The word totalitarianism usually generates impressions of dictatorial systems which crush civic freedoms and negate the humanity of their subjects in an effort to achieve complete control. Images of barbed wire, jack-boots and thought-control are conjured up in our minds. 20th century literature has given us some powerful works of fiction which suggest a variety of possible totalitarian futures: one thinks immediately of Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World. Common to these dystopias (utopias which have collapsed into tyranny) is the absolutizing of the power of the State, or systems controlled by the State.
Totalitarianism invariably strives to do away with genuine absolutes and to establish false absolutes in their place. Genuine absolutes are fundamental, ultimate, unqualified truths, independent of the ebb and flow of cultures, fashions, myths and prejudices. An example of genuine moral absolutes is the Ten Commandments. An example of false absolutes can be found in Marx’s ideology, where a theory called dialectic is posited as the mechanism which determines human history—an “abstraction” that has resulted in hundreds of millions of violent deaths.
G.K. Chesterton wrote in his 1935 book, The Well and the Shallows:
“It is the State which changes; it is the State which destroys; it is nearly always the State which persecutes. The Totalitarian State is now making a clean sweep of all our old notions of liberty, even more than the French Revolution made a clean sweep of all the old ideas of loyalty. It is the Church that excommunicates; but in that very word implies that a communion stands open for a restored communicant. It is the State that exterminates; it is the State that abolishes absolutely and altogether; whether it is the American State abolishing beer, or the Fascist State abolishing parties; or the Hitlerite State abolishing almost everything but itself.”
Chesterton touches upon an important characteristic of totalitarian states. The absolute ruler always attempts to destroy diversity. He cannot rest content with a passive populace. As he extends his grasp into more and more aspects of human life he becomes hostile to everything outside of his own will. As his power becomes near absolute it grows increasingly negative, because by its very nature it must oppose what cannot be extinguished in the human person. It must seek at some point to destroy the inner impulse to genuine creativity which depends for its well-being on freedom from manipulation.
The tyrant in the beginning rarely looks like a monster. He usually appears to be the savior of his people, though once he has attained power he soon shows his hand—at root he merely wishes to accumulate as much power as possible in order to obtain an absolute security or glory for himself, and to enjoy it at any cost. This kind of tyrant is not difficult to identify. When he runs out of gasoline or bullets or wheat the people cast him off, because he is a monster who looks like a monster. He has blown his cover. More difficult to pin down and to throw off is the idealistic tyrant who expands his power in order to protect what he considers to be the good of his subjects. He will reduce crime and make the trains run on time. He will balance the budget and bring order and a measure of material plenty to the nation. He will labor to make a better citizen of the raw material of his subjects. There can be a reassuring sense of security in all this. We like dependable public services and an ordered economy, though we would, perhaps, remain uneasy about trading away certain freedoms. But it is precisely the elimination of personal responsibility which is the tyrant’s ultimate goal, for this is what he sees as our fatal flaw.
It must be understood that the highly motivated idealist is not merely interested in improving the exterior forms of society. He wishes to save us from ourselves. Of course, he will find that basic human nature is rather difficult to remold, and as time goes on he will need to continuously expand his power until his control approaches the level of totality. If he is clever at it and fills up the world with beautiful rhetoric, and takes care not to grossly infringe upon our pleasurable rights, and if, at the same time, he takes upon his own shoulders our unpleasant rights, the ones which demand effort and sacrifice, then he may get away with it. This is never more possible than in a historical period of extreme stress. In such a climate the lifting of our responsibilities is not felt as deprivation; it feels, rather, like relief from intolerable tensions. Somebody at last is doing something about the human condition! A sick society is getting therapy! A cancer patient puts himself into the hands of his doctor, so why shouldn’t a “dysfunctional” people entrust itself to its social or political physicians? Somewhere during the therapy there is a decisive transfer of power and responsibility. When this happens on a massive scale something is seriously amiss. There may not be brown-shirts and jackboots marching in the streets. No public book-burnings. No grotesque executions. In some cases there may even be no visible dictator, only a system or a social philosophy which permeates and controls everything. Indeed, the world may appear to be perfectly normal. The Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper points out that this is the most dangerous form of totalitarianism of all, almost impossible to throw off, because it never appears to be what, in fact, it is.
Both the monster tyrant and the “humanitarian” tyrant offer something that appears to be a good. Both, in the end, will exact a terrible price. The person who wishes to remain free must understand that he cannot and should not pay that price. In the beginning the payments may appear small and harmless enough. We are asked to compromise a little here, a little there, unsuspecting that eventually there will be no strength left to resist the betrayal of everything. Pope John Paul II once said, “I would a thousand times rather have a persecuted Church than a compromised Church.” The Church stands as the one defender of the entire range of human and divine absolutes in the world. She knows that if she wishes to remain free—that is, free in the fullest sense of the word, free to be completely herself, free to defend Love and Truth—she must be ever willing to be a sign of contradiction, and if necessary to accept that society will condemn her.
Christopher Dawson, in The Judgment of the Nations contrasted the collapse of the Roman Empire to the collapse of a Christian civilization. He believed that something far more ominous is at work in the latter:
“For the civilization which has been undermined, and is now threatened by total subversion, is a Christian civilization, built on the spiritual values and religious ideals of Saint Augustine and his like; and its adversary is not the simple barbarism of alien peoples who stand on a lower cultural level, but new Powers armed with all the resources of scientific technique, which are inspired by a ruthless will to power, that recognizes no law save that of their own strength.”
Dawson was referring to overt tyrannies. However, he went on to sound some additional warnings for us all:
“Thus, the situation that Christians have to face today has more in common with that described by the author of the Apocalypse than with the age of St. Augustine. The world is strong and it has evil masters. But these masters are not vicious autocrats like Nero and Domitian. They are the engineers of the mechanism of world power: a mechanism that is more formidable than anything the ancient world knew, because it is not confined to external means, like the despotisms of the past, but uses all the resources of modern psychology to make the human soul the motor of its dynamic purpose.”
