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weonfunaki · 3 months

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I read "Totalitarianism" by Hannah Arendt. I came to the conclusion that the feminist movement shares many similarities with totalitarian movements.

Recently, I read the well known book “Totalitarianism” by Hannah Arendt. My original goal while reading this book was to understand totalitarianism better, as I think it’s a danger to humanity even today, and because I thought that totalitarianism is something that these days is not just seen in rightwing movements/parties but also in leftwing movements/parties. I didn’t start reading this book with the idea of making a post where I would link it to feminism, but here we are now that this books has made me more confident in the thoughts I already had for a way.

In this post I will discuss why the feminist movements shares many similarities with what Hannah Arendt calls totalitarian movements. Totalitarian movements are different from totalitarian regimes, in the sense that totalitarian regimes have absolute power and use terror, violence and indoctrination to enforce their own dogma, while totalitarian movements are forced to use propaganda as they are not so powerful that they can do whatever they want. This is expressed in the following quote below. When it comes to her quotes I have to say I read her book in Dutch, which means the quotes I am using are my own translations which could possibly include some of my own interpretation as well because of it.

Totalitarian movements mainly use propaganda when they don’t yet have complete power over a society, the use of terrorism usually only happens whenever there is still opposition, the more power the movement has, the more propaganda moves towards indoctrination, where terrorism is not mainly used to frighten people, but to enforce its own dogma’s and to create its own lies.

I will now give some quotes and relate them to things that can also be seen in the feminist movement. I will start with the following quote:

Lack of meaning in people’s lives, feeling alienated, feeling replacable.

Hannah Arendt claims that the prerequisite to totalitarianism is found in people who lack meaning in their lives, who feel alienated, and who feel easily replaced by someone else. She links this to imperialism and capitalism, which alienates people from their natural way of being, and which results in people turning overly cynical, nihilistic and indifferent. I would argue that this still rings true in our capitalist society today. She argues that this created a complete collapse of “classes” as people used to know, in favour of the creation of masses. She defines masses as groups of people who don’t share a common self-interest, but are kept together through loyalty to an ideology.

I think its clear to see that feminists are to some extent an example of such a mass, as women don’t necessarily hold common self-interest. Its in the self-interest of a woman to support her own family over other women she doesn’t know, and the self-interest of women also depends on their ethnicity and their class. This has resulted in conflict, and has resulting in infighting within the feminist movement, which suggests that the feminist movement isn’t a “pure” mass as Arendt described. However, despite the infighting, the core ideology behind feminism is rarely questioned, which would lead one to conclude that the feminist movement can be situated somewhere in between a class and a mass, using Arendt’s terminology.

In what way is the feminist movement totalitarian? I will now give some examples that Arendt gives to describe totalitarian movements and link them to behaviour commonly seen in the feminist movement. At the end I will also give some counterexamples that suggest that feminism is not completely totalitarian as described in this book.

For totalitarian movements, ideological purity is more important than factual reality and self-interest which makes totalitarianism a form of idealism.

I think its pretty clear that this applies to the feminist movement, as they continue to make claims that contradict with empirical data, and since they quite often don’t mind hurting women if it keeps their ideology pure. An example of this is their refusal to help male victims of abuse, which studies suggest would decrease the number of women that are being murdered, which they themselves call femicide. Whenever women are trying their best to build mutually beneficial relationships with men, and whenever they hold themselves equally accountable, they are insulted and called “pick-me” for attempting to achieve happiness for themselves. Confirming to an ideology is seen as more important than acknowledging reality, and then women achieving their own desires.

A following quote expands this further, and I think mainly relates to the behaviour of male feminists:

Totalitarian behaviour is characterized by seeing no harm in going against your own self-interest, to not lose the status of being seen as one of the good ones that belong to the movement.

I think most male feminists feel like they must support feminism to prove that they are chivalrous and that they belong to the good ones, even when it clearly goes against their own self-interest.

As totalitarian movements don’t have complete power, they must use propaganda to gain influence over an increasingly large amount of people, as she writes:

Totalitarian movements are forced to use propaganda, because they initially exist in a world that is not fully totalitarian. Hereby they focus their propaganda mainly on those who aren’t yet fully indoctrinated.

She then says:

Totalitarian movements make a clear distinction between the ideological teachings for those inside the movement, and the propaganda for the outside world. The ratio between indoctrination and propaganda depends on the power and size of the movement, and the amount of criticism coming from the outside. The weaker the movement, and the stronger the criticism, the more the movement will use propaganda over indoctrination.

Which I think aligns well with what we see in the feminist movement. Within in feminist places, which can range from certain fields in academia, to certain media(journalists), to feminist organisations, to feminist communities offline and online you mostly see echo chambers that consist of unfiltered ideological circlejerking, where misandrist conspiracy theories are being discussed, and where people are indoctrinated into a fictive worldview that is completely separated from observable reality. I will get back to this later in this post.

