The dangers of Soft Totalitarianism
And why it might be our future sooner than you think.
Make someone’s day: Gift a subscription to your friends and family!
One of the key goals of this Substack column and my “From Poverty to Progress” book series is to:
promote an awareness and understanding of human material progress and
how we can keep it going.
I think people seriously underestimate how much better their material lives are than virtually all previous generations. For this reason, some people accuse me of being polyannish and naive about the future that awaits us.
What those people do not understand is that I do not believe that Progress always moves in a straight line. For the vast majority of human history, few if any individuals experienced progress. And even once material progress started, it has taken many detours into dead ends.
The Totalitarian Threat
Perhaps the biggest detour in modern history was the rise of Totalitarian ideologies in the 20th Century. Those ideological movements combined together modern technologies, compelling world views, and mental disorders to create a man-made hell. These regimes committed violence at levels rarely seen in human history.
In a previous article, I explained what Totalitarianism is. Totalitarians of the 20th Century typically took power via coup d’etat, violent civil war, or foreign invasion. Once those new regimes consolidated their power, they ruled by terror and violence, including:
Genocide
Work camps and concentration camps
Violence by internal security services
Systematic violence was a key to these regimes. This is what might call “Hard Totalitarianism.”
Nor do I believe that these Hard Totalitarian ideologies and regimes are relics of the past. The mental disorders that enabled them to emerge are still a key part of human psychology. As long as these mental diorders survive, there will always be very smart intellectuals who invent ideologies that:
Rationalize self-destructive and anti-social behaviors that stem from mental disorders
Create targets for those with mental disorders (by blaming a specific demographic group for problems in society).
Moralize those behaviors as being necessary for a higher cause.
Blame society or certain demographic groups for how they feel
Sabotage the ability of parents, peer pressure, and law enforcement to deal with their self-destructive and anti-social behaviors.
Societies must always be aware of the potential demons that are lurking within large portions of the populace. And we must also be aware of how destructive modern technologies can be if they are misapplied.
When people think of threats to democracy and progress, they typically imagine a charismatic leader speaking to adoring, irrational crowds. They picture a Benito Mussolini on a balcony or a uniformed Adolf Hitler speaking an endless field of iron helmets at Nuremberg. Or Vladimir Lenin beneath a red flag speaking to enthusiastic factory workers.
But it could never happen here…
But I do not think this is how a future Totalitarianism will come about. I think the real threat is much more subtle. Most worryingly, it consists of trends are that already in place.
I think that modern digital technologies enable a second form of totalitarianism, which one might call “Soft Totalitarianism.” This is a type of regime that achieves power peacefully and perpetuates its rule with relatively low levels of violence. It is a regime that controls individuals’ lives to an extraordinary level. Mobile devices, social media, close-circuit television, facial-recognition software, digital payment, data mining, national firewalls, and other digital technologies enable a level of control over people’s daily lives that Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao would have been envious of.
One might say that Communist China has perfected the prototype for Soft Totalitarianism. Of course, China still practices the old form of Totalitarianism in its genocide in Xinjiang. And the CCP always maintains the potential to spread systematic violence to the rest of the Chinese population if the regime is endangered. But most of the control that the Chinese Communist party has is imposed quietly through digital technology.
In the Western world, we have seen increasing attempts to impose elements of this Soft Totalitarianism on what are seemingly healthy democratic nations.
So did we get here?
See also my other articles and podcasts on Ideology:
Why Ideologies Threaten Progress (Part 1 of 3-part podcast series)
Why ideologies fail (podcast)
Descent into a man-made Hell: Understanding modern Totalitarianism
You might also be interested in reading my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:
I have always been fascinated by revolutions, radical ideologies, and Totalitarian regimes. I have always been a history buff, but I find this part of history particularly interesting.
I think that it all started when I was an exchange student in London (a long time ago). I was a budding science major. I took a long list of science courses, but I also took a history course entitled something like “Revolutions in History.”
We covered the French Revolution, the Revolutions of 1848, the Paris Commune, and the Russian Revolution, among others. Since then I have read hundreds of books on revolutions, radical ideologies, and Totalitarian regimes. I read about Socialists, Communists, Anarchists, Syndicalists, Peronists, Arab Socialists, Islamic Jihad, National Socialists, and Fascists (yes, the latter two were revolutionaries). I also read about the regimes that followers of those ideologies implemented.
At the beginning of my intellectual journey, I was very much on the Left-wing of the political spectrum. Looking back, I can see that I was a young person who was dissatisfied with the injustices and inequalities that I saw in the world. There was something very romantic about eliminating all of these injustices and inequalities in one sudden event.