Dawson was describing here the shape of a possible future, a global non-violent totalitarianism that is the most serious of all tyrannies, from the Christian viewpoint, because in it evil has become depersonalized, “separated from individual appetite and passion, and exalted . . . into a sphere in which all moral values are confused and transformed. The great terrorists . . . have not been immoral men, but rigid puritans who did evil coldly, by principle.”
In his fascinating book, Inside the Third Reich, Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect and armaments minister, wrote about the state of mind of the German people as Hitler rose to power. He says that most Germans disliked the sinister side of Hitler’s policies, but in a spirit of optimism, they assumed that he would leave behind his more unpleasant policies once he attained the dignity of high office. They overlooked his errors because they thought his form of law and order would be a lesser evil than the social disruption they were suffering during the nineteen twenties and thirties. By succumbing to the “lesser evil” argument, they brought upon the world an evil of epic proportions.
But what happens to the discernment of a people when a tyrant arrives without any of the usual sinister costumes of brutal dictators? What happens when the errors come in pleasing disguises, and are promoted by very fine people? Those living in such an environment have more than one difficulty to overcome in properly assessing what is happening. They find themselves within the events which are unfolding, and thus are faced with the problem of perception: how to see the hidden structure of their chaotic times, how to step outside of it and to view it objectively while remaining within it as a participant, as an agent for the good.
How are we Catholic people to do this if we are not rooted in the Truth? Will we be willing to compromise moral absolutes in the education of our children merely because attractive personalities, very intelligent idealists, say we should? Will the homogenization of our children’s minds be acceptable simply because we want the next generation to be nicely outfitted to cope with a profoundly disordered society? Will we be willing to sacrifice genuine diversity for the sake of the illusion of unity? Did our Catholic people help to elect a murderous social movement in this province and others, because its economic policies appeared to be kinder to the poor than the capitalist party that it replaced, forgetting the fact that abortion takes the life of far more children of the poor than children of the comfortable? Just as Dawson predicted, the confusion and transformation of moral values is seen widely as a moral cause.
How long will it take for our people to understand that when humanist sentiments replace moral absolutes, it is not long before very idealistic people begin to invade human families in the name of the family, and destroy human lives in the name of humanity? This is the idealist’s greatest temptation, the temptation by which nations and cultures so often fall. The wielder of power is deluded into thinking he can remold reality into a less unkind condition. If he succeeds in convincing his people of the delusion and posits for them an enemy of the collective good, then unspeakable evils can be released in society. Those who share a mass-delusion rarely recognize it as such, and can pursue the most heinous acts in a spirit of self-righteousness. Democracies are not immune from such delusions, although they tend to forms of oppression that are not overtly violent. Democracies in decline, however, will eventually revert to covert oppression and the overt, gradual erosion of human rights.
In his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, The Gospel of Life, John Paul II writes:
This is what is happening also at the level of politics and government: the original and inalienable right to life is questioned or denied on the basis of a parliamentary vote or the will of one part of the people—even if it is the majority. This is the sinister result of a relativism which reigns unopposed: the “right” ceases to be such, because it is no longer firmly founded on the inviolable dignity of the person, but is made subject to the will of the stronger part. In this way democracy, contradicting its own principles, effectively moves towards a form of totalitarianism. The State is no longer the “common home” where all can live together on the basis of principles of fundamental equality, but is transformed into a tyrant State, which arrogates to itself the right to dispose of the life of the weakest and most defenceless members, from the unborn child to the elderly, in the name of a public interest which is really nothing but the interest of one part. The appearance of the strictest respect for legality is maintained, at least when the laws permitting abortion and euthanasia are the result of a ballot in accordance with what are generally seen as the rules of democracy. Really, what we have here is only the tragic caricature of legality; the democratic ideal, which is only truly such when it acknowledges and safeguards the dignity of every human person, is betrayed in its very foundations: How is it still possible to speak of the dignity of every human person when the killing of the weakest and most innocent is permitted? In the name of what justice is the most unjust of discriminations practiced: some individuals are held to be deserving of defense and others are denied that dignity? When this happens, the process leading to the breakdown of a genuinely human co-existence and the disintegration of the State itself has already begun. . . .
In seeking the deepest roots of the struggle between the “culture of life” and the “culture of death”, we cannot restrict ourselves to the perverse idea of freedom mentioned above. We have to go to the heart of the tragedy being experienced by modern man: the eclipse of the sense of God and man, typical of a social and cultural climate dominated by secularism, which, with its ubiquitous tentacles, succeeds at times in putting Christian communities themselves to the test. Those who allow themselves to be influenced by this climate easily fall into a sad and vicious circle: when the sense of God is lost, there is also a tendency to lose the sense of man.
Our defense of reality itself, our resistance to various forms of totalitarianism, will demand both strong reactive measures and pro-active ones: an examination of conscience, a restoration of reverence for the “whole truth about man,” a return to Gospel principles in all aspects of our lives, and above all a profound conversion to worship of God. We must become a people who are in submissio, that is, submitted completely to the mission of the Church, in statu missionis. Thus, fully within the mainstream of grace, under the mantle of God’s divine authority, and uniting ourselves to the obedience of Christ on the Cross, we participate in the reversal of Adam’s sin. In this way we will find a personal, secret joy hidden within the crucifixion of our willfulness, a gateway to freedom, a dying that leads to life. And in doing so we will assist in the redemption of the world.
We must also support a widespread rebirth of those small, diverse, and beautiful works of man which retain their human dimensions and thereby foster the full meaning of the human person. There is need for a rediscovery of the family farm, cottage industries, new and old literature that is as vital as it is true, arts and crafts that are beautiful and made with love, schools small enough so that children can be known and nurtured as unique individuals, worker-owned co-operatives, small presses, libraries, community bees, works of mercy, discussion groups, etc.—these are only a beginning. We must learn and relearn that the only effective response to degeneracy, political, cultural, or otherwise, is to create an alternate culture that is so good, so beautiful, and so true that man is drawn back to his own true home.
