Modern Totalitarians

As we all know, we recently celebrated VE Day here in the UK and it might be suggested that we were partly celebrating a victory for political safety. This would be the right to influence our own laws and our own governments safe from any form of repression or retaliation. Worth fighting for but unfortunately since the end of World War II, a concern for political safety seems to have evolved into a concern for personal and kin safety via totalitarian politics.

Modern totalitarians are a substantial and very influential section of the population. Those who are dependent on state apparatus in some way, are financially comfortable, unlikely to lose their jobs, unlikely to endure protracted periods of unemployment or suffer a decline in financial status. They have discovered personal security and are determined to keep it whatever the political or economic cost to others.

Hardly surprising perhaps - personal and kin safety are primary evolutionary drivers. Maybe that is why VE Day recently failed to remind us that a police state is no way to deal with a serious but not catastrophic coronavirus pandemic. It was not worth even venturing part way down this totalitarian dead-end, quite apart from the colossal economic cost. This is not how civilised free societies work but modern totalitarians are not into freedom, it isn’t safe enough for them.

Unfortunately civilised free societies have their influential fellow travellers and the implementation of a police state has encouraged them. We may as well accept that there are people who do not want a free society for a range of motives, none of which would stand up to civilised scrutiny, all of which are familiar.

Modern totalitarians have their hands on the levers of power and do not intend to let go in favour of abstractions which are no great use to them personally - such as political freedom. A comfortable life has its own freedoms and this is all they require. There is no interest in analysing where those freedoms came from and how they are to be maintained.

For example, a substantial part of the environmental movement is essentially a totalitarian political ethos riding on the back of understandable but grossly exaggerated environmental anxieties. As for the motives of those who hitch such a ride, they vary considerably but modern totalitarians are heavily involved. They think it makes their future safety more assured. If it screws up the rest of us that’s too bad.

It may have been inevitable that modern totalitarians would use environmental narratives to attach themselves to this political crisis. We are in a pandemic hole where governments do not quite know how to stop digging and those with a totalitarian ethos don’t want them to stop. This mixing of political interests is not new but the coronavirus pandemic and the draconian reactions to it are bound to bring them closer.

Within a matter of a few months the UK has experimented with the imposition of a police state and large sectors of the voting population seem to approve. As far as one can tell, the totalitarians certainly approve and are willing to make things worse than they need be. The future as ever is uncertain, but we have foolishly shifted the odds firmly against outcomes which might have strengthened a free and civilised society.

On a more positive note it is also possible that we are sufficiently well-adjusted to employ a temporary police state to tackle a national problem without undue risk. After all we did it in World War II so why not now?

Alternatively it may be that World War II was a disaster from which we never fully recovered and our supposedly temporary police state is a symptom of that. In which case the pandemic problem is even worse in that it will further damage political freedoms which have been shakier than we knew since the original VE Day.