The word ‘totalitarian’ seems blatantly inaccurate in the description of today’s Western civilization, and this conference clearly proves that. We would not be here if we lived in a totalitarian society. I vividly remember how aggressively and often brutally the communist government reacted to the dissenting initiatives, and it would be indecent to say that today’s dissenters are in the same situation. For this reason, the word ‘totalitarian’ would be inadequate to articulate our criticism of the modern world, but that is only one part of the story. Things are not as rosy as that. We see certain tendencies that are most disconcerting and bring to mind the developments in totalitarian societies. For this reason, perhaps the word ‘totalizing’ would be more acceptable. Yes, today’s Western world has exhibited unmistakable totalizing proclivities.

Let us point out some of the characteristics of a totalitarian society. The first of these would be a one-party system with no political opposition. A small correction: in some communist regimes, for instance, in my country, there were several parties, but only one, the communist, held the real power, whereas the rest had only an ornamental function. No opposition was allowed, and the entire nation was expected to support the leadership.

Do we have something like this today? Yes, we do, though in a diluted form. First of all, what disappeared from the Western world is a classical division between the Left and the Right, the party of change and the party of continuity. At least, since, symbolically speaking, 1968, Western politics have undergone a tremendous shift to the Left, and the conservative parties, with few exceptions, practically ceased to exist. If you look at the UK, the British Conservative Party is no longer conservative. Christian democracy as a political movement in Germany and Italy exists only by name. All these seemingly Right and Centre parties have adopted the Left agenda. Same-sex marriage law was introduced by the entire political spectrum: in Britain by the conservatives; in France by the socialists; in Germany by a coalition of the socialists and the erstwhile Christian democrats.

The differences between the government and the opposition are differences between many shades of the Left. The emergence of the so-called political mainstream based on the Left agenda resulted in something few predicted. I do not know who was the first to coin the expression – extreme centre – but the expression, sounding somewhat flippant, correctly captures the essence of the current situation. The predominant part of the centre is occupied by a coalition of forces that have launched a radical program of restructuring the entire society, and those that defend moderation, continuity, family, marriage, national tradition, Christian heritage, and common sense are pushed aside and called dangerous extremists, fascists, populists, far-right and, at best, loonies. All these allegedly dangerous groups are marginalized, stigmatized, bullied, and, whenever possible, closed within a cordon sanitaire.

In some places, and particularly in Europe, this extreme centre has captured the international pan-European institutions – I am talking about the EU – and has acquired the instruments to try to enforce their rule on some dissident member-states, such as Poland, Slovenia, or Hungary, regardless of the democratic legitimacy of their governments. This led to something that was compared to a new version of the Brezhnev doctrine. Brezhnev, let me remind you, was for many years the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, and he, among other things, authorized the invasion of Czechoslovakia when the newly elected government tried to deviate from Communist orthodoxy and follow a semi-independent course. The Brezhnev doctrine stated that the countries under Soviet domination had only limited sovereignty and were not free to pursue a non-communist policy. The same – toutes proportions gardées – is true today in the European Union with respect to weaker member states, particularly from Eastern Europe.

Let’s take another trait of totalitarianism – the omnipresence of politics. The communist politicization was indeed comprehensive in scope and painfully intrusive. No wonder for some, the oppressive nature of the system was unbearable, and they tried to find refuge in the areas that could be fairly safe from politics – private life being most obvious. Some tried to find it in art or intellectual activities, though it was more difficult because schools and education, in general, were considered a top priority for the communists to take control of. In my country, it was the Catholic Church that provided not only such a refuge, but also a spiritual inspiration and an alternative way to look at the world. You entered the church and found yourself in a different world – language, symbols, human destiny, human relations, human nature, music.

Today, we have a similar trend to subordinate everything to politics, with education at the forefront. Schools have become highly politicised, and political correctness has been imposed with shocking harshness. The campuses in the entire Western world are still in the avant-garde of political correctness and woke’ism. The concept of political correctness – let me add – goes back to communism, where it meant being in accordance with communist ideology. Truth did not matter because truth was said to be class-relative and class-conditioned. What mattered was to be faithful to the ruling ideological orthodoxy.

The private life – another place of refuge under the communist regime – no longer has this role. The change also started – symbolically speaking – in 1968, the moment the sexual revolution broke out. The feminists, with their “the personal is political” slogan, made the first step. Then the sexual revolution spilled all over the Western world. Starting as an emancipatory movement, it soon changed to its opposite. The most private aspect of our life was elevated into the centre of political conflict and became the vehicle of the revolution. The problems related to sex were henceforth presented – as always in politics – as the problems of power. Over the last few years, even toilets have become a territory subject to political control. This politicisation of the toilets started, if I am not mistaken, in the United States, which still takes pride in being the land of the free and the home of the brave. Sorry, but I could not resist this rather low piece of malice.

The disappearance of the shelter that traditionally protected the private life has been an ominous development. Not only does it give the political institutions to intrude in something that is not their business – the personal bonds between people are not political in nature – but it destroys the bonds of trust. In some extreme cases, it encourages people to inform on others about what was said in private conversation. In the history of communism, a symbolic figure was a Russian teenager – Pavka Morozov – who denounced his father to the political police. He became a Soviet hero and a role model for the Soviet boys.

The current war against discrimination, sexism, hate speech and suchlike leads to parallel consequences. Several years ago, there was a case of a Harvard professor, the rector of the university, who in private conversation talked about women’s lack of success in such disciplines as mathematics and physics. He was denounced to the authorities, and though he profusely apologized, was sacked. The argument that this was a private conversation did not matter. The current changes in the law in such countries as Spain and Canada – both being at the forefront of progressivism – go in this direction. Denouncing one’s friends and family to the powers that be, for centuries considered a despicable act, has become a virtue.

But recently Scotland emerged as number one in this infamous competition, due to a new law which came into effect April 1st, this year. The law is intended to fight hate speech. What counts as hate speech is determined by the current ideological fads. How it might work let me mention one incident. A former Scottish prosecutor warned J.K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter books, who lives in Edinburgh, that her old posts on Twitter ‘most likely contravene the new law’ and advised her to ‘start deleting’. She replied that she will not be expunging anything: ‘If you genuinely imagine I’d delete posts calling a man a man, so as not to be prosecuted under this ludicrous law, stand by for the mother of all April Fools’ jokes.’

The law specifies a list of entries where one could make more harsh judgments. It is expressly permitted to voice ‘antipathy, dislike, ridicule or insult’ for religion, but certainly you cannot do it towards gender ideology. The law doesn’t just apply to social media posts or newspaper articles. It covers anything said anywhere – even in your own home. Children will in theory be able to report their parents. Scots can inform on each other anonymously, through an expanded network of ‘third-party reporting centres’. The list of centres includes a striking number of university campuses, as well as a Glasgow sex shop and a mushroom farm. To be frank, having been an academic my entire adult life, I am less surprised by a large number of university campuses than by the sex-shop being the centre of anonymous denunciation. However, I find a mushroom farm slightly baffling.

Similar laws exist or will be shortly introduced in other countries. In my own country, the left-liberal government announced such a law will come into effect within the next months. Also the European Commission has similar plans, which, then, will influence the legislation in all member states.

Speaking seriously, the law fighting hate speech is not only another step the erosion of freedom and another form of control of our private lives. It is also another assault on morality. We have been taught to believe that anonymous denunciations should be discouraged because there is something ignoble about it, something that degrades the denouncer – a mark of cowardice. In light of the new law, anonymous denunciations are encouraged and praised. The progressive demoralization leaves us defenceless against totalizing forces because it makes us their accomplices.

Politicisation was launched as a vehicle of revolution – to change the world. This is the promise of all totalitarian revolutions, but its effects have always been the opposite, and it is not easy to see why. Politicising marriage, family, love, eroticism, etc., means that we approach them from the perspective of power structure in which there are those who oppress and those who are oppressed. The aim of the law and government is, therefore, to empower the oppressed and to reduce the power of the oppressors. But, as in every revolution, this clashed with people’s deep convictions, and the revolutionary program without the massive institutional backup would have been rejected. It is neither natural nor obvious to accept that marriage is a political battle between a man and a woman, that there is no difference between a marriage and a so-called same-sex marriage, that girls have a right to abortion, that the parents should keep out of their minor children’s sexual life, that humanity is not divided between men and women, but between many genders, that the language we use has been inherently oppressive, that the government should take over the role of sex education from the parents, etc.

To make society consent to these outrageous ideas, governments must resort to two methods. The first is coercion and intimidation. One can see how the law has become stricter and more repressive over the last decades. Today, we may be punished for criticising abortion, and for trying to dissuade a woman from abortion, one can go to jail – in France, up to two years. Punishable – including the possibility of a jail sentence – is also to question gender and even to use a wrong pronoun under the pretext that it is “hate speech” – another sinister word that serves to intimidate and bully. Some of the basic principles of Roman law have been rejected – for instance, that you are innocent until proven guilty. In most Western countries, the law got rid of what once was a sacred principle – namely, the conscience clause. Very few countries have retained it in their legal system, though in practice, it has been severely restricted. In most of them, the doctor cannot refuse to do abortion or euthanasia; the magistrate cannot refuse to conduct the marriage ceremony of two homosexuals or lesbians; the pharmacist cannot refuse to sell abortion pills, etc.

The other method is indoctrination. Since the horrendous claims of today’s progressives so much clash with common sense, elementary experience, and basic knowledge, it is necessary to restructure the human mind thoroughly, starting as early as possible, probably from nursery school. Everything in education, from the early stage until the university, should be imbued with the political message – from toys to handbooks, from mass culture to high culture. Otherwise – it is feared, and the fear is justified – people will overwhelmingly reject the indoctrination. Like under the communist regime, language is of primary importance, and the language particularly strictly controlled and enforced. It becomes increasingly difficult to publish a book or an article in a language that does not comply with the rules of political correctness.

So, the repressive law and political indoctrination – through their omnipresence – are expected to create a new political reality in which the people with the new identities will internalize the achievements of the ideological revolution.

The particularly mischievous aspect of it is that it is not only the governments – central and local – that join the revolution. The institutions that should be free from politics have declared access to the ideological crusade. I am not talking only about schools and universities. For some reason, academics and artists have grown a strong attachment to those revolutions that symbolize progress and modernization, even though, perhaps, particularly because they often use despotic measures and enforce totalizing practices.

I am talking, among others, about corporations. When forty-odd years ago, people of my generation read Friedrich Hayek and other European and American free-marketeers, we accepted their message that one of the proofs of the superiority of capitalism over communism was that capitalism was essentially apolitical and non-ideological. The free market, we were told, is interested in profit, innovation, and rational calculation, not in human souls and certainly not in political fantasies, usually too costly and hopelessly unprofitable in terms of money. It has taken several decades for us to find out how untrue this claim was.

