secret police in a totalitarian regime. They are the innermost layer of the movement, responsible for enforcing discipline and ideology. The Magisterium has its own secret police, the CCD (or Consistorial Court of Discipline), which is one of the most powerful institutions of the Magisterium, as you would expect in a totalitarian movement. The CCD are beyond the reach and power of national police services, who are subservient to them. Their jurisdiction is the entire world. In the Secret Commonwealth it is said that the CCD have a “magic key” to unlock the powers of national police forces even when they don’t have jurisdiction.

According to Arendt, the role of the secret police in a totalitarian regime is not to discover crimes, but to be on hand when people or entire sections of society need to disappear, which is one of the roles of the CCD within the Magisterium. The police find criminals who are punished. Secret police find undesirables who are vanished. When someone vanishes, they don’t just disappear from the world, their entire existence disappears with them. It is as if they never existed. They are gone forever and have always been gone. Criminals return from the punishment system to society, whereas no one returns from being vanished.

The secret police are also the most important institution of a totalitarian regime. Amongst the shifting pattern of institutions they hold constant power as they enforce discipline. They are the innermost layer of the movement, made up of the most ideological members. This is the role of the CCD and they are amongst the most powerful institutions of the Magisterium. The secret police are also the closest institution to the leader, another key element of a totalitarian movement as identified by Arendt.

The leader

Arendt identified the leader as an essential part of any totalitarian movement. Having a single leader who is all powerful in the movement in key. The leader is someone who is identified with every action of their followers who are acting on his behalf. The opinions of the leader constantly change, however, these are not seen as lies by the members of the movement as they understand the true meaning of the lies. An example that Arendt uses is when Joseph Stalin said that: “Moscow is the only city in the world with subway.” This is evidently not true, as London and many other cities have subways that predate Moscow’s. The members of Stalin’s movement, the Bolshevik Party, saw the true meaning of this which was: “All other subways were built by capitalists which makes bad and we will destroy them.” The underlying ideology of the leader’s words remains the same while the meaning changes.

The leader of the movement described in Pullman’s novels is The Authority, the god of the Magisterium. He is a supreme leader whose words are not questioned, regardless of whether they make sense with corporal reality. His power over the Magisterium is supreme, his secret police do his will and all members of the movement are equal before the leader. The Authority fits closely with Arendt’s description of the leader of a totalitarian movement.

Concentration camps

The final aspect of the Magisterium that relates to the description of a totalitarian movement as laid out by Arendt is the research station of Bolvangar that appears in the first His Dark Materials novel, Northern Lights. You might think that there is nothing in The Origins of Totalitarianism that is similar to an arctic base where the link between children and their demons is cut, but there is one key institution of totalitarianism that is similar. I would argue that Bolvangar is a concentration camp.

Arendt described concentration camps (a feature of all totalitarian regimes) as “the laboratories of totalitarianism” as it was only in these barbaric places that experiments in total domination of human beings could be conducted. It was only in concentration camps that every single aspect of people’s existence be controlled and the dreams of totalitarians be realised. It is in concentration camps that totalitarians conduct their experiments in changing human nature.

As Arendt said, there are no parallel experiences to that of a concentration camp. No reporting or analysis can capture it. The people who went there went to the world of the dead and the living cannot understand the world of the dead. Even those who are returned to life doubt their experiences their and cannot convey them. Concentration camps destroyed individualism and spontaneity and create the ideal subjects of totalitarianism. There is no reasoning behind why people end up in concentration camps as they are not rational institutions. They are kept secret and guarded by only the movements’ most loyal followers as no one else could tolerate their existence.

The Arctic station of Bolvangar is the laboratory of the Magisterium. It’s here they perform their experiments in creating the ideal citizen who is innocent, untouched by Dust and is separated from their daemons. This is done to children who have been seemingly chosen at random and there is no rationality behind this action. Only the very loyal of the followers of Magisterium know about Bolvangar because anyone else would be horrified by such a place. As such, Bolvangar fits Arendt’s description of a concentration camp.

The totalitarian Magisterium

The Magisterium conforms in many ways to how Arendt described a totalitarian movement in her seminal study on what totalitarianism is. Like totalitarianism, the Magisterium is not bound by any law as they claim they represent the laws of nature and history (in the Magisterium’s case the law of god) which are higher than the law of people. We see this in the novels when the Magisterium vanish or kill citizens of countries regardless of the laws of those countries. Terror is the weapon of totalitarianism and it’s the weapon of the Magisterium. So, when I say that in His Dark Materials the Church is a totalitarian institution, I mean that literally.