Loneliness and Totalitarianism

Arendt (as a woman) thinks it's "loneliness" that facilitates the rise of totalitarianism. No, it's the destruction of community, especially male fraternity, and republicanism (by the state and its oligarchy), and the exploitation by the state of men looking for meaning that leads to totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is just the next stage of the development of the state.

AEON: Where loneliness can lead by Samantha Rose Hill
Hannah Arendt enjoyed her solitude, but she believed that loneliness could make people susceptible to totalitarianism

Dreher Selling His Book

NEW from @roddreher: We have more in common with pre-Nazi Germany and pre-Soviet Russia than we think. https://t.co/PAGbDtTHyL

— The American Conservative (@amconmag) October 1, 2020

AmConMag

Dreher Talks about His Forthcoming Book

And he talks about the QAnon stuff in a Dreherian way... Going to skip over that.



QAnon & Living By Lies:

As you regular readers know, this book is about the creeping “soft totalitarianism” in our society, and what Christian dissidents who lived under Soviet bloc communism can tell us about how to recognize it and resist it. In its most simple definition, “totalitarianism” is a word used to describe a state in which all things are politicized. The key difference between authoritarianism and totalitarianism is in the first, the state only seeks a monopoly on political action, whereas in the latter, the state wants to command all aspects of life, and — this is key — to compel not only obedience, but internal assent. As Winston Smith was told, you must learn to love Big Brother.

The word was invented in fascist Italy, but has been applied both to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and its vassals. One consistent story that we have heard from anti-communist dissidents is that the entire system was built on lies — that is, on the willingness of people to assent to lies. Vaclav Havel (who was not a Christian) said that the only resistance available to people under communism, where it was impossible to build political opposition, was to seek to “live in truth” — that is, to refuse to participate in lies. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was even more emphatic on this point. The title of my book is taken from his final message to the Soviet people in 1974, on the eve of his expulsion from the country. That essay, “Live Not By Lies,” urged readers to engage in passive resistance to the regime of lies: that is, to refuse to say, or to appear to say, something that they believe is untrue, just to keep the peace.

How far does resistance go? In this respect perhaps Herbert McCabe was more daring -- I will get that post published soon.