The rediscovery of the family as a genuine social absolute is a crucial element of mankind’s rediscovery of this home. We must hope for it against all odds, but in the hoping we must have a realistic understanding of what those odds are. Pessimism is not Christian hope; nor is naïve optimism. We should not underestimate the capacity of modern man for self-delusion, especially when he has a great deal invested emotionally in the delusion. If awareness of the sacredness of the family has waned in our era, it is only partly due to attacks by exterior enemies. Catholics, to put it simply, have not valued Truth. In many of the particular churches we have been poorly educated in knowledge of the Truth and even more poorly educated in the spirituality of living the Truth. We did not see that our very lives hang upon the effective defense of Truth. As a result we have been fundamentally weakened and rendered virtually unprotected against the onslaught of propaganda from the media and the social sciences, which for many years have posited the origins of most human “dysfunction” in the internal politics of the family. Traditional marriage and family life are now commonly considered to be a form of oppression, even bondage. This, coupled to a loss of the sense of sin, has created a generation in which men and women no longer feel ennobled by self-sacrifice and the honoring of commitments. Nor do they feel endangered by the world of evil, by the possibility of personal slavery to invisible forces or to their own fallen natures. It is difficult for them to imagine that a pagan state might one day reinstitute an exterior form of slavery (although it would call it by a more attractive name). In his l930 essay “The New Paganism,” Hilaire Belloc noted that the liberal mind always abhors slavery in theory, but in the future, when liberalism has brought about the return of paganism, it will shortly thereafter resurrect the grand old institution of . . . slavery. However, he suggests, it will then be called “permanent employment.” Most people will have become unable to recognize that it is, in fact, what it is.
The supposed rationality of the idealist is perhaps the worst aspect of his condition, for it renders him less capable of pausing for a moment of reflection on what is real, or experiencing a healthy skirmish with self-doubt. It is this invincible self-righteousness which should alert us to the possibility that we may be living in the preliminary stages of a massive shift to totalitarian Statism on every level of society—including our religious institutions. If so, what are its exact parameters? How far will it go to usurp the perennial rights and duties of man? And if it is going to go very far (which is not yet certain) how do we stand in its path and resist it?
There are no precise blueprints of totalitarianism, for by its nature, even in its exercise of power, it is a shifting mirage. It does not know what it is, because it has no real absolutes on which to stand still and to know itself. It is urgent, therefore, that we recognize it for what it is, wherever it takes on a new form and attempts to dominate the human community. But how are we to accurately identify a force which appears in pleasing shapes and absorbs institutions with hardly an indiscretion? There are some traits which are common to violent and nonviolent forms of totalitarianism alike. The former justifies its harsh measures in the name of a so-called greater good—usually “the good of the people.” Soft totalitarianism is not fundamentally different in this regard, although its invasion of the rights and duties of man are executed with somewhat more diplomacy. We must remember here that in the beginning most oppressive regimes do not begin with overt oppression; in their early stages they appear as liberators. But when the moral foundations have crumbled under the euphoric advance of theory, it is only a matter of time before the living reality works out its awful consequences in practice. It bears repeating that this form is in the long run more destructive of the family, for it preserves the illusion of freedom. It directs its subjects to many roads, but the roads do not lead anywhere. It creates an impression of a broader world, but it is a vast prison, on the borders of which are impenetrable walls—impenetrable most of all because its residents have come to believe that there is nothing beyond it. It maintains power by continuously shifting the ground on which its subjects stand. Right, wrong, good, evil, and the identity of persons and things are each re-examined in an ongoing inquisition.
In his 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor, The Splendor of Truth, John Paul II warns of the consequences of sliding into this moral relativism:
Today, when many countries have seen the fall of ideologies which bound politics to a totalitarian conception of the world—Marxism being the foremost of these—there is no less grave a danger that the fundamental rights of the human person will be denied and that the religious yearnings which arise in the heart of every human being will be absorbed once again into politics. This is the risk of an alliance between democracy and ethical relativism, which would remove any sure reference point from political and social life, and on a deeper level make the acknowledgment of truth impossible. Indeed, “if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power. As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.”
Clearly, the Holy Father is not saying that Christians should abandon politics, for elsewhere he urges us to involve ourselves directly in the political process. He is here warning mankind against the folly of making politics into a religion that would displace the absolute rights of God and morality. The danger of this is so immediate that we can now reply to Marxism’s famous sneer, “Religion is the opiate of the masses,” with the more accurate observation that the politics of manipulation is the opiate of romantic intellectuals. Have we arrived at the stage where the politics of manipulation, and the manipulation of politics, is indeed drugging the people of the traditionally democratic nations? Consider that in the present day West, the arts, the media, the courts, education, psychology, sociology and anthropology and their hybrid disciplines, have contributed to a redefinition of the human person. Judging by the literature and the rhetoric coming out of these seemingly disparate movements, they have made a unanimous leap of faith: the restoration of man, apparently, now largely depends on the restructuring of behaviour and personality.
In his masterful essay on education, The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis pointed out that man’s power to make of himself what he pleases really means the power of some men to make of other men what they please. In other words, the human person will be increasingly perceived as a cell in a collective, needing not so much redemption by conversion as re-education and rehabilitation. Lewis foresaw that programs of reform would be developed and managed by a new class which he called The Conditioners. They will not be bad men, he advised. They will be highly motivated, and in fact will see themselves as the producers of motivation. They will become more and more dangerous as they are “armed with the powers of an omni-competent state and an irresistible scientific technique.” Their primary point of focus will be the reconstruction of human conscience: “They know how to produce conscience and decide what kind of conscience they will produce.” They themselves are outside, above, the dictates of the very conscience they produce, yet they consider themselves “the servants and guardians of humanity.”
Lewis observed the growth of this phenomenon from a Christian perspective, but there were non-Christian minds of his generation who also saw it developing. Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World Revisited (l958), said that the totalitarianism he had foreseen in l931 was materializing in the Western world at a much faster rate than he had thought possible. In Brave New World he had predicted a society in which the family, religion, language and art had been neutered and all conflicts eliminated by genetic engineering. He portrayed a perfect synthesis of technology and paganism. In Revisited he had come to believe that the totalitarianism of the immediate future would be less visibly violent than that of the Hitlers and Stalins, but it would create a society “painlessly regimented by a corps of highly trained social engineers.” He maintained that in such a society “democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial,” but the underlying substance would be a seemingly benign totalitarianism. Huxley’s otherwise perceptive book was itself a victim of the modern misunderstanding of authority. He could not see the connection between his own brand of liberalism and the world it was helping to create. The book is marred by his prejudice against the Church, which he lumps together with Marxism and Fascism. George Orwell makes the same mistake in his famous essay “Politics and the English Language.” Like so many modern anti-totalitarians, they failed to distinguish between raw power and responsible exercise of authority. We should note their failure carefully, for if even the most honest and courageous minds in the secular camp cannot grasp such basic distinctions, then late Western man is in grave trouble.
