There is a fundamental question that haunts the pages of history, and it is one that has never been addressed in a satisfactory manner. There are many schools of thought on why and how tyranny rises in any given society and all of them miss the mark in terms of explanations, primarily because they all allow their biases to rule their conclusions and blind them to the deeper aspects of power and conspiracy. In other words, they are willing to go down the rabbit hole only so far, and then they deny that the rabbit hole even exists.
The common assumption when it comes to autocracy or oligarchy is that people are “stupid” and easily manipulated into following compelling personalities that make promises they never intend to keep. This is a foolish oversimplification of reality. In truth, the level of manipulation needed to lure a majority of people into dictatorship is so complex that it requires an advanced understanding of human psychology.
In our modern era, people cannot merely be ordered to submit at gunpoint, at least not right away. They must be tricked into conforming, and not only that, they must be made to think that it was their idea all along. Without this dynamic of self-censorship and self-enslavement, the population will eventually rebel no matter how oppressive the regime. A thousand-year tyranny cannot exist unless the people are conned into supporting it.
And this is where we find the true key to totalitarianism. It only thrives because there is an inherent portion of any given society that secretly loves it and wants it to exist. We might call these people useful idiots, but it is more than that. They are not completely unaware of what they are doing; they understand to some extent that they are helping in the destruction of other people’s freedoms, and they revel in it. Sure, there are elitists and globalists that levy root conspiracies and seek out more and more control, but they could not accomplish much of anything without the aid of an army of sociopathic aberrations that live among us.
This strange and destructive characteristic is ever visible today in light of the COVID lockdowns and the push for forced vaccinations. It is clear that there are some people out there that are overly concerned with the personal health decisions of everyone else. They have become a cult that ignores all science and logic and demands fealty to their fraudulent narrative. They do not care about the facts, they only care that we comply.
Well, as I have said time and time again: We Will Not Comply!
And so begins the epic conflict; a tale as old as civilization itself. There are two types of people in this world: Those that want to control others, and those that want to be left alone. But what motivates the control freaks? Why are they the way they are? Let’s examine some of the causes…
The fear engine
There are people that are driven by success, by merit, by hope, by prosperity, by faith, by optimism, by love and by honor. And then, there are people driven by fear. There are hundreds of various fears, but only a few ways to react to any of them. Infiltrators respond to fear with a desperate need to micromanage their environment; they believe that if they can dictate people and events to a certain degree, they can eliminate unexpected outcomes and be free of fear. But life does not work this way and it never will.
The level of influence these people seek is so far beyond them that it can never be attained. That is to say, they will never be satisfied until they get more. Their fears will always haunt them because fears cannot be dealt with from without, they can only be dealt with from within.
Furthermore, the things they fear often revolve around their own narcissism and are of their own making. They fear failure, but they rarely work hard enough to succeed. They fear exposure, but only because they constantly lie. They fear conflict, but only because they are weak in body and character. They fear death because they believe in nothing greater than themselves. They clamor for dominance of their surroundings because they wrongly believe that they can cheat fate and the consequences of their own terrible choices.
The safety of the mob
The issue of fear extends into the common mindset of the totalitarian and how they find safety. The idea of standing on their own two feet and standing by their principles in the face of opposition is completely foreign to them. They avoid these situations at any cost and the notion of risk is abhorrent to them. So, they instead look for a mob to blend into. This makes them feel safe in obscurity while also wielding force through collectivist action. They can feel powerful while at the same time being pitiful and weak.
These people almost always operate through large single-minded groups that punish any dissension in the ranks, usually with gatekeepers that moderate the motivations of the hive.
The mob itself is a weapon, its only purpose beyond the comfort of its adherents is to destroy those people that do not hold the same beliefs or values as the controllers. There is no defensive purpose to the mob; it is an assassin’s tool; it is a nuclear bomb. And, as we have seen in every modern dictatorship from the Bolsheviks in Russia to the Fascists in Germany to the communists in Mao’s China, the totalitarian mob is capable of murdering more people than any nuclear weapon in existence, all in the name of “the greater good of the greater number.”
False piety in place of self-worth
All tyrants believe themselves to be righteous in their cause, even when they know that their actions are morally abhorrent. I have seen this dynamic on bold display during the COVID mandates and the vaccine passports initiatives. Consider for a moment that 99.7 percent of the population is under no legitimate threat from the COVID virus; they will not die from it, and in the vast majority of cases they will recover quickly from it. Yet the COVID cult consistently argues that people who refuse the mandates, the lockdowns and the vaccines are putting others at risk, which is why we need to be “forced” to submit.
