The New Intolerance And Why "Totalitarianism" Is A Label For More Than Political Regimes
Edward Skidelsky writes at The Critic UK:

In March 2019, tax expert Maya Forstater was dismissed from her job -- legally, according to a later judicial ruling -- for voicing the view that "sex is a biological fact, and is immutable." When author J.K. Rowling came to Forstater's defence, she was bombarded with abuse, including an invitation from one lady to "choke on my fat trans cock". The case became a cause célèbre. But it is only one of many such cases. Today, anyone who ventures a controversial opinion on "trans", race, disability, Middle Eastern politics and a handful of other issues risks being fired, insulted, intimidated and possibly prosecuted.

Last year, a "Journal of Controversial Ideas" was launched, offering authors the option of writing under a pseudonym "in order to protect themselves from threats to their careers or physical safety". How did things come to this pass?

The new intolerance is often seen as a specifically left-wing phenomenon -- an intensification of the "political correctness" which emerged on US campuses in the 1980s. But that is a one-sided view of the matter. It was US Zionists who pioneered the tactic of putting pressure on organisations to disinvite unfavoured speakers; far-right nationalists are among the keenest cyberbullies; and religious zealots of all stripes are prodigal of death threats.

Generalising, one might say that left-wing groups, being more publicly respectable in our part of the world, prefer to pursue their objectives through institutions and the law, whereas right-wing groups seek out the anonymity of the internet. But the goal on each side is the same: it is to intimidate, suppress, silence. In any case, the distinction between "left" and "right" is becoming increasingly muddled, as lines shift and alliances regroup. All one can safely say is that the various forms of contemporary extremism imitate and incite each other. What has given way is the civilised middle ground.

For this reason, I prefer to speak not of "fascism" or "political correctness" but of "totalitarianism", a label designed to pick out what is common to fanaticisms of left and right. Totalitarianism is often thought of as a type of regime, which may make my use of the term seem hyperbolic; after all, we still live in a democracy. But it can also be understood in a broad sense, as a frame of mind and a style of political action. Totalitarianism in this broad sense existed in Russia and Germany before the establishment in either country of a totalitarian regime, and it remained a force in West European politics even after the war, if only on the radical fringe. It is totalitarianism in this sense whose recent rise to prominence alarms me. A public inured to totalitarian habits of thought and action is unlikely to offer much resistance to a totalitarian takeover of the state.

Marks of totalitarianism he notes include: intolerance for "unapproved" views and a requirement for "affirmation" of the approved views (put out there with the BLM statement, "silence is violence" and bullying calls for compelled speech -- with the threat of being deemed racist if you don't wish to make a public statement one way or another).

He winds up with this:

Totalitarianism is not dead, then. Its progenitors have passed away, but they have spawned children and grandchildren bearing the familiar marks of the dynasty: narrowness of mind and woodenness of diction. The key question is: can any of these "culturally" totalitarian movements garner enough support to establish a regime which is totalitarian in the full sense, i.e. possessed of a monopoly of the means of coercion and persuasion?

The "woke" left is currently pursuing this goal by way of a Gramscian "long march through the institutions" -- a progressive co-option of the schools, universities, state bureaucracies and big corporations.

However, as a minority movement, it has been unable to capture the elective offices where sovereignty still resides, which have increasingly become vehicles for a counter-radicalism of the right. How this strange war of position will play out over the next few decades no one knows. But whatever happens, democracy is likely be the loser, since each side is more passionately attached to its own agenda than to the laws and institutions which should command them both. Weimar Germany was famously a "republic without republicans" -- a mere legal shell within which hostile factions fought tooth and nail. Let us beware its fate.