I have to write a couple of lines today (1st January ’22) to wrap up the weird experiment of my Year without News that was 2021, and to decide what (if anything) to loosely focus on for 2022. The main outcome of my Year without News has been a realisation that we are kinda fucked here in the West, and increasingly sliding towards totalitarianism. It’s already started, and this time, the main culprit seems to be those considering themselves politically left, who have taken it upon themselves to annihilate and destroy anyone who doesn’t conform to their one exclusive version of reality (left fascism).
I’m interested in the rise of totalitarianism in the West because in the last 5 years or so, I’ve been experiencing an increasingly structural totalising ideology in my civic, public, and professional life and wider society, in a political and social climate where distrust is ubiquitous and polarisation is high. This current phase of history is starkly reminiscent of the period leading to Nazi Germany, and I’m curious how this will play out from the perspective of someone (myself) who is rooted in the late 20th century and who has lived through the golden years of liberal democracies.
Say you’re a regular decent citizen in the West in 2022, contributing to society (working, paying taxes) and living in accordance with the law, and you want to live peacefully and in harmony with your family in your home country – you are now seen by some as:
- Racist (because apparently, unless you are actively anti-racist, you are now racist and part of the problem)
- Anti-human rights (because apparently, unless you agree that men can legally call themselves women even with their penis-rape-instrument intact, you are now anti-human rights and morally wrong and must face the consequences (being cancelled / be destroyed and annihilated)
The weirdest part of it all is that both the left and the right are extremely binary in their thinking, and black and white (but then again, they ARE at the extreme end, so we shouldn’t be surprised as to their binary worldview). It’s full on biblical, orthodox and illiberal to have such a hard-on for feelings and to be so vengeful like both the woke left and the alt-right are. It’s fervent and religious at its core; for example, the other day, a transgender activist on a documentary said that those who are cancelled ‘deserve it’ and need to face the consequences, to feel the pain that the oppressed suffer.
You say ‘an eye for an eye’ or ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ to refer to the idea that people should be punished according to the way in which they offended, for example if they hurt someone, they should be hurt equally badly in return.
Synonyms: retaliation, justice, revenge, vengeance
an Eye for an Eye, Collins dictionary
I even drew a picture of this last summer that I now think captures the underlying biblical, irrational, violent, and illiberal nature of it all:
I’m not sure where it’s all going to land, but for the purpose of this blog and 2022, all the above is why my loose focus will be on the topic of totalitarianism. Whether that’s reading Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism or observing my own self-censorship and other adaptation strategies to the totalising ideological pressures many of us ordinary citizens are now facing, I’m sure it’ll be an interesting – albeit infrequent – journey!
How to be Happy 