Ironically, at the same time, I was also attracted to pragmatic and moderate politicians. There was a strange dichotomy between my Leftist heart and my pragmatic brain. I am not sure that I was conscious of this conflict at the time, but it is very obvious to me now. I see this dichotomy in other people all the time.
As I continued to read more, however, I began to realize the horrors that these ideas inflict on people when they are actually implemented in the world. At some point, I decided that I would focus on the results of an idea, not the intentions of that idea. I wish everyone else would make the same decision, though I find that most people, particularly those on the Left, rarely do.
A noticeable fact in all of this is that some form of Totalitarianism has been present in almost every nation in the world over the last century with one notable exception: the United States. I think that it is also fair to include Anglo nations, such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. There are other examples, but there are far more examples of the opposite.
It is easy to assume from the above fact a Totalitarian ideologies cannot flourish in the United States and other Anglo nations. Nor is it possible for a Totalitarian regime to be established.
Or could it?
If you had asked me as late as 2019 whether a Totalitarian regime could be established within the next generation in the United States, I would have laughed in your face. The thought would have seemed absolutely ridiculous, and I could back my argument up with a wealth of historical data.
In 2024 I am here to tell you, however, that a Soft Totalitarian regime in the United States and the rest of the Western world is a very real possibility. In fact, if we do not stop in the direction that the nation has been drifting over the last 15 years, it might even be the most likely outcome. The drift towards Soft Totalitarianism since Covid hit in 2020 has been particularly rapid.
I believe, however, that a new path towards Totalitarianism has been invented (largely unintentionally) that includes:
Constantly increasing the power and scope of the central government. That growth can be measured in spending, regulations, and executive orders.
Digital technologies reaching into every segment of a person’s life, including day-to-day communication, paying the monthly bills, and working in a job.
Bureaucrats in government, corporations, and non-profits abusing their powers by enforcing supposedly objective rules in a way that benefits supporters of their ideology and undermines supporters of rival ideologies or just regular citizens.
An ideology that is constantly expanding the concept of “harm” and “crisis” so that virtually everything is a crisis that requires the expansion of government power.
Constant crises that justify emergency powers, but that never get completely rolled back after the crisis has passed.
Media and social media companies who think all of the above are good things and are willing to impose those beliefs into their business model. They typically amplify supporters of the trends in this list and shame, ignore, or censor those who oppose those trends.
Financial institutions who in relative secret punish any organizations who oppose the ideology and force corporations to push the trends further.
An education system, and particularly elite universities, where the next generation of leaders are being trained, propagandizing for ideologies that support all these trends.
Government subsidies, mandates, and regulations that force the growth of all the above (intentionally or unintentionally). This insulates those organizations from the negative consequences of their own ideology.
Billionaire philanthropists who donate huge amounts of money to organizations that push for all the above. This also insulates those organizations from the negative consequences of their own ideology.
Occasional violent physical mobs or verbally abusive digital mobs that create fear of those who are worried about all of the above.
Occasional high-profile criminal court cases and legal actions that attempt to punish high-profile opponents of all the above to create fear.
When summed together this is a Totalitarian regime coming to power via a long, slow expansion of bureaucratic powers. If Totalitarianism ever comes to the United States, it will come in the form of a bureaucrat who claims to “just be doing their job” (but who is actually abusing their power to forward a dysfunctional ideology).
Can anyone seriously argue that the above trends have not happened with increasing severity and numbers since 2019? Maybe you think that I am exaggerating the extent or a few are not occurring, but what is the overall trend?
Can anyone seriously argue that if this trend continues for the next 20 years, then that will result in something approximating a Totalitarian regime? Or that it will not undermine the foundations of:
Democratic governance
The constitutional order
Individual rights
Rule of law
Market-based economy
Non-violent, transparent competition (which I believe is an important part of How Progress Works.)
Getting more to the point, can anyone seriously argue that the Democratic party (my former party) has not been enthusiastically pushing for all or almost all of the above? Can anyone seriously argue that the Democratic party is not attacking anyone who opposes or even identifies the trends above?
In fairness, I think that the Republican party has done a terrible job of alerting citizens of the above trends and implementing sound policies that stop the trend. This is a big part of the reason why the trend has continued. In that sense, the new Soft Totalitarianism is bipartisan. The Democrats implement it, while the Republicans complain about it, but do nothing.
