PREFACE by TatzhitI would assume most people feel dissatisfied with some of the changes the current “information age” has brought us. For me, it’s the mass media reduced from educating the public to scare-mongering for profit; for someone else, it may be the push against traditional “biblical” values, or the increasing fragmentation of society.[Song is relevant. 1.5 disinterested anons as the backup dancers are the perfect metaphor for modern political discussion - ed.]However, most of us, me included, do not have a unified theory of exactly what changed within society, and why did these changes happen.Usually, people blame a shadowy group of their choice (Freemasons, Zionists, Gray Aliens), which is obviously not a reasonable explanation - the processes we see are far too low-level and widespread to be controlled by any single entity.Those a little more skeptical tend to put forth specific practical explanations for each individual problem. That, also, seems flawed - because there is an undeniable overarching “theme” to all modern problems, which goes above and beyond technological similarity.So, we have something less systemic than a conspiracy, but something that does beyond isolated advances in technology. A “spirit of the times”, so to speak, one that needs a unified theory explaining it.The article below provides such a theory, and a rather compelling one at that. I will discuss some of its flaws in the postscriptum, but before that, I’ll let you form your own opinions.PREFACE 2.Also worth noting that this is a translation of a part of a large Wiki article (from lurkmore.to, a Russian-language Wikipedia clone that includes a lot more useful info, and a lot more profanity, than vanilla Wikipedia). The subject of the article is “totalitarianism”, so it talks some about the old kinds of it, before talking about the 21st century version we’re currently living in.CONTENTS:0) TL;DR1) ON OLD-FASHIONED TOTALITARIANISM (Hitler vs Stalin)2) SIDE NOTE: AUTHORITARIANISM AND TOTALITARIANISM3) NEOLIBERAL TOTALITARIANISM (What we got now)4) CLOSING QUOTES5) POST-SCRIMPTUMTL;DRFor those too far gone to actually read ten pages that explain WHY they are no longer capable of even reading ten pages, the point of this article can be explained by some pictures...= What https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3706.Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3487.Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.= Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.= Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.= Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.= As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions."= In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure.In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.You can also get a pretty good idea of "Neoliberal Totalitarianism" by watching Ep.2 of “Black Mirror”, highly recommended:ON OLD-FASHIONED TOTALITARIANISM.. There is no way to disarm any man except through guilt. Through that which he himself has accepted as guilt. … If we teach a man that it's evil to look at the spring flowers, and he believes us, and then does it - we'll be able to do whatever we please with him. He won't defend himself. He won't feel wronged. He won't fight.- Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged”It all started back in 1956, when Brzezinski penned his magnum opus: "Totalitarian dictatorship and autocracy." In those days, Auschwitz and Dachau were the ultimate evil for hundreds of millions of people, and Communists argued, quite successfully success, that fascism was caused by capitalism itself, and therefore - down with capitalism!The fact that many knew about Stalin’s own dictatorship and concentration camps put a damper on it, but after Nikita Khrushchev proclaimed a policy of democratization, those were also gone. The “decadent West” had an acute need a new ideology for the Cold War, preferably one that blamed USSR for everything, and Brzezinski, like a true professional, did not bother with justifications and simply invented six signs of absolute evil:= A one-party system led by a charismatic leader. The party consists of a relatively small part of the population (10%), and firmly believes in an ideology. The party is organized by oligarchic principles and rules over the bureaucratic structures of government, or is completely intertwined with them;= Official ideology with covers all the vital aspects of human existence, and is mandatory for all;= Centralized control and management of the economy.= Monopoly on the mass media;= Monopoly on all means of warfare;= Terrorist police control system directed not only against the "enemies" of the regime, but also against randomly selected population groups and classes;The "theory" was immediately criticized, but it was extremely enthusiastically embraced by politicians and warmongers, and that was enough to push it into mainstream political science. Later, more and more “traits” were added to the model, but the overall theory stayed the same ... because it was built for one goal, right?