The biggest corporations have eagerly jumped on the political bandwagon and have been relentlessly pursuing ideological policies both towards their own employees and towards customers. All this seems somewhat puzzling. For instance, why would such a company as Ikea want to be plus catholique que le Pape in terms of political correctness. This certainly does not increase the profits because it puts off a lot of the more conservative clientele. There are two explanations – complementary, not mutually exclusive. The first is that the ideological formatting of the Western elites has already gone beyond the safety line and, as a result of its continuous conquests, managed to subdue even those who, like businessmen, should be essentially immune against it. The second explanation is that the corporations fear less the losses that might be incurred by alienating the conservative customers than the attacks from the radical Left. And since it is in the nature of the businessmen that they want to be on good terms with the powers that be, it is clear who they think rules today’s world, who they should fear, and who they can afford to neglect.

The same – again, toutes proportions gardées – goes for religious institutions, primarily churches, including a large part of the Catholic Church. This is a most upsetting development. From the very beginning, Christianity declared its refusal to accommodate the historical tides, social pressure, ideological fashions, revolutions, and all kinds of vanity fairs. Christianity was to be an independent judge, an absolute frame of reference, even if the world turned its back on it or made it an object of derision. But this has changed in our times and changed dramatically. We have been observing a continuous tendency to the aggiornamento, a desire to adapt the Church’s dogmas, theology and practice to the current of time, to cave in or even kowtow to the modern idols. The current Pope’s pontificate and the new teaching of the West European episcopates are a case in point. The situation in Protestant churches is even worse.

This is exactly the opposite of what the Catholic Church in my country was doing under the communist regime. The Church, the bishops, and ordinary priests did not give in, at least not in doctrinal matters. And because they did not, those who opposed the communist regime – believers and unbelievers alike – knew very well that communism could be challenged from an alternative perspective, firmly rooted in human nature, in rich institutional and philosophical tradition, and in the idea of transcendence, all these untouched by communist ideology and saving us from falling into its traps. This awareness not only saved their souls but also their minds and their moral orientation.

We should remember that totalitarian ideologies have always been anti-religious and particularly anti-Christian: they always wanted to annex and colonize the entirety of the human experience and the human person. Christianity, with its notion of transcendence, was considered – and quite correctly – to be in the way of this colonization. The fact that a large part of today’s Christianity is eager to join the colonizers rather than oppose them is singularly depressing.

There is yet another symptom of today’s liberal democracy that bears resemblance to what was happening under communism. Like communism, it considers itself to be an ultimate system. You cannot go beyond liberal democracy, just like you cannot go beyond communism. The only thing one can do is to make liberal democracy more liberal democratic. In other words, the more liberal democratic the world becomes, the better it is: people have more freedom, more equality, more empowerment, more rights, etc. The liberal democrats, therefore, believe that the development of liberal democracy means a march of progress in human affairs, just like the communists perceived the development of communism to be a march of progress, albeit differently interpreted. As Stalin famously or rather infamously said: “Life became better, life became happier.”

Stalin made his remark during the worst political terror. How would he reconcile the terror with the statement about life becoming better and happier? Easily. He said: with the growth of communism, the class struggle intensifies. To translate it into more mundane terms, the closer we are to the communist paradise, the more formidable the enemies and the more fiercely we must fight them.

Again, without pushing the analogy too far, we can observe a similar way of thinking today. One would expect that since the liberal democratic society has so much improved our existence and blessed us with all those rights and liberties, we would live peaceful and stable lives. Not so. Liberal democracy has engendered a strong sense of the enemy. I would venture a thesis that the types of enemies and thoughtcrimes in liberal democracy outnumber those in the communist regime. Mind you, I am talking about the number of enemies, not about the punishments that might befall them. Let us mention the most popular thoughtcrimes: misogyny, sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, eurocentrism, phallocentrism, logocentrism, ageism, binarism, populism, antisemitism, nationalism, xenophobia, hate speech, Euroscepticism, white supremacy, misgendering. The list is not exhaustive because new ones continue to be invented.

Contrary to the image that the liberal democrats propagate, the system with such a strong sense of enemy and with so many thoughtcrimes is most unpleasant. The increasing number of thoughtcrimes requires increasing thought police to track down the crimes and the wrongdoers. The result is censorship and – which is even more pernicious – self-censorship. Today there are so many incriminating words one can say, knowingly or not; such relentless pressure to apologize for imaginary wrongdoings, and the apologies need not be accepted; so many official and self-proclaimed functionaries of political correctness that are on the lookout for the crime that it is better to self-police rather than be policed by others.

To show how today’s totalizing minds work, let me describe my own case. I wrote it in a piece published by First Things and will summarize it now. A couple of years ago, I was invited to Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont, to give a talk about my book The Demon in Democracy. I knew it was a dangerous place. Two years before, Charles Murray, who appeared at Middlebury College to give a lecture about his book, was shouted down by aggressive ideological zealots, while another professor accompanying him, Allison Stanger, was physically attacked and suffered injury. Some of the students responsible for this act of violence were reprimanded, others mildly punished, and none was expelled.

This was the first serious symptom of the disease. In totalitarian societies, the fanatical groups of youngsters play an important role in representing the spontaneity of anger against injustice – this happened in Bolshevik Russia, Mao’s China, and elsewhere. In my own country, in the early years of communism, it often happened that the communist students shouted down “bourgeois” professors, accusing them of spreading harmful reactionary views and being hostile to the advent of progress. This practice proved quite effective in intimidating the teachers.