It is largely an unintended outcome…
Now let me be clear, I do not believe that most of the people who are implementing the trends listed above want a Totalitarian regime. I am sure that if you asked most of these people, the vast majority would yell “No.” I do not doubt their statement. I think very few Americans on either the Left or the Right actually want a Soft Totalitarian regime.
of the “good intentions” of Progressives
I do believe that the majority of people who consider themselves “Progressive” are actively cheering for many of the above trends or at least pretend that “there is nothing to see here.” I also believe that a significant minority of people who consider themselves “Progressive” are Totalitarians and would be very happy living in a Totalitarian regimes that endorses their ideology. And even smaller number are willing to use violence in the streets to get there.
The problem is that, while Soft Totalitarianism is not their goal:
A totalitarian regime is the likely outcome of their actions, and the “Progressive” Left is deliberately sabotaging political opponents who oppose them.
Progressives do not believe in the transparent, non-violent competition that is necessary for progress. The simple reason is that it undermines their ability to create an equal society. So they accidentally tear down the foundations of material progress in order to implement their vision of better society.
Progressive ideals and terminology are now associated with being high status, so many people just repeat the progressive rhetoric to project an image of being high-status to others. Conservative ideals and terminology are now associated with being low status, so many people are loath to say anything that might mark them as being low-status.
The majority of people living in areas dominated by the Democratic party do not favor any of the above trends, but they are afraid for various reasons to publicly oppose them. Typically, they fear social rejection from their friends and family most, but some legitimately fear for their careers.
In particular, most high-status people are horrified of being perceived as a supporter of Donald Trump or MAGA.
The “Trump Derangement Syndrome” is a critical means by which the Progressive Left shuts down opposition to the drift towards Totalitarianism. Yes, you can still dislike Trump and agree with everything else in this post.The “Progressive” Left has taken over the Democratic party. It dominates their activists, fund-raisers, and Democratic primary voters. They are still the minority of Democratic voters, but that does not matter. The real power within the party leans hard to the Left and leans further Left with each passing year.
All elected Democratic officials, except possibly the President and a few Senators from Purple states, need to win the votes of these activists in the Democratic primary to maintain their political career. All other Democratic elected officials have no interest in winning votes from moderate or conservative voters because that will undermine their ability to get the Democratic party nomination.
All elected Democratic officials and their appointees need to placate the “Progressive” Left with:
Rhetoric (even if they do not actually believe what they are saying)
Changes in terminology that legitimize all the above trends.
Bureaucratic and judicial appointees, who implement the trends
Executive orders that do the same
Increased funding and regulations for policies that Progressives support
Open opposition to anyone who objects to the above trend.
Any Democrats who come out strongly against any of the above are effectively ending their political careers within the party.
So the Democratic party is unintentionally building the foundations for Soft Totalitarianism. Without modern digital technology, this would probably be impossible, but in combination with modern digital technology, it is the likely destination of their continued rule over the federal government.
This is what Soft Totalitarianism looks and sounds like in 21st-century America: camouflaged with nice-sounding terminology to sound thoughtful, caring, and inclusive. Yes, this person was once in charge of Wikipedia, and now she is at NPR.
I believe that as long as the Democratic party has control over either the Presidency, US Senate, US House, or the Republican party refuses to take steps to roll back these trends, the unintended drift towards Soft Totalitarianism will continue. And if the Democrats control the Presidency and governing majorities within the US Senate and the US House, the trend towards Soft Totalitarianism will accellerate.
I believe that this drift is virtually unstoppable in about a dozen Deep Blue states where Democrats almost always control the Governor’s mansion and have strong governing majorities in the State legislatures. But American citizens still have the right to relocate to better states, and they have been doing it in droves. If the drift to Soft Totalitarianism is contained to the dozen Deep Blue states, then the damage will be much easier to recover from.
After Covid and the BLM protests/riots, Republicans in about 25 Red States seem to be finally waking up to the danger and are taking hesitant steps to roll the trends back in their states. My guess is that this trend will accelerate, if only out of a desire to please an angry electorate.
The practices and ideas are dysfunctional
The real question is whether the federal government will keep bailing out state governments and other organizations with massive subsidies, regulations, and mandates. In particular, federal government censorship over social media and government-enforced DEI practices in hiring, firing, and promotions. All of these practices are enabling organizations to stay financially viable and enable activists to maintain cushy jobs within the bureaucracy, while their policies become increasingly dysfunctional.
The important thing to remember is that the policies and viewpoints of the Soft Totalitarians are completely dysfunctional. The stronger they get, the more dysfunctional their organization becomes. Their path is simply not sustainable. They will inevitably come crashing down to earth, just like every Totalitarian movement of the past. The only question is how many people will be hurt before the collapse occurs.
