Horizontal totalitarianism in life and literature
sciphijournal.orgWhat a mess.
In small tribes social control can be directly maintained as members have perfect knowledge of any individual’s reputation. This mechanism doesn’t scale beyond a few hundred individuals so institutions such as hierarchical organized religion were invented.
We have established words (oppression) and jargon (social control) for this already. The author has decorated an old concept with new jargon and is passes it off as original thinking. Notably, every instance of oppression mentioned (beyond the Aboriginal example) involve large and necessary institutional components.
Insanely, Rodriguez points to two computer-mediated social control as examples of “horizontal totalitarianism” apparently not noticing that Facebook and China’s Social Credit bureaucracy are each enormous and expensive institutions.
One wonders why Rodriguez is even bothering. Thankfully he answers this question for us near the end of his piece:
> This phenomenon can be observed in the actions of existing successful public silencing initiatives, which confront questions and divergent opinions with insults, as seen in the unfortunate social media lynchings perpetrated in recent years by fanaticised supporters of MeToo or Black Lives Matter, or by similar movements with equally extreme ideologies.
Ah. Rodriguez resents progressive movements that seek to upend the current social hierarchy (presumably because Rodriguez enjoys exerting social control far more than experiencing it) and has coined this new jargon to associate movements he dislikes with a reviled term (totalitarianism)
Rodriguez begins with an intellectual lie, then uses it to advance the idea that anti-racist and anti-misogynist movements are the actual oppressors. And not the misogynists and racists themselves.
What motivation might Rodriguez have for asserting such a thing?
> Ah. Rodriguez resents progressive movements that seek to upend the current social hierarchy (presumably because Rodriguez enjoys exerting social control far more than experiencing it) and has coined this new jargon to associate movements he dislikes with a reviled term (totalitarianism) > > Rodriguez begins with an intellectual lie, then uses it to advance the idea that anti-racist and anti-misogynist movements are the actual oppressors. And not the misogynists and racists themselves.
What evidence is there that progressive movements are actually seeking to upend anything? Seems to me they've been culturally dominant in America (i.e. they control the schools, the media, entertainment, government bureaucracy and now Big Tech) for over a century, and have this been influential in the rest of the West.
As far as I can tell, progressive movements like BLM and MeToo are absolutely attempting to preserve the existing order. After all, these movements and groups are well-funded by the very people you suggest they are trying to take down. These movements and groups (and you?) appear to cheer 1% of the population holding 99% of the wealth as long as that 1% is 50% female, 14% black, 5% percent LGBT or whatever, etc.
The intellectual lie you begin with is that progressives don't already have a complete monopoly over the relevant cultural power.
EDIT:
> Insanely, Rodriguez points to...
Also, if I were you, I might be cautious about using the I-word. It's already banned from being in any commits at Google.
BLM started as a response to police brutality driven by an institution that is quite literally the furthest you could get from progressive ideals. In the last hundred years, these police departments: violently broke up strikes at the behest of corporations, tried to put down the Civil Rights movement, and have been by far the biggest proponent of the destructive war on drugs. Institutions that to this day have nearly impenetrable qualified immunity - a level of power no one else has.
#MeToo started as a response to a flood of accusations against Harvey Weinstein, quite literally one of the most powerful and influential people in Hollywood at the time. It was followed up by a flood of accusations against Les Moonves, CEO of CBS, one of the most powerful and influential people in television broadcasting at the time. These men were at the top for decades
Your analysis makes no logical sense. The nature of these institutions hasn't changed, some figureheads were sacrificed and shuffled around (literally, in the case of police departments).
"progressives... have a complete monopoly over the relevant cultural power"
Can you really make that claim, in light of the current political climate and in-progress election results?
"Complete" goes too far, I agree, but it's also not right to think these movements are standing up to the powers that be. A movement including JPMorgan, Google, Nike, Walmart, Chevron, etc. has to be seen as a component of the current social hierarchy rather than a challenge to it.
> progressive movements like BLM and MeToo are absolutely attempting to preserve the existing order
I so wish this were true. If we lived in the world BLM envisions, George Floyd and while lot more people would still be alive.
> they control the schools
Let's get specific with this one. What's one thing that is taught in schools that you object to?
The structure of the learning environment.