[Hitler had a red flag. Stalin had a red flag. Hitler drank water. Stalin drank water.]Of course, even supporters of “totalitarianism” theory (as long as they’re capable of simple logic) realize that Brzezinski definition has the same value as claiming “chin acne is necessary to be considered human”. The “criteria” are simply religious commandments, and if you believe in their power to define absolute evil, then it's time to realize that you are a typical dumb voter, duped with typical pseudo-scientific bullshit.Totalitarianism is a primitive stamp invented by those who harbored fugitive Nazis, in order to equate those who defeated Nazis and those who supported them, and comparing this “theory” with actual political systems is like comparing Jewish Torah with Eskimo fairy tales.The adherents of “totalitarianism” belief don’t care, because the theory itself isn’t important and serves merely as an excuse for a pre-determined answer: communism and fascism are the same, the blame for the Second World War is on the left and right-wing extremists, and any socialism is no better than National Socialism.Some Western scientists almost immediately noted that some fascist and socialist countries do share certain traits, but the reasons are quite different. For example, totalitarian socialism has only one class - salaried employees of the state (eg, farmers), and therefore only one party, and centralized economy. The other “totalitarian” ideology, fascism, is supported by small and medium business, which violently crushes all opposition. This also leaves them as the only party, and free to regulate the economy (albeit seriously affected by interests of the big business).It is also easy to notice that absolutely any army fits the “totalitarian” criteria, simply because soldier should act, speak and think strictly in service of one goal - victory. A war, civil or international, tends to turn the whole society into a military camp, and adopt the ideal model for war. Therefore, so-called “totalitarianism” can be found in any opponent, if the latter has the will to resist.A very convenient political cliche - but describing it specifically, beyond “society under martial law”, is impossible, because it simply does not have a more precise definition. Mobilization isn’t a goal in itself - it's a way to survive and win, and its meaning is defined by later goals. Therefore, comparing WWII Soviet "totalitarianism", modern-day North Korea, or the Union under Lincoln to, say, Mussolini’s totalitarian state, is essentially pointless.Of course, the defeat of the socialist camp meant victory for the believers in “totalitarianism”. The concept has become widely accepted dogma, arguing with it went out of style, and soon the Communists were condemned to the same treatment as Nazis in a number of European countries. And while the ban on Nazism was legally based on the materials and decisions of the Nuremberg Tribunal, the ban on communism was based on the fact that ... it is bad by definition.[snip]But why, then, are the long-dead monsters from three-four generations ago constantly referenced today?Besides painting any political opposition with the same colors as Hitler or Stalin, “totalitarianism” also serves as a good contrast to modern times. Without constantly referencing crimes of “totalitarian” past, painting them to be more and more terrible year by year, the “democratic” present no longer looks particularly rosy - but you do not want another Stalin executing billions, do you?!SIDE NOTE: AUTHORITARIANISM AND TOTALITARIANISMAn authoritarian regime denies you the right to speak, and the totalitarian goes a step further - it deprives you of the right to remain silent."- Credited to Slavoj ZizekSome people feel the two are one and the same. This is very wrong, like equating Lukashenko and Hitler.= Totalitarian regime is for wartime, authoritarian is for peacetime.= Totalitarian state seeks to dominate all areas of human life, authoritarian - only the political sphere.= Under totalitarianism, the whole population is mobilized by propaganda and various mandatory shows of support for the regime. Authoritarian regimes, on the other hand, seek to de-politicize the entire population (e.g. only about 2 million Russians are members of the ruling party, and most don’t believe they can affect politics; by contrast, ~73 million Americans are members of the two-party scam, and most fervently believe in it; more on that in the next part).= Totalitarianism promotes jingoism and patriotic enthusiasm, authoritarianism cultivates apathy.= Under totalitarianism, repression is widely used in all areas. Authoritarianism prefers to operate not by repression but by the possibility of it, applying it rarely and to specific enemies. As a rule, authoritarian repression comes not not in the form of executions, but being sent to mental hospitals or expulsion abroad (however, there are exceptions - in Chile, within the first month of the dictatorship, tens of thousands were killed).= Totalitarianism, same as “democracy”, is based on the concept of “the people” and “the masses”, just interpreting it somewhat differently. Authoritarianism is inherently elitist, and not really trying to hide it.= Under totalitarianism there is usually only one party. Authoritarianism is often multi-party on paper, but in practice, a number of factors give power to a single party - the party of the country’s leader.