The Silent Sickness of Totalitarianism
Are you comfortable with totalitarianism? What about authoritarianism? For most people living in a free society, the answer would be a definite no.
The question, I think, is more complicated than it seems. Today, when we imagine what totalitarianism looks like, we assume that it resembles Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia: we think of them at the height of their power and violence; we think about the Holocaust, World War II, massive work camps, or the Cold War; we think about millions of people dead. “These are,” we say, “true totalitarian governments.” And, of course, our analysis would be accurate. These are some of the best examples of totalitarianism.
But is that all a totalitarian government is? Is it all bloodshed, violence, and suppression? I don’t think so. Totalitarianism can come in many forms and can manifest at any time. It can be subtle; it can be sneaky; it can burrow itself into any institution, into any public or private sphere; it can even shapeshift into a form resembling our deepest ideological wishes. And, even worse, it is unpredictable; it can evolve from a benign clump of cells to a cancerous tumor that ravages its political and governmental body.
Some think we’re living through the early stages of such a societal sickness. Some, such as Andrew Sullivan, think that the tyrannical disease has a name: Donald Trump. Others, like Rod Dreher, believe that our technology, our educational systems, and all our institutions are taking us down a “soft totalitarian” road, a form of tyranny that shows no symptoms until we are already dying.
Maybe they’re both wrong. And maybe they’re both right. Certainly, our political and societal bodies are sick; certainly, Donald Trump is an extremely flawed figure; certainly, our institutions are broken, perhaps beyond repair; and we are, certainly, more divided than we have been in an extremely long time. The circumstances are ripe for totalitarianism to sneak in.
How, exactly, does totalitarianism manifest? Often, it begins by reshaping the past. And we’ve already seen a few explicit examples from both sides of the political aisle.
Take, for example, The New York Times’ controversial 1619 Project: it argues that the true founding of America is 1619, when the first slaves arrived in the British colonies from Africa. And, not only was the American Revolution fought in an attempt by the Founding Fathers to maintain the institution of slavery, but, as a result of this sin, the entire history of the US is inextricably linked to racism and discrimination.
At least, that’s what the 1619 Project did argue. Now, it seems, they’re backtracking on their revisionist claims. Not only has the Project’s leader, Nikole Hannah-Jones (who has since won a Pulitzer for her work), deleted her tweets affirming this original claim, but the 1619 Project’s website has recently gone back and removed any claims that the Project ever argued that America’s founding date was not 1776.
The most generous interpretation of this recent development may be that Hannah-Jones and the Times has realized their mistake. But this is not likely. Hannah-Jones continues to deny ever arguing to change the date of America’s birth, and it has now been revealed that the Times ran its incredibly popular Project against the judgment of a historian’s fact-check, who, along with other leaders in the field of Revolutionary America, found egregious mistakes in the Project’s claims.
Despite these errors, it was revealed that the Project was being taught in public schools. Many conservative and liberal journalists and historians were outraged.
Then, last Thursday, the president stepped in.
On September 17th, in honor of Constitution Day, Trump held a press conference at the National Archives, where he announced that he would be, as a counter to the “discredited” 1619 Project, establishing the 1776 Commission, which would would seek to create a new “patriotic” curriculum that would counteract the “Marxist doctrine holding that America is a wicked and racist nation.”
It seems, unfortunately, that President Trump is largely operating in the same mode as the Times; his 1776 Commission offers little in terms of truth and may deliver similarly shoddy history. It appears that, when Trump says he wants a “patriotic” education, he means a whitewashed one, one that skimps over the murder, theft, and even, perhaps, genocide of Native Americans and Black slaves, or one that forgets the discrimination handed to Black Americans until the Civil Rights movement.
Perhaps I’m being too harsh or too quick to judge the President’s words. Perhaps his Commission will actually be a balanced account of American history. But there also another problem that arises out of Trump’s attempt to counteract the postmodern dogma inundating students, and one that most Trump supporters seem to forget: that his Commission isn’t conservative. In fact, it plays the same soft totalitarian game as the 1619 Project does.
Historically, conservatives detest government interference – the smaller the government, most of them think, the better. But Trump’s Commission – like many aspects of his presidency – haven’t been concerned with limiting government. Every day, it seems, he signs another executive order.
To left-of-center folks, I get it: the concern that Trump is whitewashing history is a real worry, and only time will tell what 1776 Commission’s finished product will look like. But blindly subscribing to bad ideas without truly testing them simply because they affirm your preconceived notions is to play the same game as actual historical whitewashers. To right-of-center folks, I also get it: you want to the president to get rid of ahistorical, smearing lies about the country, and to get rid of harmful ideologies like Critical Race Theory. But you, too, must be consistent; you, too, must not be afraid of difficult historical truths because it makes you squirm in your seat.
The 1619 Project’s bad history, their subsequent coverup, and their campaign to get such lies into our schools is a form of soft totalitarianism; it would try to sneak into our minds and culture through our mental back doors, pretending that some of us don’t notice. But so does, in every way, Donald Trump’s version of American history.
I don’t think that Donald Trump’s a totalitarian. I think, rather, that he is a boisterous, polarizing loudmouth with no true values. Everything he does it to pander to his base. If he cares about American history, it is because his constituency cares about it a hundred times more. If the Right wants to play that game with him, fine – but they have to be prepared for their ideological opponents to play the same game — which is unwise. Unlike Trump, the radical portions of the political Left actually believe in what they’re doing, which is what makes them so frightening: they’re so blinded by their radical cause that they will gladly look the other way when it’s obvious their intellectuals are baldly lying to them.
Both the Left and the Right are susceptible to totalitarianism. Both the Left and the Right are capable of becoming sick, of being infected by a silent cancer. The best defense against such sickness is regular exercise and careful attention to our diet. Politically and culturally, this means that both the Left and the Right must consistently weed out bad ideas, and we must ensure that the ideas we feed ourselves are indeed true and healthy. If we don’t, we can become just as sick and twisted as the worst totalitarian governments in history; we can transform from soft totalitarianism to full totalitarianism.