How does one reliably discern democracy versus totalitarianism? This question is becoming more relevant every day, as the distinction dissolves.
Many authors of the status quo steer us towards a structural analysis of institutions and content analysis of the written provisions of statutes. The glibbest of these pundits serenade us about elected “representatives” versus inherited leadership and undue “interference”.
In fact, there is a reliable error-free test: The degree of freedom of the individual to influence society by expression.
A democracy requires individual freedom of expression in order to function as an actual democracy. This is a foundational tenant of the USA constitution and it is given massive lip service by the supreme courts of all Western nations. It is also true, by axiomatic definition.
The converse is not as frequently acknowledged by Western institutions: A totalitarian system requires suppression of individual expression in order to secure and preserve itself.
In addition, freedom of expression is not a monochromatic continuum of intensity, from freedom to obedience and servitude. Rather, the overall social dominance hierarchy is populated by a large array of different (and sometimes competing) institutional structures that can be totalitarian.
Indeed, each of these institutional structures is totalitarian to the degree that it manipulates and exploits the individuals; by maintaining, projecting, protecting and imposing its foundational lies, doctrine or ideology.
There are many historic and current examples of these totalitarian systems that do not admit criticisms of their foundational lies:
– The Catholic Church
– The pharma-medical complex
– The judicial-legal-lawyer establishment
– The USA military and finance global extortion system
– The USA-Zionist racket
– The UN-anchored global benevolence complex (“globalism”)
– The banking and finance complex itself, and its army of service-intellectual “economists”
and so on.
Each of these totalitarian systems has its own “truths” (lies) that cannot be uttered against, let alone challenged in any organized way. Each of these systems suffers an existential threat if visceral criticisms propagate and spread to a majority of sufficiently influential individuals.
This occurred, for example, with the Catholic Church in Quebec, which had sided with federal Anglo-rule, during the Quiet Revolution. The Church’s collapse was marked by the creation of a secular society and the emergence of Quebec separatism.
Globalism is a totalitarian system, with its own rules, including: written human rights principles, image diplomacy, political correctness, institutional “anti-racism”, and so on. These behavioural rules and myths support economic globalization, open immigration driven by economic and financial imperatives, standardization of all education, and complete indoctrination of the management, professional and intellectual classes, especially.
Systemic suppression of individual expression is necessary to secure and stabilize each of the many totalitarian systems.
Israel understands this. The Zionist genocidal project is particularly at risk because it is at odds with the ethos of globalization. This is why organized attacks by the Israel lobby in Western states are so sustained and virulent. “Antisemitism” (anti-Zionism) must not be allowed to emerge and spread. Voices and grassroots movements (BDS) must be criminalized and crushed by every method. Survival of Israel as the at-any-cost USA policy of control of the Middle East is in the balance. The stakes are high. And the social status of domestic Israel-lobby operatives is also at risk.
And on and on, in every corner of our thoughts and lives… Try pointing out that establishment medicine is the third leading cause of death in the Western World, causes 8% of deaths in the USA, and is of no help whatsoever in the leading causes of death. ((Denis Rancourt. “Cancer arises from stress-induced breakdown of tissue homeostasis”, Research Gate, December 2015, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.1304.7129.)) See how far you get. Now try practicing non-invasive harmless alternative medicine and land yourself in jail. Similarly, try pointing out that the hyperbolic claims that there are increased forest fires due to CO2 are both factually false are based on a fabricated seminal scientific article that has been disproved. ((Denis G. Rancourt, “Anatomy of the false link between forest fires and anthropogenic CO2“, Research Gate, 2016-05. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.2059.6087.)) Good luck with that!
Thus, the best measure of degree of totalitarianism is the degree to which the individual is barred from their “right to insult”, “right to be ‘unscientific'”, “right to refuse ‘treatment’”, “right to be racist”, “right to be impolite”, “right to be disrespectful”, “right to defend personal interests”, “right of freedom of belief”, “right to influence society”, “right to access mass and social media”, “right to know”, “right to all personal emotional responses”…
And we must recognize that this constant suppression is granular and specific to each totalitarian-system. Ideal freedom in one area is no guarantee that the society is not a totalitarian regime. The better indicator is the excess of suppression that occurs in specific areas and specific cases. Generally, soft freedom is tolerated in areas that do not threaten any dominance system.
Academics know this better than most: “Don’t use your academic freedom or we may lose it.”
So think again before you judge the next “anti-vaxxer”, or “hate speech” offender, or “climate denier”, or “anti-Semite”… and think of the civil-rights political prisoners that still die in USA jails and were murdered by the FBI. They wanted racial equality, aboriginal land rights, and peace.
Well, now society can have these things; now that the real activists are dead and in jail, and that nobody really wants these things. Now we want carbon taxes, multiculturalism, self-identity tolerance, better “education”, free “health care” — and we “demonstrate” and social mediatize against Zionism and the wars-in-repetition of complete nation destruction (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen…).