Dominic Lieven, Napoleon vs Russia, and the eastward expansion of NATO. The Hundred Years Cold War. Mary Sarotte, Not One Inch, James Baker and Mikhail Gorbachev. Totalitarianism and public health.
Tag: totalitarianism
Podcast #19 – Vaclav Havel’s Letter to a Locked Down World
This episode of The Burning Archive podcast explores how Havel's writing, ideas and the model of his way of living in truth remains meaningful to us today. This episode sets out the main events of Havel's life and the ideas of his political essays. It looks in depth at the "Letter to Gustav Husak" (1975), and its uncanny evocation of aspects of our lives today in a locked down world.
On living not by lies
2020 has taught us through bitter experience that our societies are not vaccinated against totalitarianism, and certainly not the mutant strain of "soft totalitarianism" described in Rod Dreher's Live Not by Lies: a Manual for Christian Dissidents (2020). The last year has seen lockdowns, curfews and bans on the most fundamental human relationships (attendance at… Continue reading On living not by lies
Millenial predictions: return of totalitarianisms
Fernandez-Armesto's second prediction was that rival totalitarianisms would return. This prediction was bravely conservative or pessimistic, when drafted a few short years after Fukuyama's rush of hegelianism to the head in The end of history. Fernandez-Armesto by contrast saw the apparent worldwide installation of liberal democracy as a false dawn. His prediction rested on a… Continue reading Millenial predictions: return of totalitarianisms