“Humanity
is arming itself, in dread and fascinated horror, for a stupendous
crime.” Carl Jung, Archetypes and the Collective
Unconscious
While
we cannot create a heaven on earth, we can create a hell and history
is full of examples. Many of these man-made hells are the result of
war and conquest, but many others are the result of governments
persecuting their own people. Be it the Gulags of the Soviet Union,
the killing fields of Cambodia, the Nazi concentration camps, the
genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda, or the Cultural Revolution in
China, power-hungry political leaders are responsible for the deaths
of millions of people in the 20th century.
How
much have we learned from these recent horrors? Could a modern
democratic government commit a political persecution and kill a
portion of its own population? Are we naĆÆve and sheepish enough to
permit the rise of totalitarian rule.
“.
. .the totalitarian hell proves only that the power of man is greater
than they ever dared to think, and that man can realize hellish
fantasies without making the sky fall or the earth open.” Hannah
Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism
Totalitarian
government is a modern phenomenon. It first emerged in the 20th
century and as Rod Dreher explains:
“…a
totalitarian society is one in which an ideology seeks to displace
all prior traditions and institutions, with the goal of bringing all
aspects of society under control of that ideology. A totalitarian
state is one that aspires to nothing less than defining and
controlling reality.” Rod
Dreher, Live Not by Lies
To
achieve its ideological ends a totalitarian government mobilizes all
the mechanisms of the state to exert a strict top-down control of the
populace, a mass surveillance system is put in place, and all aspects
of life become politicized.
In the
20th century Nazism was the ideology that drove totalitarianism in
Germany, it was Fascism in Italy, while in Asia and other parts of
Europe it was Communism. Today a new totalitarian ideology appears to
be taking root. This ideology is built on the belief that at current
population levels human beings are parasitic creatures, and if
allowed to be free, will run roughshod over mother earth. Harmony can
be returned to our planet, and ecological disaster averted, but only
if certain politicians and bureaucrats are granted the power to
control our lives. What to eat, what type of energy to use, where to
work, how to spend one’s recreation time, how many children to
have, and where one travels – all these questions are to be
answered by the totalitarian ruling class, not by free individuals
planning their lives within the law and order of a free society.
“The
controlling mind [of the totalitarian] foresees a paradise in which
every action and every object is monitored, labeled, and controlled.
There will be no room for any bad thing to exist. Nothing and no one
will be out of place.” Charles
Eisenstein, Fascism and the Antifestival
Will
we in the modern world allow another group of sick minds the
opportunity to remake society in the image of a deluded ideology?
Will we permit the rise of totalitarian rule? If we do the result
will be same as it was in the 20th century, society will be
destroyed, poverty will be the norm, and many people will be killed.
To understand why every time totalitarianism is tried it devolves
into mass killings by the government in power, we must examine the
mind of the totalitarian politician and bureaucrat. For when we
understand the pathologies that afflict these individuals it will be
clear why totalitarians will drive society into ruin before
abandoning course and admitting failure.
A
first characteristic of the politicians and bureaucrats who make up
the totalitarian government is that they are deluded true believers
in their ideology. They are convinced, in other words, that what they
are trying to accomplish is for the good of humanity and that society
would be worse off absent their rule. The totalitarian mind is
similar to the schizophrenic mind. It believes the web of delusions
in which it is caught; it sticks to its ideological model of the
world in the face of disconfirming evidence; and it tends to hate
those who try to pierce its illusions.
A
second characteristic of totalitarians is that they hold a
contemptuous view of the masses and see normal men and women as
inferior and incapable of making good choices. For their own good, it
follows, and for the good of mother earth, the masses must obey the
government. Totalitarians also tend to view the masses as unneeded,
in such large numbers, for the realization of their ideological aims
and so view whole segments of the populace as useless eaters who are
overpopulating the world.
