Truth Against the Total State

How We Got Here And Where We’re Going

Part I: The Problem

There has been a lot of bad news recently: the Coronavirus pandemic is sweeping the globe, the economy is in near-freefall, we are facing a cataclysmic climate crisis, and uncertainty and fear are in abundance. I have felt this anxiety, more so in recent weeks than ever before. It feels as though we are on the brink of something, something terrible and frightening. But I am reminded of the words of Czeslaw Milosz, in his book The Captive Mind, written in 1953, just after he defected from Communist Poland. In it, he reflects on the Nazi occupation of his country:

“Like many of my generation, I could have wished that my life had been a more simple affair. But the time and place of my birth are matters in which a man has nothing to say.” (The Captive Mind, vii)

The sheer volume of distressing news and setbacks frequently makes me want to shut down and close myself off from the world. But in this episode, I want to compel us to not look away — I want to force us to be aware of ourselves and our world and resist the impulse to be silent when it is critical that we speak up.

The overwhelming nature of politics, problems, and the world today has created a heavy atmosphere in the United States and around the globe that, I fear, breed two profound antagonists: apathy and ignorance. This pair, along with a third factor, conformity, provides the ingredients for a rise in authoritarianism, much as we have seen in Europe and the United States in the past decade. Further, authoritarianism merely acts as a stepping stone on the way to totalitarianism and Fascism, which are much worse, and it is thus incumbent on us to see such a fate avoided. Hannah Arendt, in her 1951 work On the Origins of Totalitarianism, wrote:

“Totalitarian solutions may well survive the fall of totalitarian regimes in the form of strong temptations which will come up whenever it seems impossible to alleviate political, social, or economic misery in a manner worthy of man.” (On the Origins of Totalitarianism — Totalitarianism, 157)

We are by no means too far gone, but the only way to prevent a descent into totalitarianism is by being aware of its possibility and taking preventative action.

Part II: Truth and its Value

The critical pillar of a free society is truth: that we are all bound within a shared reality that is recognized, measurable, and that our actions affect it. Timothy Snyder in On Tyranny wrote:

“It is your ability to discern facts that makes you an individual, and our collective trust in common knowledge that makes us a society.” (On Tyranny, 73)

Our acceptance of the premise that there is discoverable truth is what enables us to debate and construct policy, as it comprises a belief in the power of government to improve society. In this vein, rejection of truth allows us to become nihilistic in regard to the duty of government, enabling tyranny despite the objective suffering it causes.

America has never been a bastion of truth, per se, with its embrace — and abundance — of alternate realities. The evidence of this is everywhere: in amusement and theme parks, climate denial, hippyism, evangelism, cosplay, frontierism, gun fanaticism, libertarianism, and our perennial failure to reconcile and accept the truth of our history. Our nation is one founded on fantasy, from the moment a slave-owning Virginian constructed and established the rationale for abolition in our Declaration of Independence.

Our “American faith in faith,” as Kurt Anderson put it in his 2018 book Fantasyland, has its origins in the era of colonization, when religious extremists established settlements in places like Plymouth, Massachusetts, but its legacy persists today (Fantasyland, 85). The enlightenment politicians who founded the United States — Jefferson, Paine, Adams — were antithetical to the laissez-faire, religious, anything-goes ethos that has gripped much of America throughout history. Deist and advocates of reason, the founders believed that Americans would similarly be guided by enlightenment ideals, at their forefront being the pursuit of truth and rationality; in this they were wrong. Wrote Anderson:

“By my reckoning, way too many Americans now bother with reason hardly at all, give themselves over too much to the deliria of crazy imaginations, believe too many untrue and impossible things, and are losing the ability and the will to distinguish between real and unreal. Not that they don’t have the right.” (Fantasyland, 320)

In fact, our revolutionary upbringing has manifested as a profound mistrust of authority, so much so that reality itself, as a concept and an aspiration, is vulnerable. We are so endowed with freedom and liberty that our liberty enables us to believe whatever we want, regardless of — or despite — the truth. Again, from Anderson:

“…we’re Americans, because being American means we can believe any damn thing we want, that our beliefs are equal or superior to anyone else’s, experts be damned. Once people commit to that approach, the world turns inside out, and no cause-and-effect connection is fixed. The credible becomes incredible and the incredible credible.” (Fantasyland, 7)

The real danger of this rejection of truth is the obscuring of reality; this can occur to such an extent that truth is entirely forgotten or compromised, thus destroying it is a discoverable and essential concept. This can be observed in the recollection of American history, especially when the deluge of Americana has shifted our perspective so much as to lose its core truth altogether. For example, the “Wild West” is a virtual construct produced by American cinema, literature, and all-around cultural fantasy; some of its truths are, as such, unattainable. Not only the right to live alternate realities, but the habitual daily exercise of such a right creates a gray area between what is real and what is fabricated. In The Shifting Realities of Philip K Dick, the author, Philip K Dick wrote:

“We have fiction mimicking truth, and truth mimicking fiction. We have a dangerous overlap, a dangerous blur. And in all probability it is not deliberate. In fact, that is part of the problem.” (The Shifting Realities of Philip K Dick, 266)

In moderation, in-touch fantasy is not necessarily evil and can be a positive wonderland from which to draw ideas and idealism; but too much of it and a loss of connection with reality damages and endangers society. Despite fantasy, reality remains, well, real, and delusion, therefore, has actual ramifications. Again, Anderson wrote:

“There are real consequences in the real world. Delusional ideas and magical thinking flood from the private sphere into the public, become so pervasive and deeply rooted, so normal, that they affect everyone…” (Fantasyland, 321)

The rise of climate change denial and the delusion of rampant gun confiscations are two prime examples that come to mind of magical thinking translating into real-world problems — problems in which the entire factual premise is refuted (Fantasyland, 368). There are real policy debates that should happen regarding our approach to combatting climate change and the most effective gun control policies to limit gun violence while preserving the Second Amendment, but to argue that global warming is a hoax or that gun violence is only a mental health problem is anti-truth and, therein, anti-democratic.

The real danger of collective ambiguity and ambivalence towards truth is that it creates an opportunity for totalitarianism to gain popularity and, subsequently, power; for just as much as democratic society relies on truth, so then does totalitarianism rely on untruth. More than pure uncertainty, apathy and unconcern for what is real and what is not is frightening for the (lower-case d) democrat. When reality itself loses value, when the weight of the world is so overbearing that people turn their backs on truth and live completely in delusion, that is when totalitarianism becomes both appealing and a real possibility. Hannah Arendt, in On the Origins of Totalitarianism, wrote:

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.” (On the Origins of Totalitarianism — Totalitarianism, 172)

Wannabe dictators rely on widespread disillusionment with truth among the masses for their rhetoric to be impactful and persuasive. Reflecting on the rise of the Nazis in 1920s and 30s Germany, Adolf Hitler only ascended when a sufficient level of desperation among voters was achieved in order for them to shun democratic politics and policy, and turn towards a strong-man to solve their many problems. When the Great Depression annihilated the already-moribund German economy in 1929, the truth became altogether unbearable, thus making easy solutions — despite their illogicality and immorality — appealing to the masses. The repetition of such untruths, as well as desperation-induced credulity, made the truth not just incomprehensible, but also wholly irrelevant. The people heard what they wanted to hear from the Nazi Party, and it sounded so wonderful that truth must itself be constructed — constructed by those scapegoated by the great dictator. It is under such desperate circumstances that make the gray area between truth and fiction all-consuming, ending the collective trust that reality and fantasy are discernable, and labeling both as fabrications of an evil elite. Timothy Snyder, in The Road to Unfreedom, wrote:

“Authoritarianism arrives not because people say that they want it, but because they lose the ability to distinguish between facts and desires.” (The Road to Unfreedom, 249)

