Courageous dissenters of totalitarian Soviet Russia offer Americans a harsh warning: Our consumerist comforts are soothing us into a form of “soft totalitarianism.” This kind of oppression doesn’t require prisons or brute force, though. Rather, this encroaching soft totalitarianism slips in quietly under the guise of an oppressive “social justice” ideology that destroys our ability to think and live freely. Renowned author of The Benedict Option, Rod Dreher interviews former Soviet dissidents to draw illuminating parallels to the American condition and embolden people to defy this tyranny of mind with biblical truth.

History isn’t static or stationary. Rather, history leaks into the present. This is the case for a large number of former Soviet-era Russian radicals. After receiving a call from Dr. John Schirger, a well-known doctor who initially asked to remain anonymous, the author was informed of a terrifying fact: An increasing number of people who resisted the hand of a totalitarian regime in the past are sounding alarms for America’s present. Milada Kloubkova Schirger, the doctor’s mother and a former political rebel in Czechoslovakia, warned her son that the state of America was strikingly similar to that of early communist Czechoslovakia. The author took this as a formidable warning sign and ventured out to consult the perspectives of other Soviet dissidents familiar with American culture. What he found is far from consoling.

In order to first discern the growing clutch of totalitarianism, the author advises all Americans and Christians alike to follow the example of a quiet revolutionary priest named Tomislav Poglajen. After leaving Croatia before the impending arrival of the Nazi Gestapo, the Jesuit priest changed his name to Kolaković and moved to Czechloslovakia where he would ignite a small flame of Christian resistance. After years of studying the Soviet Union, the priest knew the deal that the formerly Nazi-operated vassal state of Czechloslovakia made with totalitarian Soviet Russia would wreak havoc in their already crushed nation. Kolaković rightly discerned that the Czech government was making yet another deal with the devil, falling prey to Soviet Russia’s false promise of freedom from Nazi imposition. One form of totalitarianism would simply slip into another one. He decided that it was time to inform others. Kolaković taught Catholic youth about the ideological danger of totalitarianism, cautioning them with the advice to: “See. Judge. Act.” After years of religious persecution and imprisonment, the small circle of informed believers eventually grew in the 1960s into a powerful movement of political dissenters  known as the underground church. With their collective action informed by an education in history, philosophy, and theology, they planted the beginnings of what would be a nation-shaking resistance.

The cultural situation of Americans, though drastically different than that of the imprisoned Czech believers, requires the same depth of knowledge concerning the content and trends of totalitarian regimes. The political philosopher and brilliant author of the 1951 work The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, unfolds her wisdom on the subject to protect the future from its horrific past. According to Arendt, totalitarian regimes push a particular ideology with the aim to cut and replace any other competing way of thinking. The author notes that the harsh totalitarian regime of Russia is coincident with George Orwell’s novel 1984, whereas the soft totalitarian ideology espoused by contemporary America parallels Aldous Huxley’s cautionary tale Brave New World. The difference in the two centers upon the regimes’ means of oppression: Hard totalitarianism threatens dissidents with imprisonment and violence, whereas soft totalitarianism eases people into enjoying their oppression through illusory comforts. In other words, Americans are subdued with lullabies that sing them to a soft, deceptive sleep.

The warnings of Soviet émigrés are undeniable signs that Americans should peer deeper into the content of their country. Perhaps what seems gentle and reassuring on the surface is in fact a weapon of ideological control?

One of Arendt’s signposts for an evolving totalitarian state is pervasive in contemporary America. In the midst of illusory relationships, each American is becoming an island within herself, or her phone, more precisely. Fragmentation and isolation are close friends that cultivate the ideal breeding ground for an oppressive ideology to flourish. Some other mentalities that Arendt argues predispose nations to accepting totalitarian regimes include: a growing disregard for institutional tradition, a blind loyalty to ideology, a desire to politicize everything, and the tendency to gravitate to a form of confirmation bias. The trend that’s most pressing and conducive to the growth of totalitarianism in America today involves the dissolving place of God in contemporary culture. Pre-totalitarian Russia witnessed a similar disillusionment with organized religion. Both nations experienced a chink in their existential armor, namely the loss of God and organized religion as valid sources of meaning.

After the failure of the autocratic government to effectively provide for its people during the 1891 Russian Famine, its people dreamed of reform. Marxism promised this kind of people-centered reform, while also offering the intellectual elite a way to see their revolution as a religion in order to fill a God-sized gap. Czesław Miłosz, the Nobel Prize-winning poet who wrote against the hold of the Soviet regime, notes that the communist ideology offered the anti-religious elite a new way to conceive meaning. According to the author, Marxism began in the tight-knit circles of the cultural figureheads and intellectual institutions, but the evangelization of the communist message in the famine-ravaged lives of factory workers is what caused it to really expand.