Modern secularists, regardless of how articulate they may be, are very often victims of one-dimensional thinking. In Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis points out:
“Christianity thinks of human individuals not as mere members of a group or items in a list, but as organs in a body—different from one another and each contributing what no other could. When you find yourself wanting to turn your children, or pupils, or even your neighbors, into people exactly like yourself, remember that God probably never meant them to be that. You and they are different organs, intended to do different things. On the other hand, when you are tempted not to bother about someone else’s troubles because they are ‘no business of yours’, remember that though he is different from you he is part of the same organism as you. If you forget that he belongs to the same organism as yourself you will be come an Individualist. If you forget that he is a different organ from you, if you want to suppress differences and make people all alike, you will become a Totalitarian. But a Christian must not be either a Totalitarian or an Individualist.
“I feel a strong desire to tell you—and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me—which of these two errors is the worse. That is the Devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors.”
There is a dangerous crack in the mind of modern man. In his supposed love for liberty and hatred of tyranny, he ignores the yawning crevasse which has opened up between freedom and responsibility. Unless those two are bridged by moral absolutes, he must eventually fall into the abyss, dragging his society in after him. In doing so he may unwittingly inflict a totalitarianism more complete than the full frontal attacks of monsters like Hitler and Stalin. The straw man of an “Inquisitional Catholic Church” lurks like a bogey in his subconscious; it does not impress him that the Roman Catholic Church has functioned for more than a century solely as a spiritual authority. It has no police, no armies, only the force of Truth and Love operating in the consciences of men. Veritas and Caritas, the Church knows, are the only real guarantees of social and individual freedoms. Curiously, it is her persistence in this regard which is found most objectionable to the modern mind, and especially to the totalitarian mind, violent and non-violent alike. The Catholic Church is portrayed on many levels of culture (including arts, communications media, education, and politics) as the monolithic structure thath produces oppressed and oppressive personalities. Modern liberalism in its secular and religious mutations is creating this universal impression. The world it is forming is in an agony of moral and spiritual sterility. Truth is made relative, undependable. Love is eroded in the name of love, communication rendered pointless in the name of “openness,” human life is devalued (being itself is despised) in the name of “quality of life.” We swim in a tide of such ominous symptoms but we have come to think of them as “normal.” We assume that the barbaric and the diabolical will be restrained by the democratic process. This is colossally naïve. Not only does it fly in the face of the very informative events which have taken place in our century, it ignores some key warning bells which are ringing here and there in the Western world.
We are at a turning point in history. The extraordinary pontificate of John Paul II is drawing many souls back to God, and even some nations to reflection on the moral absolutes and the meaning of man. The Church has all the resources necessary to restore man to his sense of purpose and identity. Yet, in the exercise of the ecclesial life of the West a kind of schizophrenia continues: we pay lip service to the Truth, and go on to do what we feel like. We say “Yes” and do “No,” but cushion the disobedience with subtly nuanced theology. The magisterial authority of the teaching Church is ignored while near-infallibility is conferred upon academic experts and committees.
Crucial choices have arrived and more are approaching. The abortion and euthanasia issues are the most ugly of these crises, but they are symptoms of something much deeper. We face a situation similar to the crisis which Christian Germany reached when the National Socialists enacted the racial laws, when state-sanctioned evil was funded by a large number of its citizenry who regarded the acts they were paying for through taxes to be crimes. Is this acceptable merely because the state or that elusive “voice of the people” has decided that the Jew or the pre-birth child is not quite human? And in a few short years will the orthodox Catholic or Christian be considered “an enemy of the people?” And will the family which fails to conform to state-defined notions of health be categorized as “dysfunctional,” and thus undeserving of custody of their children? If we should wake up some morning to find that a massive infrastructure of Conditioners is proceeding with the reconditioning of society—in the name of the people, in the name of the family, in the name of the child—who then will judge the State, and who will judge the people? Will we look back upon the present as the last brief period in which it was still possible to reverse the tide?
Is this a paranoiac nightmare or the shape of the world materializing under our very eyes? The objective signs should be sufficient to at least raise the necessary questions. Our pogroms and our crystalnachts are hidden away in clinics and hospitals. The people of the West are a nice people. An idealistic people. But note carefully the public rhetoric, note how the destruction of a child, the violation of conscience, the undermining of personal responsibility, the steady elimination of diversity, are lauded as steps in the protection of rights and freedoms. Have we reached that point to which Dawson, Pieper, Huxley, and Belloc referred? If it is true that rhetoric about freedom and democracy proliferates as the real thing declines, then the Western world has entered a period of institutionalized unreality.
http://www.studiobrien.com/the-new-totalitarianism/
The most interesting aspect of the New Right is that, in following Vaclav Havel, it has diagnosed “soft totalitarianism”: the absolute state administered not by its police force, but by its citizens. Citizens turn each other in for rewards, whether official or simply social.
Soft social forces like this can work in a positive way. If there is a neighborhood pedophile, having people come together and remove that person is a benefit to all. However, we switched to organized government long ago because vigilante justice and mob retribution are too often misused or inaccurate, as happened in the Salem witch trial or when online user groups play detective.
In the case of soft totalitarianism however the subject matter is not something as natural as beating down predators. Rather it is the hunting down and elimination of all “politically incorrect” viewpoints. Consider the term “political correctness”: it literally means adjusting everything we say and do to fit with the political ideology of our time. It is the opposite of “think for yourself,” or even “think.” It is the jackboot slamming on the face of humanity, but within our own minds. Why enforce with police, or even courts, when you can get the population to panic instead and flee from any “bad” thoughts, flinging feces at the person implicated?