= In totalitarianism, corruption is removed through physical removal of the corrupt. In authoritarianism, it prospers, because bureaucracy and oligarchy in an elitist authoritarian state are inviolable.= The authoritarian regime collapses after death of the leader, unless he left a strong and charismatic heir - totalitarian regimes fall less easily, unless the whole ideology gets discredited.[~12 "religious activists" whom the media shows as the face of Castro's regime][200,000 "smile and wave" people who are the actual face of Castro's regime]==NEOLIBERAL TOTALITARIANISMTeach a man only to read, and he will read pornography.- Aldous HuxleyI will not tolerate intolerance!- South ParkThe non-believers could not understand the difference between different “oppressive regimes”, so the next logical step in trolling believers in “totalitarianism” was absurd criticism of democratic societies under the same criteria, especially the first two (one party, official ideology).Would USSR still be totalitarian country if vying factions in the Communist Party split it into “Communist Party Left” and “Communist Party Right” (what if they called themselves “Republican” and “Democrat”)?Is the liberal-democratic ideology an “ideological monopoly”, if it bans all others as “illiberal” or “undemocratic”?Are capitalists the ruling elite, as they have monopoly on lobbying and mass media corporations?Such questions lead to full-length comparative research studies on freedom of choice in “democratic”, “fascist” and “socialist” societies, which unsurprisingly concluded that all three are shit, and the “open and free” modern society is in fact even more totalitarian (controlling) than the fascists and socialists, because it not only sets the social ideals and standards, but also generates personal needs and values ​​of each individual.Liberal totalitarianism begins with the assertion that no one else can make decisions for a person, because it would be “restriction of freedom”. But how can an individual grow up, unguided by anything, and figure out all by himself what the right decisions are, while avoiding temptations and addictions?The more technically advanced and information-based our society becomes, the harder it is to make a truly personal choice, because the temptations of paid euphoria become more and more sophisticated (compare the porn mere decades ago to today -ed.), and choosing to avoid pleasure, even for future gain, becomes harder and harder. At the same time, at the moment of euphoria a man sincerely thinks that he satisfies HIS need - he gets used to thinking that he is [consuming cigarettes], whereas it’s actually the tobacco industry consuming him, he thinks he gets an orgasm [with a webcam show] - but it’s actually the sex industry getting his money, leisure, thoughts, feelings and life. “Consuming” replaces “living”, entertainment replaces creativity and social interaction (can be seen in people stuck on smartphones at parties - ed.). The most common revelation of our time is that food and sex is all we talk about, and that fixation on them is overrated.Three monkeys of today.A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization, a token of technical progress. Indeed, what could be more rational than the suppression of individuality, the mechanization of socially necessary but painful performances; the concentration of individual enterprises in more effective, more productive corporations; the regulation of free competition among unequally equipped economic subjects; the curtailment of prerogatives and national sovereignties which impede the international organization of resources. That this technological order also involves a political and intellectual coordination may be a regrettable and yet promising development.Herbert Marcuse, "One Dimensional Man"Freedom of thought, speech and conscience lose their original meaning with the disappearance of free enterprise, which they were originally supposed to protect. Forced removal of any obstacles to “free competition” isn’t defense of freedom - it’s violence against anyone who dares to think, speak or act "insufficiently freely".Examples can be found everywhere - a true “child of the Internet” doesn’t simply troll religious fanatics, but anyone who dares to stand for anything. Exactly the same thing is happening at the national and international level - online trolls simply copy it. For example, the so-called “sexual liberation” is nothing more than forcing all societies around the globe to accept the same perversions as the norm.Free consent to live in such a society is not proof of its superior freedom; on the contrary, it proves the increased efficiency of the new control methods. Yes, there is paradoxical “freedom of speech” - but there is nothing to say, and no one wants to argue or even listen.A person can even intellectually understand some aspects of what is happening, but will still go along with his base urges. Freely electing one’s masters does not change the division between servants and masters - but typical “voters” try to literally perish this thought, because otherwise it follows that such "freedom" must be fought, and fighting interferes with living comfortably.Under liberal totalitarianism, social settings are embedded in