Dedicated to Dr. Wilbur Puhr PhD who came to Maryknoll College Seminary from the University of Chicago to teach us political science and introduced us to the magnificent thought of Hannah Arendt, including her pivotal distinction between the authoritarian and the totalitarian in the classic Origins of Totalitarianism (a must-read to think politically after 1945.) And a fond memory of dinner and drinks with him in Ivan Illich's marvelous Cuernavaca, summer of 1968, in the midst of all the social and ecclesial uproar.
What's the Difference Between Authoritarian and Totalitarian?
The former demands complete political control and will crush any opposition or political pluralism, including freedom of speech. But if you do not challenge his political control, he can be a good neighbor and friend. He will live easily with cultural and societal pluralism: religious activities, evangelization, private enterprise, various schools, non-profits, art and such.
The later is a far darker, deeper nemesis. Flowing from a total, quasi-religious fanaticism, it seeks to control all of human life: religion, family, education, economics, culture and art. This we might call "radical evil"...a real visitation from hell on earth. A far, far deeper evil than routine dictatorship.
Portugal's Salazar, Spain's Franco, and (arguably) Italy's Mussolini were authoritarians; Hitler, Stalin and Mao were totalitarians. Contrast: 1930s Spain of Franco and the Popular Front; Vietnam under Diem and the Viet Cong; Iran under the Shah and the Mullahs; Nicaragua under Somoza and the Sandinistas; Cuba under Batista and Castro; Russia and Eastern Europe after and before 1989.
Totalitarianism flows from an ideology, a total, but reductive view of the person and uses violence to destroy anything that resists this: Nazism (racial), Communism (economic), Sharia Islam (religous), and Cultural Progressivism (sexual).
Trump: Incompetent, Aspiring Dictator
As a person, Trump epitomizes and aggravates the moral depravity of our age: post-Sexual-Revolution-of-1960s. He is an entertainer, a celebrity, a flaming narcissist who demands attention. He is not a power broker. He did not consolidate power in his first term. His defiance of the 2020 election was futile, ridiculous, and pathetic. His current crusade for Matt Gaetz as Attorney General is a case in point: a self-defeating waste of energy out of his obsessional resentment against a Department of Justice that targeted him in four prosecutions that were poorly founded, political and finally self-defeating . His insistence will elicit resistance from a critical mass of moderate Republicans or eventually (if he achieves recess appointments) from a Supreme Court. While he has consolidated control over the RNC, he is erroneously presuming a huge mandate out of an election that was a virtual tie. He is riding for a fall. Traditional Republicanism is in decline, but has not disappeared. More importantly, failing that guardrail, we have a Supreme Court that is conservative, but not mechanically so. A recent NY Times article enumerated the many cases in which Justice Barrett resisted the "conservative" position out of rigorous legal reasoning. She is not alone: Roberts rescued the Affordable Care Act and Gorsuch infamously installed gay marriage as law of the land. Alito and Kavanaugh are also capable of surprisingly independent thought. I am optimistic about the strength and resilience of our political institutions. My liberal family and friends disagree; but they hope that I am right.
A Modest Catholic Proposal
The USA of 1970 was entirely different from that of 1960. We might understand it as the Invasion of the Body Snatchers: same body but now indwelt by an alien spirit. The 1960 reality was exuberantly Christian, Ecumenically-Protestant-and-Catholic-Friendly, after victory in WWII and united in opposition to the communist USSR. A single technology, in the 1960s, along with a perfect storm of developments, transformed our culture: Contraception. Sex was torn from marriage, children, fidelity, chastity; abortion became an absolute necessity; divorce and cohabitation became the new norm; pornography an epidemic; religion declined; the family was broken along with all the smaller/intermediate institutions that nourished it; Big Government and Big Business took control in service of the sovereign-indulgent-unhinged-isolated Self. Some of us were slower than others (many are still stuck cognitively in a euphoric 1960), but sometime in the 1970s, certainly by the time John Paul became pope in 1978, the Catholic found himself a stranger in a strange Brave-New-Progressive-Catholic-Despising-World. Classic Catholicism was suddenly reconfigured by Progressivism as misogynist, homophobic, reactionary, authoritarian and later transphobic and often racist, greedy and even fascist.
In this context, we Catholics do not ambition to transform society: to eliminate abortion, global warming, gun violence, social inequality, warfare, birth control, adultery and crime. No! Our primary goal is simple and modest: to live our faith. We aspire to freedom to live our way of life, raise our children in it, and share it with others who desire it. But we must fight fiercely for that liberty. It is at risk in a Progressive, totalitarian world hostile to it.
