We live in a Totalitarian Society

Summary

In this engaging video, a creator known as Whatifalthist delves into the nuances of living in what he describes as a "totalitarian society," despite the modern West's facade of liberal democracy. With references to the transformative impacts of the 20th century, the video highlights contrasting philosophies and political structures throughout history, from authoritarian regimes to elusive totalitarianism. Key distinctions are drawn between freedom and control, juxtaposing historical and modern societies. The conversation explores philosophical and social models across eras, emphasizing the persistent challenge of balancing power with human freedoms, while critiquing contemporary societal norms and ideologies, including wokeness, viewed as a form of modern totalitarianism. This discourse is part of a broader dialogue on societal and political evolution, inviting viewers to reflect on the lessons of history.

Highlights

• The creator reflects on the subconscious assumptions of growing up in the 21st century 🧠.
• The impact of the 20th century's philosophical contrasts with historical perspectives 📚.
• Examining authoritarian vs totalitarian regimes through historical and modern lenses 🏛️.
• The discussion on modern 'totalitarian democracy' juxtaposed with classical authoritarianism 🎭.
• Wokeness is critiqued as a modern form of subtle, social totalitarianism in Western societies 💥.

Key Takeaways

• The 20th century introduced unprecedented philosophical shifts, moving away from historical norms 🌍.
• Historical societies were often authoritarian, but not all embraced totalitarian control 📜.
• Totalitarianism entails an all-consuming state control, distinct from authoritarian regimes ⚖️.
• Modern democracies can paradoxically possess totalitarian elements, as seen through social norms 🔄.
• Current social ideologies like 'wokeness' can embody totalitarian features, imposing broad cultural conformity 💬.

Overview

In a thought-provoking video, Whatifalthist explores whether modern society operates under a guise of democracy while veering into a subtle form of totalitarianism. The 20th century, marked by transformative philosophical changes, sets the stage for this discourse. The video dissects how historical and current political structures, from ancient authoritarian regimes to today's democracies, navigate the complex balance between freedom and control, often blurring conventional boundaries.

The creator discusses the distinct philosophical lessons of the 20th century that differ starkly from previous eras. These differences are highlighted through historical examples, illustrating broader societal shifts. The video questions the sustainability of modern societal norms, considering them reflective of totalitarian features seen in the pervasive adoption of ideologies like wokeness. Such norms are viewed as indicative of a deeper cultural and philosophical transition.

Moreover, the discussion interrogates the nature of freedom in both authoritarian and totalitarian contexts, asserting that modern Western democracies might embody totalitarian tendencies under the guise of liberalism. These commentaries invite viewers to introspect on the underpinnings of societal control and freedom and challenge the audience to rethink assumed historical and contemporary truths.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to 21st Century Perceptions The chapter delves into the mindset of a Zoomer, highlighting how being born in the 21st century shapes perceptions and assumptions about history and the world. It points out the unique understanding that comes from growing up with only this century as a frame of reference. For instance, despite having relatives who participated in the world wars, these events are perceived as ancient history due to a generational disconnect. This perception underscores the profound impact of the 20th century as a pivotal era, emphasizing its significant and tumultuous influence on human history.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Philosophic Lessons of the 20th Century The 20th century is unique in its philosophical stance, often contrasting sharply with predominant views throughout history. Most of human history agrees on about a dozen philosophical precepts, which the 20th century notably disputes. Bertrand Russell and Tarnas, through their influential works on the history of philosophy, illuminate how different eras contend with specific philosophical issues due to societal structures and prevalent worldviews.
• 06:00 - 12:00: Authoritarianism vs Totalitarianism The chapter compares the technological capabilities and philosophical orientations of different eras, particularly focusing on classical Greece and Rome, and medieval societies. It highlights Greece and Rome's potential for industrial advancement through inventions like the steam engine, hindered by their aristocratic disdain for empirical labor. In contrast, medieval philosophy is critiqued for its obsession with intricate theological details, rooted in a biblical worldview.
• 16:00 - 24:00: Freedom in Authoritarian Societies The chapter discusses the concept of freedom in authoritarian societies, using China as a case study.
• 32:00 - 39:00: Historic Perspective on Totalitarianism The chapter titled 'Historic Perspective on Totalitarianism' discusses the impact of the 20th century on modern civilization. It highlights how the 20th century overshadows our current era and suggests that it offers numerous philosophical lessons that are crucial for contemporary society to understand. The chapter also points out that some philosophical assumptions from the 20th century are profoundly incorrect, but there has not been enough time to fully comprehend these mistakes. The incredible power and wealth brought about by the Industrial Revolution are also discussed, acknowledging their significant role in shaping the century.
• 70:00 - 80:00: Woke Totalitarianism The chapter discusses the influence of rapid technological change and economic conditions of the late 20th century, leading to beliefs and behaviors seen as insane by historical standards. It suggests that our current era is concluding the 'long 20th century,' which began with World War I and will end with an impending political crisis. The chapter argues that failing to recognize our proximity to 20th-century conditions causes significant errors in understanding and relating to our present circumstances.