Soft totalitarianism succeeds because it taps into our instincts going back to our glorious Simian heritage. Monkeys live in “troops,” or small groups like tribes but less strictly associated with heritage. If one monkey comes down with a disease, the other monkeys will throw stones at it and drive it out of the troop. Thus in monkey society, the primary social concern is: where do I rank in the troop, aka how close am I to getting thrown out? Humans have adopted this into in-group/out-group logic within a modern society united by nothing but political-economic ideology; when people have nothing in common with each other, the instant the crowd turns on someone they will have no compunction about destroying that person.
And this requires zero intervention from government. It’s “freedom,” after all, to form a mob and go after people so long as you don’t literally murder them. This is what happened to Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, who has driven out of the troop not for hating gays, but for not supporting gay marriage. He did nothing affirmative against gays; he denied that they should have a right historically extended to heterosexuals. The Crowd gathered and deposed him. From Mozilla’s press release:
Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn’t live up to it. We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it’s because we haven’t stayed true to ourselves.
We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act. We didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry. We must do better.
Brendan Eich has chosen to step down from his role as CEO. He’s made this decision for Mozilla and our community.
Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard.
The rest is more of the same groveling.
What does soft totalitarianism mean?
First, it means that any dissent with be met with destruction of your livelihood. The only people with true free speech will be billionaires, because they do not require income. Anyone else who speaks up will be driven out of his job; anyone who aids him will be driven out of her job. Anyone who speaks up in her defense will be driven out of his job, in turn. You are the diseased monkey, and the only permissible act is to throw stones at you. We have un-done civilization itself and reverting to witch hunts and lynch mobs.
Second, it means that our society is entirely inwardly-focused. Those who can create things, like Brendan Eich who guided the development of JavaScript, are secondary to those with the right opinions. The resulting hybrid of corruption and ideological nepotism ensures that soon we will have Beautiful People in our elites everywhere, but that they will be useless. Sure, they can memorize instructions and repeat variations on actions from the past. That’s why they’re all so good at developing web apps despite the crushing tedium of doing so. But when it comes to making strategy decisions, or inventing actual new technology, they will be lost. We have replaced the innovators and their politically incorrect opinions with a herd of politically correct but fundamentally useless people.
If you wonder what brings down empires, it is this internal policing of reality. The Soviet Union fell because it was politically incorrect to say that fewer beets had been grown that what the Five Year Plan said should be grown, thus people simply lied. They faked it. Ancient Greece faded from history because they executed philosophers who spoke up for the truth when it was politically incorrect. Ancient Rome became decadent and unable to defend itself because of its own internal system of ideological nepotism based on praising Rome, rather than acknowledging its problems and fixing them. Those who spotted problems were attacked in a “kill the messenger” fashion. The same is true here.
Brendan Eich was a messenger for our society. He dared to differ from the herd on a few crucial points, and for one of those, they attempted to destroy him. When this sort of behavior becomes the norm, you have a society that insists on programming itself toward conformity and ignoring serious warnings about its socially-correct but realistically-incorrect ideals. At that point, the only missing ingredient is time, as the nation waits for the Vandals to finally appear and enforce the reality principle with swords and fire.
Remember: Do X! Don´t do Y!
Protect innocent, respect life, defend art, preserve creativity!
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Tonttu Korvatunturilta Kuunsilta JSB
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They are on the run, we are on the march!
Dummheit ist, wenn jemand nicht weiß, was er wissen könnte.
Political correctness ist, wenn man aus Feigheit lügt, um Dumme nicht zu verärgern, die die Wahrheit nicht hören wollen.
“Im Streit um moralische Probleme, ist der Relativismus die erste Zuflucht der Schurken.“ Roger Scruton
Antisemitismus ist, wenn man Juden, Israel übelnimmt, was man anderen nicht übelnimmt.
Der Nicht-Antisemit ist ein Antisemit, der nach der derzeitigen deutschen Rechtsprechung, Israel, Juden diffamiert, diskriminiert, delegitimiert, jedoch nicht expressis verbis das Ziel der dritten Reichs, den Holocaust, die Judenvernichtung, befürwortet.
Islam ist weniger eine Religion und mehr eine totalitäre Gesellschaftsordnung, eine Ideologie, die absoluten Gehorsam verlangt und keinen Widerspruch, keinerlei Kritik duldet und das Denken und Erkenntnis verbietet. Der wahre Islam ist ganz anders, wer ihn findet wird eine hohe Belohnung erhalten.
Wahnsinn bedeute, immer wieder das gleiche zu tun, aber dabei stets ein anderes Resultat zu erwarten.
Gutmenschen sind Menschen, die gut erscheinen wollen, die gewissenlos das Gewissen anderer Menschen zu eigenen Zwecken mit Hilfe selbst inszenierter Empörungen instrumentalisieren.
Irritationen verhelfen zu weiteren Erkenntnissen, Selbstzufriedenheit führt zur Verblödung,
Wenn ein Affe denkt, „ich bin ein Affe“, dann ist es bereits ein Mensch.
Ein Mensch mit Wurzeln soll zur Pediküre gehen.
Wenn jemand etwas zu sagen hat, der kann es immer sehr einfach sagen. Wenn jemand nichts zu sagen hat, der sagt es dann sehr kompliziert.
Sucht ist, wenn jemand etwas macht, was er machen will und sucht jemand, der es macht, daß er es nicht macht und es nicht machen will.
Sollen die Klugen immer nachgeben, dann wird die Welt von Dummen regiert. Zu viel „Klugheit“ macht dumm.
Wenn man nur das Schlechte bekämpft, um das Leben zu schützen, bringt man gar nichts Gutes hervor und ein solches Leben ist dann nicht mehr lebenswert und braucht nicht beschützt zu werden, denn es ist dann durch ein solches totales Beschützen sowieso schon tot. Man kann so viel Geld für Versicherungen ausgeben, daß man gar nichts mehr zum Versichern hat. Mit Sicherheit ist es eben so.
Zufriedene Sklaven sind die schlimmsten Feinde der Freiheit.
Kreativität ist eine Intelligenz, die Spaß hat.
