The New Authoritarians

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/new-authoritarians

The economic divide between the Democrat-affiliated upper-middle class and the rest of the country has produced a highly insular intelligentsia increasingly disconnected from reality and aligned with corporate interests.

What is dismissed as cancel culture is actually central to the authoritarian project. A new idea (“flatten the curve,” “save Grandma,” “two weeks to stop the spread”) can be introduced at any moment, and if it’s framed as morally necessary and unquestionable, it will receive resounding support from the most well-educated class. This poses a huge threat to society as a whole.

When new moral panics, rigid rules, and speech codes are constantly being introduced, the main function they serve is to test people’s loyalty to the dominant ideology.

As a result of this increased economic pressure, the class war waged by college graduates has become two-pronged. Not only is a nexus of Democrat-affiliated academics, NGOs, and bureaucrats waging a campaign against the “unenlightened” masses, but it is also engaged in evermore competitive intra-elite battles. These battles escalated with Trump’s election, but have reached a fever pitch since the beginning of the pandemic. Thus are woke professionals of all ages advancing evermore extreme positions to oust their competitors and vie for limited spots in the managerial elite. As these positions become more extreme, the people who hold them become more absolutist, cruel, and deeply undemocratic.

Comment from reddit:

The name "laptop class" is slowly entering the English language.

 if it’s framed as morally necessary and unquestionable, it will receive resounding support from the most well-educated class.

Because it's more important to be morally right than factually correct.

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Just the fact these vaxxes have failed so miserably and the pandemic [supposedly] continues, should be problem enough to wake people up. I wrote this on another message board the other day...

We are screwed coming and going, we got the technocracy neo-liberals and then we have the Handmaid Tale, would be Commander Waterfords....on the other.

The censorship alone proves their authoritarianism. Notice how everyone who is off the Fauci/Pfizer ranch is silenced.

One reason I am politically homeless is I reject authoritarianism across the board, so even when leftists do it, I want to throw up. I do sometimes think of the world the upper classes navigate, the whole corporate culture led to all this with blind obedience and implicit belief in a system that rewarded them while betraying so many others. The left has jumped the shark, they are now longer counter-cultural but the mainstream status quo. Don't think this means I am going to run to the right. You realize I was already "in the right" when I was a fundamentalist even though I war protested and refused to vote Republican. I just don't understand why so few see what is going on. That disturbs me greatly.