These protests are, of course, by no means spontaneous but are steered by the elders. One of the instigators of the protest was a professor of gender studies in Eastern Europe; he was quoted saying, „through my colleagues in Poland I became aware of what else [Legutko] had said, and what his views were, and it turned out that the ‘demon’ in democracy that he is referring to is tolerance”. It seems there is an international network, and it is difficult to escape their inquisitorial eye. This is another trait of the totalitarian phenomenon.

Another symptom is that political coercion and power turn a non-political institution such as a university into a political battlefield. A few days before my arrival, a group of students and professors started circulating a petition with the intention to organize a protest, in which I was called all possible bad names – a homophobe (“f*cking homophobe” on FB), a racist, a misogynist, a sexist, a bigot. The protesters wanted to express their anger outside the building by staging a “protest dance and by wearing offensive T-shirts to “shock my conscience”.

Predictably, the university authorities capitulated as they had done in the past after the Charles Murray incident. The cowardly capitulation is another symptom of totalitarianism, not just a capitulation, but a capitulation of the legitimate authority that has the instruments of power and clear rules, but they know that there is something more powerful than the institutions and the rules. They know that the real power is in the hands of the fanatics, their protectors, national and international networks. The invisible unspecified, unsaid but intensely felt threat.

One could see it in the statement of the Provost and the President of the university. They decided to cancel my lecture because the college could not respond effectively to the “security and safety risks at either the lecture or the counter event”. This statement provides us in an insight into the minds of those who capitulated. The Provost and the Vice-President clearly assumed that there were two academically legitimate “events”, complementing each other: the first being a lecture by an author of a theoretical treatise on the ills of modern society, the other – a protest dance, hurling of invectives at the invited guest, and a show of offensive T-shirts. The intellectual content of the first was placed on the same level as the offensive gestures of the other. Talking about arguments was on par with heckling and caterwauling.

The college authorities not only seem to have accepted force as something legitimate in the college life, but have some sympathy for it. Here is what we find in the next paragraph of the letter. “We recognize that students worked hard and transparently to plan a non-disruptive event that would remain within the bounds of our protest policy. We also recognize that students, staff, and faculty planning to attend and critically engage with Ryszard Legutko’s lecture lost the opportunity to do so.”

The protesters were thus praised for “working hard” to plan “a non-disruptive event”. Translated into a normal language, this means that the students were commended for not behaving like full-fledged hooligans, which clearly presupposed that in order not to behave like a full-fledged hooligan in Middlebury, one had to “work hard.”

The Provost and the Vice-President also expressed their regret that since the lecture did not take place, the students and professors could not “critically engage” with what I had to say. Again, in practical terms, it meant that the Provost and the Vice-President were sorry that a homophobe, a racist, a sexist, and a bigot was not taken to task in public by the enraged protesters. What the Provost and the Vice-President were not sorry about is that it was, first and foremost, an intellectual event that they canceled and that the students lost an opportunity to learn something. The lecture, after all, is an intellectual event, and that is what the Provost and the Vice-President missed. When a guest speaker is invited to campus, it is always because those who invite him believe that he has something interesting to say and that the students and faculty would somehow benefit by listening to him. This intellectual aspect is completely absent in the letter, and I must say I find its absence shocking. The Provost and the Vice-President, so eager to cozy up to the protesters, never bothered to apologize or at least to say a word to those who wanted to attend the lecture out of intellectual curiosity and were prevented by both the ideological hooligans and by the administration.

But this is not the end of the problem. Another trait of totalitarianism we see in the destruction of the language.

“Our intention for the protest was to create an affirming, nonviolent space for marginalized people (particularly those impacted by Ryszard Legutko’s hateful rhetoric) to celebrate themselves and each other. … We planned to create a non-disruptive, respectful counter-space to create a place of healing and inclusivity in the face of prejudice.”

It does not require great intelligence to see that the quoted passage is gibberish, composed entirely of cliché words and expressions that today’s political language is full of. Whoever uses this language – “respectful counter-space”, “celebrating themselves and each other”, “a place of healing and inclusivity” – condemns himself to intellectual impotence, with no possibility to make any coherent descriptive statement about facts. But this is only one part of the story.

There is a method in this gibberish. This is a mendacious language, the language that lies, and it reverses the meanings of the basic concepts. “Marginalized people” are not really people who are marginalized, but, on the contrary, people who managed to impose on the college their agenda and who can get away with anything, including physically assaulting their professors. These are the very same people who are close to liquidating the basic principles of university life and who are creating this havoc with full impunity. “Respectful and non-disruptive counter-space” means subjecting a lecturer to insults and humiliations. “Inclusivity” is simply the systemic censuring of people and ideas.

The students’ organization responded with making stricter political demands. “Any organization or academic department that invites a speaker to campus will be required to fill out a due diligence form created by the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in coordination with the SGA Institutional Diversity Committee. These questions should be created to determine whether a speaker’s beliefs align with Middlebury’s community standards, removing the burden of researching speakers from the student body.”

As a result of the growing power of such offices, we will see the growing corruption of language. Diversity, equity and inclusion have long ceased to mean what they always meant, but their opposite. They are now associated with rigidity, dogmatism, conformity, intimidation, control, arbitrariness, censorship. In Orwell’s world – it will be recalled – war was peace, freedom slavery and ignorance strength. At Middlebury, diversity is monopoly, equity bias, inclusion censorship.

