> In the West we have a false sense of security that totalitarianism will inevitably fail.

Can you point to a serious author on the subject suggesting so? For example, Hannah Arendt:

> The frightening coincidence of the modern population explosion with the discovery of technical devices that, through automation, will make large sections of the population 'superfluous' even in terms of labor, and that, through nuclear energy, make it possible to deal with this twofold threat by the use of instruments beside which Hitler's gassing installations look like an evil child's fumbling toys, should be enough to make us tremble.

and

> Humans, in so far as they are more than a completion of functions able to react, whose lowest and therefore most central are the purely animal like reactions, are simply superfluous for totalitarian systems. Their goal is not to erect a despotic regime over humans, but a system by which humans are made superfluous. Total power can only be achieved and guaranteed when nothing else matters except the absolutely controllable willingness to react, marionettes robbed of all spontaneity. Humans, precisely because they are so powerful, can only be completely controlled when they have become examples of the animal like species human.

and

> We don't know a perfected totalitarian power structure, because it would require the control of the whole planet. But we know enough about the the still preliminary experiments of total organization to realize that the very well possible perfection of this apparatus would get rid of human agency in the sense as we know it. To act would turn out to be superfluous for people living together, when all people have become an example of their species, when all doing has become an acceleration of the movement mechanism of history or nature following a set pattern, and all deeds have become the execution of death sentences which history and nature have given anyway.

Notice the "very well possible" in "the very well possible perfection of this apparatus would get rid of human agency in the sense as we know it".

I suspect that we largely ignore this author and others not because they're too silly to even refute, but because we can't refute what they point out, and are unwilling to shoulder the responsibility that follows from that.

In a nutshell, I'd say a desire for power is just a futile attempt to fill a hole that cannot be filled that way, that even makes it bigger (kinda like people rationalize and identify with the abuser out of cowardice, reaping only more cowardice in the end). But "a boot stamping on a human face, forever" isn't necessarily static. The boot can keep stamping, and the human face can keep getting infinitely thin.

> Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible.

-- George Orwell

"if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives".

That was then. Today we have great thoughts such as

> One could argue that “totalitarianism” was the default government form for most of history."

and

> Successful "tyranny" could be analogous to successful multicellular life. We could be witnessing a similar development in the history of life.

Which both actually employ the same "logic" totalitarianism does, revisionism and pseudo-science, us just adapting where history (or biology) pulls us. And then there's

> a crazy and bold experiment

It's a pyramid of individually weak and confused people! As much that is a simplification, "bold" doesn't belong anywhere near this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk4EspwLpzc

Ahhh. I feel better now.

When someone starts beating their spouse and kids, and starts to accuse them of more and more heinous stuff the smaller and sicker they themselves get, might one also call that a "crazy and bold experiment"? Of course not. Much less so when more people do even more of that. Totalitarianism is sociopathy and narcissism, dishonesty and violence on a mass scale.

Yet here we are, it's fine to belittle it. At least "they" don't have death camps, right? And once "they" do, at least there won't be anything anyone can do.

It's not about theory or history or science, and it's not about trade-offs. It's about character, which you either build or let rot; it's about about walking past a few brat kids setting a baby on fire, or doing something about it, even if it's "just" taking it seriously and taking it from there. That's more than nothing. It's a LOT more than trying to be creative about shrugging it off.