What is Totalitarianism?
Totalitarianism is a form of authority in which people enforce the will of the dominant ideology without being told to do so. They act as if the imposed authority of an other is a natural-born idea of their own, so they are acting on their own will. (Ideology means a system of ideas.) Totalitarianism is a mentality in which people oppress themselves and others as if it were the right thing to do. The oppression is socially accepted to the point where it is not recognized as oppression and is seen as normal.
Examples of these ideas are hating or dehumanizing people when they do not have homes or are driven to commit low-tier crimes even if for an understandable reason; Obeying the institution of policing no matter what they do; Believing capitalism or so-called democratic governments are always good, inevitable, or beyond discussion; Gender or racial stereotypes that are socially acted out and reified through case studies used in intellectually dishonest ways. (Reification is a word for the process of making something— an idea or opinion— into reality. That thing is usually assumed to be a fabrication.)
True reality is not a one-sided thing that can be arrived at conclusively in simple statements. It is a complex unfolding of situations which we understand a percentage of and that understanding is useful up to a certain limit. We always have something to learn and understanding is the acceptance of many perspectives, angles, and nuances. The exception to the rule is not to be written off but understood as a part of or the beginning of what we don’t understand yet. Reified reality tries to represent reality in its totality and is mostly opinions or incomplete knowledge strewn as truth.
Another example of totalitarianism is one used by Slavoj Zizek when he explains totalitarianism as a more embedded form of authoritarianism. He uses the example of a parent who tells their child to call their grandmother. The authoritarian parent simply commands the child to call their grandparents. In this dynamic, it is easier to rebel. The totalitarian parent would say you know your grandmother loves you. If you love your grandmother, you will call her. It is posed more as a choice but it is a fake choice because the consequence is shame, guilt, or nagging. It is meant to make it seem like you freely chose it so that it is harder to rebel. Another example he uses is how these days bosses and managers try to be friendly with employees to make it seem like they freely choose to obey or cooperate with the boss. They bond with them and the whole situation becomes more favorable to the boss who still has authority over their employees. In a classical situation where the boss commands their employees, they are more likely to develop rebellious tendencies.
When people are embedded in totalitarianism their ideas about life and society are warped and controlled by the authority figure through the embedding of their power as a social norm that is accepted. That type of thing is achieved through parenting, education, and peer influence. People then tend to believe things without the need to justify or prove them and when the need to defend ideas arises those people with the embedded idea lean on the dominant ideology to bail them out. To do that they employ a kind of arrogance by borrowing from the ego of the dominator and employing a libidinal technique where ideas are accepted based on personal energetic ecstasy by relating to the dominant sexual form. In our case, the dominant (prevailing) sexual form is dominance itself.
Totalitarianism in Real Life
For example, alt-right manosphere content uses libidinal techniques and ego to shame men into being right-wing. Someone will bring up a feminist issue of some sort and the alt-right man will point to a submissive woman and say that women are weak or something to that effect. They point to a man who does not abuse women as some sort of lackey or punk who has no pride and gets used by women. Then they point to a man who has money and abuses women as successful to drive home a point that then gets accepted and reified. They will leave out any exceptions. They’ll downplay or chastise any negative consequences those people face. They will also leave out the history of how these conditions came to be (refer to Caliban and The Witch by Silvia Federici as a source for how the oppression/ enslavement of women began). Furthermore, they will basically use humiliation and intellectual dishonesty to avoid any other challenge to the argument.
Almost any situation in our culture of cruelty can be looked at and analyzed as totalitarianism because it most likely has an element of totalitarianism within it. As long as a viewpoint cannot be defended using logic or honest ideas then it is probably totalitarianism. If the logic of the argument reaches an end that is unjustifiable with conflicting evidence then the idea is most likely a myth being reified. Hatred towards others, ideas relating to the viability of slavery of different kinds, and ideas regarding meaning and joy are all susceptible to totalitarianism.
Different Trojan horses are used to slip people into totalitarianism including culture, human nature, social norms, or sexuality.
A case that most Americans will accept as totalitarian is the Soviet Union or Communist China and for good reason. They were in fact very totalitarian. The dominant ideology is imposed upon the people by a central cult figure who poses as the representation of the people’s will. Anyone who opposed this person or the central governing body was labeled as an enemy of the people. The people then were punished very easily for disobeying. People would get informed on spontaneously by people who were embedded with those ideas.
This is similar to how in criminal court in America defendants are prosecuted by the so-called people.
