I covered nationalism and authoritarianism and why I think the latter is the serious issue. While you can’t have blood and soil politics without nationalism, in it’s weak form it isn’t a problem. Then I covered authoritarianism and that there is no acceptable level of authoritarianism. And why you can have authoritarianism even when the people choose it. We come to the third, but not to last, leg of the dictatorship table. Unlike a three-legged stool, dictatorships have probably four legs, maybe five, or even six legs. It takes a lot of work to dislodge the autocrat and the peoples’ thirst for an autocrat. People have a craving for order and strange fetishes a democracy will never really satisfy. Totalitarianism is just another leg. One that may not be critical in the modern age.

Total control has largely fallen out of favor. The Nazis, but more so the Soviets, really brought it home. (I will use the term Soviets broadly, encompassing the USSR and allied regimes, like East Germany, Hungary, Romania, or Yugoslavia). A totalitarian state is one where the totality of civic, artistic, and professional life falls under sway of the autocrat. There is no other party. There is no protest. There are no ‘liberal’ cities in opposition. There are no books sold at the store that are not approved. There are no films shown, records played, or news broadcast that isn’t approved by the state. In the Soviet period, especially in the 1930’s to the 1950s, possessing contraband items, expressing contraband ideas, or just running afoul of an apparatchik who desired your apartment could earn you a stint in a slave labor colony.

Modern dictatorships have not picked up the extreme totalitarian mantle. China is a hold-over from the old Soviet model, but even they realize they can’t have a modern society and truly perfect control. They’ve left that to the starving North Koreans. Which is why they allow a limited form of protest and discussion. Within narrow bounds you can make specific points, but no other power centers are permitted. Other dictators, like Orban, Erodgan, or Putin, have differing degrees of social and political control. Russia maintains a tighter control over its people than Turkey or Hungary, but they all have limits on expression and do not tolerate any challenge to their authority.

Autocrats are pulled toward totalitarian control. Dictators can’t help themselves. In little and big ways, their need to control manifests itself. Why has Trump injected himself into the Kennedy Center? Why does he threaten entertainers with investigations or arrest? Why does he use the FCC to intimidate news outlets? And also a late night comic by going after his parent company? Part of it is ego. Part of it is legitimacy with his own base of popular support. No more garish displays of love and acceptance, just proper entertainment like eulogies to fallen internet trolls and odes to the their gold-plated tin god. Part of it is calculated to discourage dissent, intimidate his opposition, and stifle debate. But the need to totally control is just is their insatiable desire for power.

The modern dictator slowly tightens the totalitarian noose, but never pulls it hard enough to completely choke the opposition. This ‘kindness’ accomplishes does two ends. First, it allows the dictator the fig-leaf of not being a dictator. How can we say someone is a dictator if there are still media outlets to oppose them? They’re not a dictator, they’re just the popular choice. When they go after a news outlet or nascent party, it’s over some fraud or a dense legal issue around permits. Because one or two independent sources still exist, other closures were obviously not for political reasons. It provides a handsome veneer over the rotten state of affairs. It allows their apologists to claim it is not a dictatorship or autocracy because control is not total.

Second it reduces the cost of staying in power. Those networks of informants, jails, collecting data, and surveilling cost resources. There is a degree to which the population naturally policies itself, if the regime has a degree of legitimacy. A true believer will rat out the person they see as a traitor or a threat. We like being cozy, safe, right, and righteous. For them, throwing someone in the gulag is for a better society is its own sick reward. Then there are those that can be cheaply coaxed into cooperation. Rat on your neighbor and you’ll be promoted to a better job. At the end of the day it still requires a network of informants, dossiers, and piles of “evidence.” Even in the AI age, that is not cheap. An algorithm might select, but cannot arrest, jail, or torture someone. That requires a paid human being in a jail that must be maintained. By some estimates, the cost of the internal security in Russia exceeded the cost of the military before the war.

It is impossible to put a minder in every home. In the Soviet era “samizdat” circulated even in the darkest days. These are well-worn, dog eared, hand-made, hand-copied, and hand-circulated books, essays, stories, works of art, and news that the Soviet boot heel could not smother. Despite the blaring of propaganda from radio, film, television, and even the PA system in the subway, it was impossible to snuff out the minds of millions of people. People developed the skill of being outwardly compliant but inwardly rebellious. An unseen mass that just needed a spark to set them off. And to the regime, these dangerous people were everywhere. The regime knew this and spent untold efforts to eradicate traces of “foreign” influence. They did so in a brutal and frightening campaign of terrorizing its own population. In the Stalinist peak, people were simply plucked off the street or out of their homes. Accused of some crime or another, it didn’t matter, they were headed to the gulag or a drunken firing squad.

The parallels in the US are obvious. We’ve seen the true believers reach out to quickly remove books form libraries and schools. The fantasies some have of their political opponents arrested, en-masse, are beyond troubling. An administration targeting public opposition with threats of investigation or being charged with the thinnest of crimes. Violently abducting immigrants, and not being too concerned if any citizens who are opposed are also arrested and roughed up. Threatening news outlets with law-suits or revoking press access because they made the dear leader unhappy. Or the sycophancy on display during public events. Or working with police to use excessive force at every opportunity on protesters. Or even taking over the reigns of culture at the Kennedy Center. If you don’t see it, you are pathetically and hopeless ignorant or are a willing participant who won’t admit to it.

A degree of social control is part of the picture, but it is no longer total. We will be allowed some degree of opposition. California exists as a foil to the goodness of the autocrat and his worshipers. A hell-hole of crime and liberal values that the core supporters can contrast to their own cozy sense of safety. The dictator doesn’t need to disappear California politicians from the street. It is enough to force his presence into their civic life. Soldiers standing around a Humvee in the middle of a park. The dictator keeps the protests in check by making it known accusation of excessive force are of no concern. South Park, until it becomes too much of a threat to the profits of its owners, can continue to make essentially obscene mockery of the dictator. The blogs and the “liberal” social networks can continue to exist. As long as it doesn’t actually threaten the hold on power, costly totality is not necessary.