DISINFO: The US is a totalitarian state
SUMMARY
The United States has always been and still is a totalitarian state. Unlike most countries in the world, it exercises double totalitarianism, that is vertical and horizontal. Suppression of certain behaviour occurs vertically at the level of government, and horizontally at the level of society, which has become an element defining the national culture. For example, you are obligated to trim the lawn in front of your house, and if you do not, your neighbour will be the first to report you to the police, or more precisely, all of your neighbours will do so.
RESPONSE
This is a recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative, which seeks to discredit the United States and liberal democracies by claiming that liberal societies are totalitarian systems and that liberal democracies, like 20th-century totalitarian dictatorships, practice repression against the population.
Although the US and other Western democracies today face multiple and serious domestic and foreign threats, it is not true that liberal democracies are obsolete, have collapsed or are being replaced with dictatorships. Reports of the death of liberal democracy have been greatly exaggerated. Moreover, the article’s attempt to equate the West’s liberal societies to totalitarian regimes is an obvious falsification of reality. According to the 2020 World Press Freedom Index, the US is in 45th place out of 180 countries.
Read similar cases claiming that contemporary liberalism is becoming totalitarian and that the United States and the entire West are sinking into tyranny and degeneration.