What is totalitarianism?

There is a meaningful talk-back to the article mentioned in one of my recent posts, where I argued that in a democratic society the government has no right to make decisions regarding the utility of money for different groups of the population. If you are interested in this problem, I recommend reading the whole talk-back - it presents various points of view, and contains many grains of wisdom.

I would like to point out only the exchange regarding my definition of totalitarianism as a system, which suppresses the rights of an individual for the sake of the well-being of the nation (the corresponding decisions inevitably made by somebody in the government):

Me: "At best, taking someone's property against his/her will is simple robbery... at worst it defines the difference between a democratic society that protects the rights of an individual and a totalitarian one."

Someone called "Modicum":
"No. I think you'll find that the difference between a totalitarian state and democracy has to do with, you know, the absence of elections and independent courts, secret police, imprisonment without trial, torture chambers, genocide, etc. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the marginal tax rates paid by high earners or with providing healthcare to poor folk. The suggestion is frivilous and insulting to the memory of the victims of genuine oppression."

My reply to this:
"This is confusing the reason and the consequence. Totalitarianism puts the good of the nation above the rights of an individual. How far it will go in suppressing these rights is a matter of quantity, not quality.

Nazis, for example, started with merely restricting the rights of the Jews to own property and it took for them more than 10 years to arrive to gas chambers. On the other hand, communists in Russia began right away with exterminating those, whose "utility" for the future society they deemed too low. Yet, several decades later USSR had all the visible attributes of a democratic state - elections, courts, no imprisonment without trial etc."