Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 03:1 (Spring 2021)
Article: An Interview With Rod Dreher On Soft Totalitarianism
Author: Rod Dreher

Eikon 3.1 (Spring 2021) p. 46

An Interview With Rod Dreher On Soft Totalitarianism

Rod Dreher

Rod Dreher is a senior editor and writer at The American Conservative and the author of several books, including The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation and Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents.

1. Can You Explain What Soft Totalitarianism Is?

When people think of totalitarianism, what comes to mind is gulags, secret police, torture — basically, Stalinism, or Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four. This is understandable, because that was the twentieth century experience. But if we are looking out for the KGB agents to come roaring down the street to haul us off to prison, we’re not going to see it, and we’re going to miss the softer ways totalitarianism is emerging in our society.

Eikon 3.1 (Spring 2021) p. 47

Totalitarianism is a political system in which only one political ideology is allowed, and everything in society becomes politicized. An authoritarian government only wants you to obey politically. A totalitarian system wants your soul. When you see something as absurd as Oreo cookies celebrating LGBT Pride with rainbow-colored fillings, you know that you are dealing with a totalitarian mentality. After the Russian Revolution, the Soviet chess society tried to keep politics from infiltrating the game. They put out a statement saying that they wanted to keep “chess for chess’s sake.” The Communist government chastised them, saying that all things, even chess, must be made to serve the revolution. This is the same mentality that makes Oreos woke.
Hard totalitarianism depended on inflicting terror and fear of pain on people to force them to conform. Soft totalitarianism, by contrast, depends on people being afraid of losing comfort, status, and at worst, employment, to force conformity. Nevertheless, because so few people today will be willing to suffer for the truth, it will achieve by softer means what the earlier version achieved through harsh means. What’s more, I think that the enforcers won’t need to resort to hard tactics to enforce their ideology. They will use sophisticated surveillance technology, like the Chinese social credit system, to regulate consumer privileges and access to jobs. Nobody will be sent to prison for their faith. They will simply not be able to buy or sell if they are judged by the algorithms to be bad citizens. China is well on its way to implementing this kind of control.

Finally, the softness of soft totalitarianism is also a reference to the fact that we are building a total control society for the sake of compassion, in order to create a “safe space” for favored minorities. The other day I was dressed down on my blog for “cruel...