The Rebirth of the Totalitarian Left in the 21st Century

Critical theory and the Woke have found a new path to power

Mar 21, 2024

All my life I have been a history buff. I am constantly reading history books.

One of my favorite topics is radical ideologies: Communism, Fascism, National Socialism, Islamic Jihadism, and Authoritarian Socialism. You name it.

I have read both theoretical books written by true believers as well as history books that show what happens when they are able to implement their ideals in reality. Somehow, I am fascinated by the dark side of humanity while I am simultaneously repelled by it.

For most of my reading, I felt like I was reading about other nations that had little influence on my personal life. It was always in the past and foreign nations: Russia, China, Germany, Italy, Vietnam, Cambodia or Korea.

I guess that there was a certain comfort in that. Though the rational side of my brain told me that radical ideologies could come to power anywhere, my non-rational side said:

“Here in America? In the 21st Century? No way.”

And then something changed

Starting around 2010 I started to get this sense of unease, that something was changing. The America that I knew and understood was slowly starting to change. Something new was afoot, but I could not put my finger on it. Being married, a homeowner, a father, and a full-time worker, I pushed those thoughts back into the dark recesses of my brain and focused on more immediate tasks.

Clearly, a new way of thinking was overtaking Americans with 4-year college degrees, which I call the professional class. A new obsession with race, gender, and inequality was overtaking this class. It was most apparent with an entirely new set of terminology: “systemic racism,” “misogyny,” “privilege,” “non-binary,” “lived experience,” “micro-aggression", “cis,” and many more. An entirely new world view was emerging.

I had seen it before

Whatever you want to call it, this way of thinking was not new to me, although I was not quite sure what I was experiencing the first time that I came into contact with it. In my first encounters, I seriously underestimated the staying power of the ideology. I will not make that same mistake again.

My first encounter with this way of thinking occurred when I was a graduate student at Brown University's Political Science and Public Policy department in the early 1990s. Most of my professors were conventional liberals, and most of my fellow grad students were of the same ilk. At the time, I was very much on the Left. I had been a member of the Democratic Socialists of America long before it was vogue.

At the time “politically correct” culture was at its high point, and Brown University was one of its strongest bastions. I noticed that there was a consistent pattern of about 10-20% of the students being very strident Leftists who injected race and gender into every topic. They were very loud in their opinions and quick to put down or cut off any students with different opinions. They were loud to claim that everything was relative, but they were absolutely sure that their convictions were more moral than everyone else’s.

Even though I was on the Left myself, I felt it was my obligation as a professor’s assistant to foster a balanced discussion. It was clear, though, that many students found it intimidating to speak up in opposition to the aggressive minority.

I also experienced some fairly creepy events where other professors’ assistants got into serious trouble with the administration for what seemed to be very reasonable remarks in the classroom. With hindsight, I can see that this was the very beginning of Cancel Culture.

Ironically, it was my interactions with these PC Brown students that really pushed me away from the Left. I saw their arrogance and unwillingness to listen to counter-arguments combined with very obvious economic privilege. To me, it was nauseating to see such obviously privileged people taking on the attributes of victimhood, and I began to see some of that type of thinking in myself.

These PC students made me want to take a good look in the mirror. So they pushed me away from the Left without even realizing it.

I did not see any real significance in any of this for the rest of society. It was so obvious to me that their way of thinking was dysfunctional and self-serving.

I was confident that once these students got out in the real world, they would abandon those ridiculous ideals and move on with their lives. I am sure that many if not most of them did so.

But I went on with my life

I pretty much forgot about those PC antics for the next few decades. From the mid-1990s to around 2010, this way of thinking seemed to die out. Or maybe it was just because I was not longer an academic (I went into the Digital Technology field after being a professor for a few years), so it did not impact me.

From 2008 to 2021 I pretty much dropped out of politics and avoided watching the media. I did not even follow presidential elections. I basically missed the entire Obama and Trump administrations. For that I am grateful.

Then in 2021, after I retired and wrote my first book, I decided that it was time to come up for air and start following politics again.

See also my other articles and podcasts on Ideology:

Where do ideologies come from?
Why neither the Left nor the Right have solutions
Radical ideologies feast on mental disorders
Why Ideologies Threaten Progress (Part 1 of 3-part podcast series)
Why neither the Left nor the Right have solutions
Why ideologies fail (podcast)
Descent into a man-made Hell: Understanding modern Totalitarianism
Why the Left endures
Were Hitler and the National Socialists actually Socialist?
The Left has hit a historic dead-end
The Rebirth of the Totalitarian Left in the 21st Century (this article)
The dangers of Soft Totalitarianism
more

You might also be interested in reading my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:

Something had changed, but what?

When I did so, I felt like Rip Van Winkle. For those of you who are not aware, Rip Van Winkle is a short story about a man who lived in pre-Revolutionary America. He drinks too much, falls asleep, and wakes up 20 years later after the American Revolution takes place.

I can relate to poor old Rip, because everything in 2021 seemed so different from 2007. Persons in mainstream media would make statements, as if formerly left-wing statements that were far out of the political mainstream in the 1990s and 2000s, were now obvious facts.

At first, it was very confusing, but after a little while, it all seemed so perfectly clear. All those books that I read by thinkers who embraced Communism, National Socialism, and other radical ideologies gave me a clear point of reference for what I was seeing.

Meet the New Boss; Same as the Old Boss

Now it is clear to me that I was seeing the Rebirth of the Totalitarian Left in 21st-century America. But it was a form of Totalitarianism that was very different from Totalitarianism of the 20th Century. Or more accurately, the ends of a utopian society with ideologues in control were the same, but the means of achieving those ends were radically different.

