Recipe for Totalitarianism

What makes us susceptible to authoritarian control?

Totalitarianism remains pervasive in current American society. It increased during the Obama years and peaked under the Biden administration. Despite a recent change in administrations, it still hasn’t gone away. What are the conditions that lead to a population’s acceptance of total control, such as fascism under Hitler or communism under Stalin? Which of these societal conditions remain with us today?

Four main conditions

In The Psychology of Totalitarianism, author Mattias Desmet discusses the four main conditions that must be present for totalitarianism to occur. “These four conditions were present prior to the rise of Nazism and Stalinism, and they are also present now,” Desmet says.

Condition 1: Social isolation. Loneliness, a lack of normal social relationships, and absence of social bonds is strongly associated with social media and other communication technologies. The problem is most keen in developed nations. “About 30 percent of people living in these countries report chronic experiences of loneliness and isolation, and this percentage is increasing every year,” explains Desmet.

Condition 2: Lack of meaning. Humans are social beings. A loss of social connectedness leads to experiencing life as meaningless, according to Desmet, a professor of clinical psychology at Ghent University, Belgium, and a practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapist. In his experience, viewing the universe as a machine without purpose or intention often renders life meaningless.

Condition 3: Free-floating anxiety. People who lack human bonds and meaning in their lives are prone to generalized unease and anxiety. These feelings are difficult to manage and can easily turn into panic, which, for most people, is something to be avoided and feared. “For that reason, a person in that state seeks to link their anxiety to an object,” Desment says.

Condition 4: Free-floating frustration and aggression. Research shows that people who experience social isolation, lack of meaning and indefinable anxiety generally feel frustrated and aggressive. They often look for objects on which they can take out their feelings. “The potential of unvented aggression present in the population—aggression that is still looking for an object”—is the fourth pre-condition for totalitarianism, Desmet says.

Mass formation

The mass media will often create a narrative that suggests an object for venting unvented aggression. Under Nazism that object was Jewish people. Under Stalinism it was the aristocracy. During the COVID pandemic it was the virus and, later on, the anti-vaxxers. In each case, identification of an object was followed quickly by widespread social support for carrying out a strategy to attack and take control of the identified object.

The fight against the object becomes a mission that is widely considered virtuous. The population’s frustration and aggression can now be taken out on the object. It can also be taken out on anyone who refuses to go along with “politically correct” narrative. The goal of the behavior, which often becomes ritualized, is to “subject the individual to the group.” As Desmet explains:

The individual must at all times show that he submits to the interest of the collective, by performing self-destructive symbolic (ritualistic) behaviors.

The end result is radically irrational collectivism:

What one thinks does not matter; what counts is that people think it together. In this way, the masses come to accept even the most absurd ideas as true, or at least to act as if they were true…The masses believe in the story not because it’s accurate but because it creates a new social bond.

The new social bond becomes a bond with a large group. This, in turn, assuages loneliness and generates superficial feelings of connectedness. Extreme intolerance to other opinions outside of politically correct groupthink is part of this phenomenon. Desmet has coined a name for this type of group behavior: mass formation. He is widely published on the topic.

The bottom line

Totalitarianism is not confined to Stalin and Hitler. The conditions are currently ripe for totalitarianism in the U.S. and many other nations. Social isolation, lack of meaning, free-floating anxiety, frustration and unvented aggression are conditions that have become widespread in many developed nations. This can result in mass formation. All it takes is the mass media to suggest an object and announce a plan to control the object. Far too often, the masses cooperate in the “politically correct” narrative by giving up their freedoms and submitting to increased authoritarianism and control. When the control becomes total, totalitarianism results.

An important antidote is modesty. “One who knows the limits of his intellect usually becomes less arrogant and more humane, more capable of allowing the other to be different,” says Desmet in the concluding chapter of The Psychology of Totalitarianism.

Critical thinking is another potent antidote. No one person or group has a monopoly on all the facts and all the truth. There are limits to logic and rationality. “The awareness that no logic is absolute is the prerequisite for mental freedom,” Desmet emphasizes. The “experts” who confidently proclaim the facts today will almost certainly retract them tomorrow. Don’t fall in the trap of relying too much on technocrats or experts.

Last but not least, summon the courage to tell the truth. Totalitarianism cannot survive without a pervasive culture of lies. The ideology’s grip on society ends when enough people stand up to say: “The emperor wears no clothes.”