By Amal Saad-Ghorayeb
They label non-submissive governments as "authoritairan" "regimes" or "dictatorships" but none of these political
systems are totalitarian in the same way that liberalism is, particulary its
American variant. None of these systems demand inner [cognitive and emotional]
conformity from their subjects, only outward conformity in their political
behaviour. For what could be more totalitarian than a system which also
wants to control our "hearts and minds"? A system which seeks to
intellectually and psychologically structure our choices in every aspect of our
lives; A system which refuses to acknowledge that it is an ideology at all but
pronounces itself a meta-ideology or zero-point from where other ideologies are
judged to be left or right, religious or secular, democratic or undemocratic; A
system which doesn't even require overt modes of control or censorship to
control its subjects because it shapes rationality with its subjects' consent;
A system which passes itself off as common sense and hence distorts our
perception of reality itself; a system which is so totalitarian and
universalized that even those who resist its more violent manifestations remain
blind to the fact that their resistance remains confined within its parameters;
What system is anywhere near as totalitarian as liberalism?
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