Article by: Jim Muldoon
Throughout history, totalitarian rulers have always used scapegoats, in the form of “Enemies of the State”. It allowed them to deflect attention from their corruption and incompetence. They and their minions could blame their chosen villains for the consequences of the regime’s crushing reign. At the same time, they took out their resentments and appeased their own consciences with their rage against the official foe. The State therefore deputised the mob to suppress any and all resistance. In short, it encouraged and legitimised hate.
Everyone within the State was then faced with a decision: Would they participate in the hate? As far as the totalitarian regime was concerned, you were either for them or against them. If you didn’t join the haters, then you risked becoming one of the hated. Many tried what they hoped was a third option of being silent and staying out of the way. The idea was that if they kept their heads down they would stay out of trouble. This strategy worked… until it didn’t. Then, because most had taken the same path, when the State came for an individual for whatever trumped up reason, there was no support, no outrage, no protest from anyone else.
For those who chose the mob, they knew, instinctively, that if they stopped running with the state approved posse they would be denounced as traitors. The worst kind of Enemy of the State. The rulers didn’t care who was considered as the enemy. Their only concern was that “the People” would be too busy either witch hunting or running for cover that they couldn’t even think about overthrowing the regime.
There is most certainly a danger today that we are heading towards some new version of a totalitarian society. Thus far, it hasn’t crystalised into one powerful reality. Instead, it seems to be bubbling up from underneath the surface of our civilisation. The Wuhan Flu brought some of it in view with the lockdowns, the mandatory chemical injections and the media enforced censorship of any kind of opposition. The social credit style oppression is still circling the boundaries of our way of life. Fifteen-minute cities, digital currencies, net zero carbon (which means energy for them, but not for us), and the Voice (for activists) are all being pushed.
One of the difficulties of discussing this, or anything else, today is that very words we use seem to have changed meaning in our own lifetime. There is some spirit, some force that is trying to emerge as the dominant power in our society. It has corrupted if not captured the government, the legal system, academia, the media and more. But, trying to pinpoint who it is exactly that is pushing these agendas, and who will ultimately benefit, has not been done successfully yet. The best we have been able to do is to come up with the term “the Woke”, but this doesn’t help us really get any further forward.
For the purposes of this essay, we are going to use the term “the Left”, because whoever and whatever the Woke is, it is certainly arose from the Left. By “the Left”, we will be making a general wave of the hand definition that encompasses Labor, the Greens, the Unions, Academics, the Aboriginal activists, Black Lives Matter, Animal Rights Activists and the like. We would also be covering more or less the same individuals if we used terms like Socialists, Communists, or Environmentalists. Similarly, we could use terms like Cultural Marxists, Post-Modernists, Neo-Marxists, Feminists, Gay Rights Activists and similar and again, by and large, the same groups of individuals would emerge.
Years ago, the Left would have claimed certain philosophies and principles were fundamental to their cause. Such as freedom of speech, of association, of opinion, academic freedom, and freedom from government surveillance. Associated with these principles is a general English view of law, often summarised as “Everything not explicitly forbidden is allowed.” In other words, unless you are doing something criminally wrong, then your behaviour is your own private business. This was certainly the view claimed by the Left years ago as fundamental to a free society. And if nothing else, the Left claimed to about freedom.
In this century, especially after 2010, the call for freedom simply disappeared. The radical ideas of Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Feminist Studies, and the like moved from the University campus into our culture as a whole. This became dramatically clear during the Wuhan Flu fiasco. Freedom of speech was no longer available in Australia. That is, free speech was not permitted to those who disagreed with the “official” narrative that lockdowns were good, masks stopped the spread, the so-called vaccine was safe and effective, and that the so-called vaccine should be mandatory for every Australian.
Even on the general matter of protesting, we have seen a complete backflip on this subject by the Left. There are various institutions, all government funded, in Australia that celebrate protest as being “fundamental” to Australia’s democracy. Women’s Lib marches, Anti-War marches, Trade Unionist marches, Gay Rights marches, et cetera, are all celebrated in pictures, words, and song. But the protests against the lockdowns and so-called vaccine were either vilified or ignored. The reported numbers of the crowd were a fraction of the actual numbers there. The protesters were demonised and the criminal actions of the police, if they were reported at all, were excused as being justified.
The doublethink on this became obvious when the media celebrated the Black Lives Matter protests in Australia for events that happened in the United States. Suddenly, marches, gatherings and speeches were somehow virus-free or at least worth the risk. The rules were mere guidelines, and subject to interpretation and context. Arm in arm, with masks or without, politicians, celebrities, sports stars and the police all “bent the knee” in homage to the officially worthy cause. For about a week, protesting was more important than the lives of the vulnerable… and then it wasn’t any more, again.
