State Sanctioned Evil

Totalitarian rule

I want to start by saying I've been reading Hannah Arendt. She spent many years writing about fascism and totalitarianism. Right now, I am reading “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” If you are unfamiliar with her work, she's well known for her study of how and why totalitarianism and dictatorships form. She also speaks to how totalitarian regimes use it as a political weapon to seize democratic control away from the people.

1. Societal Capture

She talked about how societal atomization became part of the bedrock of how fascism manages to sneak in little by little. If you have been paying attention, many of you have realized that the current political situation fits this theory very well. We are atomized by our phones; we learn new things and, at times, are highly influential in our current society. At many times, it may be misguided or perhaps presented out of context. Those who are trying to atomize us know this. When disinformation is presented believably with a serious tone, it may align with some political leanings.

With enough of this kind of influence peddling and the use of artificial intelligence to augment it, one could only imagine the amount of disinformation that has been generated. Therefore, those who don’t understand the basic civics process can easily be swayed one way or another. This results in societal separation of the worst kind, because once one is locked into the fictional, algorithmic loop on apps like YouTube, Facebook, or TikTok, that disinformation is reinforced in one’s mind so deeply that one ends up part of a crowd trying to invade the Capitol building.

Hannah Arendt wrote about this type of atomized society back in the 1950’s, before anything even close to social media became available. She realized that lonely, disoriented people in society would gradually find each other while feeling abandoned by any particular political elite. With DT in charge, he realized this, so he spoke to the “politically abandoned” and realized that he could use their apathy to his advantage. He presented himself as a man of the forgotten middle class, not because he cared, but because he knew he could manipulate them.

Many of us are aggrieved by our current political and economic situation. DT used that anger and turned it up to the max volume. He is a salesman, and he was able to appeal to huge swaths of the population with the help of multi-billionaires, billionaires who could use their social media to pull so many down the rabbit hole.

2. Concentration Camps

I also read what she has to say about concentration camps. She doesn’t just talk about the deplorable, nightmarish places they are; she also speaks to the reasoning that the Nazi’s had for using them. Nazi’s didn’t invent them, they were used in the United States in the Philippine-American War, as did Great Britain in the Second Boer War.

Don’t get me wrong here, no concentration camp should ever exist. No human should ever have to be subjected to such atrocities. None, however, was as evil and depraved as what was done by Hitler.

The main thing that Nazi concentration camps did was not only take away human life, but also their identity. Per Hannah Arendt’s observations, the concentration camp removes the personhood of someone; it essentially destroys any independence. They turn a person into a “body,” a number.

What this does is remove the value of a person to the point where any of their personality, their likes or dislikes, wants and needs, any accomplishments, or anything that makes a person who they are, not even a distant thought, if anything at all. When someone is kidnapped and taken to a place like this, and no one knows where they are, one becomes erased. Any thought of martyrdom goes out the window because the individual has become anonymous. The only people to have any recollection are those who would be too afraid to speak.

Everyone should be afforded an independent life, everyone should be entitled to a beautiful existence, and everyone deserves to be remembered. To allow something like a concentration camp to be considered and state-sanctioned is something beyond evil. To actively pursue this type of psychological, physical, and downright evil behavior is beyond any evil that I know because it shows that so many have NOT learned anything from our past.

Now I'm seeing the same thing here in the United States. This is not a hint, not a trend, an inkling, a clue. This evil is in our backyard, it…is…here. The people who are running our country are either actively pursuing the allocation of these warehouses to exile people, or they are complacent. Billions of dollars have been spent buying warehouses and real estate to displace citizens and suspected non-citizens alike. Make no mistake, this is not just a pursuit of people who don’t live here legally. Please understand that this is serious and that we HAVE to take Robert Niemoller’s poem seriously. Read it here if you haven’t. Take it to heart.

That's something that people should have learned. I learned about it growing up, and I learned about it in more and more detail as I went from grade to grade. The horror of what was revealed when the Nazi camps were finally revealed should send echoes throughout the world to never allow for something so incredibly monstrous again.

Yet here we are, allowing our government representatives to continue their complacency or their continued push to make something so insanely bad happen. The Republicans are mirroring what the Germans did when Hitler became Chancellor. I cannot comprehend how the current regime actually has the nerve to pretend that they are not r pulling us into a Christian nationalist, fascistic state in which its leader represents none of the values or principles said in the Bible.

This is one of the things I find so confounding. How do they not see it? Actual physical warehouses are being retrofitted to house people as if they were rodents. Just like DT said in one of his older speeches, saying he was going to “root out the vermin.”

3. Conclusion

Some of the people in Congress have figured out what is happening. That is terrific, but if we are going to put an end to this, there is still going to have to be a major upheaval in Congress.

Hannah Arendt says at the end of her book that an ideology is based on an idea. There is no actual grounding in an ideology, especially one of total domination of the entire country or the planet. Eventually, this idea does fail for those who pursue totalitarianism because it depends on a fictional concept. The leader cannot follow through with his promises. At some point, the fantasy, even for the true believer, fails.

There are clear signs of people dropping away from the crazy ideas that DT was spouting off as he campaigned. We all know he has many things working against him. First and foremost, his health is failing, and when he expires, hopefully the spell will break.

Secondly, more and more Republicans are getting bolder about disagreeing with their dear leader.

I am hopeful for the future, even though this is a gloomy post; I do believe we will get through this. But what makes me so upset is that there is already way too much suffering at the hands of this farce of an administration. This needs to end as soon as possible. This falls to our leadership that is being strung along at the expense of the American people.

The people are fed up, and I am one of them. This needs to end now, and I am sure many of you agree with me.

Love you guys.

Erik

(Liberaldad)