Two practical conclusions:

1. We should not use their language, their language – hate speech, diversity, etc. – is inherently mendacious;

2. We should not treat the other side as the proponents of the project that was well-meant but somehow got wrong; no, the project was, from the very beginning, animated by a totalizing potential.

The four days of the International Solidarity Forum (ISF) were packed with lectures and presentations from experts and distinguished speakers. Professor Carlo Lancelloti spoke about the “new form of totalitarianism” that has taken over our contemporary times; Dr. Ethan Haim, shared his story as a whistleblower, exposing the secret transgender program at the world’s largest children’s hospital; Mr. Cheng Guangcheng, a human rights lawyer and advocate, has risked his life in bringing awareness to the crimes of the CCP; and WYA’s very own Mislav Barisic and Clare Halpine, spoke about the history of Marxism and the impact of language in the pervasive creep of ideology.

During a break at the ISF I went to the entrance of WYA Headquarters and found Caroline Maingi, a founding staff member for WYA in Africa, chatting with a couple delegates. Caroline shared with us the story of WYA’s beginnings. She spoke about the struggles and hardships. She said several people didn’t believe in the WYA movement. Despite criticism (and borderline hostility) from opponents, Anna, Caroline, and the rest of the team persevered.

I stayed, listening to Caroline’s story. Bit by bit, more and more delegates gathered to listen in the entrance foyer. Soon, the room was packed with ISF participants from every corner of the world, sharing the same mission from 25 years ago. While it was a short moment amidst the week’s intensity, I believe it encapsulates the spirit of the International Solidarity Forum.

In a world overtaken by totalitarian ideologies seeking to undermine the truth and attack the dignity of the person, there is hope. Advocacy requires perseverance and a fearless confidence in the truth. While it is not easy, we aren’t alone in this struggle; a fact reinforced by the experience of meeting impressive young people from around the world who are dedicated to the WYA mission.

In between lectures, participants engaged in deep discussion, playing with the new ideas and perspectives from the speakers. Our conversations drew from both the lectures and the readings we were provided. Hearing pertinent anecdotes from other delegates, especially their experiences with totalitarian ideologies in their societies, impressed me. 

The forum was followed by rigorous negotiations on this year’s WYA Declaration on Human Dignity and Totalitarian Ideologies. It was enlightening to hear the perspectives of other delegations and how language was interpreted differently. We all agreed on the central message of our Declaration, but the negotiations required hashing out the important details. Negotiations were filled with stimulating discussions and passionate debates: reaching consensus was more challenging than I anticipated. With representation from around the world, we agreed, disagreed, and worked together to produce a text we all would be proud of. After several days and many hours, I believe we accomplished this goal.

First of all, let me thank the World Youth Alliance for the invitation. I was asked to talk about the  “New Totalitarianism,” and my remarks will largely be a re-elaboration of the insights on this topic by  Augusto Del Noce. As some of you will know, Del Noce was an Italian Catholic philosopher who died  in 1989 and I have translated into English some of his works, including a short essay from 1970 titled  precisely “Towards a New Totalitarianism,” which is now included in a volume titled “The Crisis of  Modernity.” Before we talk about the “new” totalitarianism, however, we must answer a preliminary  question: what do we mean by totalitarianism, exactly? Historically, this world was originally coined to describe the new political regimes that arose in Europe between the two world wars: Russian  Communism (Stalinism), Italian Fascism, and German Nazism. What did they have common?  

Here, it is easy to focus on features that are most immediately striking, like the ways in which  totalitarian regimes exercised their power. They all had strong charismatic leaders, secret police,  concentration camps, obsessive propaganda etcetera. These aspects are important of course, but in Del  Noce’s view they are not strictly essential for a precise definition of totalitarianism. He points out that  if a totalitarian regime were able to completely control the flow of information and manufacture  popular consensus (like in Orwell’s 1984, for example), police violence on a large scale would not be  necessary. And one can well imagine a totalitarian state run by committee, without a single charismatic  leader. And in any case, history is full of tyrants and dictators who used very violent means to control  their subjects. What makes a political regime totalitarian in a specific sense? Is totalitarianism a new  phenomenon, of just a more modern, large scale form of absolute power?  

This question was on many people’s minds after World War II, and they came up with various  answers which Del Noce found to be generally inadequate. He did not agree, for example, with those  who tried to understand totalitarianism simply in terms of its opposition to and democracy and  liberalism. He also did not accept the fashionable psychological or sociological explanations. A famous  one was the idea, due to Theodor Adorno and other thinkers associated with the so-called Frankfurt  School, that totalitarianism has to do with “authoritarian personalities.” Even less did Del Noce think  that totalitarianism is somehow a “backward” or “reactionary” phenomenon which goes back to pre modern, “theocratic” political conceptions. He regarded totalitarianism as a distinctly modern  phenomenon with deep roots in modern political thought, which can take different forms. Depending  on the angle under which one looks at at it, according to Del Noce totalitarianism can be defined in  several different but interconnected ways. Let me list four of them.

First of all, totalitarianism manifests itself in the life of a society as the absolutization of politics. By  this Del Noce means a process whereby politics frees itself from all external constraints and becomes  the all-determining factor of social life. Thus, instead of being, say, philosophy or religion or morality  or science or art that condition politics, it is politics that invades all aspects of culture, and absorbs  them into itself, so to speak. Political activism penetrates education, medicine, professional societies,  the military, the arts, even scientific research. In every context, political activists demand allegiance for their agenda (or counter-agenda) separating the friends (or at least the “allies”) from the enemies.  Typically, this generates extreme polarization and in some cases civil war. In a fully totalitarian  situation (think of Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany), politics tends to completely replace religion as  the collective source of meaning, and to absorb ethics into itself. Right and wrong are determined by  what aids or hinders the dominant political project. 