The category of the people is a nebulous— unspecified— group that prosecutes others with an implicit higher authority. The idea of God is also used in the same setting. It avoids the responsibility of these ideas actually being the opinions of a small ruling minority who has achieved their power through those brainwashing— totalitarian— methods.
The Trump phenomenon is exactly that. Trump, his strategizers, and investors use him as a cult figure to impose mythical ideas on his supporters. The ideas are posed as things that people already believe even if they don’t. They might already believe the idea but that is because the oppressive and repressive ideas are not new, only the cult figure is new. The media on all sides of the political spectrum function to reify his presence as legitimate by giving him a platform in the first place. They make it seem like what he says could be accepted at all. His supporters don’t actually prove his ideas as correct they simply ecstatically announce them and reify them by embodying them using hats or slogans but never complete intellectual arguments. He threatens to try and make everyone (not just his supporters) accept his ideas. He often praises autocrats in Europe and Asia who have already accomplished a complete totalitarian hold over their governments.
In America, totalitarianism functions in any case as American pride. Most Americans denounce those who denounce America. Pride in America is seen as almost mandatory to be a citizen or else people say, “if you don’t like it then leave.” It was not very long ago when communists were being black-listed and put in concentration camps for engaging in their political projects.
Combating Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism as a form of control is different from communism— an economic system in which the means of production are owned by the producers and used by all.
Communism at this point in time is a dirty word that does not have much potential to transform itself into a liberatory philosophy or useful economic policy.
The anti-ideological or anti-totalitarian method to transform our economic system from one owned by a few stakeholders to one that is not owned requires a new approach. The stakeholders own the economy, so they own our labor. Since they own our labor, they own the majority of our lives and seek to dominate our essence through that process.
Our essence, of course, supersedes our labor alone. Those who can escape ideology and totalitarianism have the freedom to own their essence even if they can’t escape the economic hold on their lives. They can become more than what the system makes of them. They have the potential to be truly alive and revolutionary. They can create forms of life that cannot be locked down by intellectual dishonesty, manipulation, or the sort. However, their liberation isn’t complete until they can take back that part of their life that is owned by the minority owners of the economy.
The base motivation and impulse for the fight for liberation comes down to what we truly feel rather than what we are told to feel or have been made to think through trauma and abuse.
Understanding totalitarianism is important because we encounter it every day: in music, media, social settings, conversations, and so on. Things like ego traps regarding money or status are some of the most common experiences we have— even if unspoken. The high-wage worker is implied to have more dignity than the low-wage one. People make music mocking broke people, low-wage workers, or workers in general. Gone are the times of worker solidarity and personal pride for one’s labor. People are more proud to do nothing and exploit others. That dynamic alone is responsible for almost all the stagnation of true discourse. Rather than discussing actual issues and topics, people resort to not caring and quarreling over how their money or status makes them healthy, wise, or superior. They resign themselves to the importance of getting money and dominating others.
That is all totalitarianism. It doesn’t feel organically good. It doesn’t create a better world. It is often enforced unnaturally. It comes off as natural because “look someone chose to make that music… these people look happy… it is a majority opinion” etc. Behind the scenes, the small minority is still pulling the strings and deciding what gets promoted. It later gets reified because, after all, those things are the only thing getting pushed/ promoted. Then that does become the only way to make money from the craft and hence survive.
Survival has the final word in most people’s lives. The courageous throughout the ages have played with that edge of risking death to overcome their oppression— their oppressors. The truth is that it would be remarkably easy to overcome the false power of the small minority if we collectively evolved intellectually to not allow these false realities to continue which allow us to live but only in repressed and messed-up ways. It is our power they are using, buying, and manipulating.
To overcome it all requires culture, courage, and being savvy. It takes time and work to understand, unlearn, and develop new cultures and patterns that align more with harmonious ways of life—ways of life more in favor of nourishing our spirit. At base, it should be important to all people to eliminate abuse and subservience in favor of good relations, autonomy, and responsibility.
To finish off with a sharp image: Totalitarianism is like a dog putting a leash on themself and walking themself around. That is the main mechanism controlling us. If someone was simply holding the leash we could have overthrown them long ago. A group of dogs as large as our population could easily overpower the ones holding the leash.
This brings up further topics regarding domestication and deep anthropological studies that could support these points. That study is better left for another essay explaining our current situation as humanity. Just know that it can change, it has changed before, and it will be changed again. The spirit cannot be defeated. We will fight!