A strong dose of transparent, non-violent competition will force the organization to either:
Abandon the practices and ideas, or
Collapse
In this way, they are like Communism of the 20th Century. The goal of the West in the Cold War was containment. Containment worked because of inherent contradictions within the communist system. These contradictions meant that if the system could not expand, it would eventually collapse.
Our goal should be to contain Soft Totalitarianism within the dozen Deep Blue states where the Democrats have powerful governing majorities and then watch material reality do its job.
How do we contain Soft Totalitarianism?
Fortunately, we do not need to invent new solutions to this problem. We just need to rediscover proven solutions from the past.
We do not need a “strong leader.” We do not need civil war. We do not need a revolution. We do not need violence. We do not need to throw out the Constitution.
We just need to get back to what already has worked for the United States for over 200 years. Except for modern digital technology, all of the forces pushing for Soft Totalitarianism have been in existence for millennia. Ever since the invention of agriculture, there have been those who want to use wealth created by others to achieve their own personal ends. Those ends might be power, wealth, or social status.
The exact same factors that enabled material progress to evolve out of oppressive Agrarian regimes can be used to contain Soft Totalitarianism and eventually roll it back.
Decentralization of Power
We need to rediscover the importance of the Third Key to Progress: Decentralized political, economic, religious, and ideological power. It is of particular importance that elites are forced into transparent, non-violent competition that undermines their ability to forcibly extract wealth from the masses. This also allows citizens to freely choose among institutions based upon how much they have to offer to each individual and society in general.
In the distant past, we had monarchs and nobles who extracted the food surplus from peasants for their own power and social status. More recently, we had Totalitarian dictators who extracted wealth to transform their society into a Utopia. There are always people who will abuse power for their own ends. And sometimes those ends are what they perceive to be a moral calling.
The solution is to force those people into transparent, non-violent competition. This competition undermines the ability of people to abuse power and forces them to produce results that are beneficial to the masses. This works in economics, politics, religion, and ideology.
No one person is so smart, so expert in their field, so moral, or so incorruptible that they can be trusted with large amounts of power unless it is derived from transparent, non-violent competition. The problem is that the Soft Totalitarians are very confident that they are smart enough, expert in their field enough, moral enough, and incorruptible enough to use their power only for good. So all the rest of us should just trust the experts.
I will go into much more detail in other articles, but I believe the following principles will limit the possibilities of transitioning to Soft Totalitarianism:
Freedom of speech, particularly on social media. Social media will only get more important as a means of communication, and there have been clear attempts by the federal government to restrict freedom of speech on those platforms.
If we lose freedom of speech, all our other rights are in much greater danger.Transparency - Soft Totalitarianism thrives in secrecy. The more the American people know about what is going on within bureaucracies, the easier it is for us to fight back.
Merit-based hiring, firing, and promotions - The key to smuggling activists into public and private bureaucracies are the policies of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. This undermines the proper functioning of all our institutions and undermines their legitimacy. Worse, it is blatant racial and gender discrimination.
Radical reductions in government, corporate, and non-profit bureaucracies - Soft Totalitarians thrive in bureaucracies. The smaller the bureaucracy, the less likely that Soft Totalitarians impose their will slowly by bureaucratic rules.
Decentralization - The Founders established the US Constitution on the principle of Federalism, but we have gotten away from it in the last century. We need a massive shift of domestic powers away from the federal government and towards the state and local governments.
Competition between institutions - Competition forces organizes to focus on results. And if free citizens get to choose which institutions to vote for, work within, buy from, invest in, and donate to, then a large portion of those results flow to the masses.
Elimination of government subsidies - Government subsidies isolate organizations from competition, so they tend to produce bad results.
Creation of new institutions based on the above principles to compete with ideologically captured institutions.
I will write future articles that go into more detail on these principles.
See also my other articles and podcasts on Ideology:
Why Ideologies Threaten Progress (Part 1 of 3-part podcast series)
Why ideologies fail (podcast)
Descent into a man-made Hell: Understanding modern Totalitarianism
You might also be interested in reading my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:
Very nicely done exposition of Soft Totalitarianism and what is required to counter it. Thanks.
I might add the comforting factor of totalitarianism. It sounds bizarre but some people feel very comforted by its rigidity and predictability. As mammals, humans crave hierarchy and order. This basic instinct counters the more advanced desire for freedom (even though freedom implies discomfort and unpredictability). From this point of view, there will always be forces in society towards totalitarianism (the prevailing form of governance throughout human history). Democracy and freedom entered the scene relatively late in human history and only in the most advanced societies where people were able to overcome the animal instinct and realize the benefits of non-totalitarian model.