We live in a Totalitarian Society Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 as a Zoomer the 21st century is the only thing I've known this results in subconscious assumptions in how I process my environment which I forget aren't normal for the general population for example I mentally processed the world wars as ancient history even though I grew up with knowing relatives who fought in them this is a pretty important detail since the 20th century draws a pretty long shadow in that it's possibly the most important and most insane Century in human history what we
• 00:30 - 01:00 also forget is that the 20th century in many ways exists in opposition to the rest of human history almost all of human history agrees on a series of about a dozen precepts which the 20th century disagrees with one of the amazing points I've learned from reading out the history of philosophy of which bertran Russell and tarnes have amazing books is that each era of History due to the structural incentives of the society as well as its worldview have certain philosophic issues which they struggle
• 01:00 - 01:30 with the classical world of Greece and Rome for example had the technology for the Industrial Revolution like the steam engine and Computing but since their aristocratic ethic viewed actual physical labor or testing things empirically as beneath their honor they were incapable of actually realizing science or the Industrial Revolution medieval philosophy had a tendency towards autistic obsession over tiny details of theology since in a worldview built off the assumption that the Bible
• 01:30 - 02:00 is the exact Living Word of God you will obsess over tiny details of God's word Chinese philosophy has always had a bias towards conservatism given China has always been the dominant player in their region of the world for almost all of history and they have every incentive towards conservatism since they were already the ones on Top This is why China invented the printing press gunpowder and the compass but never used them thus causing China's multi- year
• 02:00 - 02:30 civilizational decline the 20th century casts an overwhelming Shadow over our era one of the videos which I've been meaning to make for years but I haven't yet is that the 20th century posits a series of philosophic lessons which we really need to learn and also posits a series of philosophic assumptions that are just vastly incorrect however we haven't had enough time to realize them in short the enormous Godlike power that the Industrial Revolution brought alongside the incredible wealth and near
• 02:30 - 03:00 utopian conditions of the late 20th century economically as well as the incredibly rapid speed of technological change meant that we started believing lots of things that the rest of History would see as completely insane our current ERA of history is the finishing Act of the long 20th century which started with World War I and is going to end with whatever political crisis we're about to have we don't realize how close we still are to the 20th century thus we make staggering errors in how we relate
• 03:00 - 03:30 to our environment in a variety of different ways the easiest example of this is that we believe that a man in a woman can be the same that we can print infinite money sustainably with no consequences and culture or the nation doesn't matter possibly the cruestv
• 03:30 - 04:00 something I will try to articulate in this video is that the modern West including America although we may not realize it is a strange form of totalitarian democracy that sounds like a contradiction however once you realize this you will find it's literally our entire Society the totalitarianism of our society is so overarching that is in fact the dominant variable of our society what went wrong and what do we do about it [Music]
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• 05:30 - 06:00 where black forest has a wonderful buy two get one free deal for the next 48 hours so click the link below and start reclaiming your own masculinity with Black Forest Part One totalitarian versus authoritarian the reason I wrote this video is that I was on Tom Bilo's podcast where I was arguing the point that Trump isn't Hitler because Hitler was a totalitarian and I do not think
• 06:00 - 06:30 Trump is an autocrat who's looking for undemocratic power but I was saying if Trump were to be there's no way he'd be a totalitarian he would be an authoritarian in that Hitler had this enormous vision of what the German state would be encompassing every single aspect of the average German's life with the complete breaking of German Society to form a new civilization and I said hypothetically if Trump were to be a sort of strongman he would be more in the Latin American tradition where in
• 06:30 - 07:00 Latin America what you find is certain dictators who are strong men who seize power are the calos and then they create a cult of personality they help their buddies out but they're not changing the total society and what I was saying on Tom's podcast that I find so so important is that this is a truly truly vast distinction that I realized I need to talk about because if we can't figure out this distinction we're going to be in a very bad place there are certain words and terms which seem to be quite
• 07:00 - 07:30 similar but in fact could not be more different in actual real world application an easy example of this is the difference in Classical liberalism and consensus liberalism or the liberalism of the French Revolution versus the American Revolution this is the right left binary inside liberalism due to complex word games we can't see the enormous differences between these two supposed types of liberal the difference between authoritarian and totalitarian arianism is a great example
• 07:30 - 08:00 of this on paper authoritarian and totalitarian seem like practically the same word the start an example of authoritarianism would be a lord in feudal Medieval Europe keep in mind that for almost all of human history the state was less powerful than it is today given the state overreach of the 20th century is something basically unparalleled in the pre-industrial world probably something like 95% of societies in human history are some shade of
• 08:00 - 08:30 authoritarian an example of authoritarianism is again a lord in medieval Europe who has control over his Estates and The Peasants living on them in medieval Europe especially depending on the country the feudal Lord had economic political judicial and Military control over the peasants on his land the great irony is that this was vastly less intrusive on personal life than any government in the industrial world today the state was less than 2 to 3% of the economy in the pre-industrial world now
