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The ideological totalism of the Left
Ideological totalism is a phenomenon about which every Leftist should be informed, so that we can guard against it.
In 1961, Psychologist Robert Jay Lifton published Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. Based on in-depth interviews with survivors of Chinese re-education camps, Lifton identified eight psychological themes involved in ideological totalism:
Milieu control. True believers long to create an environment “containing no more and no less” than their “truth.”
Mystical manipulation. The ideology is a higher purpose in itself, and its leaders chosen by History to lead the way towards Truth. All must trust in and obey the ideology and its leaders.
Demand for purity. All “taints” must be removed and “anything done to anyone” in the name of attaining purity is excusable, even moral - including the continual denouncement of the impure. The ideology creates a narrow, suffocating world of guilt and shame, in which one must perpetually strive for perfection and expect humiliation for failing to achieve it.
Cult of confession. Confession is an act of self-surrender to the group; individuals must retain no intellectual/emotional/social privacy. Confession could be an opportunity for catharsis, but through repetition becomes a performance, often a “histrionic public display.” It becomes impossible to maintain a healthy balance between self-worth and humility. Furthermore, the perpetual confession becomes a means of judging others (“the more I accuse myself, the more I have the right to judge you.”)
Sacred science. The ideology simultaneously “transcends ordinary concerns of logic” and claims scientific truth. (Thus any criticism becomes “unscientific," backward as well as selfish and morally wrong.) Such a worldview can provide comfort via the excuse to avoid more rigorous kinds of knowledge-seeking.
Loading the language. Thought-terminating clichés reduce large, complex issues to brief, simple, definitive-sounding phrases that are easy to remember and repeat. Totalist language is repetitious, jargony, and relentlessly judgmental. Linguistic deprivation stifles critical thought.
Doctrine over person. Reality is constructed as a morality play with stock characters of good and evil experiencing abstract emotions. This myth replaces individual experience. Any individual’s unique nature/potential must be molded to fit the ideology. The past must be re-written. The ideology is what is valid and therefore true.
Dispensing of existence. The ideology is clear about who has the right to exist and who does not. Outsiders are less than human. Insiders can also become less than human if “contaminated” by affiliation with outsiders. Thus, individuals must fear ideological annihilation. “I believe/obey, therefore I am.”
Ideological totalism is not confined to communist China, of course. Based on his observations of the Soviet police, German Nazis and Japanese Kempeitai, George Orwell wrote of the same tendencies in his novel 1984, constructing a chilling dystopia of Thought Police, Newspeak and Doublethink. We saw a lesser strain of Leftist totalism in the Political Correctness of the 1990s, and we are seeing it again in the natural outgrowth of hyper-individualist, power-blind approaches to “diversity”: identity politics.
The ideological totalism of the Left
Ideological totalism is a phenomenon about which every Leftist should be informed, so that we can guard against it.
In 1961, Psychologist Robert Jay Lifton published Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. Based on in-depth interviews with survivors of Chinese re-education camps, Lifton identified eight psychological themes involved in ideological totalism:
Milieu control. True believers long to create an environment “containing no more and no less” than their “truth.”
Mystical manipulation. The ideology is a higher purpose in itself, and its leaders chosen by History to lead the way towards Truth. All must trust in and obey the ideology and its leaders.
Demand for purity. All “taints” must be removed and “anything done to anyone” in the name of attaining purity is excusable, even moral - including the continual denouncement of the impure. The ideology creates a narrow, suffocating world of guilt and shame, in which one must perpetually strive for perfection and expect humiliation for failing to achieve it.
Cult of confession. Confession is an act of self-surrender to the group; individuals must retain no intellectual/emotional/social privacy. Confession could be an opportunity for catharsis, but through repetition becomes a performance, often a “histrionic public display.” It becomes impossible to maintain a healthy balance between self-worth and humility. Furthermore, the perpetual confession becomes a means of judging others (“the more I accuse myself, the more I have the right to judge you.”)
Sacred science. The ideology simultaneously “transcends ordinary concerns of logic” and claims scientific truth. (Thus any criticism becomes “unscientific," backward as well as selfish and morally wrong.) Such a worldview can provide comfort via the excuse to avoid more rigorous kinds of knowledge-seeking.
Loading the language. Thought-terminating clichés reduce large, complex issues to brief, simple, definitive-sounding phrases that are easy to remember and repeat. Totalist language is repetitious, jargony, and relentlessly judgmental. Linguistic deprivation stifles critical thought.
Doctrine over person. Reality is constructed as a morality play with stock characters of good and evil experiencing abstract emotions. This myth replaces individual experience. Any individual’s unique nature/potential must be molded to fit the ideology. The past must be re-written. The ideology is what is valid and therefore true.
Dispensing of existence. The ideology is clear about who has the right to exist and who does not. Outsiders are less than human. Insiders can also become less than human if “contaminated” by affiliation with outsiders. Thus, individuals must fear ideological annihilation. “I believe/obey, therefore I am.”
Ideological totalism is not confined to communist China, of course. Based on his observations of the Soviet police, German Nazis and Japanese Kempeitai, George Orwell wrote of the same tendencies in his novel 1984, constructing a chilling dystopia of Thought Police, Newspeak and Doublethink. We saw a lesser strain of Leftist totalism in the Political Correctness of the 1990s, and we are seeing it again in the natural outgrowth of hyper-individualist, power-blind approaches to “diversity”: identity politics.