Wen die Arbeit krank macht, der soll kündigen!
Wenn Deutsche über Moral reden, meinen sie das Geld.
Ein Mensch ohne Erkenntnis ist dann lediglich ein ängstlicher, aggressiver, unglücklicher Affe.
Denken ist immer grenzüberschreitend.
Der Mob, der sich das Volk nennt, diskutiert nicht, sondern diffamiert.
Legal ist nicht immer legitim.
Wer nicht verzichten kann, lebt unglücklich.
Sogenannte Sozial-, Kultur-, Geisteswissenschaften, Soziologie, Psychologie, Psychotherapie, Psychoanalyse, sind keine Wissenschaften mehr, sondern immanent religiöse Kultpropheten, organisiert wie Sekten.
Ohne eine starke Opposition atrophiert jede scheinbare Demokratie zur Tyrannei, und ebenso eine Wissenschaft, zur Gesinnung einer Sekte.
Man kann alles nur aus gewisser Distanz erkennen, wer sich ereifert, empört, wer mit seiner Nase an etwas klebt, der hat die Perspektive verloren, der erkennt nichts mehr, der hat nur noch seine Phantasie von der Welt im Kopf. So entsteht Paranoia, die sich Religion, und Religion als Politik, sogar als Wissenschaft nennt.
Islamisten sind eine Gefahr, deswegen werden sie als solche nicht gesehen. Juden sind keine Gefahr, deswegen werden sie als solche gesehen. So funktioniert die Wahrnehmung von Feiglingen.
Humorlose Menschen könner nur fürchten oder hassen und werden Mönche oder Terroristen.
Menschen sind nicht gleich, jeder einzelne Mensch ist ein Unikat.
Erkenntnis gilt für alle, auch für Muslime, Albaner, Frauen und Homosexuelle.
Islam gehört zu Deutschland, Judentum gehört zu Israel.
Der Konsensterror (Totalitarismus) ist in Deutschland allgegenwärtig.
Es wird nicht mehr diskutiert, sondern nur noch diffamiert.
Es ist eine Kultur des Mobs. Wie es bereits gewesen ist.
Harmonie ist nur, wenn man nicht kommuniziert.
Man soll niemals mit jemand ins Bett gehen, der mehr Probleme hat, als man selbst.
>>Evelyn Waugh, sicherlich der witzigste Erzähler des vergangenen Jahrhunderts, im Zweiten Weltkrieg, herauskommend aus einem Bunker während einer deutschen Bombardierung Jugoslawiens, blickte zum Himmel, von dem es feindliche Bomben regnete und bemerkte: “Wie alles Deutsche, stark übertrieben.“<< Joseph Epstein
Man muß Mut haben, um witzig zu sein.
Dumm und blöd geht meistens zusammen.
Charlie Hebdo: solche Morde an Juden sind euch egal, mal sehen wie”angemessen” ihr reagiert, wenn (wenn, nicht falls) eure Städte von Islamisten mit Kasam-Raketen beschossen werden.
Christopher Hitchens großartig: „In einer freien Gesellschaft hat niemand das Recht, nicht beleidigt zu werden.“
Je mehr sich jemand narzisstisch aufbläht, desto mehr fühlt er sich beleidigt und provoziert.
“Das Problem mit der Welt ist, daß die Dummen felsenfest überzeugt sind und die Klugen voller Zweifel.” – Bertrand Russel
Das Problem mit den Islamisten in Europa soll man genauso lösen, wie es Europa für den Nahen Osten verlangt: jeweils eine Zweistaatenlösung, die Hälfte für Muslime, die andere Hälfte für Nicht-Muslime, mit einer gemeinsamen Hauptstadt.
Was darf Satire? Alles! Nur nicht vom Dummkopf verstanden werden, weil es dann keine Satire war.
Islamimus ist Islam, der Gewalt predigt.
Islam ist eine Religion der Liebe,und wer es anzweifelt, ist tot.
Krieg ist Frieden. Freiheit ist Sklaverei. Unwissenheit ist Stärke. Der Islam ist die friedliche Religion der Liebe – George Orwell 2015
Islam ist verantwortlich für gar nichts, Juden sind schuld an allem.
Islamisten sind Satanisten. Islamismus ist eine Religion von Idioten.
Leute fühlen sich immer furchtbar beleidigt, wenn man ihre Lügen nicht glaubt.
Jeder ist selbst verantwortlich für seine Gefühle.
Die Psychoanalyse geht niemanden außer den Psychoanalytiker und seinen Patienten etwas an, und alle anderen sollen sich verpissen.
“Zeit ist das Echo einer Axt
im Wald. “
– Philip Larkin, Gesammelte Gedichte
Wenn jemand wie Islamisten sein Ego endlos aufbläht, dann verletzt er seine eigenen Gefühle schon morgens beim Scheißen.
„Die sieben Todsünden der modernen Gesellschaft: Reichtum ohne Arbeit, Genuß ohne Gewissen, Wissen ohne Charakter, Geschäft ohne Moral, Wissenschaft ohne Menschlichkeit, Religion ohne Opfer, Politik ohne Prinzipien.“
―Mahatma Gandhi
„Wo man nur die Wahl hat zwischen Feigheit und Gewalt, würde ich zur Gewalt raten.“
―Mahatma Gandhi
Warum zeigt sich Allah nicht? Weil er mit solchen Arschlöchern nichts zu tun haben will.
„Wenn der Faschismus wiederkehrt, wird er nicht sagen: ‚Ich bin der Faschismus’. Nein, er wird sagen: ‚Ich bin der Antifaschismus’.” – Ignazio Silone
Politische Korrektheit verlangt eine Sprache für ein Poesiealbum.
Psychoanalyse ist frivol, oder es ist keine Psychoanalyse.
Bunte Vielfalt, früher: Scheiße
Was der Mensch nicht mehr verändern, nicht mehr reformieren kann, ist nicht mehr lebendig, sondern sehr tot. Was tot ist, das soll man, das muß man begraben: Religion, Ehe, Romantizismus, etc.
Romantik ist scheiße.
Die Realität ist immer stärker als Illusionen.