• 08:30 - 09:00 the government makes up between 40% to 2/3 of economies around the Western and Industrial world this was why religion was so important to these Societies in that their entire lives were interpersonal relationships in which you had to deal with people in your village and religion was a moral code to police all your relationships the idea that the state was the main controller and arbiter of human life which exists today in that our religious code is in effect
• 09:00 - 09:30 the worship of the state in that leftist philosophy the state takes on the character of a god which exists to bring Heaven on Earth once you realize that the underlying idea behind wokeness is that the state has taken on the responsibility of Christ in which the state must die for our sins in the same way Christ died for our sins what an authoritarian society looks like is that your lord can order you around and that almost no Societies in human history were democracies but besides that the state's pretty weak I've lived in a lot
• 09:30 - 10:00 of countries around the world including several dictatorships and a great irony is that in a lot of military dictatorships or monarchies people have more functional freedom in their daily lives than modern Western democracies I don't want to Discount political Freedom which is incredibly important however there is another kind of Freedom which we don't really have a word for but which is still critically important that being the freedom to live your own life and have fun without others
• 10:00 - 10:30 bothering you when I was in Peru Mexico Thailand and Egypt the first of which are barely democracies which recently moved out of being dictatorships and the final two of which are military dictatorships right now is that in their daily life the individual has more freedom than the more technically free countries I've also lived in like Canada France or America yes freedom of speech and the right to vote are critically important as a classical liberal I will die on on this hill however at the same
• 10:30 - 11:00 time in these countries there's passively more freedom to not let others bother you the thing about human life is it's mostly pretty boring and pretty repetitive I've lived what I think is a pretty interesting life but I think pretty frequently about how almost all of my life consists of cooking food working sleeping talking to a friend and hanging out just on the couch even the greatest men in history lived pretty boring lives for almost all of their waking and sleeping time the key
• 11:00 - 11:30 distinction between authoritarianism and totalitarianism is that the authoritarian only looks for your loyalty in politics in medieval Europe the Lord or king would take your rent which was also taxes in feudal politics which let me remind you for almost all of the whole medieval period until the medieval world's collapse around the time of the Black Death was lower than both the taxes and the rent people pay today for their basic maintenance of
• 11:30 - 12:00 Housing and the government as a general rule of thumb the barrier a society hits in which it is extracting the most it possibly can from the population is around 3/4 of their income although we don't like to say it we've already hit this in which the average lower class or young American spends 2third of their income on rent and then Social Security is 10% of their income on top of which you have taxes keep in mind America has one of the lowest taxes of any Western Country what this means is that the
• 12:00 - 12:30 system is extracting about 3/4 of the income of the average young Westerner which tends to be the threshold society's reach before they collapse with a secular cycle examples of this before in history are the Black Death the fall of Rome the 30 Years War and the fall of mugul China where the state was extracting that percentage of working people's income and then the entire Society fell apart totalitarianism is that the state consumes literally every single aspect
• 12:30 - 13:00 of someone's life what that means as an example is that the state is trying to become literally all consuming the irony is that totalitarianism was first used as a positive when musolini invented the term melini's goal was to use the state to take over literally every single aspect of someone's life and the first modernist totalitarian regime was French Revolutionary France in which they would proudly write speeches about how in France's Total Wars it was the duty of the men to fight and the women older men
• 13:00 - 13:30 and children needed to make weapons and material to support the home front the proponents of totalitarianism are pretty Shameless about it an authoritarian regime would never even consider interfering into religion Family Life economics or social life an authoritarian regime would never interfere in drinking in public as an example there are three sorts of proxies I use for totalitarianism in societies these aren't perfect but are meant to be a sort of holistic proxy I consistently
• 13:30 - 14:00 find adds up rather than being a genuine definition the first being that a totalitarian Society will try to control the religion of the population the second is that it will interfere in family life and the third is that it will control the market economy or ironically the absence of a market economy the reason I use this is that it means the state is trying to control literally every other aspect of human life outside its normal purview what found living in countries with
• 14:00 - 14:30 authoritarian regimes is that they're often less intrusive to personal life than totalitarian democracies I felt Freer living in the countries above than America since there's more tolerance for the failings of The Human Condition You Can wander around the jungle without others bothering you you can drink in public and have an active Street Life the thing is that these are the things that affect your daily life the most the first world has been consumed by a certain type of n State
• 14:30 - 15:00 totalitarianism I periodically test people to see how anxious they are I will purposely leave my shoes untied to see how much anxiety it causes others I've literally had strangers tell me to tie my shoelaces since they could get stuck in the elevator shoot that would never happen and it would never be an issue I will leave my trash can out on a day besides the collection and the previous town I lived in would find me for it I did it like four different times on each day to figure out if they CAU it each time and every single time
