Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth for the Colson Center on John Stone Street. In her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, German-American political theorist Hannah Arendt documented the rise of the Nazis within Germany and the Stalinists within the Soviet Union. Her analysis included identifying preconditions that make the rise of totalitarianism possible. And her analysis is as helpful today as when she wrote it. For example, the breakdown of traditional social institutions, especially the family, communities, and churches, precede totalitarian control.
The void left when people are rootless and disconnected from one another is often filled by bad ideas and authoritarian leaders. leaders that promised to fix everything. And today radical individualism is often confused as the American way of life. and accelerated by both the collapse of these essential institutions and the siloing effect of digital technology.
So the idealized, rugged American individualism has now devolved into what's more accurately called expressive individualism. in which our identity is determined in active rejection of any outside influences and responsibility. In this view, autonomy is confused with dignity and a rejection of the inherent relational realities of God's design. Smartphones and social media provide daily liturgies for us By which to define ourselves, but they can never fill the void of connection that so many have. As a result, we now have become a nation of activists, in which people attach to online causes.
or embrace social contagions, and that kind of conformity is what is required for totalitarianism. A second prerequisite of totalitarianism is the spread of ideology, often through propaganda.
Now, to be clear, An ideology that offers an all-encompassing vision of the world and demands our absolute loyalty and is presented by fearful propaganda rather than reasoned argument and evidence. This is a way to both raise alarm among people and also to provide a sense of security. And it's even more effective when a particular individual or movement can be portrayed as the only true defender of an ideology. And of course, economic crises like hyperinflation or unemployment and social crises, whether manufactured or real, fuel further distrust in government and also create the climate that makes ideologies plausible. That same kind of destabilizing propaganda comes in so many forms in our culture today.
And even though some of the claims have merit, so many of our political institutions are so significantly weakened that totalitarianism threatens to fill the void left by public distrust. Another characteristic of pre-totalitarian states is the steady erosion of personal freedoms, often in the name of public safety. Ideas that do not conform need to be censored, often for quote unquote our own good. Mass surveillance is sold as a necessary evil, but it's then used to identify and punish any dissent. Emergency powers are invoked as temporary, but then rarely are.
Now of course all those characteristics are far more evident in Britain and Canada and the European Union than here, but we have certainly seen government entities working with tech companies to police thought. and to increase surveillance. Incidentally, fascism is by definition an alliance between government and industry with the government holding all the power. Another characteristic of pre totalitarian societies is scapegoating. For example, the Jews in Nazi Germany, or the Kulaks in the Soviet Union.
scapegoating channels social and economic frustration toward a common enemy. And that props up in ideology by identifying villains. And when the totalitarian government comes to power, it also provides a ready excuse for any of its failures. Most obvious examples today of scapegoats in our society is the villainization of white Christian males, the hatred of all in the other opposing political party, and of course the resurgence of anti-Semitism that we see on both the right and the left.
Now, though we see all of these indications in America today, that does not mean totalitarianism is inevitable here. But we ought also not think that we are somehow immune, either. Even the freest and most successful civilizations in history are vulnerable to decline and revolution. The path to renewal is to resist the allure of ideology, propaganda, scapegoating, and to instead work and recommit ourselves to truth. That will require courage, the courage to say what's true, the courage to live what's true, despite a high social cost.
And that is exactly what the new film Truth Rising is all about. In it, Os Guinness identifies the ideas that built the West, the great risk we now face because we've abandoned those ideas, and the call that we all have to counter false ideology with truth and courage. You can watch the film at TruthRising.com. That's TruthRising.com. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint.
Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Glenn Sunshine for a version of this commentary that you can download, print out, or share with others, go to breakpoint.org.
