“Under the relentless thrust of accelerating over-population and increasing over-organization, and by means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature . . . the quaint old forms… elections, parliaments, supreme courts and all the rest… will remain.
The underlying substance will be a new kind of Totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly like they were in the good old days. Democracy & freedom will be the theme of every broadcast & editorial, Meanwhile, the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite will quietly run the show as
they see fit.”
—Aldous Huxley, 1962
It is not a “new kind of Totalitarianism” … it is the same one we have had around since before Aldous Huxley penned those words in 1962. Even his novel, Brave New World (published 1932), was not really about anything new or the future, those societal proclivities (loss of individuality, troubling ethics behind advanced technology) were already present.
Same impulse toward totalitarianism, but now equipped with powerful new tools that couldn’t have dreamt of in the past.