Horizontal totalitarianism in life and literature

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)

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...

What 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?

> 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.

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 .

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.