“Only
where great masses are [viewed as] superfluous. . .is totalitarian
rule. . .at all possible.” Hannah
Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism
A
further characteristic of totalitarians is their tendency to judge
moral issues through a utilitarian lens. When making policy
decisions, in other words, totalitarians tend to use the criteria of
the greatest good, for the greatest number of people as the
justification for their actions. Individual rights matter little to
the utilitarian, what matters is the good of the collective and to
the totalitarian the good of the collective always means achieving
its ideological ends. This utilitarian approach to moral issues is
reflective of a very disturbed mind, or as Iain McGilchrist explains:
“The
tendency to adopt a calculating and utilitarian approach in judging
moral issues is more marked in those with reduced aversion to harming
others, lower trait empathy, higher psychoticism (which is itself
characterised by reduced empathy and emotional blunting). . .and
greater Machiavellianism. It is also characteristic of the moral
thinking of psychopaths. . .” Iain
McGilchrist, The Matter with Things
A
deluded true believer in a utopian ideology, viewing him or herself
as a superior being, seeing the world as overpopulated, and judging
moral issues through a utilitarian lens, such is the mind of a
totalitarian, and such is a mind capable of committing a mass
atrocity. After totalitarians have taken power, all that is needed to
initiate the process of political persecution is the inevitable
failure of their rule. And fail they will, as all attempts to control
society in a strict top-down manner are doomed from the start. The
more order the totalitarians try to impose on a society the more
chaos they create, and with such chaos comes a never-ending series of
crises. But when the crises come instead of admitting that the fault
lies with their rule, totalitarians deflect blame to others through
the process of scapegoating. For as true believers totalitarians
never consider the possibility that the crisis is a by-product of
trying to force a deluded ideology on society through top-down
control. Rather they convince themselves, and strive to convince
others, that responsibility for the crisis lies elsewhere.
Who is
to be offered as the scapegoat? In the early stages of totalitarian
rule, it is the non-believer or dissident who becomes the scapegoat
for government failures. Such individuals are blamed for
disseminating misinformation and sabotaging the ability of the
government to fix the crisis. A quick utilitarian calculus will deem
free speech expendable when the benefit, in the mind of the
totalitarian, is quicker progress toward ideological aims. But this
cracking down on free speech is but a preliminary step, and a
dangerous warning sign, that a society is moving in the direction of
a violent political persecution, for as Arthur Versluis explains:
“Key
to this transformation [of the totalitarian] into [the role of] a
persecutor is a set of doctrines that one holds to be absolute or
universal truth: thus everyone else is made into an unbeliever, or a
traitor. . .It is only a short step from this to the belief that
one’s duty is to impose the doctrines on everyone else, and that
such an imposition is for “their own good,” or for the “good of
society.” From this point, it is not far to persecuting the
recalcitrant and, in the frenzy of persecution, only a small further
step to rationalize even mass murder under the guise of “the
greater good”.” Arthur
Versluis, The New Inquisitions
To
move from the mere silencing of dissidents, to imprisoning and
committing violence against them, totalitarians must turn them into
what Hannah Arendt calls the objective enemy. The objective enemy is
the ultimate scapegoat. These people are not guilty of any crimes,
nor are they a threat to society, rather they are men and women whose
way of life is incongruent with the totalitarian ideology. The
objective enemy could be a certain ethnicity, they could be owners of
private property in a communist country, or they could be the
educated class, as in communist Cambodia. Or as Arendt explains:
“.
. .the Jews in Nazi Germany or the descendants of the former ruling
classes in Soviet Russia were not really suspected of any hostile
action; they had been declared “objective” enemies of the regime
in accordance with its ideology. . .the [objective enemy] is never an
individual whose dangerous thoughts must be provoked or whose past
justifies suspicion, but a “carrier of tendencies” like the
carrier of a disease.” Hannah
Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism
Rampant
and repetitive propaganda is the tool used to create the objective
enemy, and in this situation words matter. For it is the terminology
with which the objective enemy is branded that eventually convinces
the totalitarians, and much of the public, that violence can
legitimately be used against them. Or as Donald Dutton writes in his
book The Psychology of Genocide:
“…a
common perception of [totalitarians] is that their target group are
vermin or a virus.” Donald
Dutton, The Psychology of Genocide
As the
crisis intensifies, so too will the propaganda used to demonize the
objective enemy. The totalitarians will become increasingly desperate
to deflect blame, and with free speech outlawed those with sane and
reasoned opinions will find it increasingly difficult to reveal the
absurdity of the totalitarian’s claims. The masses will be
desperate as well – wanting to escape from the misery of a society
deteriorating and an economy collapsing, they too will need someone
to blame. If the propaganda is successful, the frustration of the
masses will turn toward the objective enemy and the ground will be
paved for the ultimate crime to be committed:
“If
the [objective enemies] are vermin,” writes Arendt “it is logical
that they should be killed by poison gas; if they are degenerate,
they should not be allowed to contaminate the population. . .”
Hannah Arendt, Origins of
Totalitarianism
But it
is not the ruling class who commits the violence against the
objective enemy, but so-called normal men and women who occupy lower
levels of government bureaucracies. How can these individuals commit
such horrific crimes? And how can such a large segment of the
population be convinced to support the political persecution, or at
least to stand idly by and watch as innocent men and women are
stripped of their rights, imprisoned, and then sent to an early
grave?
“The
road to totalitarian domination leads through many intermediate
stages . . .[during this process] what common sense and “normal
people” refuse to believe is that everything is possible.” Hannah
Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism
from
academyofideas.com on July 14, 2022