“And so it starts again”

Meditations on the current infection of our society by totalitarianism

“And so it starts again”

Meditations on the current infection of our society by totalitarianism

In our society, and I refer to the United States and Europe which were the geographical and cultural entities that formed me, in our society we were protected for years by older people, in government, in universities and in private life, people who knew all too well the dangers of totalitarian governance posed by fascism, and also by communism.

That older generation, unknown to us younger ones, was always on the lookout for the indications of totalitarianism in our politics and in our institutions. Those people knew how things really work and how exactly they can go so wrong.

We depended on their experience. But in 2022, they are all gone. They all lie peacefully in their graves.

Now, like an orphaned duckling, we are suddenly forced to think for our ourselves, to do our own heavy lifting. Not a single person around us knows what totalitarian politics was like back then from personal experience.

But some of us are learning the hard way, right now.

My mother will be 91 years old in a few weeks. She remembers something of what it was like when my grandfather was dismissed from his job in the government of Luxembourg, after it was annexed by Germany. He was dismissed because he refused to join the Nazi Party. But she does not remember much of what happened. She was, simply, too young. 

And so, it starts again. And so the liberal intellectuals, the political progressives and the anti-racists, the nature lovers and the defenders of the rights of native peoples, they all joined the party, they all accepted COVID19 rule under which secret government and corporate organizations can make up, at random, rules condemning anyone to receive fraudulent vaccinations, to be put in isolation and to be dismissed without appeal, all without due process.

These upstanding members of our society, who we count on to steer us in the right direction, have convinced themselves that no one will ever know about this secret pact they made with the devil. They assume it will always be secret how they knowingly bought into a fascistic system because of little advantages that they received for looking the other way.

It is exactly what happened before, granted the context and the issues have changed. If anything, the scale is even larger this time, and the dangers even greater.

We need above all to have the spiritual and intellectual strength to look the truth in the face, without concern for our personal benefits. That means that truth has a greater value than our wellbeing and the material benefits we can offer to our families.

If we are wrapped in layers of lies, then we are all doomed, whatever temporary benefits we may receive for our collaboration.