There is an old term, a leftover from WWII and the Cold War. It refers to Nazis, Soviet Communists, and other full blown dictatorships regardless of ideology. It is totalitarianism. The Trump administration's war on Harvard is an example of what could be a beginning. Totalitarianism means not only control over the function and public policies of government, but control over what individuals and nongovernmental institutions should think, do, believe, speak about, and promote. If the edicts are not obeyed, there will be consequences ranging from defunding to closing them down, if not sending the non-compliant on a trip to a gulag or the ovens. Academic freedom is no longer, nor are First Amendment rights. The purpose is not only to promote the ideology of the dictator, but also to control the minds and bodies of their citizens so that there is no opposition to the dictator's power.
The original demand letter from the Trump administration was to virtually take over the curriculum, the appointees to the teaching staff, and the ideology(anti-DEI?) to which the University was to be loyal.Read the Trump Administration’s Letter to Harvard - The New York Times The pretext was anti-Semitism and pro-Hamas demonstrations; they (the Trump administration) deemed them out of control ...The violator was the president of Harvard, in particular, who is Jewish. Upping the threat, Trump now threatened to remove the tax-exempt status of Harvard and announced the freezing of 2 billion in federal funds and grants, which Harvard countersued. Then, Trump escalates fight against Harvard - POLITICO threatening to yank tax-exempt status and control foreign student admissions. This is not just Trump's war on Harvard but also an attack against all other private universities in the US if Trump succeeds with his threats. Most of his threats are unlawful or unconstitutional, but likely popular with some of his base elements who resent intellectuals, creative and critical thinkers, and even reject science.
The same was attempted on my alma mater, Northwestern, whose president is Jewish. Gov. Pritzger of Illinois, also Jewish, railed at his religion being used as a pretext. Gov. Pritzker blasts Republicans and ‘do-nothing Democrats' in fiery speech (FULL)(see minute 17.8-9)
MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: Fascism is shaping youth to believe in the leader's ideology: it's happening
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/05/trump-harvard-grants
From my Feb. 8 blog post:
In modern times, dictators achieve their position and keep it, not by ovens, or even gulags. They do it by controlling the message: "The central goal remains the same: to monopolize political power. But today’s strongmen realize that in current conditions, violence is not always necessary or even helpful. Instead of terrorizing citizens, a skillful ruler can control them by reshaping their beliefs about the world. He can fool people into compliance and even enthusiastic approval. In place of harsh repression, the new dictators manipulate information. Like spin doctors in a democracy, they spin the news to engineer support. They are spin dictators. How Do Dictatorships Survive in the 21st Century? | Andrew Carnegie Fellows | Carnegie Corporation of New York
Taking a lesson from history, we have experience with dictatorships that do more than just control the mechanics of government: They control those they govern's hearts and minds, too.: Communist takeover in Europe post World War II followed another dictatorship in Germany, Hitler's. The ideology was different, but the techniques to get and maintain the hearts and minds of those they ruled were similar. It was more than just the form and practice of a government. One was "the dictatorship of the proletariat," and the other was fascism, but they both required ideological purity of the hearts and minds in all aspects of their subject's lives, not only in their daily work-a-d ay jobs and obeyance of laws but also in their heads and hearts, beliefs and arts. We called it "totalitarianism" once, a term that has not been used lately. It is not just control of the reins of government. It is the control by the government of thoughts, personal lives, who or if they worship, which news and what slant of the news they get, what music they hear, what literature they read, which kind of movies they see, and what kind of art is politically correct, all in service to the political leadership. Diversity of thought and lifestyles are suppressed or access denied. That is the worst kind of dictatorship, one that demands conformity of entire lives, or else. It is time to dust off the term "totalitarianism" as an extreme form of dictatorship and to recognize it as an evil to fear and to resist. We are not there yet, but we could be.
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