The reference materials.
The subjects which have been omitted.
I suspect that what's taught in schools about homosexuality would make liberals more comfortable than conservatives. I suspect that almost everything taught in the humanities in universities would make liberals more comfortable than conservatives.
Depends on what culture you are conserving, right? Maybe american conservatives ideology conserves a narrow judeo christian, protestant view that isnt necessarily the same conservativism that runs in jewish, Hindu, Catholic, atheistic communities. Sometimes these ideologies intersect on certain values, but it definitely does not contain the whole conservative view.
> Seems to me they've been culturally dominant in America (i.e. they control the schools, the media, entertainment, government bureaucracy and now Big Tech) for over a century
Explain to me how BLM controlled America in the 1920s.
> Explain to me how BLM controlled America in the 1920s.
Progressive movements in general, not BLM and MeToo in particular.
The Atlantic, The New Republic, the American Economics Association, Planned Parenthood and many other Progressive organizations have been around for over a century. BLM is a particular instance of the sort of "third wave" of Progressive activism, which is based on expanding the civil rights movement.
(The first wave Progressives wanted nothing to do with civil rights, and most were virulent and unrepentant racists like Woodrow Wilson or Margaret Sanger. The second wave was based around the welfare state and neutrality on racial issues, and included FDR, Harry Truman and the New Deal coalition. All three groups advocate for nearly identical policies, and yet have contradictory stated goals.)
Explain how "existing" is the same as the original "controlling".
> BLM is a particular instance of the sort of "third wave" of Progressive activism, which is based on expanding the civil rights movement.
That sounds like some ivory-tower theoretical nonsense to me. BLM is, on the whole, seeking the real-world application and reification of the original civil rights movement. It's not "expanding" any particular political philosophy to insist on justice by bringing attention to violent crimes perpetrated by law enforcement and the justice system against people of color. Institutionalized racism is real, and the degree to which saying "black lives matter" is necessary, let alone controversial, is telling.
> third wave" of Progressive activism, which is based on expanding the civil rights movement.
> The first wave Progressives wanted nothing to do with civil rights, and most were virulent and unrepentant racists
> All three groups advocate for nearly identical policies
All three of these statements can't be true at once.
They use "based on" to mean "using a stated goal of "expanding the civil rights movement" as a justification for their policies [despite those policies being nearly identical the policies advocated by first wave Progressives]", not to claim that third wave Progressives actually act in manner consistent with "expanding the civil rights movement" as a terminal goal.
Ad hominem attacks like this one calling him insane and questioning his ethics illustrate the author’s thesis quite effectively.
> progressive movements that seek to upend the current social hierarchy
They seek to advance the interests of people on top of the current social hierarchy. Most stakeholders who have influence on modern society seem to support these movements and don’t feel threatened by it.
Your criticism seems sloppy. "Social control" and "oppression" can come from peers or superiors, so they don't pick out the concept the author is interested in, which is specifically horizontal (peer) social control. That may not be a new concept - off the top of my head, I know Orwell wrote a lot about it - but you don't even seem to understand what the topic of the article is.
You are upset about one sentence in the article, one that I also happen to disagree with. And on that basis, this sloppy dismissal of the whole piece? Lame.
I was typing a similar response, before I saw your better articulated one. Thank you.
I'm not sure it's fair to say the statement: "<actions> perpetrated in recent years by fanaticised supporters of <group>" is the same as suggesting <group> is an oppressor.
One can criticize the Red Terror, for example, without criticizing socialism - if that makes sense.
At any rate, even if I agreed with you, this idea of finding someones "secret motivations" and condemning them for it instantly loses me - there is plenty of good ground to fight on without guessing and accusations.
If you have issues with the ideas or know of similar ideas with different names then let's have it.
But what is it with this mind reading and character lynching?
What could be your motivation and why do you even bother?
> spanktheuser
Oh, nm.
What a shame. You seem like a smart bloke.
Don't you see how this response demonstrates the author's point? We're in an intellectual environment where people routinely scan for deviations from cultural norms - where hints that the author might secretly believe bad things are considered a strong form of argument. It's hard to meaningfully dispute the social consensus among one's peers in such an environment.
