That’s more pleasant to live through than Nineteen Eighty-Four

Friday, October 2nd, 2020

Rod Dreher discusses his new book, Live Not By Lies:

Let’s start with some basic definitions. Authoritarianism is when a non-democratic government has a monopoly on politics. Totalitarianism is when an authoritarian government expands its claim to power to cover every aspect of life – including the inner life of its citizens. Stalinism, or hard totalitarianism, achieved that through terror and pain. This kind of system is what every American high school student read about in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. I wouldn’t say it could never come here, but I don’t really think it will.

Instead, we are building a kinder, gentler version. What awakened the Soviet-bloc emigres is the way political correctness has jumped over the walls of the universities and is both intensifying and spreading through society’s institutions. The forms it takes, the language that it uses to justify itself, and the way that it tolerates absolutely no dissent – all of this is truly totalitarian.

What makes it soft? A couple of things. First, it is emerging within a democratic system, within the institutions of liberal democracy, without a state monopoly on power. Second, and more importantly, the emerging totalitarian system will not coerce compliance through pain and terror, but more from manipulating our comforts, including status. It will be more like the dystopia in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. That’s more pleasant to live through than Nineteen Eighty-Four, but it’s still totalitarian, and it will still have major long-term effects.

[...]

In 1951, the great political theorist Hannah Arendt published The Origins of Totalitarianism, the results of her investigation into how Nazism and Communism arose. Though the two ideologies were very different in most respects, they appealed to the same longings in the masses, who saw in them a solution to their grave problems. Reading Arendt in our time was shocking to me, because I realized that most of the signs of a pre-totalitarian society are flashing strongly in ours.

For example, Arendt said that loneliness was the greatest source of totalitarianism – that desperately lonely people were looking for meaning, purpose, and solidarity with others. They found it in totalitarian political ideology. Sociologists have been warning for years now that we have reached dangerously unhealthy levels of loneliness and atomization in our “Bowling Alone” society.

Also, the loss of respect for hierarchy, traditional authority, and the decline of the institutions of civil society, opened the door for totalitarianism. The desire to transgress – that is, to destroy things for the sake of destroying them – were key factors. Another: the willingness of the masses to believe things they knew were untrue, or probably untrue, but that made them feel good.

There are others. None of this means that totalitarianism is inevitable, but it means we are especially susceptible to it. Arendt said that liberal societies will always have to contend with an inner voice that says it can’t happen here, when the 20th century proves that yes, it actually can.

[...]

[Father Tomislav Kolakovic, to whom the book is dedicated] was a Catholic priest who arrived in Slovakia in 1943, fleeing the Gestapo. He told students at the Catholic university that their country was going to fall to Communism after the war, and that as Christians, they needed to prepare themselves. The Communists were going to severely persecute the Church. Some bishops thought he was alarmist, but Father Kolakovic got busy organizing young people into cells for prayer and study – including studying the art of building a resistance.

In 1948, the Iron Curtain fell over their country. Everything Father Kolakovic predicted came true. But the network of faithful Christians he had built around Slovakia became the backbone of the underground church. I dedicate Live Not By Lies to him because I think it’s 1943 in America today, and we all need to look to his example for guidance and inspiration.

In fact, it’s strange how history moves. When I was in the Soviet bloc interviewing people who survived Communism, some of them talked about how grateful they were to Americans for standing with them during the Cold War, and offering them hope. Now, as a very different kind of totalitarianism threatens us in the West, they are in a position to return the gift of solidarity and hope. The stories these people trusted me with, and that I tell in the book, are going to be seen one day as a lifeline to truth, to sanity, and to hope.

Comments

  1. C. Matt says:

    “within the institutions of liberal democracy, without a state monopoly on power.“

    The State, by definition, always has a monopoly on power. Power derives from the use of force. Only the State has the monopoly to use force without repercussion.

    What the State has done in our times is best described as anarcho-tyranny. Essentially outsourcing the right to use force to those private groups with which it agrees through selective enforcement of any encroachment on its monopoly of force. In reality, it is not different or “soft”, it is just outsourced.

  2. C. Matt says:

    What Dreher leaves out (or does not want to consider) is that coercion through manipulation of comforts and status will, if acceptable results are not reached, give way to infliction of pain. Brave New World is only stage 1.

  3. Guy says:

    “Now, as a very different kind of totalitarianism threatens us in the West”

    Sorry, different how exactly?

    From what I can see it’s the same bullshit communist infection playing out.

    A) Communists win.
    B) Normal, decent human beings shoot all of the communists.

    Is there another outcome?

  4. Wang Wei Lin says:

    Similar points are made by Eric Hoffer in his book The True Believer. He touches on the individual issues. The prominent characteristic being that the rioters are misfits and losers seeking purpose. Being incapable of creating anything useful they choose to destroy. Just like Antifa and BLM.

  5. Adar says:

    YES. Authoritarian wants you just to comply. The totalitarian wants you to comply and also be an enthusiast for the new way.

    Black Lives Matter. All the companies without coercion just making enormous contributions to the cause and overtly expressing support over and over.

  6. Dave says:

    “Is there another outcome?”

    A parasite can either (A) grow unchecked until its host dies, (B) provoke an effective immune response, or (C) acknowledge its parasitic nature and moderate its taxation to a level that the host can bear. “We must preserve capitalism to pay for socialism”, said Lula da Silva after becoming President.

    The problem with (C) is that Communism is like a shark: If for any reason it cannot swim forward, it dies.

  7. Kentucky Headhunter says:

    Is Dreher the guy who supports the “Benedict option”? The idea that we could build our own communities and the government would leave us alone? Yeah, fat chance.

  8. Lucklucky says:

    A Democracy can be Totalitarian. If the majority votes that everyone must wear only yellow(or other) color cloths what you would call it?

    Totalitarianism is absence of Individuality.

    There is also this definition by an Israeli historian J.L.Talmon

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarian_democracy

    J. L. Talmon’s 1952 book The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy discusses the transformation of a state in which traditional values and articles of faith shape the role of government into one in which social utility takes absolute precedence. His work is a criticism of the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose political philosophy greatly influenced the French Revolution, the growth of the Enlightenment across Europe, as well the overall development of modern political and educational thought. In The Social Contract, Rousseau contends that the interests of the individual and the state are one and the same, and it is the state’s responsibility to implement the “general will”.

  9. Bob Sykes says:

    Indeed, the Founders feared the tyranny of the majority, and installed many obstacles to democracy: the Electoral College, the Senate, the Bill of Rights, the Supreme Court. Well, maybe not the Supreme Court. Marshall turned that into an anti-democratic bulwark, but everyone had the good sense to let him do it.

  10. Harry Jones says:

    It worked for the Amish. For the Branch Davidians, not so much. Seems it’s a crapshoot.

  11. Senexada says:

    The famous Handle has reappeared with a 10,000+ word review.

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