Is Tech-Totalitarianism the worst form of dictatorship?

A look into past dictators, and how today’s technology would have made them 100x more powerful…

ORIGINALLY POSTED JULY 12, 2023

If someone asked you what freedom means to you, what would you say?

For a lot of people, freedom is the ability to pursue their dreams, and maybe one day be able to afford a dream car or dream house.

But what a lot of people don’t understand is that freedom is what protects your life.

Governments that take away freedom from their citizens cause unbelievable amounts of damage to their citizens’ lives. Whether it’s directly through forced labor, or eugenics. Or indirectly through things like starvation.

Freedom is the most important thing in your life.

And the biggest threat to freedom is an out of control, totalitarian dictatorship.

The only way that a totalitarian government can succeed is by gathering as much information on its citizens as possible, and also controlling the information that they have access to.

That’s why privacy is so important, because without privacy, the Government can track your every move and use it against you…

Part 1: What is Totalitarianism? (+ Examples)

According to Britannica “Totalitarianism is the form of government that theoretically permits no individual freedom and seeks to subordinate all aspects of individual life to the authority of state.”

In a totalitarian government, the goal is absolute power. They achieve this by centralizing all of the power and taking it away from their citizens. Any opposition, whether it would be social or political is suppressed through coercion, censorship, violence, and manipulation.

Social institutions and organizations are discouraged and suppressed. This leads people to adopt the totalitarian state’s ideology even faster. Because without access to knowledge, you cannot form opinions on things you don’t know. Once this happens, individualism dies and is replaced by mass conformity.

Some examples of totalitarian leaders are Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Benito Mussolini.

If you were a citizen in a totalitarian society, you might not even know it. That’s because they will make great efforts trying to brainwash you into following their ideals.

If you were born into a totalitarian society, you will have been raised in its schools, and taught its ideals from a young age. It’s almost impossible to break free from that level of brainwashing. And that’s exactly why they try to do it.

But it’s not just kids, adults are brainwashed too. The only literature, internet access, or video content they will have will be “state-approved”.

But let’s say you were against the Government all along, you grew up with freedom and you want to protect it. It doesn’t matter….

A totalitarian government will put measures in place to punish anyone that speaks out against them.

And EVEN IF you were brave enough to face the punishment, chances are the people you are talking to wouldn’t be.

These governments are so powerful that family members even turn on each other. Sometimes because they love their government so much, and sometimes because they are so afraid of the consequences of being caught with “opposition”.

Fear is the ultimate reason that dictatorships take over. People are afraid of being hurt and submit as a form of self-preservation.

Here is a famous poem talking about this from Martin Neimöller a Lutheran Pastor who lived through Nazi Germany.

“First they came for the socialists, but I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.”

In the 1920s, and early 1930s Martin actually sympathized with many Nazi ideas. Once Hitler came into power he became an outspoken critic of Hitler and spent the last eight years of Nazi rule in concentration camps.

If you look at any totalitarian government throughout history, you understand 1 thing. The citizens will go through hell.

If you’re reading this and think “This could never happen to me, I live in a very strong country…” think again. In the next section, we are going to talk about how democracies can fall into totalitarianism.

Part 2: How Can Freedom-Oriented Society fall into Totalitarianism?

One major misconception people have is that only weak, small, or third world countries fall into dictatorship.

That is far from true, and it’s also why I am going to be using Nazi Germany as an example today.

In the late 19^th century, Germany was one of the world’s superpowers. It was considered to have one of the best educational systems in the world, and it was also at the forefront of science.

They had created the first gasoline-powered automobile, diesel engines, x-rays, they discovered electromagnetic waves, and not to mention all of Albert Einstein’s discoveries.

After World War 1, German University enrollment almost doubled. Germany started paying TONS of money towards scholarships.

So how could a once prosperous nation fall into the grips of Adolf Hitler?

Well, first the country wasn’t as stable as it seemed.

Germany had poorly managed their economics and their country was starting to unravel.

When Germany had entered into World War 1, they needed a way to fund the war. They decided to suspend the gold standard (bad idea) and fund the entire war by borrowing.

