You Just Might Be A Totalitarian

Do you require that all your friends agree with you on every topic?

Do you unfriend and quit seeing those who dare to disagree with you?

Do you require that all your coworkers agree with you on every topic?

Do you ask that coworkers who disagree with you be disciplined or fired?

Do you excitedly pile on via social media posts when somebody steps out of line?

Do you unquestioningly follow all advice and “guidelines” from so-called experts even if that advice and those guidelines fly in the face of common sense?

Do you cheer when somebody you politically disagree with loses their job and/or is publicly humiliated?

Do you support criminal prosecutions of individuals for objecting to policies you support?

Do you get feelings of moral superiority from any of the above actions?

If you answered “yes” to any of the above questions, then you just may be a totalitarian and/or a useful idiot.

If you believe any of the above must be done for “the good of all” then you just might be a totalitarian. FYI, this doesn’t just apply to those on the left, even though it’s more prevalent on that side of the political spectrum.

If you publicly supported, but claim to privately disagree with any of the actions cited above, then you just may be a “useful idiot” for those perpetrating the stupidity outlined above.

The political ideology of “totalitarianism” describes a political, social, and cultural system in which all information, speech, thought, and actions are delineated and controlled by the state (government). The political philosopher Hannah Arendt coined the term to describe what she saw emerging in the then-new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). As the name implies, it is a system of total control.

You may think you are immune to the negative consequences of living in such a system because you publicly and vocally support all such actions. However, as with all such systems, if you aren’t in a position of power (and even if you are) you will eventually become of victim of your own willful blindness and excesses. Your useful idiocy will come back and bite you in the butt a million times over.

Lenin created the term “useful idiot” to identify those intellectuals in the West who publicly and loudly supported his overthrow of the Russian imperial government (no, I’m not saying that the tsar was a good form of government. Just stop with that b.s.) and the implementation of his form of communist government in place of the empire. Lenin knew damn well what he was doing and deliberately dressed it up for Western intellectuals. He had no illusions it was “for the good of all.”

This was sparked when I saw a bit on Instapundit this morning mentioning that liberal/progressive/lefty types are freaking out over Twitter/X and claiming that it is now a “conservative media outlet.” Glenn’s comment was that if you think that’s what it looks like now, that should tell you how much content was being censored prior to Musk’s takeover.

Censorship is a tool of the totalitarian government. If you find the change in Twitter/X horrifying, disturbing, or otherwise highly unwelcome, then you are a censor and by extension a totalitarian.

Forbidding those who disagree with you to share their opinions on the most popular opinion-sharing platform alongside yours, and perhaps even (gasp!) disagreeing with you, is censorship. And censorship is a necessary and sufficient condition for calling you a totalitarian.

If you cannot stand to hear disagreeing opinions, if you (wait for it) censor them, not only are you engaging in totalitarian behavior, you are acting as if you are in a cult. Cults are totalitarian in nature – no one is allowed to disagree with the central tenets of the cult. Doing so is grounds for kicking members out of the cult.

Progressives and others who wish to squash dissenting voices are totalitarians who wish to control not only “hurtful language” but all language and thought. Yes, thoughts. Because language is the vocalization of thoughts.

As a society we are constantly assured by politicians, media, and general nosy do-gooders that everything they are saying or doing and/or “recommending” (read “requiring”) we do, is all for our own good. But didn’t you notice anything odd? Like how none of those doing the “recommending” were following their own recommendations? Why was that?

During the Wuflu shutdowns, Gavin Newsome said that nobody could have indoor parties… and then went to a birthday party for a staffer indoors at the French Laundry restaurant. Philly mayor Jim Kenny signed an EO outlawing indoor dining in Philly (in the winter, btw)… then promptly de-camped to Baltimore so he could dine, you guessed it, indoors. Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House, proclaimed that no one should go anywhere unless masked and then had her hairdresser come to her home where nobody wore a mask. Every single Hollywood event had celebrities going maskless while staff were required to be masked. All while proclaiming that those refusing to mask were killing everybody’s grandmother. The list goes on and on.

Believe me, none of this was for your own good. Just like firing people over the use of “wrong” pronouns or “dead-naming” somebody is not for your own good (hard to see how it could be, but there are those who will argue that) or the good of the workplace, but is rather designed to increase the power, or perceived power, of the one doing the complaining.

Everything they do and say is for their benefit and to enable them to maintain their phony-baloney jobs. Censorship, language-policing, politically-correct language, woke language, pronoun requirements, all of it is totalitarian. And you are engaging in totalitarian behaviors by going along with these ridiculous claims, and “requirements”, and by supporting actions such as firing somebody for not going along with them. You are acting as a totalitarian.

Politicians and (even worse) bureaucrats are never doing anything for your own good. How do they even know what is good for you anyway? Why do you persist in thinking they do know? Doesn’t it bother you that total strangers, sitting in offices 3,000 miles away, purport to know what you need?

Quit believing those whose goal is to acquire even more power over you. They will not go away and they will not stop.

Listen to your gut and stop going with the flow.

Protect your sanity and the sanity of your family – especially your children.

Go outside in the sunshine, or even the rain. Breathe the fresh air and get away from the chattering classes.

Quit being a totalitarian and quit being a useful idiot.