This is what I fear most about the Trump era: a large portion of the American electorate has grown so desperate and afraid that they have rejected the concept of truth and elevated their demagogue, Donald Trump, to the presidency. In the past three years, our political language has become visceral and virulent, and our epoch has been defined as “post-truth.” In fact, as Snyder wrote, “post-truth is pre-fascism.” (On Tyranny, 71)

Part III: The Totalitarian State

Vulnerability, fear, and desperation are the essential fuel of a totalitarian movement; human suffering is the critical ingredient for the collapse of democracy. Totalitarianism and Fascism emerge from national crises in which the masses are so disillusioned with reality and socially isolated that they become amenable to tyranny. For Nazi Germany, the Great Depression was this catalyst; for Fascist Italy, it was the perceived betrayal by the Allies at Versailles following World War One; for the Soviet Union, it was the collapse of the Russian army and economy and the continued reign of the anachronistic Tsarist regime. In all three, loneliness is the underlying zeitgeist that makes the reasonable seem unreasonable and the unreasonable seem reasonable. Hannah Arendt wrote:

“What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness… has become an everyday experience of the evergrowing masses of our century. The merciless process into which totalitarianism drives and organizes the masses looks like a suicidal escape from this reality. The “ice-cold reasoning” and the “mighty tentacle” of dialectics which “seizes you as in a vise” appears like a last support in a world where nobody is reliable and nothing can be relied upon…” (On the Origins of Totalitarianism — Totalitarianism, 176)

Those who seek to rule as dictators take advantage of this loneliness, which is not confined to just an emotion or feeling, but is, in fact, a way of life — a point of view which changes how individual members of society perceive society, each other, and even truth itself. To be lonely is to feel completely out-of-place — to feel dispossessed by society; it is an overarching feeling that something is wrong and that you are the culprit.

What loneliness produces is personal isolation from society. More than just causing depression and a feeling of meaninglessness, this isolation can even inhibit our abilities to reason and to think; our default to assume that people are generally good, which enables the existence of healthy society, is also hindered. Arendt described this distrust of society as “thinking everything to the worst.” (On the Origins of Totalitarianism — Totalitarianism, 175)

Add to this already problematic scenario an aspirational dictator and the appeal of totalitarianism suddenly becomes much more difficult to resist. The strategy of the aspiring totalitarian is to propagate fear and terror, taking advantage of the masses’ isolation-generated default to assume the worst of others. Arendt wrote:

“It has frequently been observed that terror can rule absolutely only over men who are isolated against each other and that, therefore, one of the primary concerns of all tyrannical government is to bring this isolation about. Isolation may be the beginning of terror; it certainly is its most fertile ground; it always is its result.” (On the Origins of Totalitarianism — Totalitarianism, 172)

But loneliness is curable: by communicating with others and finding community, social isolation can be overcome. However, for the totalitarian or Fascist to maintain power, they must keep their subject desperate and isolated. This is achieved through terror and uncertainty — fear both between subjects and of the “other.” The “other” can be anything, really, and it doesn’t even have to be real. In Nazi Germany, it was the Jews, primarily, the Communists, and the Slavs; in Stalinist Russia, it was the Fascists, for a time, and the Capitalist West, after the Second World War. In 1984 by George Orwell, the enemy was Emmanuel Goldstein and his rebel organization, “The Brotherhood,” both of which were most likely fictions perpetuated by the totalitarian Big Brother to keep the citizenry in line.

In Looking Back on the Spanish War, an essay Orwell wrote about his experience volunteering to fight against Francisco Franco’s Fascists in the Spanish Civil War, he observed that totalitarians have the ability, by counterfeiting enemies, to redefine for the masses even what a human being is. He wrote:

“It is just this common basis of agreement, with its implication that human beings are all one species of animal, that totalitarianism destroys…”

