The greatest lie ever told about totalitarianism by the left is that totalitarian movements are in fact a few strong men or Übermensch imposing their will on the unwilling participants. That people like Trump or Gavin Newsom are the embodiment of this at the federal or state levels. The opposite of this is actually true. This subtle correction to the simplistic "dictator imposes tyranny on everyone" model flips the script on the mindless liberal assertion of one powerful person taking over the masses.
Totalitarian movements generally require mass participation, or at least substantial popular mobilization. They don't merely suppress an unwilling society from above; they seek to transform society from within-through propaganda, ideological conformity, political organizations, rallies, protests, surveillance and pressure to demonstrate enthusiasm organically that is actually artificial.
The paradox is that coercion and consent can coexist and are not mutually exclusive. A population may initially embrace a movement (BLM, Trans rights, etc, participate actively in and genuinely believe its ideology, while the resulting regime simultaneously destroys alternatives and makes dissent increasingly dangerous and then destroys these ‘useful idiots’.
Hannah Arendt emphasized something like this in The Origins of Totalitarianism. Totalitarian movements drew power from mass society and sought to organize otherwise politically atomized people into an ideological movement. In other words, the rogues, those left out or perceived as left out or the lone gunmen and lunatics. The "strong man" is therefore not the whole explanation; the movement and its mass base matter enormously if it is to succeed. A distinction needs to be made though.
Authoritarianism primarily asks people to obey. Totalitarianism seeks to mobilize them -to make them participate in, identify with, and reproduce the ideology of the regime. That is the reason totalitarianism can be more socially invasive and violent than ordinary dictatorship. That is why we are seeing a mobilization of the weak and marginalized in society to protest law-abiding agents of change such as ICE and other paramilitary organizations incorporated by the sitting government.
Recruiting the weak and the isolated creates a mass of weak individuals that imposes its will on a majority of sane and responsible citizens. We see it in the transgender movement, in the lunacy of the post partum killer Lindsay Clancy, and similar support of otherwise insane ideologies. At its core it is cultural Marxism. For this Marxism to take over it needs to isolate and kill of its main threat. The masculine male in a traditional male role…father, soldier, leader. Modern progressives believe that if they suppress the male drive toward strength, tyranny stays caged. They have it completely backwards and support the destructive outcome of putting weak morally rudderless males or even morally debased women in charge.
This ‘collectivism’ runs on social causes regardless of how depraved or mental they are. They enforcement by what should be considered ‘consensus enforcement’ or the ‘will of the mob’. What Americans should really be doing is shifting our focus from the so-called dictator or predator complex (Trump as Hitler) and realize that we need focus on the isolated individual as a recruit for collective power and the recruiters. The people like those supporting Lindsey Clancy, the would-be assassins of Trump and the morally bankrupt media recruitment agents. They are the cooperative agents in the hidden tyrannical takeover.
In other worlds, true totalitarians regimes exploit isolated and politically aggravated people. This applies to both sides of the aisle in America too. Both view themselves as the underdog and oppressed. Both willing to resort to violence to make a point. The left being quicker to pull the trigger than the right. The truth and time has shown that suppressing individual strength doesn't necessarily prevent tyranny; if anything, a population of fragmented, dependent, and socially insecure individuals are easier for an organized movement to mobilize.
The protesting of the oddball left therefore needs to be seen as ‘consensus enforcement’ and is born of a weak population too beta-ized and demasculinized to stand on its own. Through this weakness the true dictator steps in to take advantage of the weak and feebleminded. People who outsource their lives to the state and look to it for rescue from an existence they cannot bear. Ostracism, reputational ruin, and cancellation work best on those too frail to face rejection. A mind that judges independently, backed by a spine willing to absorb the anger that follows, is the only thing that stands against a mass movement. That is exactly why ‘acceptance’ is not only desired by the progressive left, it is demanded.
The one trait that defends against this tyranny, masculinity, is then labeled as toxic an undesirable, harmful of even extreme. There is even a biological and scientific support of this argument. Testosterone in men has fallen roughly 1% a year since the 1980s, a decline the endocrinology literature documents independent of age. A man today carries meaningfully less than his father did at the same stage of life. A growing body of research points one direction. As alcoholism and drug use increase, testosterone falls even more. As testosterone falls, so does the capacity to withstand social pressure. We are building a society where the internal capacity for dissent is falling while institutions raise the penalty for dissenting. Compliance is expected. Compounding this fact, increasingly women, more physically vulnerable by nature, move into positions of power and men grow weaker, the herd instinct that drives every collective movement takes hold due to sheer numbers or rule of the mob, not actual strength.
At this point, the herd is the precondition for every totalitarian project. The volume of sheer numbers an the mindlessness of the mob wins over the individual masculine resistance. Like a white blood cell being overwhelmed by a horde of diseased cells or a malignant cancer. The immune response to stop the spread of contagion is overwhelmed by design. The diseased cell attacks the healthy one by surrounding it, suffocating and killing it.
What is the easiest way to stop this? It is also happens to be the hardest. It requires a critical mass of strong, independent, responsible individuals, enough to outweigh the compliant mass. It begins with the refusal to pretend that sexual perversion and gender identities are okay. That illegal immigrant invaders can just do as they please. That no-fault divorce is okay and raping men blind of everything they invested in a family is a legal recourse for unemployed women with a vendetta. That women can wantonly murder children in the womb and the medical establishment gets away with calling it healthcare.
As Carl Jung wrote, resistance to the organized mass can only be affected by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the parasitic mass is itself. The best defense against a dangerous but organized mass isn't simply physical aggression or "strength," but an individual sufficiently integrated to withstand the psychological cost of disagreeing with the group.
To summarize: Societies become weak and vulnerable when individuals become psychologically, economically, and socially dependent on institutions for identity and security. Conformity is the logical out come in oppressive societies like this because dissent then carries severely higher reputational costs. We all saw this during COVID if someone actively resisted or refused vaccination. A free society doesn't merely need citizens who are willing to resist a tyrant…it needs citizens willing and capable of resisting their own neighbors and family if morally required. Sometimes...you just have to do the hard thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment