I think you're overgeneralizing, because the "follow the leader, deny truth" politics is way older than the 20th century: the Roman Catholic Church is a pretty famous example of it. So if there's one totalitarianism, it dates back thousands of years. That's a reasonable point of view, but once you distinguish the Catholic Church from Stalin, you have to distinguish Hitler from Stalin...
re: the 20th century running from 1914-2020. 2020 seems a little late to me. I would mark it around 2005-2010 and the attention economy and its power over the economy was rising rapidly at that point with VC funding pouring into the software world, primarily into social media-related offerings. Distrust of government and institutions had exploded with the consequences we see today.
Interesting that you lead with the totalitarian question and the need to not question the leader (making China the 800 lb gorilla as the best current example) and end with Fox News (as the leader?) of the right-wing agenda that can be described in exactly the same terms.
I think you're overgeneralizing, because the "follow the leader, deny truth" politics is way older than the 20th century: the Roman Catholic Church is a pretty famous example of it. So if there's one totalitarianism, it dates back thousands of years. That's a reasonable point of view, but once you distinguish the Catholic Church from Stalin, you have to distinguish Hitler from Stalin...
re: the 20th century running from 1914-2020. 2020 seems a little late to me. I would mark it around 2005-2010 and the attention economy and its power over the economy was rising rapidly at that point with VC funding pouring into the software world, primarily into social media-related offerings. Distrust of government and institutions had exploded with the consequences we see today.
Interesting that you lead with the totalitarian question and the need to not question the leader (making China the 800 lb gorilla as the best current example) and end with Fox News (as the leader?) of the right-wing agenda that can be described in exactly the same terms.
This part of sentence jumped into the pea brain: "It is because of this attraction of follow-our-leader-right-or-wrong-and-especially-when-wrong"
Seems to resonate with the former guys leadership of the rethuglican party.