Alert To The Contradictions

There are several components to any industry, however conceived. It’s normal for outsiders to see that industry as a unitary entity, while insiders are aware of its several, cooperating parts. If we view the advancement of a totalitarian state from that perspective, and work to separate its various subassemblies, we quickly see all the following:

The strategic / tactical apparatus: This component designs the totalitarians’ campaign, both in terms of its ultimate objectives and the tactics best suited to advancing toward them.
The promotional apparatus: This component uses propaganda to persuade as many people as possible that what the totalitarians seek is “what the people really want.”
The counteractive apparatus: This component focuses on identifiable elements among the totalitarians’ opponents and works to impede or defeat their initiatives.

Those are the pieces easily identified in a fledgling totalitarianism industry. Should such an industry gain some degree of traction, others will become visible:

The subornation apparatus: This component works on elected officials to turn them toward the totalitarians’ goals, whether intermediate or ultimate.
The anesthetic apparatus: This component operates to ensure the compliance of government functionaries responsible for enforcing compliance with totalitarian enactments, and to reassure elements in the population that might be moved to resist.
The suppressive apparatus: This component uses marginally illegal methods to defame and / or suppress political adversaries’ operations.

Should the totalitarians achieve political dominance, the whole force of the State is turned toward their aims, and the components named above are subsumed into the structure of the government as “official organs.”

During a totalitarian campaign, logical clashes between the representations of the various components will occasionally appear. Here are a couple of illustrative ones, from our favorite Bookworm:

And of course, when observers note those contradictions for others’ consideration, the totalitarian response is predictable:

...because ultimately, freedom of expression is the totalitarians’ greatest enemy.

The totalitarians’ tacticians know they cannot conquer the U.S without inducing Americans to fear one another. Their promotional machine has done its level best to inculcate that fear in us. It makes heavy use of atrocities such as the recent ones in Dayton and San Antonio, of course without reference to the individuals who committed them or the influences that drove them. When opposed organizations point out the flaws in their “logic,” their counteractive apparatus springs into action with slanderous defamations and the promotion of falsehoods.

When the totalitarians achieve some inroads, we begin to see the subornation component exercise its sway over elected officials desirous of remaining in power or increasing it. Government functionaries, as David L. Burkhead observes, rationalize their compliance with “the law” by saying “it’s just my job,” with the implications left unspoken. The suppressors work to disrupt any organization that fights for the maintenance of individuals’ rights, whether by “deplatforming” them or by outright violence and intimidation.

I don’t have much more to say just now, Gentle Reader. I’m still in a highly frazzled, somewhat fragile state. But it struck me as important to elucidate, schematically, the way in which an anti-freedom movement plans its moves and strives to enact them.

Remain alert to the contradictions. Make sure others are aware of them, too. It’s part of the “eternal vigilance” thing: your job, as a citizen of these United States.