And so, for example, we will insist that our own hospitals, doctors and nurses, tax and insurance money will NOT be used to kill the unborn, to make and freeze embryos, to reconfigure the gendered human body. It is true that two thirds of black babies conceived in NYC are destroyed in the womb; that Afro-Americans continue to vote pro-choice in large numbers. There is little we can do for those babies as that is the overwhelming consensus of that demographic. However we will fight fiercely to protect our own way of life. We will NOT cooperate with abortion, IFV, or trans-surgery.
Progressive Totalitarianism
- Kamala Harris insisted that there would be no religious exemptions regarding her sacred "reproductive rights." The religious dare not resist the absolute, unconditional right to kill the unborn; additionally they will be required to cooperate with it. For good reason did she boycott the Alfred Smith dinner in NYC: she realizes her agenda is hostile to that of the Church.
- Catholic agencies across the country have closed their adoption services as they are required to place little girls and boys with homosexual couples.
- The Little Sisters of the Poor, who sacrificially serve the poor and elderly, have been forced to court repeatedly to resist state coercion to support contraception and abortion as regulated under the Affordable Care Act.
- In the Covid crisis, Churches (with the compliance of bishops who are most to blame for this) were closed across the nation, depriving all of us, including the dying and dead, of the sacraments. Meanwhile large BLM rallies were tolerated and liquor stores, gyms, and mainstream institutions remained open.
- Trans-females, biological males who prefer another gender, are granted "constitutional" (???) rights to use female bathrooms and compete in woman's sports.
- Believers who do not accept "gay marriage" are coerced, against their inner convictions, to bake cakes and take pictures at these events.
- In vitro fertilization, an artificial, expensive and unnatural practice, which freezes millions of small human beings (what else are they?) is widely, unthinkingly embraced across the society, including by the ignorant Trump and much of the RNC.
- Mainstream Catholics (Knights of Columbus, Latin mass folks, Pro-life centers) are targeted by FBI memos, Senate hearings for justices, and widespread vandalism that goes unaddressed by liberal prosecutors.
The pattern is consistent, assertive and systemic: the Progressive State cannot tolerate the Catholic way of life. In that it agrees with Nazism, Communism, and Sharia law. But not on behalf of the master race, the working class, or the Koran; but on behalf of the Sovereign Self.
Global Culture Wars
On the international level, the Christian order is engaged in agonistic struggle with three and a half totalitarianisms. The "half," and in the long term least threatening, is Putin whose racial/cultural imperialism makes him more than your ordinary dictator but less than full scale totalitarianism. The communism of China, North Korea and Cuba is totalitarianism pure and simple; but now more technologically potent than that of Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Likewise, Sharia law is classical totalitarianism, but it is divided against itself in its Sunni/Shiite forms, Iran and international terrorism, and therefore less powerful. The most insidious, camouflaged, and close at hand is Cultural Progressivism. It presents as liberational in its crusade for the isolated, rootless, sovereign Self as it systemically destroys the bonds (especially the most sacred, father-mother-child) that bind us to each other. The enemy close at hand is worse than that overseas.
We find ourselves in complex, contradictory conflicts and shifting alliances. Currently, Iran, China and North Korea are aligned in the Ukraine, while a fragile Nato consensus faces the Trumpian intention to detach and make peace. In the Culture War however, Putin himself supports Christian tradition against Cultural Progressivism. So we see that his endorsement by Archbishop Vigano is not entirely crazy (but only 90% crazy!) Recall also that John Paul's struggle against the abortion imperialism of the West in the Cairo and Peking conferences found its best allies in the Islamic countries.
We defeated Hitler in partnership with Stalin. In the "real politique" of the Cold War we supported many dictatorships as the lessor evil than the imperialistic, totalitarian order. And so now, in the new, violent, multi-polar order, we do well to follow the "Christian Strategy" of Adrian Vermulle: position ourselves pragmatically but not absolutely with those parties who advance and protect our concerns.
Conclusion
Yes, Trump entertains authoritarian impulses: he imagines himself as John Gotti on a global level. I am confident that our political institutions are resilient and will resist his chaos. He is a world class demagogue, a flaming narcissist, a product of the sexual revolution, a low-class and crude American, a xenophobe, a moral counter-exemplar, a cartoon character, a buffoon. He has become the voice of the underclass, the marginalized, those despised (as ignorant, racist, homophobic) by the liberal elite. He has championed our religious freedom, the nature of the gendered-sexual person and family, and the inviolate value of every person, however small or powerless. Given the choice between a real, camouflaged but pervasive Progressive totalitarianism and our aspiring, often entertainingly transgressive (against dogmatic "wokism") strong man... the choice is easy. He is a jerk, but he is our jerk. He is the enemy of our enemy; so he is a friend.
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