As I listen in frustration to my liberal friends complain about encroaching authoritarianism in the United States and the danger of letting people express their opinions on X, I stand amazed at their admiration for allies in Europe, such as the UK or the European Union cracking down on people who aren't in lockstep with the ruling regimes. 

It is a testament to the power of groupthink and the power of propaganda and gives us a window into how otherwise civilized societies descend into barbarous madness that results in crimes against humanity. 

The analog isn't so much the rise of Nazism--that sprang up out of the humiliating defeat of World War I and the economic turmoil of the post-war and Great Depression years when social upheaval would be expected. Rather, we are witnessing something akin to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, in which a years-long campaign of propaganda created the conditions for a social contagion that sparked a wave of oppression. 

Link to article: https://t.co/3iQ790Onn1

— Andrew Doyle (@andrewdoyle_com) March 28, 2025

When Maxie Allen complained to his daughter’s primary school about the recruitment process for a new head teacher, he hoped it would result in more openness and transparency.

Instead six uniformed officers from Hertfordshire police were sent to arrest Allen and his partner after the school objected to them sending numerous emails and to their criticisms including “disparaging” comments on a parents’ WhatsApp group.

Allen and Rosalind Levine were detained in front of their young daughter before being fingerprinted, searched and left in a police cell for eight hours. They were questioned on suspicion of harassment, malicious communications and causing a nuisance on school property. After a five-week investigation, police concluded there should be no further action.

The couple had previously been banned from entering Cowley Hill Primary School, in Borehamwood, after questioning the appointment process for a head and “casting aspersions” on the chair of governors on WhatsApp.

They say they were blocked from attending the parents’ evening for their daughter Sascha, nine, and were not allowed to be in the audience for her Christmas performance. Crucially, even though Sascha suffers from epilepsy and is neurodivergent and registered disabled, the couple were unable to meet teachers to inform them how to administer medication and ask questions about her learning progress.

I expect this sort of behavior from the "revolutionary" left, but I am appalled when ordinary, decent, and "compassionate" liberals embrace these tactics or, at most, tut-tutt at what they see as excusable excesses of zeal in making society a kind and decent place. 

"If only you complied with our demands!" "We are doing this out of love!" 

Weirdly, movements like this do not spring out of authoritarianism--authoritarianism has much more limited goals--but out of idealistic totalitarian movements. Jeane Kirkpatrick captured the distinction in her seminal work "Dictatorship and Double Standards" back in the old Reagan days. Right-wing dictatorships have limited social goals--social order. Left-wing movements have totalitarian goals--a complete revolution of societal norms and thinking. One is practical, the other idealistic, and the idealistic ones are the more dangerous. 

That's not an excuse to embrace dictatorships, but to put them in order when it comes to dangerousness and to help us make decisions when evaluating them. If you don't, you will wind up dumping support for the Shah of Iran because he oppressed his political enemies only to put in the Ayatollah, who oppressed everybody in his society and embraced terrorism to expand his power to the entire world. 

If your choice is between the two, the Shah is infinitely better. The same can be said with supporting the South Korean dictators who led their country into freedom and democracy and the Kuomintang in Taiwan who did the same. Authoritarian regimes can evolve into democracies, as happened in every Western country, while totalitarian regimes aim to change human behavior, thinking, and values fundamentally. 

“Nazis are not welcome in civil society”.

Thanks to panelists @HPluckrose @HeatherEHeying @JamesADamore and @MikeNayna @becomethesignal for filming.

For more, see @MikeNayna’s outstanding documentary, The Reformers https://t.co/3s92HnIXQc

— Peter Boghossian (@peterboghossian) March 29, 2025

Britain and Europe, as a whole, are run by proto-totalitarians who see arresting parents, Christians, and any ordinary Britons for wrongthink as necessary to building an ideal society. Dissenters are enemies of the people, of the ideal order and must be disposed of or suppressed. 

The left and the center-left embrace their "comply or else" attitude as a necessary stage in the evolution to a better society. 

Liberals may see the tactics of the leftists as going a bit too far..."I don't approve of..." but they always add a "but..." Sure, the tactics are extreme, but the intention was idealistic. Their once-charming faith in the perfectibility of mankind is far more dangerous than the cynicism of moderates and conservatives who understand that the only thing more dangerous than a self-interested authoritarian is an idealist bent on fundamentally changing society and human norms. 

These people saw COVID tyranny as a necessary, or at least understandable response to a crisis, while people like you and me were horrified that otherwise decent people were whipped up into a mob. A majority of Democrats expressed a desire to put the unvaccinated in camps, to let them die, to take away their children, and often chased the noncompliant around in stores to harangue them for the simple act of not wearing a totally useless mask. 

Helicopters were dispatched to collect people sailing in the ocean or surfing, and the authorities filled skateboard parks with sand to prevent youths from engaging in sport. 

It was for our own good. Wrongthink must be punished.

This is how we get to the point where parents are arrested for questioning decisions, for wrongthink, and for praying silently in their homes and on the streets. 

 To those who think, "It can't happen here," I say: It IS happening here and will get worse. We are already seeing mobs using Brownshirt tactics, police raids, censorship, and even violence being used against noncompliance. And many liberals shrug and are fine with that as long as the right people are targeted. 

The left sees Luigi Mangione as a hero. Liberals "abhor" but "understand" the violence. They will not object until they are the object of the terror.