Secondly, in order to justify itself, totalitarianism needs some sort of “theory.” However, such theory is not concerned with expressing the truth, but rather with advancing a political project. Thus its proper  name of is ideology. Totalitarian thinkers tend to replace philosophy (the search for wisdom and truth)  with ideology, viewing ideas, essentially, as political instruments. An ideology usually starts from some partial truth (for example, that some group has been oppressed or mistreated) and then systematically  interprets every aspect of reality through that lens. It develops a whole theory, meaning a sequence of  seemingly logical consequences of that partial truth, without letting experience interfere with the  theory. By cutting itself off from experience, ideology makes itself impervious to all criticisms.  

Ideological thinking is related with what Del Noce regards as another telltale sign of totalitarianism:  which he calls the “denial of the universality of reason.” Totalitarians dismiss their adversaries not by  refuting their arguments, but by accusing them of belonging to an hostile group. Famously,  Communists would accuse their critics of defending the interests of the bourgeoisie. The Nazis would  accuse their opponents of being at the service of Jewish plutocracy. The teoreticians of the sexual  revolution like Wilhelm Reich accused people who disagreed with them of being “fascist” and sexually repressed. Radical feminists routinely forbid men from talking about abortion. Some people dismiss  their critics based on their race. In all these cases there is a common pattern: some people must not be  listened to because allegedly they defend the interests of their group. Therefore, rationality is no longer  universal, it is no longer held in common by everybody. It is always the rationality of a group, where  the various groups are defined by an ideological narrative. Such narrative allows a totalitarian thinker  to disqualify its opponents by revealing their sociological or psychological motivations (their being 

bourgeois, or Jewish, or repressed, or white, or black, or a man, or “phobic” and so on) and thus  excluding them from the very sphere of acceptable discourse. The psychiatric hospitalization of  political dissidents in the Soviet Union was quite symbolic of this “exclusion from the realm of  rationality.”  

Whereas ideology and the denial of the universality of reason are the “cognitive” markers of  totalitarianism, one may ask if totalitarian movements have a specific form of ethics, of morality. Del  Noce thinks that they do, and calls it the “ethics of the direction of history.” Totalitarian ideologies  typically affirm that history is moving towards some inevitable outcome, like for example the Marxist  revolution, or the Nazi one Thousand Years Reich, or Wilhelm Reich’s state of general sexual  happiness. Today you will find people who believe that the direction of modern history is towards  “decolonization.” Whatever it is, this “direction of history” determines what is good and what is bad.  For example, both Lenin and Gramsci claim that what brings about the success of the Communist  revolution is morally good, and what hinders the Communist revolution is morally bad. Thus, some  people are on the “right” side of history and others are on the “wrong” side of history. As a  consequence there are no universal moral values that apply equally to all people. Actions must be  judged according to the group one belongs to, be it bourgeois or proletarian, Aryan or Jew, oppressor  or oppressed etc. 

I think we can all agree that these four characteristics highlighted by Del Noce (absolutization of  politics, ideological thinking, denial of the universality of reason and the ethics of the direction of  history) describe well the “classic” totalitarian regimes of the last century, both real (Stalinism,  Nazism) and fictional (like in Orwell’s 1984). However, after the defeat of Nazism and the death of  Stalin, many people in the West claimed that the age of totalitarian regimes had come to an end. Del  Noce disagreed, and in the 1960 he pointed out that the totalitarian spirit was reemerging in the Western world, despite its liberal principles and its democratic institutions. Around 1970, as I mentioned, he  wrote that the West was moving towards a “New Totalitarianism” which looked quite different from the old forms, but deep down shared in the characteristics I have listed. Del Noce described this new  totalitarianism as a combination of three factors. 

In the first place, he said that the new totalitarianism is scientistic. By scientism, Del Noce means  the attitude that regards the scientific method as the exclusive paradigm of rational knowledge, in  opposition to both religion and philosophy. When he refers to the totalitarian nature of scientism, he  does not have primarily in mind the natural sciences (like, say, physics or chemistry or biology) but 

rather the human sciences that came to great prominence in Western culture after World War Two:  sociology, psychology, anthropology etc. In the post-war period these disciplines generally claimed to  take the place that used to belong to philosophy as interpreters of the entire human sphere. They  claimed the ability to explain “scientifically” human realities like morality, religion, the family, national and ethnic identities, political behavior and so on and so forth. In the intention of their practitioners, all  such things should be deprived on their “mythical” aspects. They should be separated from all  pretenses that they incarnate absolute and permanent metaphysical values, and shown to be the result of material forces, and thus relative to specific social-historical situations.  

Now, in Del Noce’s view, scientism is inevitably totalitarian precisely because it claims a  methodological monopoly on rationality. Once the “experts” have proclaimed what is the current  “scientific consensus” essentially no questions can be asked. In particular, no one can question the  judgments of value which are inevitably embedded in the practice of the human sciences. For example,  one cannot conduct pedagogical studies without making assumptions about what constitutes “student  success.” Or one cannot study human sexuality without assumptions about the ends and purpose (or  lack thereof) of human life, and about what constitutes “happiness.” Likewise for sociology or even  economics. All human sciences do rely on implicit answers to philosophical question but often hide  them. Then they become totalitarian because they can shut down debate by invoking the  methodological superiority of “science.” The ideological enemy of scientism is “religion” and the  direction of history is towards removing all traces of “superstition.” The corresponding form of politics  is “technocracy,” rule by the “experts” who understand the process of de-mythologization and can steer society according to the dictates of science. 