However, towards the outside world, feminists portray a carefully curated image of being the movement for equality, and of being the ones who are trying to address a huge injustice in society. This is the propaganda of their movement. The propaganda of totalitarian movements has a certain nature, for example:

Totalitarian propaganda usually consists of a mixture honesty and dishonesty.

Which is exactly what feminists do, by conflating the very real existence of gender roles with the made up concepts of patriarchy and male privilege. This is a clear mixture of honesty and dishonesty.

Rewriting history in ways that are clearly false yet are believed to be true. Additionally, they are convinced that traditional writings on history are false anyway, since the non-privileged and the oppressed are banned from history.

Which is exactly what feminists do, by rewriting history in a way that suggests men had it way easier than women, even though this is not supported by historical evidence. Whenever they are challenged, they claim that this historical evidence is false anyway, and that the scientific method and logic are constructions of the patriarchy and an example of male privilege which has banned women from history.

Totalitarians used constructions that were meant to prove that the official history is a joke, or to show that there is a sphere of unknown and secret influence from with the apparent reality is just a façade, a façade created to indoctrinate people.

This secret influence has the name of “patriarchy” for feminists and they believe it is always present working under the surface yet invisible, and that everyone is indoctrinated by it.

The idea that the biggest lies and untrue claims can be made into indisputable facts, that man is free to choose its own history randomly, and that the difference between truth and untruth could lose its objectivity, to end up in something purely dependent on power, cleverness, coercion and endless repetition.

Again, feminists are anti-intellectual like this, as they basically try to ignore the difference between truth and untruth and claim everything is about power and patriarchy instead by doubting the scientific method. Truth for them is what their ideology claims to be true, which results in them using power, coercion, and endless repetition to make sure people believe it. In this sense it’s a cynical movement, like those that developed before the second world war.

In contrast to traditional class-based movements, who often admitted to defending the self-interest of their classes, totalitarian movements insured their superiority by having a worldview that would focus on the human species.

Again, feminists claim to be an international movement, who’s goal is the eradication of patriarchy globally in every country. Feminists frame themselves as a global movement that isn’t defending a class, but rather claim to universally eradicate female suffering for the whole human species.

Totalitarian propaganda highly emphasizes how scientific their claims are, referring to studies, numbers, and facts. For a totalitarian, science is merely a surrogate for power. This emphasis on scientific proof disappears once they have total power.

Despite openly doubting the scientific method and rarely using it at all, feminist propaganda usually treats their own claims as if they were scientific claims made by a scientific authority even when those people have no relevant qualifications. Whenever you disagree with a feminist text or book because its pseudoscientific drivel you will be told that “you misunderstood/misinterpreted/didn’t get what it meant” or “that you’re so privileged and not empathic that you couldn’t possibly understand”.

I’d argue that even the second part of the quote also rings true, as for those fields in which feminists are dominant there is absolutely no science being done at all anymore. The scientific perception serves a purpose for the propaganda, but in those places where its no longer needed, it turns into straight up indoctrination instead.

Totalitarian propaganda is often focused on scientific prediction. The ideological origin becomes clear when they claim to have discovered hidden powers that will give their members redemption. The masses are attracted to absolutist systems that reduce all historical events of one or a few big origins or causes. By doing this, they remove the humanity from those who lived in the past.

Again, this is exactly what feminists have done. They claim they have discovered the hidden power of patriarchy that rules everything and that fighting it will magically improve the lives of the members of the movement. Everything is interpreted through the patriarchy as the cause and origin of everything without any proof, while alternative explanations are not even considered in the first place. They also remove the humanity of those who lived in the past, by portraying the lives of men as way easier and way powerful than they were, and by removing almost all agency from women.

This kind of pseudoscientific propaganda is characterized by almost perfect efficiency in terms of methodology, but complete meaninglessness in content, as there is no better way to avoid discussion and disagreement than removing every kind of proof from being tested by the present reality.

Another thing that can be seen within the feminist movement, all kinds of concepts of theories are created but they are intentionally obtuse and unclearly defined so that they don’t mean anything and that they can’t be tested by using empirical data. Feminists do not prove that patriarchy exists or that male privilege exists, but they create all kinds of theories using this concept to make it seem like these are serious and scientific theories while they essentially don’t have any scientific content.

The concepts used by totalitarian movements are presented as infallible predictions, of which the form and presentation has become more important than their actual content.

Feminists will not ever doubt the infallibility of concepts such as patriarchy and male privilege, they don’t care about the empirical reality. Reality could be anything, regardless of what it is like they will still see patriarchy as the best way to understand and predict the world. The actual content does not matter, its all about consistent form and presentation of the world.

Totalitarians can’t ever admit a mistake. Infallibility does not result from superior intelligence, but from the idea that totalitarian is the only one who knows the correct interpretation of the powers behind history and/or nature, whom are seen as infallible, as they are said to work on such a large scale that they can never be disproven by contradicting evidence.

No matter the evidence presented, feminists will just redefine their concepts and slightly reconstruct their theories because those can’t possibly be fallible. See “patriarchy harms men too”.