• 15:00 - 15:30 they caught it even if I left it out for a single day when I was a child I drew swords in elementary school and my teachers called my parents in since they were worried I might become violent I remember how hysterical adults were about me drinking as a teenager and I remember thinking I'm Irish literally all of my ancestors were alcoholics from childhood especially for people my age this sort of tyranny consumes every single aspect of Our Lives I remember when I worked minimum wage jobs or did
• 15:30 - 16:00 service for my school and I'd wear my airpods in to listen to an audio book while I was doing some completely mindless monotonous task and they made me take them out for being unprofessional I remember thinking listening to Dan Carlin triples my enjoyment of this activity for literally no cost to the productivity and you're just having a power fantasy here I grew up in an agricultural area and I know how we treat cattle or livestock I find it Beyond infuriating the industrial World in effect turns treating its own
• 16:00 - 16:30 inhabitants in the same way we treat livestock the great irony is that my argument that authoritarianism is in fact more free than totalitarian democracy is something that most of human history would agree with keep in mind I am still Pro democracy I'm just playing Devil's Advocate in fact autocracies are radically more likely to push tyranny and democracy is the greatest historic block against tyranny the natural Arc of human nature will lead to tyranny due to to entropy and
• 16:30 - 17:00 thus it's the responsibility of a society to construct itself in a manner that leads away from tyranny Aristotle along half a dozen other classical authors in leading to the founding fathers said that the Natural end point of democracy was using the mob to justify the majority eating Superior minorities in effect the mob uses the apparatus of democracy to enable envy and crabs in the bucket thinking in a society as feminized as hours this gets
• 17:00 - 17:30 pretty horrifying in which our society is regulating against having fun on the part of funless people that's what's going on here one of the things I've consistently found is that our society isn't against income inequality per se in that we are one of the most unequal societies ever in human history which oppresses the poor in the most horrifying ways that we're in complete denial about however we're against the rich having fun we don't dislike the quiet guy in Tech who makes a software and becomes incredibly wealthy living in
• 17:30 - 18:00 obscurity we can't stand the rich man who has a Harum lives in opulence and is unabashedly proud of his wealth wokeness is emotional communism in which the system regulates those who feel any Pride or Joy it's not here to actually regulate a real social structure it's here to keep straight white men from having any Pride or self-respect it's emotional communism that exists to degrade everyone in summary almost every society in human history is authoritarian again authoritarian
• 18:00 - 18:30 societies don't have to be anything alike in the same way that among rtists the difference between fascists classical liberals Messianic religious fundamentalists and monarchists are as different from each other as they are from the left given almost every society in human history is authoritarian this term does cover up enormous differences Imperial China Franco Spain Latin American hunas medieval France or Alexander the Great are all authoritarian but it would be insane to say that those are all the same
• 18:30 - 19:00 authoritarianism can often have relatively free societies given that if the Monarch already has power they don't need to try that hard this is why feudal nobility military dictatorships and monarchies often have more personal freedoms than the modern West since they have nothing they need to prove the lion has no need to show why it's in charge since it's so obvious this is the origin of the concept of divine right one of the greatest issues of mod is that due to our concepts of progress which are
• 19:00 - 19:30 very useful for the state which is a feature not a bug since in order to keep progress going the state has to keep growing since progress can never end the reason that democracy had a bad name before the American Revolution is that for centuries nearly every regime in the world was a monarchy with a handful of theocracies I remember reading Edward Gibbon who was writing at the time of the American Revolution where he just casually said monarchy is vastly superior to democracy democracy are vastly disproportionate in the most
• 19:30 - 20:00 excellent societies however whether Athens Rome Britain America France Venice or the Netherlands but democracies are predicated upon a series of very rare conditions where democracies need to have literate populations which are Property Owners a democratized military system religiosity high social trust and often ethnic homogeneity when a society loses any of these traits the democracy spirals into mob rule which we can easily see in
• 20:00 - 20:30 South Africa now this is why monarchy is so common in history given the monarchy establishes good incentives and which given the Monarch's ancestral line is responsible for the nation the Monarch Can't Screw over and exploit the population that much responsibility and ownership are the most important things in politics once you establish politics without responsibility it immediately descends into looting from the society for your own benefit while you stockpile money in foreign Assets in case you lose
• 20:30 - 21:00 power this is what's killing Africa now the other side of this though is that monarchies are not responsive to the incredibly rapid social changes brought about due to the Industrial Revolution which is why monarchy is nearly dead around the world today the French thinker bertron de juvenile has an interesting political theory in which every society starts off as a monarchy stemming from divine right and then as the society gets more religious they lose the connection to God or the environment what then happens as the politics becomes more and more about
• 21:00 - 21:30 exploiting the public until the Empire Falls and then the cycle restarts this occurs on such a large time scale over the course of thousands of years that people don't realize it but for example America is a descendant of the originally English Divine Right while Rome was under the atran Kings and China from its Imperial dynasties when you look over history almost all of the most admirable political rulers in history were monarchs whether Alexander the Great August Peter the Great Frederick
• 21:30 - 22:00 the great Charlemagne just to name a handful monarchy allows singular individuals to flower into Excellence while a democracy allows the entire public to attain Excellence while done correctly a well-managed democracy will beat a well-managed monarchy in some cases since the public has a better incentive to fight harder while the monarchy will just win under other conditions since it allows a more seamless wielding of power and transfer of authority part two total arianism now
