Arthur Koestler is an important witness and analyst of the totalitarian phenomenon of the twentieth century. After A Spanish Testament and Darkness at Noon, The Scum of the Earth, a manuscript written between January and March 1941, from London, recounts the French period of 1939-1940, the arbitrary round-ups, the persecutions and camps, and the flight from France.

For Ariane Bilheran, clinical psychologist, author of Psychopathologie de la paranoïa (Psychopathology of Paranoia) and Psychopathologie de l'autorité (Psychopathology of Authority) (Dunod), our societies are sinking into totalitarianism.