Most of them know according to the data that COVID is not a threat, but the narrative gives them an opportunity to apply power through “moral judgment,” and so they lie, and they continue to lie about the data until they think the lie will be accepted as reality. This is a common aspect of most cults and of fundamentalist religions that have gone astray. The habit of adherents to value lies over facts and evidence not because they are trying to protect their faith, but because it affords them the chance to feel pious and superior to everyone else.
Those who disagree are labeled heretics, the lowest of the low, the unwashed terrorists. The anti-mandate crowd is thus stripped of its humanity and is painted as demonic. The people who want to remain free become monsters, and the totalitarian monsters become heroes out to save the world. As the author Robert Anton Wilson once said:
“The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous rather than cowardly.”
The love of a cage
I feel as though I understand this philosophy to an extent, but it never fails to shock me the way in which people who scratch and scrape for power over others also seem to love being slaves to the system. I’m not so sure that it is ironic, as authoritarianism does fulfill some of its promises of “security” as long as the people involved are willing to trade away any impulses of liberty. If you do as your told at all times and serve the system without fail, then there is a good chance you will be able to hold on to the meager necessities of survival. You will live a life, though probably not a happy one.
For those that go above and beyond and cast aside all personal principle in order to further the goals of the system, they might even enjoy a modicum of wealth beyond their peers. You see, in a despotic society, the people who are most without honor are the people that get ahead. They don’t need merit, or accomplishment or skills or even brains; all they have to do is sell their souls and do whatever it takes to catch the eye of the oligarchy. They don’t have to be good at anything, all they have to do is be evil and for some people that’s easy.
In this way, the system becomes a comfortable blanket that people can be swaddled in. They wrap themselves in it and luxuriate in its warmth. They are not concerned with freedom because freedom feels cold to them. Freedom can be isolating, and the existence of choice is terrifying. When all your choices are made for you, there is never any doubt or internal stress. All that is required is that you wake up each day and obey.
For weak and ignorant people, subservience is a gift instead of a curse. They believe that a cage is meant to be gilded, not escaped from, and anyone that seeks escape must be crazy or dangerous. If free people exist then the slaves are forced to question their own condition and their own compliance, so everyone must be enslaved to remove any and all doubt from society. The hive mind is placed above all else.
The defiant and free
The little tyrants that infiltrate humanity probably look at liberty advocates as some kind of alien creatures from far beyond the bounds of their universe. They just can’t fathom how it is possible for someone to defy the system, to stand against the mob or the collective, even when they are outnumbered or when the risk is so high. They assume that it is a form of madness or a lack of intelligence; for how could anyone smart think they have a chance of fighting back against the dictatorship?
Liberty people are individualists by nature, but we also care about the freedoms of others. There is a common propaganda argument that individualists are “selfish,” but this is not the case at all. It is not enough for us alone to escape slavery; we will not stand by and watch others be forced into bondage either. We are willing to sacrifice our lives not just to save ourselves but to save future generations from autocracy.
As the vaccine passports and mandates continue to escalate the totalitarians will find themselves even more bewildered, because each new mechanism of control will result in even greater impetus for rebellion, and frankly at this point, it is going to be us, or them. They will not stop their pursuit of dominion and we will not comply, so we are at an impasse. Our two tribes cannot coexist on the same continent, maybe not even the same planet.
The truth is that if voluntarism was a valued ideal then this whole fight could be avoided. If the collectivist cult was willing to accept the notion that they can choose to live in a highly micromanaged environment while others can choose to live independently, then there would be no conflict. We could easily go our separate ways. But this is not how totalitarians think: To them, all people are chattel, we are property to be staked down and reeducated until we see the light. And if we don’t see the light, we are to be done away with and erased.
This is why they are utterly to blame for the war that is coming. They cannot stop themselves from grasping for our throats and our minds. They are addicted to supremacy. They are living in a fever dream and the only drug that cools their veins is total oppression of everyone around them. I see what is coming next and it is not pretty for either side, but it will be especially gruesome for the collectivists because they cannot imagine a scenario in which they lose. They are so certain of their preeminence and the safety of their self-imposed prisons that they will see failure as a phantom, a ghost that cannot touch them. They will implode when they find out otherwise.
Brandon Smith