• 22:00 - 22:30 that we've seen the difference in authoritarian and totalitarianism let's look at totalitarianism itself totalitarianism is actually pretty rare historically there's only something like downwards of a dozen totalitarian regimes in all of human history which is absolutely nothing when you realize that there are hundreds to thousands of different Societies in history there are a few totalitarian Societies in the pre-industrial world but for the most part totalitarian is is predominantly a problem with industrial civilization
• 22:30 - 23:00 let's go through every single totalitarian Society in history given there aren't really that many I split totalitarian States in two different historic categories that being the Barbarian and The Feminine the first predominates more so in the pre-industrial world with examples including the Inca or zaris Russia while the latter in pre-established societies that have experienced a level of trauma they can't understand while paired with the collapse of traditional religion and
• 23:00 - 23:30 social structures causing atomization and nihilism almost every totalitarian regime in living memory fits into the latter category the totalitarian societies I am aware of and there are probably more I don't know are communism fascism Old Kingdom Egypt the Inca the modern West zaris Russia chin China and Diocesan Rome I'm going to go through each of these to explain what formed them and why then then I'm going to say
• 23:30 - 24:00 why I believe the modern West to already be totalitarian and also what motivates people towards totalitarianism psychologically let's start with the Barbarian totalitarians there's a sort of bell curve of totalitarianism that the thing that prevents totalitarianism is a strong culture this is why there are basically not a single totalitarian regime in the history of Islam or India given these are societies which have been theocracies and which the religion is strong enough the state can't gain
• 24:00 - 24:30 incredible power there's a sort of Middle Ground of which the Middle Ages is an easy historic example in which the religion and the society is strong enough that it can keep the state from growing too much one of the things the toille and Francis fukayama writes is that the biggest Protectors of Freedom are social institutions which can include the church the nobility guilds a capitalist economy local Elites and stuff like that the short answer is that the protection against totalitarianism is having a culture where people can
• 24:30 - 25:00 organize outside the state this is why the bowling alone style breakdown of traditional social communities are so dangerous to personal freedom since when people meet up in person they don't need the state the state and bureaucracy exist as tools of social organization once the organic culture is already failed this is why the Marxist authors like gramsky were so obsessed with breaking down traditional religion and organic social ties so the state and Communists could fill the void once a
• 25:00 - 25:30 culture is developed organically it can develop a subvariety of different Elites which are capable of competing with the others what I've said before is that I believe the most important thing for a society is a subvariety of different Elites in which they can compete with each other the great danger of totalitarianism is that the singular government tries to consume everything this is the great factor which always kills societies and Empires over history as I explained in this text wall or the over Central alization of power into a single social class I can tolerate most
• 25:30 - 26:00 types of regimes in history I think I could happily live in a monarchy a military dictatorship or even a lot of theocracies that's since these regimes have some degree of boundaries over what they do and don't allow however I can't abide by totalitarianism given that it tries to destroy literally everything around it it's physically impossible to be a free thinker or have any original thoughts given the resond Detra of the entire Society is the constant growth of
• 26:00 - 26:30 power which means in turn it must consume more of society becoming more tyrannical to in turn warrant its own right to rule this is why totalitarianism occurs either in a society which has not yet established social institutions and also in a society which has through the process of modernization killed its traditional culture the Allure of totalitarianism is a weakness that comes from transition periods in which the culture is weak thus allowing the state to insert itself to Total dominance if anything
• 26:30 - 27:00 totalitarianism is an outgrowth of the breakdown of religion which removes moral rules that can hold the state accountable this is why totalitarian regimes are always against traditional religion seeing it as their dominant enemy secondarily the rise of totalitarianism under modernist conditions is an outgrowth of the collapse of the family this is a theme I talk about in this video I made where you can pretty accurately predict a society's political structure based off its family structure the reason for this
• 27:00 - 27:30 is the family imprints intuitively how people perceive power since when they're growing up as children their mind is the most mutable thus they perceive the power relationships they had in a family as normal as we'll explain later in this video modernist totalitarianism is partly an outgrowth of the feminine panicking due to the breakdown of the family structure of which women have been completely dependent for most of human history the first bracket of totalitarianism is what I call barbaric totalitarianism examples of this include
• 27:30 - 28:00 the Inca Empire Zar Russia Old Kingdom Egypt and Chin China let's Summarize each the Inca Empire was founded by ketua barbarians around the 15th century ad on the edge of the old wari Empire interestingly enough I used to work on a wari site archaeologically and the Inca came out of the fall of their empire they created a god king Theocratic society in which the state had total power the state controlled the entire economy was the religion and even controlled marriages everyone was a
• 28:00 - 28:30 slave to the state they unified the entire andian region due to their higher degree of control it's the same story with the Chin Dynasty which started out on the frontier of old China in which the state destroyed the religion ran the economy and subdivided the entire population into controlled villages with Collective punishment zarus Russia is the same story here in which they started out as a medieval Society completely disconnected from the rest of Europe under Mongol government governance they formed an apparatus of State Control where they seize control