It’s not a majority, it’s a hierarchy. Humans self-organize into hierarchy amongst members of a network. The nuance is the size of the network.
Just a few people meme a hopeful idea into existence. Then you get the idealists, maybe 0.1%. Then the 1% of angry people latch onto it as enforcers. Then the 10% of people looking for acceptance send virtue signals of agreement. Half the rest agree out of apathy, and the remains keep quiet out of fear.
This is a game of telephone. The final form may be nothing like the ideal.
I don't think rigid totalitarianism is a stable solution at all, long term. A society that isn't somewhat elastic has no hopes of overcoming unprecedented challenges; it's bound to fall apart. And even though China's social credit system seems hopelessly Orwellian, I'm confident that its architects are aware that faulty design might inadvertently render China fragile.
Tanner Greer at The Scholar's Stage has written about Xi Jinping's apparent belief in the "tides of history". It's a very Taoistic notion. History flows and develops and all we can do is try to swim along with its currents. The only other option is to get crushed. So there's not really much hope in trying to control it. At least that seems to be Jinping's philosophical position.
Deng Xioping started the trend with "pragmatic experiments" to test solutions on a small scale before implementing them wholesale. Stability is the goal. And if that means letting go of the reins, that's just what they're going to have to do. Robustness requires flexibility, and you don't get that with simple-minded rigidity.
I'm also a bit surprised the author of this essay chose to invent a new term--horizontal totalitarianism--to describe how social groups protect their worldviews. It's just ... a very mundane and obvious thing. The exact same phenomenon occurs at an individual level; cognitive dissonance results when our beliefs are in direct conflict. We tend to reject threats to our worldviews with the tenacity we defend ourselves against physical harm; it's more powerful at a group level, but it's the same thing.
When people spend time together, they become more similar. Is that "horizontal totalitarianism"? Or is that just a very obvious observation of human behavior?
> I don't think rigid totalitarianism is a stable solution at all, long term.
Long term we are all dead and universe is graveyard of the stars.
Totalitarianism for all its many faults seems more stable than democracies. People are willing to trade freedom for stability.
> When people spend time together, they become more similar. Is that "horizontal totalitarianism"? Or is that just a very obvious observation of human behavior?
There is a difference here. I think the article isn't so much talking about totalitarianism, as much as censorship. It used to be top-down, but now it's either peer censorship, or even bottom-up.
In your example, I don't think that is truly the case. People manage to fit their own rituals better. They don't become the same.
Unfounded and there are counterexamples.
This causes a huge disaparity of wealth which is often exploited by another politician.
Interesting how MeToo or Black Lives Matter are seen as purpetrators of this, but not suburbian neighborhood dynamics[1][2], which are seem much more pervasive to me and are less of a choice.
Peer Pressure might be the term in question here, no real need for inventing a new one.
I also dearly miss the usual ubiquitous Foucault reference.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_(sociology)
[1] https://www.popsci.com/story/environment/american-lawns-gras...
[2] https://www.newsweek.com/woman-threatens-sue-neighbor-over-b...
pretty scary when considering technology innovation and how it provides a solid framework under which this horizontal totalitarianism will florish (we see it most clearly in other nations not our own thanks to how propaganda works). E.g if you're from the West, China's SCS is obvious or maybe even India's Modi government and how it uses Aadhaar. (or more extreme how Facebook is used in Myanmar and other places by the junta).
they chose the worst possible example to make their point unfortunately. at least with this sentence it reads like British colonialists "liberated" Australian Aboriginals from totalitarianism:
> There once was a society in which horizontal totalitarianism was so successful that, without any need for a State or institutions, simple social pressure from friends and neighbours was sufficient to conserve a culture and its customs, perhaps for over forty thousand years.
finally the kicker:
> One could even speculate that if Captain James Cook had not disembarked in Australia it may have lasted even longer.
Aboriginals (the majority of) would have almost certainly been blind to this in the same way an insider is blind to their own immediate internal environmental circumstances. (maybe this is how "liberating people" is justified. as in - "they don't even know it's bad for them so we're doing them a favor by invading them and committing cultural genocide" etc. This then is just another form of totalitarianism)
It nowhere implies a "liberation", but more an "encounter" (as a matter of fact, not of ethics).
