Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan Lord Protector of England after the execution of King Charles the First, was the first totalitarian dictator in modern history.
Perhaps his face and frame were not posted for all Englishmen to cower under, like some Orwellian nightmare, but the omnipresent oppression of top-down christian virtue -- in truth, anything but -- was the first time in modern history when a group of dedicated intellects effected an attempt to remake the political and cultural identity of a nation.
Early in his reign, Cromwell faced the temptation of torching the archives of Parliament, in a way, a late-renaissance version of the "1984" memory-hole, which would have facilitated Cromwell and his Puritan posse's energetic drive to erase the history of their nation and start anew.
Despite his refusal to do away with the rich legal legacies of his nation and countrymen, he did forcibly instruct his subjects -- men and women who had fought the Crown of England to free themselves from tyranny --
One of the first genocidal minds in history, he plotted the outright extirpation and annihilation of the Irish, ironically enough in order to provide a modern-day Palestine for the Jews, and thus usher in more rapidly the Second Coming of Christ.
What a shame that, in the name of Christian charity, the first modern dictator instigated the first historical, secularist tyranny.
Well did Christian theologian C. S. Lewis write (most likely figuring Oliver Cromwell):
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive."
Quite right! Cromwell was the dictatorial leader of a totalitarian oligarchical state and he was a totalitarian ideologue.
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