So-called ‘totalitarian’ states use what you might call ‘consensus spectacle’, whereas ‘liberal’ states use ‘conflict spectacle‘. But it’s all spectacle.
The ‘totalitarian’ states hold mass rallies, wave flags, wear uniforms, etc, to create a spectacle of unity and consensus. The liberal states hold elections, stage debates, ritually mock leaders, etc, to create a spectacle of conflict. Underneath, they both work the same way.
Why do this? The ‘totalitarian’ and liberal states are trying to create different subjects. The ‘totalitarian’ state wants to produce a collective identity, the liberal state wants to produce a ‘individual’ identity.
Liberal states are very good at producing this ‘individual’ identity. The propaganda works! Chances are you see the world in terms of ‘freedom’, wanting to be ‘left alone’, not wanting the state to ‘interfere’, etc. The state works hard to indoctrinate you into this worldview.
The realization that ‘freedom and democracy’ is propaganda leads to the realization that everything liberal states attribute to ‘impersonal forces’ - declining birthrates, environmental catastrophe, mass immigration, stagnant wages, nihilism, apathy - is intentional. It's policy.
The only reason to create a propaganda environment that convinces people they are ‘individuals’ buffeted from all sides by ‘impersonal forces’ (which are actually your explicit policies) is because you have some really, really twisted goals.
The goal of liberalism is quite clear: to spread itself across the entire globe and to ensure that states undertake no other project than to keep individuals alive and distracted. This is what its ‘universality’, ‘neutrality’, and ‘individualism’ amount to.
Liberalism was created in the response to the opening of the cosmos in the late Medieval period. The individualized Mind was posited as a site of escape from the implications of unified, homogeneous, geometrized space. Liberalism is the politics of this ultimate act of cowardice.