I believe the core of what is happening is that a significant proportion of the American professional class has embraced a new Totalitarian ideology of the Left. The ideology has become widespread enough among those with four-year college degrees, that it has permeated many if not most American institutions. American institutions are increasingly becoming islands of groupthink where a significant portion of employees believe that one of the primary institutional goals is to propagate their ideology.

Defining Woke

The term that has caught on to identify this new ideology is “Woke” or “Wokeness.” Some prefer the terms Social Justice, Critical Social Justice, the Successor ideology, or Critical theory. Personally, I think the term “Critical theory” is the most accurate, though I have no desire to haggle over labels. And those who object to the use of any labels and pretend that there is no new ideology are just being dishonest.

For the purposes of this article and others I will use the following terminology:

Critical theory is the Leftist ideology that states that:

All societies are divided into a zero-sum group struggle between Oppressors and Oppressed. Typically, the focus is on race, gender, and sexuality, but the concept can be applied to hundreds of other characteristics where one side is more successful than the other side.
All inequalities between individuals are due to the unequal outcome in the struggle between those groups.
It is our ethical obligation to publicly side with the Oppressed in their struggle.

The Woke are the people who use the terminology of Critical theory in their daily lives and flamboyantly display their sympathies for the Oppressed and against the Oppressor. It is important to realize that:

Very few of the Woke actually understand the doctrine of Critical theory.
Many people on the Center-Left pretend to be Woke in order to protect their career, network of friends, and their social standing.

So Critical theorists define the ideology, while the Woke act as if they have fully bought into the ideology.

I have no intention of summarizing the rise of Woke ideology in this article. I will write many articles on the topic. If you want a good place to start, read this summary in my library of online book summaries.

What is their strategy?

Unlike previous versions of totalitarians, Critical theorists do not desire to achieve power via violent revolution, military conquest, or coup d’etat. Traditional totalitarians want to overthrow the government and then use the power of the government to force all institutions in society to become propaganda devices.

Critical theorists bypass the upper rungs of government and go straight for the bureaucracy. Their goal is to capture the middle rungs of all American institutions and turn those institutions into propaganda devices.

Critical theorists essentially want to present all members of the professional class with a choice:

Pretend to be Woke and hire/promote me and people like me, or
Find another career (thereby potentially losing your job, income, spouse, friends, and social status)

So the Woke say that they are struggling for social justice, but they are actually struggling for their own social status.

How will they do this?

Their goal is to:

first control the professional class who staff the middle of institutions,
then control the elites who are at the top of leadership positions within American institutions,
then use those institutions to:
1. extract revenue from the people and
2. use the revenue to pay for cushy jobs that enable them to flaunt their social status based on superior morality

More specifically their methods have been to:

Control specific institutions within society, particularly:
- Human resources departments
- Federal and state bureaucracies
- Universities, particularly education schools
- K-12 education
- Media
- Social media
- Digital technology.
Reshape the language of discourse among the professional class to put the white, male Center-Leftist who dominate American institutions with a choice:
- Adopt our terminology, or
- Be ostracized by being branded a racist, right-winger, or a Trump supporter
Abuse the power of individual bureaucratic and teaching positions to:
- Make decisions in hiring, firing, and promoting to increase the number of Woke supporters within the organization
- Engage in censorship to shut down all anti-Woke opposition within the organization to such practices
- Use the institution as a propaganda device for their ideology in the rest of society
Maintain a steady flow of revenue from non-market sources (to make up for their inability to compete in an open market) such as:
- Federal government
- State governments
- Activist billionaires
- Activist foundations and non-profits
Conduct all their actions in secret so no one realizes what is happening until after they have consolidated their control over the organization. This is why they must control media, social media, and digital technology institutions.

So rather than overthrow institutions, the New Totalitarian Left seeks to capture them and change the goals of those institutions. If they are successful, all American institutions will be the same. The institutions will appear to be different, but their ideological assumptions will be identical and their goals will all be very similar.

Why does this matter?

Critical theory and the Woke are a fundamental threat to material progress. Their methods are essentially trying to overcome the third Key to Progress:
Decentralized political, economic, religious, and ideological power. This key is essential to progress and maintaining freedom because it undermines the ability of elites to extract resources for their own purposes. Decentralization of power allows citizens to freely choose among institutions based upon how much they have to offer to each individual and society in general.

The Woke wants to create an ideological homogeneity that overcomes merit-based competition within and between institutions. The Woke want to undermine transparent, non-violent competition so that they can become a new elite that extracts resources from society so they can build their utopian society (which for some reason, they never actually define).

And guess who will dominate the leadership positions of their future utopia?

Woke is a struggle for social status

In practice, the Woke utopia is where:

The Woke have:
- higher income
- higher status, and
- greater power than everyone else, and
The Woke do not have to do anything to earn that status.

It is not a revolt of the people against the elite. It is a revolt of an emerging elite against the people.

This is why:

It is so important to them to capture the process for hiring, firing, and promotions within American institutions
They are so hostile to the concept of “merit”
They obsess over the terms “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion”

Again, the Woke say that they are struggling for social justice, but they are actually struggling for their own social status. They want to give themselves a fast track into a cushy high-status office job with a high and steady income.

Stay focused on what matters

Many people who write about Critical theory or the Woke focus on less consequential factors. They focus on protests, riots, social media activity, Cancel culture, and just plain weird behavior. All of those things matter, but it is important to focus on what is really important: the bureaucracy. In particular, one must focus on the hiring, firing, promotions, and training practices within the bureaucracy of the federal government, state/local governments, corporations, universities, K-12 education, and non-profits That is the heart of the movement.

All the other phenomena are just the tip of the iceberg. What lurks below the surface is far more important and dangerous.

How to fight the Woke

I will go into much more detail in other articles, but I believe the key to fighting the Woke is:

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.

From Poverty to Progress