Scientism is tightly linked to what Del Noce regards as the second aspect of the new totalitarianism,  which he calls “eroticism,” the ideology of sexual liberation. If this connection strikes you at counter intuitive, you only have to think of a famous literary illustration: Aldous Huxley novel “The Brave  New World.” As you will recall, the Brave New World is characterized by both advanced science and  technology and by the loss of all sexual inhibitions. After science has made possible to separate entirely sex from procreation, the inhabitants of the Brave New World treat sexuality as a pure, morally  unproblematic form of entertainment. Completely free sexuality, unrestrained from all moral qualms,  was precisely the utopian goal imagined by the theoreticians of the sexual revolution. As I said before,  an essential element of every totalitarianism is a claim about the “direction of history” and eroticism  claims that thanks to science history is now marching towards “liberation from repression” and the 

achievement of “sexual happiness.” These expressions are due to Wilhelm Reich, the Austrian  psychoanalyst who as early as in 1930 wrote a book titled The Sexual Revolution. Del Noce regarded  Reich as the first ideologue and “prophet” of eroticism, and found the link between eroticism and  scientisms in Reich’s use of psychoanalysis. Although today psychoanalysis has gone out of fashion, in  the first half of the last century it was considered to be on the cutting hedge of psychological science.  

However, I believe that an even clearer illustration of the connection between scientism and  eroticism is provided by the cultural role played by American scientific sexology after world war two,  like the famous Kinsey Reports. Sexology was based on the premise that human sexuality is entirely a  biological and psychological phenomenon that can and must be studied scientifically without making  any reference to moral or spiritual questions. In fact, these questions must not be asked because they  are potentially “repressive” and in any case make no sense in a scientific framework. In this  “forbidding of the questions,” as Eric Voegelin called it, the totalitarian element is clearly visible. All  concerns that do not fit in the “scientific” approach to sexuality do not belong in the realm of  rationality, and must be explained away based on various psycho-patologies on the part of those who  express them. They must be “authoritarian personalities,” and be themselves sexually repressed, or  suffer from religious neuroses. In any case, their arguments can be dismissed out of hand by accusing  them of “bigotry.” This is clearly a case of that “denial of the universality of reason” which Del Noce  regarded as the typical manifestation of totalitarianism. 

Finally, like all forms of totalitarianism, the new one has a “religious arm,” which Del Noce  identifies with the “theology of secularization” of the 1960s. By now this term has been largely  forgotten, but the underlying attitude is still present: some Christians, especially among the  intellectuals, think that Church’s highest priority should be to come to terms with the modern secular  world, by accepting the primacy of science and by giving up on “archaic” moral and metaphysical  claims, which the modern and scientific world cannot understand nor accept. Accordingly, Christians  should also come to terms with the results of the sexual revolution and shift their attention from  “individualistic” sexual morality to the great political struggles that can unify humanity around  common, worldly goals. The primary goal of the Church should no longer be salvation in a “vertical,”  transcendent sense, but various forms of “horizontal salvation” (for example, from climate change) to  be achieved essentially by political means. In Del Noce’s view, this type of “politicization” of the  Church has the inevitable result of subordinating it to every fashionable secular political movement,  and puts it at risk of becoming a tool of the new totalitarianism.

According to Del Noce, writing in 1970, these three factors, scientism, eroticism and secularized  Christianity are three aspects of the same new “total” culture that progressively established itself in the  Western world after World War II. This culture displays the totalitarian features I listed earlier: it makes politics absolute, it thinks ideologically, it denies the universality of reason and it believes in a direction 

of history. At this point, I should preempt an obvious objection by noting that of course Del Noce is  not claiming we leave in a totalitarian state. He is claiming that our society displays some of the same  cultural characteristics that in earlier times led to totalitarian states, although today their practical political expressions are certainly very different from, say, Stalinism or Nazism, whose modus operandi was to take control of national states and seek world domination by military means. But as Del Noce’s  argues, this is not intrinsic to totalitarianism per se.  

A totalitarian society can preserve all the formal mechanisms of democracy and even claim to be the heir of the liberal tradition, as long as it has better instruments of social control than traditional police  states. Then it can be very oppressive in non-traditional ways. In Del Noce’s view, the new  totalitarianism does not exercise its power primarily through a political party, but “softly” through  bureaucracies, corporations, administrative courts, proferssional societies, the mass media and the  educational system, establishing a sort of “hegemonic mono-culture” which is able to exercise great  power circumventing the mechanisms of democracy. Another important difference is that, rather than  being nationalistic like the old one, the new totalitarianism is global and transnational, and tends to  create not wars between states but internal conflicts between the great world cities inhabited the  enlightened, technologically oriented and sexually liberated bourgeoisie and the more backward and  religious areas.  

More importantly, because of its scientism and irreligiosity, this new totalitarianism differ from the  old ones because is unable to produce collective ideals like the Marxist classless society or the Nazi  Thousand Years Reich. Its goals are material and psychological well being and sexual happiness, and  thus strictly bourgeois and individualistic. Therefore, its cultural action is directed at dissolving the  traditional “repressive” institutions (family, Church, nation, liberal education etc) but not at replacing  them with new ones. As a result, Del Noce, says, it is a totalitarianism of disintegration. In the long run it is fated to produce systematic institutional failures in every field, and to gradually disintegrate the  nations where it was born, while it expands aggressively to other parts of the world, with a sort of  cultural colonialism directed at making everybody “like us.” In this sense, it also aims at world  domination, but it achieves it by gradually dissolving local cultures.

