Postcard From Pre-Totalitarian America
American Conservative,
by
Rod Dreher
Original Article
Posted By: Judy W.,
2/20/2020 8:00:53 AM
Last year, I spoke to a Soviet-born scholar who teaches in an American public university. I’m using a quote from our discussion in my forthcoming (September) book, Live Not By Lies. (Snip) [quote]
This academic year I’ve had an opportunity to work with some early-career academics. These are newly-minted PhDs that are in their first year on the tenure-track. What’s really scary is that they sincerely believe all the woke dogma. Older people – those in their forties, fifties or sixties – might parrot the woke mantras because it’s what everybody in academia does and you have to survive. But the younger generation actually believes it all.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
Judy W. 2/20/2020 8:03:00 AM (No. 324228)
The article includes Hannah Arendt's 1951 list of factors that allowed totalitarian ideologies to take hold in German and Russia. Pretty alarming:
Loneliness
Social Atomization
Loss of Faith In Hierarchies And Institutions
The Desire To Transgress And Destroy
Indifference to Truth, and the Willingness To Believe Useful Lies
A Mania for Ideology
A Society That Values Loyalty More Than Expertise
The Politicization of Everything
11 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
Laotzu 2/20/2020 8:19:21 AM (No. 324238)
Lost me at the footnote:
She said these factors were present in both Germany, which went to the hard right, and Russia, which went to the hard left.
The Nazis were Democrats in matching uniforms. The leaders got rich on their government positions, and everyone became a slave to the State.
12 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Newtsche 2/20/2020 8:32:13 AM (No. 324251)
Pre-Totalitarian, trademark that, scary prescience.
7 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
chumley 2/20/2020 8:32:56 AM (No. 324254)
I'm not too sure. Just last night I was at a religious meeting. My religion is generally very far left. I live with it because everything else is near a perfect fit for me, and I really love all the people in it.
On a break, one of the women made a statement in favor of banning "assault weapons". We had a short, calm discussion about it wherein good points were brought up by both of us. No screaming, no name calling, no blood pressure. I don't think she is ready to go out and buy an AR, and I am not willing to register or surrender any of my irons, but civility was had. It can still be done.
6 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
Dodge Boy 2/20/2020 8:48:47 AM (No. 324267)
It is happening right before our very eyes in Canada. My family living in British Columbia says the country is moving into a totalitarian system with lightening speed. And again, it's the millennials, millions of them from Ontario and Quebec who are encouraging it. Canada is toast.
7 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
montwoodcliff 2/20/2020 8:53:00 AM (No. 324271)
It’s the politicization of everything quote. And who really started that? It was the guy who said he was scared to death about the direction of the Democratic Party, James Carville and his buddy the Forehead, Paul Begala. Everything with Clinton was politicized. They sent out Dick Morris to poll where the.Clintons should vacation, which is how they wound up “camping” in Wyoming, instead of being on Walter Cronkite’s yacht on Martha’s Vineyard. The chickens have come home to roost. And don’t forget the clip on TV of that college fairy screaming about Republicans and fascists or the fat pig at that assembly at Evergreen College. Trump has to step in on these colleges in his second term and cut off funding to these schools.
7 people like this.
"Americans are extremely naive about what’s coming."
We are already suffering widespread cognitive dissonance. We can see what the FBI, CIA and others are doing, and deny the fact as the work of a few, but not those hard-working field people who will not come forward to expose the coup. We live in major denial about many distasteful and frightful things around us...they just can't happen here. We have a Constitution...
6 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
cat2 2/20/2020 9:24:17 AM (No. 324299)
Why isn't this a Must Read? It's chilling.
6 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
Chuzzles 2/20/2020 10:40:50 AM (No. 324364)
I am old enough to remember how it was the usual summertime activities for kids to run all over the neighborhood but be back in time for supper. I truly mourn that era, for my own two kids did not get to enjoy that kind of childhood freedom of just being a kid enjoying the world. Nowadays the neighbors would have called child services on my folks for letting us enjoy Summer without parental supervision.
The folks who lived under the jackboot of the Soviet Iron Curtain way of life understand where our country is trying to head, and I am sure they shake their heads in bewilderment and sorrow. Melania Trump would probably be very familiar with these feelings, given she grew up in Slovenia.
6 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
The Remnants 2/20/2020 11:13:05 AM (No. 324396)
Great article!
Saw a comment here that referred to Pete Buttigieg as a "red diaper baby", so I looked it up and discovered that Pete's father taught at Notre Dame University for decades and was a proponent of the works of Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937). Gramsci is considered the godfather of cultural marxism which believes in the gradual revolution of capitalist society through its culture and institutions rather than through violence.
"Gramsci's principle was that [Communists] must begin by influencing the culture, winning the intellectuals, the teachers, implanting itself in the press, the media, the publishing houses,." said French philosopher,
Jean-Francois Revel.
Mission accomplished. I would include the church in the above list. It IS scary. We need Divine Intervention before it is too late, but I guess we have to repent first.
5 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
DVC 2/20/2020 1:31:46 PM (No. 324565)
It will be very bloody if they actually try to implement their communist totalitarian ways.
More and more I think Schlickter's Indian Country is how things may very well go.
1 person likes this.
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Comments:
This is a stunning article, really scary. The Soviet-born woman points out that in the 1970s and 1980s no one believed in the communist ideology. Once the country was weakened, it easily fell because no one supported it. But here, a whole generation of young people actually passionately and fanatically believes this stuff. Some of them cry when their beliefs are contradicted, no matter how gently. If this can't be changed we are headed right for totalitarianism, gulags and torture chambers and all.