Goed Maken ❤️

In despair we trust

I feel desperate. I don’t understand how politics in many countries changed into the stinking shitshows we have to see every day. Shitshows that only articulate a deep hate of democracy and its values. With shit people that get high on bullying, intimidating and ridiculing other people who try to uphold our values. I never thought democracy could produce such horrors, I thought democracy kept us safe.

I feel desperate because I feel so small. What can a single tiny person like me actually do in this nightmare?

Totalitarism

So I ask my books. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism. A book she wrote about Germany in the second world war. An era of hate, death, destruction and despair. I never expected this book to be so relevant today 🙁

My two cents:

Totalitarian movements operate outside of the current political system and are anti bourgeois. They attract people from all classes who are fed up with the current state of things. These movements have their own rules and habits, all dictated by the strong leader who knows best. The strong leader positions himself als the servant of the people: everything he does is in their interest. But be able to do that, he demands complete loyalty. 

Totalitarian movements lack a concrete and public program. All that matters is the trust in the leader, to be dedicated and obedient followers. Doubt is disloyal. Initiative is a threat; talented people are replaced by useful idiots whose lack of intelligence and creativity is the best guarantee of their loyalty.

The ideology is just a pipe dream: a simplified representation of a reality that can never exist. A utopian world where the followers of the movement can live forever in peace and quiet. The ideology is tapped from barrels of discontent: the LGBTQ people who want to change everyone, the foreigners who steal jobs and houses, the climate pushers who want to restrict all freedom and of course the women, because women.

The followers are both gullible and cynical; the movement offers a sense of home and a means to criticise those in power. If the movement succeeds, it is because their way is the only way. If the movement fails, the cause is sabotage by the enemy. After all, the movement is the people and the people are the movement.

Propaganda

A major instrument of a totalitarian movement is propaganda. In propaganda, the only goal is to strengthen the movement. Truth is not important. We all remember the gaslighting of Zelensky. We get flooded in the stupid tweets The Orange sends every other minute and we shiver over the closing of all that is woke.

This sucks, so on social media, we share our outrage. We scream and shout and like and comment until we are exhausted. And next day we carry on. And the next. But we get nowhere: the flood of nonsense is not intended to convince, but to paralyse our ability to act: it is impossible to keep up! It’s impossible to dam, it’s impossible. 

Sociologist Katherine Cross claims that all our posting is not only not effective, it also reinforces the bad: ‘You give oxygen to things they say, even if you claim to refute them. You legitimise them as part of the debate.’ Moreover, social media alienate us from real activism: the feed is about ourselves: our feed, our friends, our network. 

But the real world is outside. Stop scrolling, connect.

Real People Movement

The only cure against a totalitarian movement is a Real People Movement. Be visible, but as a group. And then act as Arendt calls it: expres a collective opinion as a collective and force change together. Use your despair as fuel. 

  • Read and share this blog or booklet. 
  • Go demonstrate so that we are visible and find each other. 
  • Have a cup of coffee with the neighbour: the social fabric is the best remedy against totalitarianism. 
  • Do whatever you can and want, as long as you connect, in the real world. 

Hail the real people!

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