Orwell, in his novel Animal Farm, summed up the ruling pigs’ hypocrisy when they updated their rule “All animals are equal” by adding “but some are more equal than others”. And it is clear today that “Freedom for me, but not for thee” is very much how the Left, now that they have gained the upper hand in our institutions, are promoting their various agendas. The Misinformation Bill, for example, will ensure that the only propaganda allowed in Australia will be Leftist propaganda. Similarly, the “Voice” will ensure that the only people with a voice will be the Leftist Activists.
The Left have not stopped calling themselves the Champions against Oppression. It’s just that the term “oppressor” means something else now. The most significant and startling of this is that the main enemy of the Left is also being redefined. Up until five minutes ago, the main enemy of the Left was The Rich. The other terms the Left used were the Government, the Establishment, the Capitalists, Big Business, the Top End of Town, the One Percent, The Multinational Corporations, Big Oil, Big Pharma and more.
That same list are now the chief promoters of the Left’s new ideologies. Facebook, Google and other social media platforms offer their censoring services to cancel those voices against the new Woke agendas. Big Business in Australia is supporting every Leftist cause they can find. Every advertisement on TV and the web has two messages. One message is that this company supports at least one cause such as The Voice, Gay Rights, Transgenderism, or even to stopping “Fat shaming”. The other message is that their product is terrific and you should buy it. Most of the time now, the Woke message is far more important than the selling their stuff.
This is not, as it is often called today, virtue signalling. They are not really trying to impress you. It is rather a signal that they want to be part of this new establishment. They don’t want to be silenced or denounced by the media. They don’t want to be regulated out of business by the government. They don’t want to be cancelled from their jobs. But, let’s not forget, they do want some combination of government contracts, subsidies, tax breaks, or laws that will keep them in business whilst others are squeezed into financial oblivion.
But if the enemy of the Left has changed, if the enemy of the Left is now amongst its ranks, then who will be their new scapegoats. There are several contenders. A basic list, in no particular order, would consist of: Western Civilisation, White people, Christians, The Middle class, Men, Fathers, Older people, The White working class, Small Business Owners, rural Australians, small farmers, The British and their descendants, Anti-vaxxers, Conspiracy theorists, and Climate Deniers. Again, these are all wave of the hand definitions, and there are those who will fit into more than one group.
Of course, these are not the terms that the Left used to describe the usual suspects listed above. Racist, homophobe, transphobe, misogynist, white supremacist, Nazi, Neo-Nazi, and Far Right are the most common, but as the meaning of words are frequently changing, no doubt these terms will shift. Whatever the new names are or the crimes they are supposedly guilty of, it will have little to do with reality. This doesn’t mean that Big Business, or individuals like Gates or Soros are safe. No one is. This rising power is not quite The New Establishment yet, and even if they get control of the country completely, there will still be considerable in-fighting at the top for supremacy.
By now it should be clear that the main thrust of Leftist ideology is not Fraternity, Equality and Liberty. Rather, it is about power. Power for power’s sake. They have no idea how to run the country better than anyone else. In fact, they only ever make everything worse. Much worse.
Most of the history we were taught blames the leaders of totalitarian regimes for the evil that occurred. Whilst the denunciation is deserved, it does not give us the whole picture. Totalitarian leaders needed a mob to force the rest of the country into obedience. This process has little to do with the logic of the propaganda used. It was in part a matter of getting enough of their own people in enough positions of power to give them at least an appearance of authority. The rest came down to getting a big enough and motivated enough mob to ensure everyone else’s compliance.
In the end, every totalitarian regime has collapsed under the weight of its own corruption. But the price for that corruption was carnage, misery, poverty, and terror that damaged the whole country. At present, that force is not quite yet complete, not quite yet solid enough to take tyrannical control of our country. They have, however, the made a lot of progress whilst we all allowed ourselves to be distracted by the modern equivalents to Rome’s bread and circuses. We also made the mistake of trusting our institutions rather than keeping a critical eye on them.
But their mob is still too small, and the power, despite the propaganda, is still not sure of itself, still not completely focussed on its direction, still turning on their own in power struggles. They are gaining ground, however, and the voices in opposition are even less united than the Left. There is no way of knowing when the tipping point of tyranny will happen, but the way things are going, it will happen.
Therefore, the time to speak up is now.