By fabricating a “common enemy,” totalitarian regimes are able to extend their control over their subjects, in the process destroying the private life. To establish total control, they merge the public and private spheres completely, thus forcing their subjects to prove their devotion to the dictator and the regime constantly. In short, totalitarians seek to destroy the individual, making each member of totalitarian society ultimately superficial, and a servant to the regime (On the Origins of Totalitarianism — Totalitarianism, 157). This destruction enables the dictator to control the subject absolutely, even to the extent of controlling their thoughts. Arendt wrote:

“[Total terror] substitutes for the boundaries and channels of communication between individual men a band of iron which holds them so tightly together that it is as though their plurality had disappeared into One Man of gigantic dimensions. To abolish the fences of laws between men — as tyranny does — means to take away man’s liberties and destroys freedom as a living political reality…” (On the Origins of Totalitarianism — Totalitarianism, 163)

With freedom and the individual abolished, and the regime dominating the entirety of society, the control of the dictator is extended to truth itself. The world is so shaped by the totalitarian regime — the perceptions of the subjects are so cultivated — that the regime then has the ability to decree anything they wish, and it naturally becomes the new truth. If the regime’s constructed reality must be adjusted, then it can be, immediately; the truth doesn’t exist, so whatever the dictator says must go, regardless of its hypocrisy or inconsistency with what the regime has said in the past. This terrifying dynamic was described perfectly in 1984 by George Orwell, as the protagonist, Winston Smith, grapples with the totalitarian destruction of truth:

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall toward the earth’s center…

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”

Ubiquitous isolation and loneliness catalyze despair and hopelessness. When these abound, people are driven to find easy solutions to complex problems and lose touch with our shared humanity, thus becoming more willing to believe the worst of everything. Truth becomes unbearable, and it seems to the masses that something, some force or other, is out to get them; their credulity, their willingness to believe, increases.

So as the masses shun reality, opportunist totalitarians find their moment. They deceive their way into power, and the masses welcome it — for the citizenry, there is no truth for totalitarians to corrupt. The wannabe dictators promise the world to the masses — they promise an enemy to scapegoat. If the truth does catch up to the dictator, and it eventually always does, the dictator claims to have always known the truth, and the masses surely follow in pretending they did as well (On the Origins of Totalitarianism — Totalitarianism, 80). In short, it is possible for the greater part of the citizenry to find the struggle for knowledge overwhelming, and completely forfeiting the pursuit to be the easier and more appealing path. This presents an opportunity for totalitarians to destroy truth entirely, and replace it with ideology and tyranny. Timothy Snyder in On Tyranny wrote about the dangers of taking the path of untruth:

“You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case. This renunciation of reality can feel natural and pleasant, but the result is your demise as an individual — and thus the collapse of any political system that depends upon individualism.” (On Tyranny, 66)

It is difficult to be aware of oneself and one’s society in the context of a fading reality. The draw of what one wants to hear is so often great and irresistible that the act of embarking on the road to unfreedom, as Snyder calls it, can be almost unnoticeable. The totalitarian takes power so gradually and so quietly that it can seem like the government is essentially the same as it has always been, or if there is a noticeable shift, it is assumed that the shift is temporary, a slight detour, and that all will return to normal soon enough.

Milton Mayer, a journalist and author, studied a group of regular people who lived in Germany during the Second World War, attempting to understand how the Nazis were able to gain power. His findings, which were presented in his book They Thought They Were Free, were startling and fascinating. One German, an academic, explained how gradual the rise of Fascism was in 1930s Germany:

“To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it… Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what… all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing.” (They Thought They Were Free, 166–173)

Our particular vulnerability as Americans derives from the regularity with which we are enraptured by fantasy. Alternate realities abound in our nation and are universally acceptable, so much so that we are unprepared for a totalitarian to use our “American faith in faith” to their advantage (Fantasyland, 85). Americans have already lost touch, to some extent, with truth, and we, therefore, are more credulous across the board. Indeed, we are so ready to shun fact in exchange for very shiny fiction that we are often unable to refuse fiction when what we really need is to recognize the facts: this recognition is the only way for us to improve our nation and for the public sphere to function.

