We are watching the scaffolding that upheld decency, order, and democracy be destroyed. There are many examples in history of authoritarian regimes ending democratic societies. By acknowledging how unexceptional this is, we can learn from those who came before us and how they navigated the suffocating dynamics tyranny creates. Totalitarianism in the United States of America developed meticulously, and we must combat it at the scale it was created.
The landmark work on resisting the allure of fascism at the macro-level was Karl Popper’s book, The Open Society and Its Enemies, which aimed at preventing the fertilization of political landscapes where fascism grows. Karl Popper warned of how easy it is to fall under the spell of totalitarian regimes, the risks of political dogma, and how to identify the seeds of fascism planted in institutions.
An open society is one designed to safeguard against violence, hatred, and fascism. It must be renewed and reinforced as each generation chooses whether to protect the possibility of correction or surrender to the certainty of closure.
A society made up of free individuals is more difficult to control. That is why fascist regimes focus on the removal of basic rights using various techniques of coercion and the manipulation of your will to fit the totalitarian system’s needs, rather than the system suiting the needs of its people, and why authoritarian leaders favor sweeping decrees: because they foreclose correction.
That is what Project 2025 is. Tyranny can be defined as the refusal of corrections. When the government “disappears” people without due process, you are under fascist control.
Resist those who promise greatness through suffering. People are not a means to an end, and no policy is just if it requires oppression. Marcus Aurelius warned us: “Recognize the malice, cunning, and hypocrisy that power produces, and the peculiar ruthlessness of those who habitually court it.”
Resist the seductive reductionism of fascism. Don’t allow yourself to become complacent under the intellectual emptiness tyranny provides. Leverage the freedoms you have to be informed and vocal.
As Karl Popper says, “We must become makers of our fate.”
Jimmy Woyak
Oak Park