Christopher F. Rufo  ⚔️

People worry about cancel culture as a form of totalitarianism. They should worry more about the fact that so many leaders of important cultural institutions are either incapable of critical thinking or unprincipled or cowards (because otherwise cancel culture could never work)

The reason I bring this up is because contemporary totalitarianism, even in its more extreme ideological form, is part of a process of disintegration. Earlier forms (Communism, Nazism) could harness strong pre-existing polities (the old European nations) and exploit their

resources to build totalitarian empires. Not so for the totalitarians of the affluent-technocratic society. In the ideal-anthropological vacuum of late capitalism, they lust for power on disintegrating institutions, but ultimately the disintegration is going to win.

What concerns me, though, is the power that technology gives them to control the polity. I'm talking about the kind of power that makes it possible for China to have its social credit system. That's new. They don't need gulags to control you.

I am not denying the danger of seriously oppressive phenomena. But the Chinese system works in a society that seems reasonably cohesive along Confucian-nationalist line. The American dynamic is very different. Technology cannot prevent institutional disintegration.