the brain starting from day 1. The institutions of "civil society” handle this much better than any medieval church or state propaganda machine. The goal is not to shape a man, but to implant the right tastes and interests, so that he shapes himself into an ideal consumer. Compared with such a consciousness, the consciousness of residents of Fascist Italy, Muslim Pakistan or socialist Soviet Union was much more autonomous - because the neoliberal control does not come from some higher-level intellectual, political or spiritual belief system, which is unnatural and can be resisted, but by catering to base human urges on behalf of His Majesty The Higher Standard of Living.All propaganda is reduced to promising a higher standard of living, and any mental and emotional protest against this drive for “increased consumption at any cost” is seen by all "sensible people" as madness, although it’s hard to imagine anything dumber than an ever-increasing desire to "consume more".Everything that before was considered “snitching” or “selling out”, is now supported by the whole ideology of consumerism. Journalists that sell their integrity, pretty boys that sell their posteriors, executives that fire thousands of workers to increase short-term profits by a few percent - they are all merely “improving their standard of living”, and think that it’s completely normal, because society glorifies this approach as the most correct, most rational of all. And this latter claim is completely correct - the society of liberal totalitarianism really is the most rationally organized. Its main difference from the deceased predecessors is that technology itself serves to connect the culture, politics and the economy into an inseparable and omnipresent system, totally absorbing individual identities of people. In such a society, all political opposition is rejected or disbelieved not because it’s in opposition to the system, but because it’s not optimal. Opposition to consumerism simply does not make sense, because anyone who does not strive to consume as much as possible is automatically defined as a “loser”.[snip]The political program of liberal totalitarianism is reduced to one thing - increased comfort. It is an axiom and the dogma of modern times. The first world is considered better by default: even if a person does not know anything about the culture of Japan, he thinks Japan is generally better than China, and Egypt generally better than Iran.Any opposition in Third World countries can easily be written off as backwardness and being unsuited to "democratic standards" (consumerism standards), which, by definition, can not be higher in the Third World than in the First. Not fitting these standards (being poor + disliking the first world) is what’s generally denounced as “totalitarianism”. Poverty + loyalty to first world can be labeled “authoritarian” or even “democratic”, but certainly not for “totalitarian”, even if the country in question is a medieval monarchy with the most severe Sharia laws, where in the last year, 149 people were beheaded by state executioners.'Despite the number of terrorists that are regularly born on its sacred sands, Saudi Arabia is the principal bastion of Western democracy in the Middle East.It is a democratic monarchy: It sells the United States a million-and-a-half barrels of oil a day, at low prices, and spends $10 million a day on high-priced U.S. weapons.It is a monarchy that loves liberty: It prohibits political parties and unions, decapitates or mutilates its prisoners a-la the Taliban, and bars women from driving or traveling without the permission of a father or husband.Since May 2000, Saudi Arabia has been a member of the United Nations Human Rights Commission.'- Eduardo GaleanoA central category among the needs being cultivated are the "false" ones. [snip] The feeling of satisfying false needs is familiar to all of us - euphoria against the background of devastation and misery, a parody of life. Staring at the TV, parties where nothing happens, mastrubation, overeating, drug abuse, chasing current trends - those are the simplest false needs. They are a waste of time and energy, and essentially rob everyone of a very large portion of their lives.The vast majority of your needs are false.He wasted his life, while the rest of us went to frat parties and laughed at memes.Fascism and socialism pale in comparison to modern society. It is even less free, if we understand freedom classically, [as having multiple paths]. It shapes desires and dreams in a predetermined direction, and there is no reason for the appearance of dangerous or simply original thoughts. Anything that can not be monetized for profit and consumption is discarded, or changed to be consumable, i.e. to fit one of a small number of molds. Even those who “struggle against the bloody regime” fight it mostly from the comfort of their homes and mostly so that they can consume the feeling of “being a rebel”: their idea of victory is rising up to the elite, being respected and drinking champagne - not working themselves into the grave, so that the next generation lives better.Only in modern media it is actually impossible to draw a line between information and manipulation, between entertainment and propaganda. [snip] It