Ein Wahn zeichnet sich durch zunehmenden Realitätsverlust, und das kann man den heute Regierenden in Deutschland und deren Massenmedien attestieren.
Realitätsverlust beschreibt den geistigen Zustand einer Person, welche nicht (mehr) in der Lage ist, die Situation, in der sie sich befindet, zu begreifen. Ihr werdet also von Wahnsinnigen regiert und durch deren Massenmedien manipuliert.
Der Totalitarismus kann nur besiegt werden kann, wenn man den Mut hat, die Dinge beim richtigen Namen zu nennen, so wie sie sind. Politischen Korrektheit verhindert es, fördert den Totalitarismus und ist politische Feigheit und politische Lüge.
Die Auslöschung: Islam ist wie die Sonne, wer ihm zu nahe kommt, der verbrennt darin selbst und fackelt den Rest der Welt mit ab.
Islam will keine Unterwerfung! Islam will Sieg, Vernichtung und Auslöschung.
Die Welt wurde nicht nur für dich alleine erschaffen.
Zeit braucht Zeit.
Was hat Gott mit uns vor, wenn er dem Teufel immer mehr Territorien freiräumt?
Es ist nicht die größte Angst, wenn man in einen Abgrund schaut, sondern zu merken, daß der Abgrund zurückschaut.
Ich ist anders.
Muslima mit Kopftuch nerven weniger, als deutsche Mütter mit ihren Kinderwagen.
Prothesen-Menschen – sehen aus wie Frau und Mann, sind aber keine.
Global Governance – der politische Reparaturbetrieb, fängt an zu reparieren, bevor etwas entstanden ist.
Das extrem gesteigerte, angeblich kritische, tatsächlich dämonisierende, Interesse der Deutschen an Israel und Juden ist pervers.
Helden von heute wissen nichts, können nichts und wollen nichts. Sie schauen einfach wie Helden aus, das ist alles.
Mag sein, daß früher Väter ihre Kinder gefressen haben. Heute fressen die Mütter alles, Väter, Kinder und den Rest. Alles Mutti, irgendwie!
Deutschland gestern: der Wille zur Macht.
Deutschland heute: der Wille zur Verblendung.
Deutschland morgen: 德國
Deutsche Psychoanalyse? Großartig, wie deutscher Charme, deutscher Humor und deutscher Esprit.
Der Widerstand fängt mit einer eigenen, anderen Sprache als die der Diktatur.
Smart phones for stupid people.
Ein Linker kann, muß aber nicht dumm sein.
Wenn man ganzen Staaten nicht übel nimmt, wenn sie mit Millionen Opfern Selbstmord begehen, warum dann einem Co-Piloten mit 149 Toten?
Nur die Reinheit der Mittel heiligt den Zweck.
Ein extremer Narzißt ist ein potentieller Terrorist, und jeder Terrorist ist ein extremer Narzißt.
Islamisierung bedeutet Verblödung.
Copy-shop als psychoanalytische Methode heute.
Die Psychoanalyse heute ist lediglich die Nachahmung einer vermeintlichen Psychoanalyse, die es so nie gegeben hat, also unbewußte Karikatur, Totemmaske ihrer selbst.
Die Revolution frißt ihre Väter, nicht ihre Kinder.
Jeder verdient eine zweite Chance. Eine zweite, nicht eine zwölfte, zweiundzwanzigste oder einhundertzweite.
In Polen haben amerikanische Geheimdienstler ihre Gefangenen gefoltert, während vor polnischen Gerichten Prozesse gegen polnische Geheimdienstler liefen, die Gefangene gefoltert haben.
Besser irgendwelche Sitten, als gar keine Sitten.
Reale Gewalt gegen strukturelle Gewalt – lediglich eine Rationalisierung der eigenen Lust als Rechtfertigung für eigene wilde, triebhaften Gewalt.
National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (NSDAP) war links,, ihr Kampf gegen Kommunisten und Sozialisten war nicht ideologisch, sondern es war ein Konkurrenzkampf unter Gleichen.
Der Mensch – ein Kopierfehler.
Das Leben ist kein Mittel zu irgendeinem Zweck. Der Mensch soll keinen Nutzen für jemanden haben, sonst ist er kein Mensch mehr, nicht mal ein Rindvieh, sondern eine Art Frikadelle.
Stupidity is demonstrated by people lacking the knowledge they could achieve
Political correctness can be defined as the telling of a lie out of the cowardice in an attempt to avoid upsetting fools not willing to face up to the truth
“In arguments about moral problems, relativism is the first refuge of the scoundrel.” Roger Scruton
Antisemitism is when one blames the Jews or Israel for issues, he does not blame others
Islam is less a religion and more a totalitarian society, an ideology that demands absolute obedience and tolerates no dissent, no criticism, and prohibits the thinking, knowledge and recognition. True Islam is totally different, the one who will find it will receive a very high reward.
Craziness is, when one always does the same but expects a different outcome
If a monkey thinks “I am a monkey”, then it is already a human
A man with roots should go for a pedicure
Self smugness leads to idiocy, being pissed off leads to enlightenment
If someone has something to say, he can tell it always very easily. If someone has nothing to say, he says it in a very complicated way
Addiction is, when somebody does something he wants to do, yet seeks someone who can make it so he won’t do it and doesn’t want to, either.
If the clever people always gave in, the world would be reigned by idiots. Too much “cleverness” makes you stupid.
If one only fights evil to protect life, one produces nothing good at all and such a life then becomes no longer worth living and thus requires no protection, for it is already unlived due to such a total protection. One can spend so much money on insurance, that one has nothing left to insure. Safety works in the same way.
Happy slaves are the worst enemies of freedom.
Creativity is an intelligence having fun.
If working makes you sick, fuck off, leave the work!
If Germans talk about morality, they mean money.
A man without an insight is just an anxious, aggressive, unhappy monkey.
Thinking is always trespassing.
The mob, who calls himself the people, does not discuss, just defames.
Legal is not always legitimate.
Who can not do without, lives unhappy.
So called social, culture sciences, sociology, psychology psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, are not anymore scientific, but immanent religious cult-prophets, organized as sects.
