Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and welcome to another Prager U 5 Minute podcast.

Up next, Totalitarianism. Can it happen in America? But first,

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Now to today's episode, enjoy.

Here's the good news. The secret police are not coming with guns to take you away to a prison

camp in a frozen wasteland for speaking out against the government. They did that in communist

countries in the 20th century. It's not going to happen here in America or in Western Europe.

Here's the bad news. The secret police aren't coming for you because they don't have to.

There are ways to shut you up and keep you quiet that don't involve physical force.

The powers that be and that now includes major corporations, the educational establishment,

the media, and the government can just kick you off the internet, put you on a no-fly list,

and bar you from using the banking system. We can describe scenario number one as hard

totalitarianism and scenario number two as soft totalitarianism. There are big differences

between them, but in the end you arrive at the same place, submission and silence.

To grasp the threat of totalitarianism, hard or soft, it's important to understand exactly

what it means. According to the famous political scholar Hannah Arrent, a totalitarian society

is one in which an ideology seeks to displace all prior traditions and institutions,

with the goal of bringing all aspects of society under control of that ideology.

The state literally defines and controls reality. Truth is whatever the rulers decided is.

These rulers might say something like, men can have babies. Or, skin color is more important

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