is impossible because the thing being promoted isn’t a specific political program or a religious creed, but an all-encompassing way of life - meaning reflexes, habits, emotional reactions, attitudes and values ​​of the characters in your favorite series, cartoon or book. And as the behavior being pushed is all-encompassing, control also becomes absolute. The difference between private and public becomes purely arbitrary, and not only due to [hackers or government spying].Want to know the defining symbol of liberal totalitarianism, like Hitler’s swastika, or Stalin’s hammer and sickle?Take a selfie.Liberal totalitarianism is definitely “progressive”, in both senses. Today it is not even an ideology, but a universal and unavoidable scenario. This type of society encourages any opposition which does not threaten its economic and political foundations: the existence of of various interest groups defending the rights of wheelchair-bound gays, gender-fluid lesbians, animals or insects serves both as propaganda of freedom and as a way to preoccupy the politically active population.At the same time, anything that actually or potentially interferes with making money, or controlling the economic process, is sharply repressed and completely demonized in the media. Any foreign cultural tradition may at any time be declared "unfit for developed democracy," which basically means that they are all defective by definition and are doomed to be ruled by the first world. In foreign policy terms, this is an old but effective ideology for the clash of civilizations, when all but those bearing the “White Men’s Burden” are declared “subhuman”.Like any good Ponzi scheme, liberal totalitarianism rests on the fact that the marks deceive themselves out of greed and stupidity (for example, in the Roman Empire, the vast majority of soldiers who suppressed slave uprisings did not have any slaves, but they fought to preserve the system - because they dreamed of becoming slave-owners sometime in the future). Adaptation for the purpose of receiving pleasure leads to submission, and rejection of conscience (having values higher than consumerism) creates happy fools, willing to accept any crimes and to obey any oppression in order to stay oppressed. These days, we can see that true consumers can even accept ongoing war, even if they are its victims.[snip]Natural instincts, needs and desires are crushed and distorted since childhood with various random crap - and the main role isn’t played by the state propaganda, but cartoons, music, advertising, films, porn, computer games, memes, etc. [snip] Shaping patterns of thought and perception, while giving “full freedom of choice”, is much more reliable than the most sophisticated coercion. Repressions against the discontented are simply not needed: torture by state security is now reserved for the chosen few, the rest can’t even bear the slightest sensory deprivation. If we say that totalitarian control is forcibly implanting conscience and morals, such control is ineffective and unneeded when it’s possible to shape people’s needs [in service of consumerism]. The “totalitarian” violence of brainwashing and ideological propaganda is replaced by a common cult principle "our control means your happiness". Essentially, a neo-liberal society can be seen as a destructive sect of aggressive fetishists.[snip]==“The main idea that any person is trying to convey to others is that he has access to much more prestigious consumption than you would think. At the same time, he tries to explain to people that their type of consumption is far less prestigious than they would naively think. All social maneuvers are subordinate to this goal. Moreover, only these issues elicit persistent emotions in people.”- Actually, I know people who don’t concern themselves with this, - I responded, with delicate irony.He looked at me meekly.- Right now, you are trying to inform to me that you have access to more prestigious consumption than I, and that my type of consumption sucks. Only you are talking about types of consumption in the social interaction field. This mindset is exactly what I was talking about. You won’t find any people motivated by anything else. The only thing that changes is the specific type of consumption they are concerned about. It can be consumption of things, impressions, cultural objects, books, concepts, states of mind and so on.Victor Pelevin==The most effective and sustainable form of enslavement is no longer violence or the threat thereof, but implantation of needs and wants that promote obsolete forms of resistance. The control does not disappear, but changes to more delicate and perfect forms: hedonism and tolerance breed obedience. That’s why the leftists and liberals became the political mouthpieces of liberal totalitarianism, and the right wing, as shown [by recent revolutions such as Syria, Libya, Ukraine] are only used when brute force is needed to smother resistance.State ideology is no longer pushed off of every wall and TV - modern politics comes down to marketing. One-dimensional thinking can be easily filled with anything you want - just properly combine the a bouquet of “familiar+interesting+sexy+fun” snippets. Anything unfamiliar, not sexy and not fun can’t ever