Antidemocracy and Inverted Totalitarianism

“Antidemocracy, executive predominance, and elite rule are basic elements of inverted totalitarianism. Antidemocracy does not take the form of overt attacks upon the idea of government by the people. Instead, politically it means encouraging what I have earlier dubbed “civic demobilization,” conditioning an electorate to being aroused for a brief spell, controlling its attention span, and then encouraging distraction or apathy. The intense pace of work and the extended working day, combined with job insecurity, is a formula for political demobilization, for privatizing the citizenry. It works indirectly. Citizens are encouraged to distrust their government and politicians; to concentrate upon their own interests; to begrudge their taxes; and to exchange active involvement for symbolic gratifications of patriotism, collective self-righteousness, and military prowess. Above all, depoliticization is promoted through society’s being enveloped in an atmosphere of collective fear and of individual powerlessness: fear of terrorists, loss of jobs, the uncertainties of pension plans, soaring health costs, and rising educational expenses.”

Democracy is struggling in America and Britain, by now this statement is almost cliché. But what if these countries are no longer democracies at all? In Democracy Incorporated, Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: have Britain and America unwittingly morphed into new and strange kinds of political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled? Can these nations check their descent into what the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"? Wolin portrays countries where citizens are politically uninterested and submissive and where elites are eager to keep them that way. At best these nations have become "managed democracies" where the public is shepherded, not sovereign. At worst they are places where corporate power no longer answers to state controls. Wolin makes clear that today's America is in no way morally or politically comparable to totalitarian states like Nazi Germany, yet warns that unchecked economic power risks verging on total power and has its own unnerving pathologies. Wolin examines the myths and mythmaking that justify today's politics, the quest for an ever-expanding economy, and the perverse attractions of an endless war on terror. He argues passionately that democracy's best hope lies in citizens themselves learning anew to exercise power at the local level. Democracy Incorporated is one of the most worrying diagnoses of America's political ills to emerge in decades. It is sure to be a lightning rod for political debate for years to come. In a new preface, Wolin describes how the Obama administration, despite promises of change, has left the underlying dynamics of managed democracy intact.

― Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

www.researchgate.net/publication/291932295_Democracy_incorporated_Managed_democracy_and_the_specter_of_inverted_totalitarianism