Totalitarian States: it comes from the bottom as well as the top

Vladimir Voinovich said this in the 1980s. So does my colleague Rebel Yell. People imagine that totalitarian ideology is imposed from the top. Yes, but not exclusively. It also pervades from below and around. The lie is the basis of totalitarianism. So said Solzhenitsyn. You can think of several without difficulty. Sex is a social construct. Gender trumps sex. Race is simultaneously a social construct; white people invented race in the 18th century. Black lives actually matter – more than any other race. You belong to the sex you feel that you belong to. My pronouns are…

But cancel culture is a participatory sport; anyone can join in. In fact mass participation in the denunciations of wrongthink are mandatory. It is the envious neighbour who enforces the lie far more effectively than the policeman.

Jordan Peterson touched upon this aspect of totalitarianism in a recent interview with Piers Morgan. Listen to the discussion around the little Hitler in all of us. “The totalitarian state is the grip of the lie”