Their plan was to win the war and make the newly conquered nations pay for the debt.

Well, Germany ended up losing the war. And it was in a massive amount of debt.

They printed so much money, and none of it was backed by anything. (AKA they hyperinflated their currency).

A loaf of bread in Berlin that cost around 160 Marks at the end of 1922 cost 200,000,000,000 Marks by the end of late 1923. One US dollar was worth over 4 TRILLION marks. The currency became so worthless that people would actually burn their money to keep themselves warm.

At this point, almost everyone was turned against the Weimar Republic (the government of Germany at the time).

Hitler was one of the people that was fighting against them strongly.

But Hitler’s specialty was that he was a fantastic speaker. He had charisma, and he knew how to rally crowds. Like other dictators, he had scapegoats (particularly jews).

After the loss of the war, the Allies demanded large reparations from Germany. So much so that Germany ended up having to default on its reparations. This is one of the things that contributed to the devaluation of the Mark.

Hitler’s speeches would preach to the “starving billionaires” of his nation. During the time of inflation, he gained around 50,000 Nazi followers.

He was jailed for attempting a coupe, and in prison wrote his book “Mein Kampf”.

As the crisis continued, the number of Nazis did as well.

And this brings up a key point. In hard times, many people are willing to go along with unethical things that would be unthinkable in good times.

Hitler would not stop. He constantly travelled and gave speeches all over Germany. He demonized the other parties and accused them of being traitors. The S.A. and the S.S. began violent attacks on his opponents.

Every night, there would be Nazi rallies and marches. There were Nazi magazines, Nazi records, and even Nazi movies.

They became the largest political organization in Germany, and in 1933 Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany. Once that happened, he started consolidating all of the power before anyone noticed.

So here are some key points of how a country as powerful as Germany fell…

1. Bad economic/foreign policy led to huge real-life consequences.
2. Dictators will sympathize with the people and demonize a scapegoat or target people.
3. In hard times, many people will do unethical things as a matter of self-preservation.

These are some of the key points that led to Hitler’s rise in power. And we all know how devastating that was.

Remember, in the beginning I mentioned that information is power, and that’s very true.

But what if Hitler had access to today’s level of technology? Would his story be different? Would he be able to have a different level of control?

The answer is yes.

Part 3: What Would be Different with Today’s Level of Technology?

It would be MUCH worse than any totalitarian leader that we have ever seen. Let me take you through a hypothetical example that is very possible with todays level of technology. (and based off of the social credit system that already exists today in China).

As a power-hungry dictator the first step is controlling the information that your citizens can receive. This is really easy nowadays, sure you can remove books from libraries and bookstores, but that’s just the first step. All of media will be controlled, the internet will be HEAVILY censored, and the only content available would be supporting your agenda.

During the totalitarianism of Romania in the 1980s, there were only 2 hours of television a day, and it was all propaganda. Including stuff like people who “emigrated” to the United States and returned to Romania to talk about how bad the crime, poverty, and degradation of America was. But at the time, none of it was real.

It goes SO much further today. The internet is a highway of information, and people are on their phones all the time.

Everything they see on social media will support your agenda, everything they read in the news will support your agenda, and they will not be able to see any outside information.

That means their entire world view is shaped by you.

But with the help of algorithms today, you can individually target certain groups of people and attack their states of consciousness. This is actually happening today. Just look at the Chinese application TikTok.

China’s version of Tiktok celebrates academic achievements and athletic achievements. But in America, they are glorifying dark and edgy content. Things like drugs, crime, and mental disorders.

Then as a dictator, you would want to infiltrate the school systems, and the information that children consume. I made an in-depth article of how this is being done in the media already. You can read that article here. In the article, you will see that not only are they presenting this information to children, but they are also empowering them to “re-educate” their parents.

Ok, now that we have propaganda taken care of, let’s take a look at how you would enforce your power.

First, you would want to set up a reward and punishment system, that way you can encourage people to support your agenda and punish people that don’t.

