aforementioned elements of ideologies … first, because its thought movement does not spring from experience but is generated, and secondly, because it transforms the one and only point that is taken and accepted from experienced reality into an axiomatic premise, leaving from then on the subsequent argumentation process completely untouched from any further experience.29
The notion of taking a point, any point, which is again not grounded in experience but generated out of air, and making it an axiomatic premise so to leave subsequent argument untouched and unchallenged, is very important because the consequence goes directly to how such terror works on our mind and on our thinking. “The coercive force of the argument is if you refuse, you contradict yourself and, through this contradiction, render your whole life meaningless; the A of which you said dominates your whole life through the consequences of B and C which it logically engenders.”30 It is the fear that “springs from our fear of contradicting ourselves,”31 because the contradiction would undermine our faith in rationality and shatter our world. Terror is thus the “essence of totalitarian domination.”32
A more simple way of saying this is that totalitarian leaders engage in a strategy of constantly bombarding people with unsubstantiated propositions and nonsensical arguments: in the recent case of the Ukraine, they argue Ukraine is a neo-Nazi state, though its organization was self-determined and it is led by a Jew; they argue the invasion of Ukraine was prompted by Western aggression against the “Motherland,” Russia, though it was quite the opposite: they argue Hitler was a Jew, and most atrocities are committed against Jews are by Jews themselves, though no such evidence exists.
The result is reasonable and reasoning people will first listen to the argument, then raise the question of how such could be true, then argue whether it is true or object it is not, within their own mind or through conversations with others. As the absurdities are repeated over and over again, or yet other people adopt such positions and promote them further, the mind continues to push against the claim and people who promote such: they argue Russia would not and will not bomb civilian targets, but then it bombs hospitals and theaters; they argue Russia would not and will not bomb humanitarian corridors, but then it bombs humanitarian corridors. Repeating the pattern of trying to make sense of the nonsense but getting nowhere, the mind finally shuts down rather than admit the very reason for its existence — navigating a world based upon understanding issues and making choices — is itself meaningless. This it can’t do, so it instead chooses to embrace the reasoning of the unreasonable, hoping the terror will stop and the evil will disappear. This effectively leaves the totalitarian free to actualize whatever policy he or she chooses.
The situation becomes more dangerous when solipsism enters the equation. Solipsism is an “extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one’s feelings, desires, etc., or egoistic self-absorption,” which extends well beyond narcissism to a point where a person attempts to make the external world conform to his or her personal worldview — no matter how perverse or lacking in fact. It was a condition psychologists Erich Fromm and Wilhelm Reich identified and aligned with Nazi leaders, and it certainly resonates with the concept of the logocracy and not thinking.33
However outrageous people might find this claim, the point to note is that, in each instance, the desires of the individual mind plays out in the policies and practices within the political and social realms. And each illustrates the concern people should have when strongmen come into power, because in such instances there is neither the promotion of human dignity nor is there recognition of or empathy for other human beings. It is simply about nothing more than the illnesses and perversions of an individual mind that, in becoming manifest in society, disregards the legitimate standing of other individuals.
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