A transposition of totalitarianism from the “physical” to the “moral” … [is achieved] through the creation, which is arranged by the domination of culture and education, of a new “common sense”, in which traditional metaphysical questions no longer resurface.
It is with regard to Gramsci that we can understand in all its depth the apparently very simple formula with which Eric Voegelin defined totalitarianism: “the prohibition of asking questions”.
This definition states its novelty: because the conformism of the past was a conformism of answers, while the new [conformism] results from a discrimination against questions whereby indiscreet questions are stigmatized as expressions of “traditionalism”, of “conservatism”, …
… “reactionary”, “anti-modern”, or perhaps, when the excess of bad taste reaches its limit, “fascist”; the situation is reached in which the subject himself forbids them as “immoral”. Until these questions, due to the process of habit, or by virtue of teaching, no longer arise.
In fact, the same thing does not happen to rational questions as to instincts, which, when repressed, re-emerge; rational questions, on the other hand, can disappear entirely. Dissent is made impossible, not in physical ways, but in pedagogical ways.