Additionally, we, as denizens of the democratic world, are vulnerable to tyranny because we perceive history as destiny. For over two-hundred years, the United States has been democratic relative to its contemporaries. Our definition of democracy has evolved and greatly improved, extending suffrage, abolishing slavery, and granting citizenship to more and more oppressed communities. But we have nonetheless been some form of democracy since the nation’s founding.

This democratic tradition strengthens our institutions and the determination of many Americans to protect our free society. However, at the same time, it can make us apathetic and ignorant, and inspires a resolve that our history ensures that we will be a democracy forever — that our destiny is to be free, so free we will remain. George Orwell, in Looking Back on the Spanish War, expressed this sentiment about his homeland, the United Kingdom, which shares this democratic certainty with the United States:

“Nourished for hundreds of years on a literature in which Right invariably triumphs in the last chapter, we believe half-instinctively that evil always defeats itself in the long run… Don’t resist evil, and it will somehow destroy itself. But why should it? What evidence is there that it does?”

Part IV: The Great Democracy

Donald Trump was elected President of the United States on November 8, 2016, because his fabricated persona and ambivalence toward truth were appealing to a large minority of the American public, and they turned out to vote. Up until this point, I have tried to avoid discussing the Trump phenomenon in-depth; but the 2016 election was a significant turning point in American history, elevating, for the first time in modern recollection, a man to the presidency who ominous fits the description of the wannabe totalitarian that I have so far devoted this podcast to illustrating.

Trump won the election by focusing on attracting an electorate which felt unrepresented and ignored and which wasn’t especially political; they were not a reliable voting bloc for either the Democrats or the Republicans before 2016, and had lost faith in the democratic system in practice. This mentality is understandable, as public policy has failed to keep up with these communities’ challenges in our ever-changing twenty-first-century world. However, the rejection of the democratic system and the loss of belief in fundamental truth are two critical catalysts in the destruction of democracy, as well as the ascendance of authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and Fascism. Hannah Arendt described similar conditions for the rise of Fascism in the past:

“It was characteristic of the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany and of the Communist movements in Europe after 1930 that they recruited their members from this mass of apparently indifferent people whom all other parties had given up as too apathetic or too stupid for their attention… [these movements] found a membership that had never been reached, never been “spoiled” by the party system. Therefore they did not need to refute opposing arguments and consistently preferred methods which ended in death rather than persuasion, which spelled terror rather than conviction. They presented disagreements as invariably originating in deep natural, social, or psychological sources beyond the control of the individual and therefore beyond the power of reason.” (On the Origins of Totalitarianism — Totalitarianism, 9)

The Trump electorate believes in Trump because they believe in nothing else; he says exactly what they want to hear, without the means to actually achieve such rhetoric, and the core group of Trump supporters is so disillusioned with truth as a mechanism, as they perceive it, of the establishment, that the actual improvement of society and their individual lives are entirely beside the point. When Trump says he will build a wall, it sounds good to his supporters, reality be damned, so he will build the wall. In an article entitled “The 2020 Disinformation War” from the March issue of The Atlantic, the author, McKay Coppins, interviewed Trump supporters at a rally in Mississippi in November:

“Tony Willnow, a 34-year-old maintenance worker who had an American flag wrapped around his head, observed that Trump had won because he said things no other politician would say. When I asked him if it mattered whether those things were true, he thought for a moment before answering. ‘He tells you what you want to hear,’ Willnow said. ‘And I don’t know if it’s true or not — but it sounds good, so fuck it.’”

That a large portion of American society is disillusioned to the point of universal credulity means that we are now set on the road to unfreedom, and have descended enough for that portion to put a wannabe dictator in the White House. The important thing to recognize for all of us who were horrified and disheartened by Donald Trump’s election is that our problem is not simply that reality hasn’t been broadcast sufficiently to the Trump base, but that they simply don’t care about reality. Again, Coppins wrote:

“Among liberals, there is a comforting caricature of Trump supporters as gullible personality cultists who have been hypnotized into believing whatever their leader says. The appeal of this theory is the implication that the spell can be broken, that truth can still triumph over lies, that someday everything could go back to normal — if only these voters were exposed to the facts. But the people I spoke with in Tupelo seemed to treat matters of fact as beside the point.”

