America is leaning toward totalitarianism. Three factors are moving us is that direction.
The first is a corrupt central government that promotes a political agenda that perverts the rule of law and disregards the historical precedence of America’s founding documents. Lincoln’s “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” has been replacing the word “people” with “government politicians and their donors”.
In the 20th Century history of historical global totalitarianism, competing political parties were initially tolerated. But soon, political opposition ceased to be allowed by the ruling class. Eventually, elections evolved into sham events, or were cancelled. Joseph Stalin once famously said that what matters is not who votes, but who counts the votes.
The second requisite for totalitarianism is a complicit news media eager to parrot the talking points of a corrupt central government. The venues of broadcasting (TV, radio), print (newspapers, tabloids), and social media (e.g., Google, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok), with the financial support of commercial advertisers, make up a news media that routinely shills for the ruling political class.
The third and final requirement is a compliant population that accepts the maxims of the totalitarian agenda. In America, derogatory slurs aimed at the minority party include accusations of being Nazis, white supremacists, racists, and sexists.
The headcount of the compliant population is sufficient when mass formation psychosis infects enough people to divide a nation.
The man pictured above is Mattias Desmet, Professor of Psychology at Ghent University in Belgium, and author of The Psychology of Totalitarianism (Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Vermont, London, UK © 2022). Here’s how he defines the social-psychological process of mass formation:
”…the willingness of the individuals to blindly sacrifice their personal interests in favor of the collective, radical intolerance of dissident voices, a paranoid informant mentality that allows government to penetrate the very heart of private life, the curious susceptibility to absurd pseudo-scientific indoctrination and propaganda, the blind following of a narrow logic that transcends all ethical boundaries (making totalitarianism incompatible with religion), the loss of all diversity and creativity (making totalitarianism the enemy of art and culture), and intrinsic self-destructiveness (which ensures that totalitarian systems invariably annihilate themselves in the end). An analysis of the psychological process of totalitarianism is extremely relevant in the twenty-first century.” (pp. 90-91)
No comments:
Post a Comment