• 28:30 - 29:00 of the church shoved most of the population to surum which in Russia was defacto slavery and prevented any authentic capitalism the nobility were state servants in Russia not connected to the land as they were in Europe in ancient Egypt narur unified the country around 3,000 BC making Egypt by far the earliest country to form in the world they worshiped the Emperor as a god forced the public to do lengthy conscription of Public Works projects including ego projects like the pyramids
• 29:00 - 29:30 to give the emperor more glory and make him Immortal I hope you can see a series of very consistent patterns with early barbaric totalitarianism that there is a sort of disunified tribal pre-capitalist society and then what occurs is that the hardest guy in the ecosystem is able to unify the empire under this brutal totalitarian model what occurs in most cases here is that as the Empire is Unified the totalitarianism breaks down as the unity gives the society a certain
• 29:30 - 30:00 degree of stability which means that the society against the consent of the government gets complex enough that the state has to loosen up its control this occurred in Russia over the 19th century as the country liberalized with Egypt evolving into a more complex capitalist pluralist Society over the course of the New Kingdom or the Chin Dynasty being replaced by the practically libertarian DST oriented Han Dynasty the second type of totalitarianism is what I call modern I think the Chin Dynasty might kind of
• 30:00 - 30:30 fit both parallels since at the time China was going through a process of cultural modernization with the destruction of the old religion and culture it's funny to read about modernization occurring 2,000 years ago where you see so many parallels to the current world in that they were trying to destroy the old religion for secularism that being Confucianism as chin Shi hang D tried to burn all the old books or memories of the old culture they tried to flatten all class and cultural differences you can see the
• 30:30 - 31:00 cultural memory of this exact same process in China 2,000 years later under maong with the Communists another example of a sort of modern totalitarianism in the ancient world is the fall of Rome under Dian at its peak for centuries Rome was a free religiously tolerant pluralist wealthy capitalist Society much like the modern West however as the Empire faced external challenges in the thir Century ad which shattered its previous social
• 31:00 - 31:30 structure the state gained more and more power as Rome fell into totalitarian state control the fall of Rome is one of my historic specialities in which I joke that fifth century Rome is the exact opposite of a society that Libertarians want part of the reason that Rome converted to Christianity was to have a single religion the state could use to control the public Rome raised the size of the bureaucracy the state and the military so much that it destroyed every other part of the economy and Society the population and economy stagnated
• 31:30 - 32:00 since there was no incentive to work or have children every generation cities grew smaller the state made every occupation a hereditary cast they made State work unpaid they made quotas for each job to force people to work fifth century Rome was one of the most unequal societies ever it's not a Wonder Rome finally fell when you know this now to the biggest and most famous variety of totalitarianism that being industrialization the Industrial
• 32:00 - 32:30 Revolution operates like a frontier in that historic Frontiers push either towards Freedom or slavery as I explain in this text wall now to get to the biggest and most famous variety of totalitarianism that being the industrial the Industrial Revolution operates like a frontier in that historic Frontiers push either towards Freedom or slavery as I explained in this text wall the Industrial Revolution both ended slavery and caused the greatest slave states in history like Nazi Germany or Stalin Russia the Industrial Revolution both promulgates
• 32:30 - 33:00 Mass urbanization which demands bureaucracy to manage human societies which can no longer operate through social relationships secondarily the Industrial Revolution gives human authorities Godlike power which drives them crazy with power fantasies finally the Industrial Revolution turns the average person into an anonymous Cog which fantasizes about power as a psychic balance to their feeling of insignificance in the industrial concrete anthill what's happened in each major totalitarian industrial country is
• 33:00 - 33:30 that these societies experienced a combination of social change that was too rapid for them to adapt to organically followed by a traumatic event that they could never predict Revolution is the first and in the second case almost every industrial regime of the 20th century which lost the world wars fell into totalitarianism which almost no one is able to predict the world wars which was what made them so traumatic and left the Nations that lost with so much numb horror this is what happened in Germany Japan Russia
• 33:30 - 34:00 Italy France and China in which they firstly faced social changes that were rapid enough that they meant there was no social institutions capable of giving people psychological stability the best book written on totalitarianism or the True Believer by Eric Hofer which you should definitely read talks about what totalitarianism offers is a freedom from freedom in that people often look for very rigid belief structures in order to counterbalance the chaos of their lives especially with how rapid change is in
• 34:00 - 34:30 the industrial World part three The Addictive lure totalitarianism has a sort of innate demonic addictive Allure naturally built into it that you'll never have to worry again in your life most people are innately weak and stupid and thus find this incredibly attractive for most people the biggest thing that scares them as responsibility and having to worry totalitarianism is innately feminine at its core in that women and to clarify this is completely healthy
• 34:30 - 35:00 and normal and beautiful when done correctly naturally crave submission of the most powerful force possible due to the cost of their children and their own innate weakness what man can be more powerful than the allc consuming totalitarian state this is why leftism is so popular among unmarried women now that their core base is that exact demographic by an enormous margin since the state offers them unconditional protection without expecting anything in return those who support the
