“Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot--all of these institutional murderers believed at least in part that they killed people for their own good, or at least, for the better good, and in order to realize some better state upon earth in the near future.
While we still live under a soft totalitarianism, those who ruin, cancel, call for the re-education, or even the drone-bombing of the "enemy within" believe that they undertake such ruination for the good of the enemy, or, at least, for the better good.
This is because totalitarianism is abstract at base. The concrete particular human is not the object of concern but rather the abstraction to which these concrete particular humans are to be sacrificed.
Thus, you can spot and know the totalitarians by their beliefs--by their abstract idealism, the altar on which their sacrifices are conducted.”
—Michael Rectenwald
—Michael Rectenwald
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