Chronicles of Totalitarianism 4 - The Paranoiac Apogee

A. Bilheran, "Chroniques du Totalitarisme 4 - L'apogée paranoïaque", in L’Antipresse n°297.

"In reality he had done nothing. He had simply obeyed orders;

Since when is it a crime to obey orders?

Since when is it a virtue to rebel?

Since when would it be decent to prefer death?"

Hannah Arendt, "Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility", in Humanity and Terror.

The Body in the Totalitarian System: The Paranoiac Apogee

In the delusional hypochondria of paranoia, illness is everywhere, experienced as dangerous, mortal, the enemy of the living. The sick are opposed to the healthy, as the impure to the pure: the order is given to eliminate (and before that, to "evict" to use the words of Jean-Michel Blanquer, Minister of National Education in France, concerning unvaccinated children) the part of the social body designated as impure.

Impurity must be hunted down by terror and radical methods: the end justifies the means. This is why "terror is constitutive of the totalitarian body politic, just as legality is for the republican body politic." (H. Arendt). One could just as well say that in a totalitarian regime, illegality is the force of law.

How many cries of outrage have we not heard in recent years in the name of the "fight against discrimination"? But when it is "for a good cause", "for health for all" (except for a few...), it changes everything!

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