This shift parallels the growth of “social justice” ideology in contemporary America. Similar to the pre-Soviet nations, the United States is in the grip of a gap in its beliefs and source of meaning. This outcome was prompted by a gradual evolution produced by the Enlightenment period of the 18th century, one which sought to laud the progress of science and technology in place of religion and belief in God. The author notes that the growth of positivism, or the assumption that all knowledge is found in the empirical data of science, fueled the cry for progress to relieve the burden of material lack. This is the same thinking that powered Marxism, and today it’s practiced unconsciously throughout America. Critic Philip Rieff’s 1966 book The Triumph of the Therapeutic contrasts the former “Religious Man” with the modern “Psychological Man” to assert that while in the past people found meaning in religious belief, in the present people turn to personal wellbeing and desire as lifelong pursuits. In other words, relieving material discomfort is the meaning of life.

Enter “social justice” theory. In the same way that Marxism tried to fill the existential gap for intellectuals who shunned religion, “social justice” attempts to do the same. “Social justice” promises illusory relief from oppression through force, granting its followers a warm, moral feeling lost in the rejection of God. Now, it’s easy to feel good—simply make a politicized social media post in favor of the trending “social justice” campaign and you’re moral gold.

That’s what makes the ideological sway of “social justice” so dangerous. It promises a shining and just new world through underhanded oppression and gentle manipulation.

The nearly dystopian dream of asking your house to turn off the lights for you, or check on the weather without stepping a foot outside is here: Smart speakers are a popular household fixture and a loyal family assistant. In fact, 70 million Americans fall asleep with one of those brave little attendants in their home, or worse, right by their bed. The family of Kamila and Václav Benda are wary of this development after experiencing an intrusive communist government in Prague. Email, smartphones, smarter speakers—the Bendas said no to allowing these into their homes even while living in a new, relatively free liberal government. In the wake of their experience under a totalitarian regime which diminished any kind of personal privacy, the Bendas are vigilant to maintain the freedom they have now. Their warning to Americans is the same: Preserving privacy preserves truth.

Still, going “off-the-grid” sounds like a modern day nightmare. But the potential consequences of our reliance on consumer comforts may be costing us and corrupting our near future. The author notes that the source of America’s impending soft totalitarianism is not in the government; rather, its source is in big business fueled by big data. Now, businesses incorporate the Google practice established in 2003 called “data extraction,” a method that tracks browsers’ habits in order to sell that data to other companies and more effectively market to consumers. Fears concerning big data might sound like an over-exaggeration of a shrewd marketing method, or an apocalyptic movie plotline, but they aren’t unfounded. The author observes that the rise of big data in business coincided with the movement of corporations towards “social justice” ideology. The government isn’t pushing manipulative creeds; corporations are, and in the process, we’re buying into them. 

Take a moment and think about the retailers that rittle your day: Maybe you ordered a package from Amazon, or stopped at Walmart for a few groceries. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook—the list of impactful corporations is nearly endless. And they all have something key in common: They manipulate and exploit shoppers by espousing a superficial version of the “social justice” credo. Corporations simultaneously mold and market with ideology. In other words, they know what consumers want to hear, and they shape what consumers will eventually know. 

Technology might make life easier, but it takes an exploitative amount of information to do so. This information is readily available to big businesses that harness the potential to use this gathered data against consumers who may threaten an established belief system. This isn’t a far-fetched future, either; the same principle is evident in today’s “cancel culture.” Similarly, the People’s Republic of China, a technologically-developed totalitarian state, uses artificial intelligence and big data to fuel a social credit system in which people must act a certain way in order to partake in society. 

Like the Benda family, Americans must cultivate secure places in which their privacy is safe and truth is possible. Authentic living requires sacrifice; the transition isn’t easy, especially when advertising saturates culture so heavily. Leaving your smartphone at home, unplugging your smart speaker, or going for a walk away from the noise might be a good start, though.

Cultivating resistance doesn’t have to be massive or violent, requiring thousands of people to fight together against one common enemy. That might be how movies portray resistance and freedom-fighters, but many real-life dissidents stray from that mold. Even a small resistance can be earth-shattering. Instead of those thousands, a rebellion might only require 10 or five or even two. Instead of weapons, it may simply involve the ability to speak the truth and bring the memory of the past into the present. During his research, the author unearthed a common trend in Soviet dissenters: The strategy of the small group. The Benda family is a prime example of a seemingly tiny gathering of people motivated by the desire to practice truth apart from oppressive ideology. 