American politics were in bad shape, to say the least, before Donald Trump. Public trust in government, according to Pew, is historically low, with only 17% of Americans trusting that the government will “do what is right just about always or most of the time.” We reached a turning point in 2016, as Kurt Anderson wrote in Fantasyland:

“Trump waited to run for president until he sensed that a critical mass of Americans had decided politics were all a show and a sham.” (Fantasyland, 420)

What was appealing about Trump was that he, too, shared — and took advantage of — this sentiment. If his presidency will be remembered for anything, it will be that he was a serial liar, and I don’t mean this as a pointless attack on him, it’s simply the truth — the reality we all live within. In his first three years in office, according to The Washington Post, President Trump has “made 16,241 false or misleading claims.” This statistic, if nothing else, demonstrates his indifference toward shared reality.

American culture is generally accepting of fantasy because our history and, therein, perceived destiny are built on alternate realities; as a fundamentally hypocritical “shining city on a hill,” despite the slaves who built and painted that anecdotal citadel a scintillating white, we have always been a fantasyland. The rejection of truth, as a principle and a constant, by a plurality of our great democracy was not inevitable, thanks, in part, to many a rationalist who formed institutions to safeguard our liberty; but it was always possible. Wrote Anderson:

“Donald Trump is a pure Fantasyland being, its apotheosis… He’s driven by resentment of the Establishment. He doesn’t like experts because they interfere with his right as an American to believe or pretend that fictions are facts, to feel the truth.” (Fantasyland, 417)

In 2016, I believed Hillary Clinton would win in a landslide — not just because of the polls or the conviction that much of my community held that she would succeed, but because Donald Trump was so obviously ridiculous: so wacky and creepy and constantly promising solutions for everything when he clearly had no idea what he was talking about. I had incredible faith in the reason and rationality of all Americans, that we had been presented with the facts and would make the right decision based on them.

Needless to say, I was wrong: Donald Trump played the game and he won. In fact, I have realized over the past three-and-a-half years since 2016, that the same American fantasy which got Trump elected also made me believe in inevitability — in the universal rationality of my fellow citizens. The anti-Trump coalition was never truly realized because we stopped caring, we thought the election was a done deal so we didn’t put out the effort it would have taken to defeat Trump. Madeleine Albright, in her book Fascism: A Warning, wrote:

“…Americans have so much faith in the resilience of our democratic institutions that we will ignore for too long the incremental erosion that is taking place in them. Instead of mobilizing, we will proceed merrily along, expecting all to turn out for the best, until one morning we open our eyes, draw back the curtains, and find ourselves in a quasi-Fascist state.” (Fascism: A Warning, 232)

In one sense, this ethos of inevitability can manifest as nationalism — as an extreme belief in one’s nation above all others. Nationalism is not just the belief in the superiority of one’s nation, but also a belief in one’s nation being immune to history — that we are an exception where nothing can be learned from the rest of the world.

Donald Trump is a nationalist, as are many of his supporters. This nationalism enables authoritarianism and betrays the core values of the nation such belief purports to protect. Patriotism, as a foil to nationalism, is pride in one’s nation with the recognition that its destiny is subject to the actions of people — of individuals, like anything else in the world. As Timothy Snyder put it in On Tyranny:

“…[a patriot] wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where his country can be loved and sustained. A patriot has universal values, standards by which he judges his nation, always wishing it well — and wishing that it would do better.” (On Tyranny, 114)

Fascism has the potential to ascend anywhere in the world, the United States being no exception. Like the laws of physics, the same principles of political science and history apply universally and uniformly, and there is no such thing as political predestination. We are a part of this world, this one, singular reality, and there are no exceptions; humanity is in this together, whether we like it or not. This can be frightening, and it can make us feel small, but it is also something to celebrate: what we do is meaningful and does have an impact. Timothy Snyder in The Road to Unfreedom wrote:

“To break the spell of inevitability, we must see ourselves as we are, not on some exceptional path, but in history alongside others. To avoid the temptation of eternity, we must address our own particular problems… with timely public policy.” (The Road to Unfreedom, 275)

There is hope in the fact that what empowers tyrants — despair and untruth — can just as well be remedied; the former with effective public policy and participation in democracy, and the latter with the embrace of reality. Vaclav Hawel, who tirelessly worked to make Czechoslovak democracy a reality, put it best when he wrote, in The Power of the Powerless:

“ If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth.”

Part V: What is to be Done

There are moments when I am afraid that we live in such definitive times — that this epoch will determine the human condition for centuries to come — and that we will fail to meet its challenges. That we are on the cusp of so much dramatic transformation and that we will not, as a society and as a global community, be able to react in time or with sufficient force of will. I fear that authoritarianism will ascend in Europe and America, that Trumpism will endure, that we are too late to confront climate change, and that we will follow the road to unfreedom directly into the heart of the new order — into post-truth unreality.

Indeed, all too often there are moments when I am compelled by the sheer emotional weight of the world to look away and hide. But the only way for our society, our democracy, our world to improve is by jumping into the public sphere and fighting for its survival. Albright wrote:

“The temptation is powerful to close our eyes and wait for the worst to pass, but history tells us that for freedom to survive, it must be defended, and that if lies are to stop, they must be exposed.” (Fascism: A Warning, 252)

And the kind of resistance that is required to defeat totalitarianism can be really difficult. It necessitates that one stands up to their peers, which is far more difficult than fighting against a distant enemy (On the Origins of Totalitarianism — Anti-Semitism, 114). Trump supporters are pretty much everywhere, and that we have relationships with these people makes it all the more onerous to confront. Indeed, as Albright wrote:

“We seem to be living in the same country but different galaxies…” (Fascism: A Warning, 238)

However, these conversations are all the more important because the pro-Trump mentality is as ubiquitous as it is. And the tyranny it threatens, that of replacing the American democratic model with a cult of personality, must be confronted, otherwise, it will have free reign to confiscate essential rights and freedoms.

We are at a crossroads, with Trump beckoning us down the path to unfreedom. But we are always at a crossroads; indeed, every four years, public figures, politicians and celebrities and CEOs and the rest beg us to vote, saying ‘this is the most important election in history!’ They’re right, every time. Each successful election, in which a democrat (lower-case d) wins, extends, by a term, the promise of another election. Additionally, each election is a kind of new beginning — an opportunity for political renaissance. Arendt wrote:

“But there remains also the truth that every end in history necessarily contains a new beginning; this beginning is the promise, the only “message” which the end can ever produce. Beginning, before it becomes a historical event, is the supreme capacity of man…” (On the Origins of Totalitarianism — Totalitarianism, 176)

More than a promise every election cycle, beginning is constant, with each birth and death and success and failure. Indeed, every action executed by individual citizens is a beginning in itself. Again, Arendt wrote:

“With each new birth, a new beginning is born into the world, a new world has potentially come into being.” (On the Origins of Totalitarianism — Totalitarianism, 163)

Actions, not fate, not destiny, but actions and the choices we each make constantly create our world of change. Nothing mandates that this change will be for the better, but its possibility to be improvement is what gives me hope.