The writer makes good points:
People see and relish technology as a good totalitarianism because it can be leveraged to make good citizens. They believe it’s a “lite” and thus good totalitarianism because it can be used to cow people into proper acceptable norms.
He points out that while for now its adherents blindly love it because it’s used for “good” causes, the burying and delegitimization of dissent (however good or bad) is worrisome.
I would agree. A free society while it should strive for good and improvement must allow dissent in order to avoid blind pitfalls. Today everything is black or white and nothing is allowed to meander betwixt.
So, to be clear, it’s horizontal totalitarianism when members of a society cast judgment on those who view homosexuals as illegitimate, for example, but not when society itself marginalizes homosexuals because they are generally viewed as illegitimate? I’m not sure the author would agree with this characterization, but it seems entirely compatible with the logic they presented here.
One wonders what critics of "cancel culture" think happened to Martin Luther King and Harvey Milk
From an identity politics point of view, this article is quite the rollercoaster, as evidenced by the comments here.
Reads to me as a set polemical straw arguments against communalism and horizontalism; broad brush strokes (based on fiction) that belie the dynamic, empowering and pluralistic natures possible within so-called horizontal organisational dynamics. Like those who would paint social forms of "anarchism" as being without rules, a black and white conflation of a nuanced topic relating to social/progressive politics with a concept like totalitarianism. Not that there aren't dark pattern social dynamics relating to the topic that are worth talking about, but there really is no attempt to engage here, just an apparent horseshoe attempt to psychologically pin negative sentiments to some keywords.
A timely article. It would be interesting to survey and catalogue the tools and techniques of modern horizontal totalitarianism in digital societies. For example, HN's anonymous downvote mechanism is one such tool.
What a cargo-culting piece of a hot mess...
It's not "totalitarianism" if people get tired of your whatever-ism. It's basic human nature.
Instead of decrying that mechanism, be happy that people tell you to shut up/stop inviting you to parties/block you on Twitter.
Because all those are low-intensity interventions. They give you essential feedback, and do so rather early in the process.
Most importantly, they make it unnecessary to use the other method society has to enforce common rules: the criminal justice system.
If you believe society today is less free than it was in the past, just remember that until the 80s, most Americans lived in small towns. Nothing I see people today complaining about compares to the essential small-town experience of your church community (i. e. "the town") ostracising you for wearing white after Labor day, or having disabled child, or being too friendly to <anyone they don't like>.
And that's the premium experience reserved for the John Sinclairs. If you happen not to white and/or a man, your life had to follow a template like a MySpace page: you get to decide on decorations, and it's horrible either way.
"It's not "totalitarianism" if people get tired of your whatever-ism. It's basic human nature."
These two things do not contradict each other. Given how often do ideologically controlled societies emerge throughout history, I would argue that basic human nature contains some seeds of totalitarian thought: "Shut up the heretic, or better kill him."
"be happy that people tell you to shut up/stop inviting you to parties/block you on Twitter."
That is not what the author had in mind (probably). The consequences such as being fired or expelled from a school are what bothers people like him and probably me.
There isn't a clean 1-0 spectrum of "being told to shut up o Twitter" and "being thrown in prison". Consequences such as being fired from your job are somewhere in the middle, not totally devastating, but still causing a pretty strong chilling effect. This is a pretty serious punishment that should be used sparingly, not over a stupid Tweet.
I am almost certain that over next 10-20 years, current willingness of bosses or directors to act on Twitter mobbing will be seen akin to other hysterias of the past.
if firing had to be for cause, twitter mobbing would not be actionable.
> If you believe society today is less free than it was in the past, just remember that until the 80s, most Americans lived in small towns. Nothing I see people today complaining about compares to the essential small-town experience of your church community (i. e. "the town") ostracising you for wearing white after Labor day, or having disabled child, or being too friendly to <anyone they don't like>.
If you didn't like it, you could move to a different small-town. As I understand it, that was a strong motivator for many people to move to the new world, that they could live in a different way that they wanted to.
But you can't move out of the global village.
> But you can't move out of the global village.
Elon would like a word with you.
> > But you can't move out of the global village.
> Elon would like a word with you.
Really? Because to all evidence he is acutely aware of that fact.
A colony on Mars is not going to be a part of Earth's "global village".