The leaders of totalitarian movements are focused on one thing: making their predictions become true. This is then used as a justification/alibi for the earlier made prediction.

Clearly visible in feminist academics who carefully define concepts, ignore certain data or make up gendered concepts that are only applied to one gender to prove to that they were indeed right that patriarchy is oppressing women and that women have it worse than men. The belief comes before the evidence.

“Every debate with a totalitarian dictator is then as creepy as a discussion with a potential murderer about the question whether their future victim is still alive or not, as the murderer can prove the truth of his claim by murdering his next victim”

Not much to say about this quote, but I thought it was beautifully put.

Only once they have power, they attempt to change reality, so it confirms to their lies, before that they already show a clear contempt for facts, as for them facts depend solely on the one with the power to decide on facts.

Perfectly describes feminist academics and the people that support them.

A preference for secrets, and the hidden mechanisms that are operating in the background.

The patriarchy.

Mysterious conspiracy theories

The patriarchy.

The masses don’t assign values to what is visible, to the reality of their own experience, they no longer trust their own eyes and ears, but merely their own fantasy. They are not convinced by facts, not even by made up facts, but solely by the consistency of the system they see themselves as a part of. Repetition is mainly needed to maintain this feeling of consistency through time. The masses refuse to acknowledge the randomness and unpredictability of the world and are vulnerable to ideological indoctrination because ideologies explain facts as mere illustrations of laws, rather than as confluences of circumstances. In this way, a made up all encompassing omnipotent being is seen as the origin of every single event. Randomness is replaced by made-up consistency.

Omnipotent being = the patriarchy.

Totalitarian movements often convince people to confess sins they have never done, as the consistency of the story is more important.

Male feminists, just look at menslib.

world domination conspiracy -> projection of the intention of the nazis to dominate the world.

I think the patriarchy conspiracy is also projection of their own intentions. They aim to consciously advantage women over men.

Totalitarians select those elements from reality that are suited for their fantasy world, and generalizing those elements to such an extent that are out of reach of individual experience. By doing this the totalitarian creates a fictive world that can compete with the real world, as its more consistent and organized. The fiction is so consistent, the organization so strict, that these generalizations continue to live on, no matter how much lies are discovered. One continues to believe in the power of Jews, even after being helplessly slaughtered.

Again, patriarchy theory, which keeps being redefined and reconstructed to never acknowledge the lies that surround it. One continues to believe in the power of men, even after they helplessly must accept feminist misandry against them that is completely accepted in society.

The point is that the nazi’s acted as if that group reddit won't let me name dominated the world, and as if they had to defend themselves from it.

Feminists act as if men as a group dominate the world, and like they must defend themselves from it.

Totalitarian organisation is characterized by a boundary between the members of the movement, and those that merely sympathize with it. Those members of the movement are reinforced in their radicalism by the sympathizers, while the sympathizers portray a less radical and fanatical, more normal version of the ideology towards the outsiders. Through those sympathizers, the lies of the totalitarian movement are made more publicly acceptable for a larger public and are they able to spread their propaganda in a more mild, respectable manner.

The difference between academic feminists, and the “no true feminists” feminists that surround them and seem to have never read anything by their own academics yet blindly defend them.

The use of indirect, convoluted, and hidden threats and rhetoric against anyone who doesn’t agree with the ideological teachings and later the terrorisation of both guilty and innocent people.

Calling everyone who disagrees with them a misogynist, a traditionalist, someone who is protecting their privilege, incels and cancel culture of anyone who tries to speak out against feminism.

A totalitarian will not just falsely claim that unemployment does not exist, he will remove unemployment benefits to prove it.

A feminist will redefine the definition of rape so that “99% of rapists are men” becomes a true statement.

Within the totalitarian movement and as long as its ideological structure keeps its followers together, the followers are completely immune towards arguments or new lived experiences that raise doubts about their beliefs. Identification with the movement adn complete conformity reign supreme.

This is exactly how feminist echo chambers operate.

A totalitarian will destroy books and documents from the past but will also attempt to destroy the lives of those authors and their readers.

Again, cancel culture.

Leaders often said the true goals of the totalitarian movement out loud in a completely brutally honest and undubious manner. The people simply didn’t believe he meant what he was saying.

Whenever people defend feminists like Bell Hooks, they act as if you’re not supposed to read what she says but interpret it differently in the most generous version possible. Think also about the ironic misandry and how “its just a joke” stuff.

A lack of connection to the material reality and finding only ideological and long lasting problems important while ignoring the problems of daily life.

Focusing on patriarchy instead of classism.

Finally, why is the feminist movement not totalitarian? I can think of 2 aspects that raise doubts.

Arendt claims that totalitarian movements are fighting against the status quo. In some sense that’s true for feminism, but they are also significantly part of status quo.

You could argue that a significant amount of feminists are operating out of self-interest, while Arendt sees a lack of care about self-interest as a core characteristic of totalitarian movements. I’m not sure what I think about this.

#feminism #totalitarism

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