{"id":60526,"date":"2026-06-09T01:00:03","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T05:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=60526"},"modified":"2026-06-08T10:44:43","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T14:44:43","slug":"qotd-the-temptations-of-totalitarianism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/06\/09\/qotd-the-temptations-of-totalitarianism\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The temptations of totalitarianism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In 1977, the French essayist, Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Revel, published a tract with the title The Totalitarian Temptation<\/em>. In it, he condemned the western intelligentsia’s faiblesse<\/em>, which was at the same time dishonest, posturing, stupid, and evil, for Stalinist-style dictatorships.<\/p>\n

One might have thought \u2014 I<\/em> certainly thought \u2014 that with the downfall of the Soviet Union, the totalitarian temptation had been exorcised once and for all. This, of course, was a very superficial view. Instead of disappearing, the temptation balkanised, so to speak, and was also repatriated. Totalitarianism had been shown almost as conclusively as anything in the sphere of human affairs to be inherently absurd, intellectually nugatory, and catastrophic in practice. This fact was not sufficient, however, to destroy its attractions \u2014 at least for those who desire a complete solution to all of life’s little problems such as how to live and what to live for. A solution in the mind is worth a thousand disasters in the world.<\/p>\n

Naturally, it takes a certain level of education to feel the temptations of totalitarianism: they do not occur to the illiterate, for example, but only to the intelligentsia. The latter has increased in size almost exponentially with the expansion of tertiary education, or at least with attendance at institutions of tertiary instruction. In retrospect, it is not surprising that totalitarianism should continue to exert its siren-song in previously liberal societies, particularly when the young, always tempted by radical ideas, face genuine if intractable problems, seemingly worse than those of the previous generation.<\/p>\n

Theodore Dalrymple, “The Temptations of Power”, The Iconoclast<\/em><\/a>, 2020-09-06.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1977, the French essayist, Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Revel, published a tract with the title The Totalitarian Temptation. In it, he condemned the western intelligentsia’s faiblesse, which was at the same time dishonest, posturing, stupid, and evil, for Stalinist-style dictatorships. One might have thought \u2014 I certainly thought \u2014 that with the downfall of the Soviet Union, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[79,84,41],"tags":[780,1020,433,1289,764],"class_list":["post-60526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-government","category-quotations","tag-communism","tag-progressives","tag-sovietunion","tag-theodoredalrymple","tag-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-fKe","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60526"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102923,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60526\/revisions\/102923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}