Sleepwalking into totalitarianism – Part 1

How our 'liberal' democracies are becoming illiberal and increasingly totalitarian

In this two-part essay I describe my observations of the growing totalitarianism in the Western world in recent years. As I say in this first part, in the beginning, wokeism was not driven by governments. It was a kind of soft totalitarianism, a decentralised system of elite control. Then came the highly authoritarian response to Covid, with some totalitarian elements, especially towards the end. 

In the second part of the essay I will provide evidence of how Western governments are now becoming increasingly totalitarian in the name of 'saving democracy', as they say, and I will explore what might be the reasons that have led us to this situation and some ideas of what we can do about it.

I know that the core argument I make in this essay is not new. It has been made many times over the last three years or so. It is more, in the so-called dissident circles of which I know some it has become received wisdom that in the Western world the totalitarian tendencies are advancing frighteningly fast.

At the same time, I am well aware that most people I know, and many of my readers, would still completely reject the idea that our liberal democracies are themselves becoming illiberal or showing signs of totalitarianism. Most people in Western Europe are still convinced that the main threat to our democracies comes from the populist right or from foreign authoritarian regimes, not from those who claim to defend liberal democracy.

While I'm under no illusion that this essay will convince those who firmly believe that the story we're living is one of the good guys (the liberal progressives) fighting the bad guys (the right-wing enemies), my hope is that there are still enough open-minded people who are willing to be convinced by evidence and logic.

I'm not going to argue that Putin is actually a good guy, or that far-right ideology and ideas are never dangerous. But the purpose of this essay is to show, as best I can, that too many representatives of our political and cultural elites, who are generally perceived as the good guys, are in fact developing a totalitarian mindset, and too many people are mindlessly accepting and often even cheering the manipulative steps that are leading us towards a totalitarian society.

One indicator that something bad is happening in our societies is the recent surge in references to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's 1984. For example, in mid-2022, when the Biden administration announced the formation of the so-called "Disinformation Governance Board" to combat disinformation and misinformation, “Ministry of Truth” trended on Twitter (now X).

But what do I mean when I say that we are sleepwalking into totalitarianism?

The concept of totalitarianism is contested among scholars. However, all definitions include the subordination of the individual to state authority and strict control over all aspects of life. Some scholars stress that while both the authoritarian and the totalitarian state discourage individual freedom of thought and action, the totalitarian state differs in that it is guided by a strong and highly developed ideology and aims to impose a new social value system through coercion and repression (see for example Encyclopaedia Britannica).

By contrast, pluralism and tolerance are (or perhaps I should say were) the essential elements of Western liberal democracies. Open discourse is the key mechanism by which political decisions are made in a liberal democracy. It allows different interests to compete and be balanced. Most importantly, open discourse has driven the creative energy that has been at the heart of the success of our free societies.

The question, then, is whether there are signs that our Western societies are moving away from the principles of liberal democracy and are instead moving closer towards the characteristics of totalitarian societies, or whether we as societies and our governments are firmly committed to the principles of pluralism, tolerance, open discourse and freedom of speech.

The case I'm making in this essay is that there is now overwhelming evidence that we are moving dangerously towards a totalitarian system, even though formally all the democratic institutions are still in place and we are still some miles away from something like a Soviet system. It is still possible to say most things without being taken to court even if this is changing rapidly, as I will explain.