Empowering their children with the imaginative works of J. R. R. Tolkien, the Bendas sought to preserve the traditional notion of the Christian family unit in the midst of the extremely atheistic Czech portion of Czechoslovakia. Under a regime which sought to dissolve the bonds of family, the Bendas maintained their hold on one another, instilling Christian values in their children through setting idyllic moral examples and incorporating them into the resistance by holding lectures on philosophy, literature, and politics at home. These talks comprised their “parallel polis,” intellectual discussions which stepped outside the realm of totalitarian ideology. The author notes that creating these units and preserving cultural memory within them remains a powerful force against ideologies that seek to displace and rewrite the past to justify the future. By living their biblically grounded truth in the presence of family first, the Bendas were empowered to do even greater things to spark their resistance efforts. 

Living in the presence of others is powerful. While this effort can begin and continue in the family unit, it shouldn’t stop there. The small group, led first by Father Kolaković and borne up by intellectual lectures much like the Bendas, extended its influence into the 1980s. František Mikloško, a man who would later become a prominent Slovak politician, led the underground church in one of the most important resistance events in Czechoslovakia. The 1988 Candlelight Demonstration in Bratislava involved a peaceful protest for religious liberty by members of the underground church, a powerful movement shaped by a shared belief in the truth of God. Speaking, standing, and acting together even on the small-scale of the family unit, a book club, or a biking group instills unified meaning into members and enables them to remain loyal to each other and to the cause of biblical truth.

Small groups are diminishing in contemporary America, though. The author notes that with the dissolution of the family structure, the spread of social media, and mounting mistrust and loneliness, small groups are vital. Meeting face-to-face with even just a few people elevates something within all of us: It enables authenticity and strength found only in a community of people. It’s much easier to withstand oppression and sift through lies with the help of others. Community doesn’t entail opening your social media page and leaving a comment on a distant friend’s photo, though—that’s an illusion that prevents us from seeking something deeper. Piercing the surface of superficiality is potent: Maybe you’ll lead a resistance, stoke an intellectual flame, or perhaps simply make a new friend. 

The most powerful means of resistance is belief. When entire nations railed against them, plunging them into the violently cold, crushing echo of the jail cell, Christian political prisoners drew peace from their faith in God. With God at one’s back and a Bible in hand, suffering becomes purposeful and in many cases, liberating. When one knows where meaning, purpose, and truth come from, withstanding moments of suffering and identifying authentic truth is possible. As Solzhenitsyn explains in his work The Gulag Archipelago, the unthinkable suffering he underwent turned into a tool that shaped him spiritually and instilled in him an even greater capacity to love and foster compassion for others. 

The famous dissident Alexander Ogorodnikov experienced the same revelation during his time as a Soviet prisoner. Before he was held in solitary confinement, Ogorodnikov discovered the purpose of his suffering: God meant for him to minister to prisoners on death-row in order to lead them from earthly death to eternal life. Even while trapped alone in a dark cell, Ogorodnikov found peace in God’s purpose for him. Many nights he would wake up to a vision of a prisoner walking toward his inevitable death. In that moment, he knew that God wanted him to pray for the prisoner’s salvation as he walked. Only God can take these seemingly disjointed lives and brutal experiences to manifest His presence and power. Though the world grew bleaker with every prison cell slammed shut, God replaced Ogorodnikov’s suffering with freedom and purpose.

In contemporary America, faith is prone to stagnate in the presence of suffering. The author notes that people confuse the absence of pain with the presence of freedom, creating an ideal ground for soft totalitarianism to grow. If one is constantly fleeing from anything that gives her discomfort, she falls prey to the message that freedom is found in pleasure. Freedom is much bigger than that, though—it transcends the self. Though Christians should never seek suffering, they should accept its presence as a weapon of spiritual renewal. The existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard distinguishes the difference between “the admirer” and “the follower” regarding one’s relationship to Christ. While the admirer treats Christianity as some unattainable ideal, or a beautiful theory, the follower allows the truth of Jesus to fill her and expand into her daily actions. The way of Jesus is a way of being in a world fraught with suffering; the way of Jesus is a way of nurturing peace in otherwise painful circumstances.

“See. Judge. Act.” Kolaković’s motto is a model for Christians to seek and establish truth in times of testing. With the wisdom of God and the knowledge of His Word, Christians are empowered to view the world apart from any number of ideological lenses it wishes to impose. Truth remains stitched into the world despite the murkiness of the contemporary moment. Action that follows the illumination of truth might not always be easy or comfortable, but it always leads to deeper freedom, peace, and joy beyond the superficial comforts of this world.