There have been times and places when the will of the people has been crushed. Fascism on the right and communism on the left have managed to establish totalitarian states, where people's voices were controlled with an iron fist. But more recent forms of authoritarianism put a padded glove on the fist.
I vaguely recall a quote that I associate with a college literature course on the books of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who survived one of these states. It went something like this: "You can cover the world in concrete, but somewhere there is a seam, and a flower will grow up through the crack." Even the most extreme totalitarianism is less than total. (This could change, some think, with the advent of AI.)
The internet and social media have exploited and widened the cracks. It is now nearly impossible to stop some truth from seeping in. And truth has a corroding effect on the reinforcement grid of totalitarian regimes. So while the desire to control is as strong as ever, the means to achieve control has changed. Instead of covering the world in concrete, the new method is to cover it with a liquid toxic waste of disinformation.
Lying is not new. Authoritarians have always promoted lies and repeated them over and over. Along with the lies, authoritarians require a grievance. If we believe a system is rigged against us, we are inclined to believe all sorts of evils and identify with whoever promotes the conspiracy. Every grievance requires a bogeyman. Someone else is responsible for my fear.
And then you accuse the bogeyman of your own crime. This is what Hitler does in Mein Kampf, when he says Jews have an “unqualified capacity for falsehood.” It's what Goebbels does when he says of his enemy:
The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.
So, while disinformation is an old tactic, how it is disseminated is changing. Since you can no longer close an iron curtain to shut out the truth, you need to dilute truth to the point where it loses its effect.
A profusion of lies allows authoritarians to use free speech to confuse and sway people who might otherwise have demonstrated good judgment. This is the firehose strategy: a flood of lying mixed with unsubstantiated claims. The need to squelch the truth is compensated for by simply flooding accurate news streams with garbage and poison. And if a few made-up news items turn out to be true, all the better; it counteracts accusations of malevolent disinformation. It matters less what you lie about than that you lie constantly and prolifically. Typically there is a central lie that rises above all the others, but the firehose ensures that there is enough confusion to keep everyone guessing.
Some focused squeezing of the more influential sources of truth can help switch the narrative. As confusion and frustration rise, people look for scapegoats, and the grievance narrative gains traction. Are you frustrated? Blame "them." More extreme measures include murdering those who investigate and then publicly denying responsibility (while sometimes using methods that make certain the victim's colleagues know who can come for them).
If enough people embrace an imagined superiority of certainty and the new freedom of blaming others, then the will of honest people who accept the reality of nuance is overcome. They simply cannot keep up with the torrents of disinformation and the fervor of those who accept the key lies. They give up.
It's a softer authoritarianism than was employed in the past, but it works in today's world. And it works where some thought it wouldn't. We thought Poland and Hungary, freed from the grasp of their giant neighbor, had embraced representative democracy. Only briefly. We thought Russia threw off a totalitarian state in favor of freedom. But the freedom was mostly given to the oligarchs, and the country's leader pines for the totalitarian past.
Surely, we have said, it won't happen here in the the US. We have traditions and laws that make it difficult for the would-be authoritarian. But the sanctity of democracy is being challenged. On January 6 an insurrection shocked us. Ah, I thought as I listened to sycophants suddenly express horror, this is the turning point. But within a few short days and weeks, virtually an entire party had decided it was no big deal, not worth investigating, while a majority of that party's elected representatives voted to not certify our votes.
Even good guys, such as Brad Raffensperger and Ed McBroom, who valiantly defended our election integrity, decided to advance the narrative that our elections need fixing, that targeted suppression (often mixed with more banal election changes) is in order, and that they could vote for the man who is still trying to reverse the election they protected. My congressional representative initially bucked his party's trend, but now pretends nothing serious happened and even said he too could support the man who won't stop lying about his election loss. Support for democracy has taken a second seat to extremism and party pragmatism.
An article in USA Today from shortly before the election, while noting Trump's dictatorial tendencies, took an optimistic outlook. Its conclusion: "What matters is that the 2020 results are respected." That optimism was misplaced: the results have not been respected, and vast numbers of Americans remain willing to vote for the ring-leader lying about those results.
Authoritarianism is coming. Likely it will come from the right, but perhaps it will be a reaction from the left. Some will protest loudly and pay a grim price. Some will wring their hands and wonder where we went wrong. Media that haven't chosen outright propaganda will push the envelope on what they can get away with, but will mostly back off when pressured lest they lose what voice they still have. Most of us will adjust and we'll ignore what's happening in exchange for protection against retaliation and the right to live our lives almost normally.
Some Americans will look at those of us who talk quietly and wistfully of our more democratic past and ask, Do you think this is new? Didn't you notice when the discrimination was focused on us? Or us? Or us? Or us?
And maybe we, who didn't, but now do share a loss of freedom, will begin to understand. And maybe then, together, we can try again to make it right. And maybe, sometime in the future, democracy's future will be better for it.
Maybe.