Our actions, every single one of them, have consequences: our lifestyles, how we react to change, how readily we accept the imposition of authority, who we spend our time with, what we do with our time, our participation in politics, our political ideologies, what clothes we wear, what food we eat, how we talk to other people, what we value and how we aspire to these values, what we believe — all of these define us, are choices, and act as models of behavior in society. When we make choices, they become a part of our communities’ dialogue, changing public perception of us and our actions. We are essentially living role models, such that the act of decision-making makes those decisions more or less acceptable. Thus, our choices have incredible consequences, and we have far greater power in our communities than is generally recognized. Furthermore, our choices have political effect — not just the ones directly related to politics, but all of our choices. Wrote Snyder in On Tyranny:

“Life is political, not because the world cares about how you feel, but because the world reacts to what you do.” (On Tyranny, 33)

Because of this power of individual choice, I often experience an overwhelming sensation that I cannot possibly do enough to slow the pace of our global evolution. In fact, my understanding that my actions have consequences, that everything I do has a political effect, burdens me with a responsibility that, frankly, not enough people attempt to understand or bear themselves. This responsibility is compelling and can sometimes edge on becoming all-consuming, but it contains hope and optimism and real possibility.

Assessing the truth of our political world, it is anarchic only in the sense that it is comprised of individuals, that states and institutions are functions and assemblies of people, and that people are generally unpredictable. But every future dictator, demagogue, democrat, general, journalist, voter, activist, citizen, police officer, professor, garbage collector, scientist, and all the rest possess a commonality that constantly confronts and propels: a conscience and a choice.

Apathy, ignorance, and conformity are the three great enablers of authoritarianism, as they all too often translate into unaccountability, post-truth politics, and complicity, respectively. The presence (or lack thereof) of all three choices in political society is determined consciously by each individual. Difficult as it may be to resist their allure, that these are decisions ensures that authoritarianism and totalitarianism, just like democracy, are not inevitabilities, but, instead, constantly possible, thus demanding that democratic society be incessantly vigilant.

Do not give in to fantasy — to the belief that because fundamental truth is ultimately unattainable, that its pursuit is therefore pointless (The Road to Unfreedom, 278). In fact, its pursuit is the only way to move forward in this world, to make progress. Reality is the only world we can live in, and understanding it is the only way to survive and flourish. No matter how many times I repeat a falsehood, my repetition doesn’t make it true; so too when an entire society or government repeats a falsehood. Speaking in falsehoods, by not recognizing truth, thus makes it more difficult to survive. That is why living in fantasies and alternate realities do not benefit people: we are unshakably stuck in ourselves and no degree of pretending changes that fact.

Resist the call of nationalism — the belief that the future is already certain, and that effort to improve is therefore worthless. We are a part of history, like everyone else, and American exceptionalism is simply another form of untruth. When we become patriots, devoted to the betterment of our society by recognizing our humanity and place in the world, and determined to improve it through hard work, a universe of possibilities open to us. It allows us to view the world through the lenses of collaboration, responsibility, and compassion (The Road to Unfreedom, 278).

Finally, our most powerful defense against the deception of tyranny is to prevent the pure desperation which makes the masses susceptible to the totalitarian’s rhetoric. This is difficult now more than ever, as the coronavirus spreads and we are all hunkered down in our houses for the foreseeable future. Loneliness is the critical factor in the rise of totalitarianism, and social distancing makes it much more difficult to combat emotional isolation.

So, above all, stay hopeful. The world may seem to have fallen apart overnight and many of us are scared and lonely. Much of what makes us happy and satisfied has departed before we could say ‘goodbye’ or, more accurately, ‘see you later.’ More than anything, many, myself included, simply want the world to go back to normal.

But it won’t. When we crawl outside in two or who knows how many months, and shield our pupils from the torrential sunlight, the world will, inevitably, be different. Two months of social distancing will change our reality.

But this change doesn’t have to be deterioration — far from it; let us make this an opportunity. We can emerge from this crisis wiser, more introspective, with the recognition of the value of human connection, and, with our re-entrance into the public sphere, a greater determination to speak up for the right, good, and just.

Resentment is no way to live. And if the totalitarian wants us to live lives of fear, desperation, and hatred, it follows that the ultimate foil to the Fascist is compassion. As Madeleine Albright wrote:

“This generosity of spirit — this caring about others and about the proposition that we are all created equal — is the single most effective antidote to the self-centered moral numbness that allows Fascism to thrive.” (Fascism: A Warning, 65)

Listen to this as an episode of my Podcast, The Pensive Anchor