Seeing deeper and farther

China's use of technology to implement control through a social credit system indicates possible future tools of social control in the West. If you do not hold the right views, you will be cancelled, unable to do business, lose your job, unable to be published and so on.

Recently we have seen the censoring of opinions by social media 'platforms'.

Under soft totalitarianism, the media, academia, corporate America, and other institutions are practicing Newspeak and compelling the rest of us to engage in doublethink every day.

You can fill in more examples of woke intolerance from our recent Australian social context. There is an orthodoxy that must not be challenged publicly, or even privately. Posting the wrong opinions on social media can get you fired, even if you are a gifted and famous sportsperson or public person. Come out with the wrong view and the progressive censorship will go for you.

The lessons of being a dissident under a totalitarian social environment are the practical part of the book. These chapters are worth the price of the book: "How to cultivate cultural memory"; the "Value of Truth"; the "Gift of Suffering".

As I read this last section, I found it hard to imagine that it could ever come to this for us here in Australia and other Western democracies. Dreher also sees this problem of reluctance to believe it could happen.

But when I count what has already changed in our country relating to loss of freedom of speech, I have to admit that the fears may one day eventuate. The totalitarianism will be soft but very controlling.

Dreher's guides told him that you have to live through it to understand what it is like, and they warned him that there are plenty of ominous signs already in evidence. Better to be ready.