Without a strong opposition any apparent democracy atrophies to a tyranny, and as well a science , to an attitude of a religious sect.
You can recognize everything from a certain distance only, who is zealous, outraged, who sticks his nose in something, this one has lost the perspective, he recognizes anything more, he has only his imagination of the world in his head. This creates paranoia, which is called religion, and a religion as politics, even as a science.
Islamists are a real danger, therefore they will not be seen as such. Jews are not a danger, therefore they are seen as such. It is how the perception by cowards functions.
People without a sense of humor are able only to fear or to hate and become monks or terrorists.
People are not equal, each single person is unique.
Insight applies to everyone, including Muslims, Albanians, women and homosexuals.
Islam belongs to Germany, Judaism belongs to Israel.
The totalitarian Terror of consensus is ubiquitous in Germany.
There are no discussions anymore, but defamations only.
It is a culture of the mob. As it has already been.
Harmony is only if you do not communicate.
One should never go to bed with someone who has more problems than you already have.
>>Evelyn Waugh, surely the wittiest novelist of the past century, in World War II, coming out of a bunker during a German bombing of Yugoslavia, looked up at the sky raining enemy bombs and remarked, “Like everything German, vastly overdone.”<< Joseph Epstein
One has to be brave, to have a wit.
Stupid and dull belong mostly together.
Charlie Hebdo: you don´t care if such murders are comitted to Jews, we will see how “adequate” you will react when (when, not if), Islamists will begin to bombard your cities with Kasam missiles.
Christopher Hitchens: “In a free society, no one has the right not to be offended.“
The more someone narcissistic inflates , the more he feels insulted and provoked.
“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” – Bertrand Russell
The problem with the Islamists in Europe should be solved exactly as Europe requires to the Middle East: a two-state solution, a half for muslims and the another half for not-muslims, with a common capital.
What may satire? Everything! Except be understood by the fool, because then it was not a satire.
Islamimus is Islam preaching violence.
Islam is a religion of love, and he who doubts is dead.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Islam is a peaceful religion of love – George Orwell 2015
Islam is not responsible for anything, Jews are guilty of everything.
Islamists are satanists. Islamism is a religion of idiots.
People feel always terrible offended if you do not believe their lies.
Everyone is responsible for his feelings.
Psychoanalysis is nobody’s business except the psychoanalyst and his patient, and everybody else can fuck off.
“Time is the echo of an axe
Within a wood.”
― Philip Larkin, Collected Poems
If someone inflates endless his ego, as Islamists do, then he hurts his own feelings already in his morning own shit.
“The seven deadly sins of modern society: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, business without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principles”
-Mahatma Gandhi
“Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise to choose the violence.”
-Mahatma Gandhi
Why Allah does not shows himself? Because he does not want to do anything with such assholes.
“When fascism returns, he will not say, ‘I am the fascism‘. No, he will say, ‘I am the anti-fascism “– Ignazio Silone.
Political correctness requires a language for a poetry album.
Psychoanalysis is frivolous, or it is not psychoanalysis.
Colorful diversity, earlier: shit.
What can not any longer be changed, can not any longer be reformed, it is no longer alive, but very dead (instead). What is dead should be, has to be buried: religion, marriage, Romanticism, etc.
Romantic sucks.
The reality is always stronger than illusions.
A delusion is characterized by increasing loss of reality, and can be attested to today’s leaders in Germany and the mass media.Loss of reality describes the mental state of a person who is not (any longer) be able to understand the situation in which it is located. So you are ruled by madmen and manipulated by the mass media.
Totalitarianism can only be defeated if one has the courage to call things by their right names, just as they are. Political correctness prevents it, promotes totalitarianism and political cowardice and political lie.
The Extinction: Islam is like the sun, who comes too close to him, will burn itself and will flare the rest of the world with him.
Islam does not want any submission! Islam wants victory, destruction and annihilation.
The world was not created just for you only.
Time needs time.
What has God with us when he freely admits the devil more and more territories?
It’s not the biggest fear when you look into an abyss, but to note that the abyss looks back at you.
I is different.
Muslim´s headscarf is less annoying than German mothers with their pushchairs.
Prostheses people – look like women and men, but they are not.
Global governance – the political repair operation begins to repair before something was created.
The extremely increased, ostensibly critical, actually demonizing, German interest in Israel and Jews is perverse.
The Non–anti-Semite is by the current German law an anti-Semite who defames, discriminates, delegitimizes Israel, Jews, , but do not supports expressis verbis the aim of the Third Reich, the Holocaust, the extermination of the Jews.
Heroes of today know nothing, can not and do not want anything. They just look like heroes, that’s all.
It may be that early fathers ate their children. Today, the mothers will eat anything, fathers, children and the rest. Everything Mommy, anyway!
Germany yesterday: the will to power.
Germany today: the will to blindness.
Germany tomorrow: 德國
German psychoanalysis? Great, like German charm, German humor and German wit.
The resistance starts with its own language other than that of the dictatorship.
Smart phones for stupid people.
A leftist can, but do not have to be stupid.
If you do not blame states, when they commit suicide with millions victims , so why to blame a co-pilot with 149 dead?
Only the purity of the means justify the end.
An extreme narcissist is a potential terrorist, and every terrorist is an extreme narcissist.
Islamization means dementia.
Copy-shop as a psychoanalytic method today.
Psychoanalysis today is merely an imitation of a putative psychoanalysis, it has never existed, an unconscious cartoon, totem mask of itself.
The revolution devours its fathers, not its children.
Everyone deserves a second chance. A second, not a twelfth, twenty-second or one hundred second.
In Poland, American intelligence officials have tortured their prisoners, while the Polish courts ran trials of Polish intelligence officers who tortured prisoners.
Better have any manners, than no manners at all.
Realistic violence against structural violence – only a rationalization of their own desire as justification for their own wild, instinctual violence.
National Socialists German Worker Party (NSDAP) was left, its fight against communists and socialists was not ideological, but it was a competition among equals.
The man – a copy error.
Life is not a mean for any purpose. If a man has a benefit for someone else, he is no longer a man, not even an ass, but a kind of meatball.
psychosputnik 
