Agents of Control
Power: Issue Three
In his 1978 Harvard address, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn spoke as a survivor of the terrors of “hard totalitarianism” under the Soviet state, but he warned of a softer version, emerging from different, less obvious agents of control. This “soft totalitarianism,” enforced by the media, the academy, and corporations, was no less dangerous than its communist counterpart; it was undermining the spiritual freedom of the West. Today, there are individuals and institutions—whether totalitarians of some stripe or merely “influencers”—attempting to manipulate what we do, say, and think, often against the claims of conscience and the transcendent moral order. To recover our sense of dignity and agency over against the likes of the biomedical security state, surveillance capital, or gender ideologues, might well, in Solzhenitsyn’s words, “demand from us a spiritual blaze.”
Articles
Book Reviews
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A Smart Catholic Critique of the Liberal Progressive Project by Germain McKenzie
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James Kalb, The Decomposition of Man: Identity, Technocracy, and the Church
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The Quiet Revolution: From International Institution to Global Government by Timothy Herrmann
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Marguerite Peeters, Global Governance: History of a Quiet Revolution within the United Nations
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