occupy the attention of a modern man for more than a few minutes (so-called “snippet consciousness”). [People can’t learn the Constitution, but remember the shape of their favorite singer’s boobs by heart]. Coupled with “political correctness”, this ignorance acts as a kind of totalitarian censorship, only much better than any censorship in history. People forget the past not because they’re ordered to, like in Orwell’s books, but because remembering the past is not necessary for being a consumer. People in such a societies have trouble focusing their thoughts and retaining things in memory - so, by refusing to learn from being fooled before, they become ideal livestock.The best slave is the one who thinks he is free.” Goethe[cut]"Neoliberal Totalitarianism" consists of focusing on purely material values in individual experience ​​(take everything from life), post-industrial theory in economics (justifying the existence of consumerism-focused society), postmodernism (rationalizing lack of morals), analytic philosophy (viewing humans as machines of incentives and reflexes), political correctness in politics (protection of personal immorality) and anal forms of contemporary art (lack of taste as the main value). That system is like a bad casino, giving you total freedom of choice to play any rigged game you wish.==Society is fragmented into small groups, each with its own 'geniuses' (utterly wretched), its own neophytes (even more wretched), its own standards of quality, its own morality, and its own fashion. Postmodernist society can no longer act as a unified whole; it is defenseless before those wielding power. Micro-groups are unable to unite, and they have great difficulty interacting with one another since they are both secretly hostile and do not need one another. The postmodern world is a world of singles. Ultimately, postmodern society strives toward atomization, complete self-satisfied equality, and limited intellect despite apparent diversity ('The Machine Stops', according to E.M. Forster).The biggest, most carefully guarded secret of the postmodern world is its extraordinary political utility for the ruling elite. The elite is consolidated, engaged, and utterly rational; and it owns property, receives profits, and organizes (on purely rational grounds) world industry and the world political process.The elite is conservative out of necessity (no profit without stability); it does not play postmodernist games. (It wears stiff suits; its children attend closed schools where they receive a classical education and nineteenth-century discipline of the rod; it buys Cézanne paintings, not the installations of Carl Andre; it listens to Beethoven in Carnegie Hall, not Michael Jackson in stadiums, etc.)The elite forces postmodernism on the 'middle class' and the 'rabble', for an atomized society is safe (it cannot take away the elite's property, and hence their power).For a fragmented society not to degenerate into an open war of groups against each other, political correctness is necessary. Political correctness is, according to the brilliant definition of Paco Rabanne, the "virtue of sheep being led to the slaughterhouse"Alexander Tarasov, 1999==A member of a liberal totalitarian society feels and acts uninhibited by values higher than himself - like an animal; but unlike an animal, he also believes that this is right and proper. Simply put, he believes in living by instinct. And, of course, he thinks that those are his own thoughts.There is no way to explain something or to prove something in such a society, because people have no solid principles - the pleasure and displeasure ("coolness" and "uncoolness") are the only criteria of truth, justice and beauty. Human consciousness is fragmentary, selective, unsystematic - and systematic thinking, by the way, is necessary for any sort of independent thought. In a post-modern society, the push is only against all the “intolerant” belief systems, but never - for believing in anything. Unless it’s the belief in “tolerance”, of course.Modern consciousnessThe ban on having a dominant ideology or system, within a society that is already cemented around consumerism, it is nothing but a ban on any opposing ideology - that is, mandating the lambs keep silent on the way to the slaughterhouse. And "totalitarianism" is simply another justification elite invents for such an order of things, just like "terrorism", "extremism", or “democracy” - another way to make the slaves mindlessly accept their bondage.Slaves, by the way, are most easily recognized by their belief in buzzwords like “totalitarianism”. They sincerely believe in “democracy” and such, like people used to believe in God back in the day. They don’t know what any of it means and they haven’t seen any proof, but they believe in it simply because everyone else does.