• 35:00 - 35:30 totalitarian are those who are psychologically feminine that's since the feminine is innately totalizing in that it craves complete domination being unable to think or worry anymore since it's been so the state is a dildo my favorite writer amori dakor likes to say that you know a revolution will work when young women support it given there's a switch when young women will go from the most vifer supporters of the old regime to the revolution which occur in both the French and Russian revolutions alongside the rise of Nazi
• 35:30 - 36:00 Germany even in the hyper masculine totalitarian societies like Nazi Germany this is a very emotional romantic concept of masculinity that women could admire the most vifer supporters of the Nazis were young women who got off on the Romantic heroism this is why democracy only succeeds in hyper masculine Warrior societies like the English Americans Athenians or Romans and then as they grow wealthier the democracies fall into decadent caesarism
• 36:00 - 36:30 the core demographics the totalitarians hate the most are the nobility merchants and church which are the demographics which root the population in either the past land or God and pull the populace away from the totalizing impulse pushed by the government many people think that because I am a rtist I would be sympathetic to Nazis the opposite is true and that I actually dislike the fascists or the Nazis more than the Communists given today those who are Nazis are Nazis since they know it to be
• 36:30 - 37:00 morally wrong and they're trying to spite Society by saying the bad words and doing the objectively immoral things what I consistently find with totalitarianism is that it's people whose brains have shut down due to psychic pressure and then they just rationalize whatever issues we have as a society by saying we need to do blank in order to solve our issues blank always involves giving the state more power the problem is they're stuck in an effort equals out comes fallacy basically if Society tries really hard to fix an
• 37:00 - 37:30 issue they can fix it this just isn't how the world works though and you'll just burn out without accomplishing anything in most cases there's this sort of attitude that we need to be doing everything we can in order to fix or save black people attain progress and inequality and about a dozen other issues you could pick however there is an innate timing to all things and trying too hard doesn't get you anywhere the totalitarian impulse is the attempt to get drunk off the process of surrendering to a bigger project the
• 37:30 - 38:00 problem is that the goal they pick is normally innately pretty stupid and trying to achieve it won't actually work communism wasn't correct that the more you get people to work the better off Society is rather wealth is an outgrowth of the correct incentives like property rights most of the most successful people I've met don't actually work that many hours a day they're just very efficient at figuring out what types of work work really well because when you're operating at the highest level of complexity the quality of the decision
• 38:00 - 38:30 vastly outpaces the quantity of work and this is why the aristocracy and pre-industrial Society spent so much time doing Leisure because the Leisure allowed them to mentally categorize and deal with incredibly complex things like Waging War or making art or philosophy or that stuff I'll run into Communists or Nazis who will say stuff like we need to deal with the Jews or get rid of the rich to solve our issues I find it morally disgusting that these people turn scapegoating others to escape their
• 38:30 - 39:00 own responsibility into a moral good and they shame others who don't do it all totalitarianism is predicated upon scapegoating in which every totalitarian regime has to find an outgroup to project their insecurities and failures onto so that the ruling class won't be held accountable for its own failures this has to be a feature not a bug because the goals they're picking are completely impossible possibly the best book on totalitarianism is the dictators
• 39:00 - 39:30 by Richard oy it's in a similar vein as another really excellent book on this topic that being bloodlands by Timothy Snider both of these books compare the social structure of Nazi Germany and stalinist Russia and show that even though one of these dictatorships is technically right-wing and another left-wing that they have far more in common with each other than with liberal democracies both are atheist managerial totalitarian command economies built off utopian fantasies whenever I hear rtists
• 39:30 - 40:00 or commies saying that totalitarianism is compassionate for the working classes unlike capitalism which is just the rich exploiting the poor one of the very important details none of these people bring up is that the first thing both Hitler and Stalin did when they went into power was to put a cap on wages or cut off the wages for the working class and also cut off their ability to change jobs or geographic region and then shut down their ability to go on strike a great irony is that regimes that say they rule for the rich tend to be
• 40:00 - 40:30 actually much nicer to the poor than those who claim to serve the Poor's interests the reason totalitarians tend to oppress the working classes they're claiming to protect is that through giving the state total power the working classes surrender any leverage they have thus the state has every single incentive to oppress the working classes as much as they can to take from them and there's nothing the poor can do to fight back this is such an important symbol since it shows that all of totalitarianism is surrendering reality
• 40:30 - 41:00 for a fantasy in order to live the fantasy of Utopia you force yourself to live through actual hell totalitarianism is the most destructive political system possible in that almost every single totalitarian regime mentioned above self-destructed within a single lifetime of its formation this is since it's just not a sustainable social model what often happens is they burn through valuable Social Capital that took centuries to develop whether a church nobility Merchant class cultural
• 41:00 - 41:30 Traditions folk ways and that sort of thing and we saw that occur in Russia China France or the germanies in which these societies lost their competitive ability due to cannibalizing their own society and culture totalitarian regimes are really the only type of regime in history which cannibalized their own populations repression is pretty common over history but totalitarianism is on a completely different scale this is why communism has killed more people in the 20th century than every other religion