Let’s call it a social credit system (like the one China has today). You will tell your citizens that this is the best way to ensure their safety, and reward good Samaritans. But really, the ultimate goal is control.

Since everyone has a phone, you constantly know their locations and can track them at all times. These phones also have cameras and microphones that can be turned on at all times. If you pair that with today’s facial/iris recognition technology, there is no chance that anyone can hide from you.

You can train your software to always listen, and if it detects suspicious behavior or hears key words or phrases it will punish the civilian. Cameras all-around town will track them, and if they do hand signals, or hold up signs with text it will see.

Not only that, but you can also see who everyone talks to on their phones, or if two people are near each other in real life. You can see all of their texts, searches, and whatever they do on their applications.

So, to quickly reassess. You constantly know where every civilian is, who they are with, who they talk to or associate with, what they like, what information they consume, what they talk about, and so much more.

Now that you are able to fully track someone, it’s very easy to constantly punish or reward them.

Let’s say you want to reward people for reading your propaganda. Using technology, we can see what’s on their phone screen. And using iris tracking, we can make sure that they are really reading the text on the screen, and not just looking at it.

The people who are obedient to you will be rewarded. They will be allowed to work the best jobs, get the highest pay, travel, take out loans, and have their children go to prestigious schools.

The key to this though is that they know if their credit score drops, they could lose these benefits.

But, what about the people that don’t submit?

You would want to make it illegal to cover any cameras or microphones. And punish anyone for using the deep web or any other tools that allow them to access information that isn’t censored.

You would also want to make sure that your currency was digital only, that way you can remove all of the person’s assets with the click of a button. This also allows you to track all of their transactions.

So now, if people speak out, or doing anything that raises a red flag, they can be instantly punished. Maybe it starts small, like a drop in their salary, but quicky it can go downhill.

Here are just a few examples of what could happen to them: No longer allowed to travel, shadow ban their profile from other users, not allowed to take out loans, children have to go to bad schools, fired from job, your electric car won’t turn on.

Now that the system is in place we can implement the social isolation segment. If you have a low enough score, you can be placed on a blacklist, and anyone that talks to you will lose points.

And going back to the algorithm I talked about earlier, social media, memes, and news can be used against you to drop your state of consciousness or turn your loved ones against you even more.

Especially with the coming technology of deepfake voices or videos, you can be slandered in ways that would ruin your life forever.

And since it’s all digital it can be easily manipulated. You could receive texts that look like they are coming from your wife/husband that aren’t.

Slowly you can chip away at any dissident’s sanity, you have complete control over their lives, and if anyone even tries to talk bad about you, they will be punished before they can even finish the sentence.

This is complete control. People will be too afraid to speak out, and even if they know what’s going on they will assume there is no use in fighting something this powerful….

Part 4: Closing notes, and words of inspiration.

Do we need an economic collapse for something like this to happen? No, I don’t think so. In fact, it’s already happening today, and the indoctrination is so slow most people don’t notice.

Governments and Big Tech companies are spying on us, saying that it is for the greater good, or hiding the true intentions with convenience.

It’s been over 10 years since Edward Snowden revealed that the government was spying on us. And it has only gotten worse since then.

The truth is the government I described is completely possible today. But they know that we wouldn’t stand for it yet. That’s why they are rolling it out slowly.

They will require you to get digital ids and use them for everything. They will form Central Bank Digital Currencies and get rid of all paper money.

Remember, when Hitler gained the role of Chancellor, he consolidated all of the power before people could notice.

And I know, this is an extremely heavy article to read. You might even feel panicked about it. But here’s the truth. You are reading this at a PERFECT time.

We still have almost all of our freedoms, and there is a ginormous amount of freedom fighters who know what’s going on. If this is your first time reading this information, I strongly urge you to share it with friends and family. And deeply think about what is going on behind the scenes, and how technology can be used against you.

It’s your duty to get private and secure online, and it’s easier than ever.

No matter how hard times get, remember freedom always prevails. Even in the worst times of totalitarianism, there are little sectors of freedom.

And don’t forget Pastor Neimöller’s poem, and how you need to do your part before it’s too late.