==- It dawned on me that we're no different from each other. I did not become a soldier of Allah after enlightenment. [I became one after seeing soldiers of Allah on TV]. The system wanted to make me a terrorist. It needs terrorists and dissidents, we are necessary. We justify the existing order, justify cracking down on protests and alternative views. The system does not need to know where I am hiding, and what will I hit next. It does not need to control my everyday thoughts. The system only needed to brainwash me one time to turn me into a minion who thinks that he is a hero and a rebel ... You see, the system does not care if it’s fucking you, or you’re fucking it. The important thing is that you [play its game], even [as an opponent]. ...... Do you think that the system is still trying to catch you? Fool. It caught us all from the very beginning. Not even that - our embryos grew around its hooks. But if you do not understand this by yourself, you are unlikely to understand it when I tell it to you …Victor Pelevin==Reformatting makes the [snip] "false consciousness" true and uncontested. The truth is defined by what is pleasurable (fit for consumption). But you do not have any control over standards of beauty/consumption, because they are implanted daily, starting at infancy. No matter how satisfied these needs are, no matter how much you think of them as their own, these needs are imposed in the interests of manufacturers and the owners of manufacturing corporations, and therefore are repressive from the very beginning, in any form. Think about this next time your eyes and ears are forcibly subjected to advertising.===QUOTES:Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.- Banksy… Neither the utilization of administrative rather than physical controls, nor the change in the character of heavy work, ... nor the equalization in the sphere of consumption compensate for the fact that the decisions over life and death, over personal and national security are made at places over which the individuals have no control. The slaves of developed industrial civilization are sublimated slaves, but they are slaves, for slavery is determined neither by obedience nor by hardness of labor but by the status of being a mere instrument, and the reduction of man to the state of a thing.- Alexander Tarasov: Ten Years of Shame: Arguments About BlameThis is not the first time a mosaic culture has developed, but it is the first time it has been global, not confined to one country or one empire. A typical mosaic culture evolved in Austria-Hungary before its collapse. The same was true of the Greek states before they fell. A postmodern type of culture, with all its attributes — repetitiveness, citations, recombinations, emphasis on spectacle, sexualization, play — has also appeared before. Such was Europe in the age of mannerisms, in the late Byzantine empire, and in late Rome. Even small details coincide — such as the hyperbolization of the "fashion industry", the enthusiasm for "ethnic music" and tattoos, or the transformation of communication by representatives of the "cultural environment" into in-group patter....Most of propaganda and most of repression in a capitalist society ... disappear behind market mechanisms (it is easy to "punish" someone by denying a job or a housing; and all advertising for products has a secondary function as political propaganda, propagating capitalism as the only way to realise your individuality) and are never visible as part of a system of sanctions. By contrast, in socialist society it isn't possible to simply get fired or lose your home, so the totality of all sanctions in society have to pass through the judiciary system....When I compare the climate my senior daughter grew up in, and the one of today, these 14 years of difference changed a lot. ... When I was a child, children wanted to become firefighters or doctors, [to help others]. Now they want to be supermodels or popstars [to promote themselves].But humans can not exist outside of a society. As all types of collectives degrade, we too keep sliding down, closer and closer to the level of babbling monkeys.===A slave remains a slave, a power source for a tool, because ofslavery, in the end, is not about hard work and groveling - it’s aboutsubmission to violence. Someone else chooses how a slave lives and whyhe will die. And thus we have “free competition” with regulated prices,“free press” that all says the same things due to “self-censorship”, andfreedom of choice between Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola. And anyone wholikes to defend alternative opinions would do well to check copyrightfirst.Such cases (c).===POST-SCRIPTUM by TatzhitA quick-thinking reader will note that this article itself is guilty of many of the sins it ascribes to proponents of “classic totalitarianism”, such as defining certain features of a class of societies as negative.For example, its claim of neoliberal totalitarianism being “more totalitarian” is fairly meaningless, since any human society is essentially totalitarian when viewed from the inside. To claim that a medieval peasant who had no choice but to farm the whole day, or a 19th century soldier serving a 25-year conscription term, were “more free” than today’s hipsters is nonsense. They were all products of their societies, and had virtually no chance of escaping their mold.Also, the article vaguely outlines the problem, but offers nothing in terms of solutions. I wouldn’t go as far as to propose one, either....Either way, a solution would likely be unnecessary - simple logic and knowledge of history show that fragmented societies tend to go extinct within a couple generations.