• 41:30 - 42:00 and ideology in history combined at the same time fascism is a really easy number two for most bloodthirsty religion and ideology in history and anything except totalitarianism doesn't even register numerically close anywhere to a similar bracket totalitarianism is the bloodiest experiment in human history by such an enormous margin and we haven't learned the lesson yet totalitarianism in one form or another has already killed the economy and Society of the industrial world and we
• 42:00 - 42:30 haven't realized it yet part four woke totalitarianism it's funny to realize that our current society as in the modern West is one of the most Prime examples of totalitarianism in fact it's one of the best examples I can find in history the Deep irony stems from how we are also a liberal democracy with a free market freedom of speech and religion these two things should be innately contradictory but the outside world is proof that they are in fact not let me
• 42:30 - 43:00 explain why our current Society is totalitarian keep in mind that totalitarianism is a sort of mindset before anything else it's the totalizing drive of the state towards total control of every single element of a person's life this was one of things that really scared me about wokeness when I first encountered it as a teenager moving from rural Pennsylvania to downtown Philly where I went from an environment with almost no wokeness to one where I was completely dominant overnight the first is that wokeness is very clear
• 43:00 - 43:30 when it openly states that its goal is the complete destruction of modern Western industrial civilization and secondly that it aims to destroy literally everything else in the culture wokeness as seize control of our art culture literature philosophy religion economy and anything else you see the only thing totalitarianism really needs is an ability to exercise power which can be Democratic our current totalitarianism as Sam Francis so pre wrote in his best book on the topic the
• 43:30 - 44:00 Leviathan and its enemies is a cultural tyranny exerted through the managerial classes control of culture the thing that's so interesting with wokeness is that it's been able to become a tyranny through operating with factors that intuitively should not allow a tyranny wokeness is anti- hierarchical anti-force anti-imperial and is a totally indirect tyranny wokeness in a lot of ways is a strange historic oration stemming through variables which
• 44:00 - 44:30 I believe lead to Mouse Utopia however it's completely obvious that wokeness is innately totalitarian in a way that other ideologies aren't an example of this is that wokeness attacks things that are emotionally adjacent to its enemies not just its enemies for example French food lost popularity in America and the earlier styles of History writing literature religion culture fashion philosophy and even the previous ethnic composition of the West have become socially taboo to discuss
• 44:30 - 45:00 wokeness is a totalizing force which aims at the complete destruction of even things peripherally connected to the memories of its enemies the nature of feminine tyranny is that it's incapable of maintaining a unified moral standard against its enemies while it also attacks the emotions others associate with its enemies this is why wokeness spirals into such Petty ridiculous tyranny in which it aims at the complete humiliation of its opponent this is why no movies video games or
• 45:00 - 45:30 pieces of culture can have any straight white males wokeness is about as totalitarian as you can get it's worse in that there is no clear Target to attack in that wokeness is a hive mind incapable of forming any leaders given it's so motivated by Envy that no one can rise to leadership inside it because they get torn down another example of totalitarianism is the obsessive inculcation of the Next Generation in the ideology being the main purpose of the school system this has been pushed the furthest in the Western countries
• 45:30 - 46:00 besides America which is awfully funny because wokeness only really makes sense inside the American context in which wokeness originally formed being predicated upon black and white pun intended racial context that exists only in America I'm always dumbfounded that European countries Australia or even Korea experience woke politics often to a greater degree than America which focuses on stuff like defund the police where these countries don't even have armed police forces in a lot of cases or
• 46:00 - 46:30 for racial issues which make no sense considering these countries histories you can see the totalizing element of wokeness if you want to look at countries like Britain or Canada in which the entire political Spectrum has become woke this creates an artificial concept of choice for the public in which the people can vote for multiple manifestations of the uni party all of which share the same managerial interests you may not believe me but look at the British Tory party and the Canadian conservative party both of
• 46:30 - 47:00 which are often more left-wing than the American Democrat Party the lesson here is that since wokeness establishes a self-interest which allows continuous State overreach in the name of progress regimes run by the managerial class convert to wokeness as a way to control their population there's no consent on the population's part which is why if you pulled the general public on their opinions on most woke cultural topics like immigration or gay marriage until at a decade ago or any single give and
• 47:00 - 47:30 woke issue reparations these are things that almost no one in the population supported but the managerial class forced it down our throat against our consent I know I'm supposed to write clean episodes with clear endings and clear themes and I have to finish the videos by tying it all off in a nice bow however I can't do that because the reality is just not pleasant here in much of the Western World a totalitarian suicide cult runs everything it is growing weaker due to structural variables in which it is losing influence but it's unclear if it can be
• 47:30 - 48:00 defeated before civilization collapse look I'm just here to give you the information and I'm not going to lie to you the story is still up to us if you find this disturbing congratulations you're a rational actor the game keeps going in which history is both a twisted mirror of the past and a constantly new beautiful individual moment we can choose to learn the lessons of the past or not we will be forced to keep reliving this trauma until we can learn the great lesson of the 20th century Cy that that totalitarianism is not acceptable all of our ancestors in
• 48:00 - 48:30 descendants see this much more clearly than we do this is not a complex issue we are run by an evil suicidal death cult