Now, let me move on to a different question. If you agree with Del Noce’s analysis, that the  totalitarian mindset is still alive and active in our culture (and in fact may be even taking new forms,  somewhat different from the ones he observed in the 1960s), you may ask: why does it keep coming  back? And why it seems to be a distinctly modern phenomenon, different from the many tyrannies of  history, which generally aimed at complete political control, but not at politicizing every aspect of life?  In Del Noce’s view, the roots of totalitarianism go beyond politics per se. and can only be described as  metaphysical and religious. It is not just a matter of recognizing that some totalitarian movements, like  for example Communism, can be reasonably described as “secular religions,” because they have a  messianic dimension, and involve a pseudo-religious faith in the coming of a “new world” after the  revolution. Rather, Del Noce maintains that all totalitarian movements, even when they present  themselves in very secular terms, reflect certain “theological” assumptions which are commonly held  by modern people. Let me list three. 

One, most “traditional” civilizations knew the notion of an “original fall,” and regarded evil as an  ineliminable aspect of human life, both individually and collectively. Then, the function of the  politicians was, in Plato’s words quoted by Del Noce, “to correct an imperfect world.” Modern thought, starting famously with Rousseau, moved the source of evil from the human heart to unjust social  structures, and postulated that it can be removed by “changing the system.” Two, the world’s great  religions believed in the existence of transcendent and unchangeable moral laws, which constrain  political action. The modern West regards laws as pure human creations, conventional rules that can be  bent to our goals. Three, most cultures used to identify happiness in terms of relationship with the  divine. Modern culture views happiness as psycho-physical well-being, and expects it from social and  economic organization.  

Putting all these together, it is not surprising that modern people look for “political salvation.” If evil resides in the “system,” and if there is no intrinsic limitation that can stop us from changing it, and if a  better system is all we need to be happy, then political action is the highest human calling and the road  to individual and collective fulfillment. Politics replaces religion as the principal source of meaning and the criterion by which everything else should be measured. For this reason, Del Noce (who was himself Catholic) thought that totalitarianism could even be defined as “political atheism,” as long as the word  atheism is carefully qualified. He did not have in mind a generic lack of belief in God, or even a  philosophical thesis about the non-existence of the divine. That would be what he called the “old” or  “scientistic” atheism of the 19th century, whose final and perhaps best known representative in the 

English world was Bertrand Russel (although arguably that tradition was recently revived, somewhat  farcically, by people like Richard Dawkins). When he talks about the interaction of atheism and  politics, Del Noce refers to what he calls “positive atheism.”  

Positive atheism affirms the radical self-sufficiency and unlimited perfectibility of humanity, to the  point that the very question of the existence of God becomes irrelevant, because we are our own  creators, and the authors of our own happiness. In order to do so, a positive atheist denies not so much  the existence of God as the very need for God, by claiming that people resort to religion only because  they are oppressed or poor or sexually repressed etc. Accordingly, they will stop caring about God  entirely as soon as they are liberated from capitalism or poverty or the patriarchy or colonization or  sexual repression or whatever is making them unhappy. The first rigorous formulation of positive  atheism, in Del Noce’s view, was given by Marx, but many other versions have appeared since,  including the eroticist one, which postulates that sexually liberated people will no longer need religion.  With this definition, it becomes clear why a positive atheist will be naturally inclined to make politics  his or her “religion.” He or she will tend to believe that history has a direction towards greater and  greater human fulfillment (a belief which, as we have seen is part of Del Noce’s definition of  totalitarianism). And he or she will not be willing to tolerate anybody who stands in the way of the  march of humanity towards liberation. Hence the absolutization of politics, the denial of the  universality of reason, and the prohibition to ask certain questions. All these are different aspects of the  same phenomenon. 

If Del Noce’s analysis is correct, some rather unconventional conclusions follow. First of all, far  from being a throw-back to “medieval theocracy” or “authoritarianism,” totalitarianism is a very  modern phenomenon, tied to secularization, or at least to certain strains of secular thought. The  “Western” form that Del Noce diagnosed is no exception. People of faith should neither be naive about  it nor despair. All forms of totalitarianism end when it becomes clear that the “direction of history” was a delusion. In our case, it has become more and more apparent that the ideology of technology-based  prosperity and sexual liberation – which became intellectually dominant in the 1960s and achieved  complete political control in the 1990s – has failed. In this respect, most mainstream political forces, especially on the left, are essentially conservative. They are trying to delay the inevitable collapse of  their ideology and preserve the scientistic-eroticist framework.  

Secondly, totalitarianism is not just a political phenomenon, but a “religious” one albeit in a very  peculiar sense, as it entails the claim that politics can replace religion for the sake of human liberation. 

Therefore, a correct response cannot be just political. In fact, precisely because totalitarian culture  tends to absorb everything into politics, a response that remains exclusively political in a sense accepts  the basic totalitarian premise. Then there is a danger of recreating a familiar scenario in which a  totalitarianism born on the left generates as a reaction a counter-totalitarianism on the right, like  arguably was the case with Stalinism and Nazism. We can see something analogue in the US today  when the “wokeness” of the left sometimes produces “anti-woke” responses on the right which are  purely reactive and destructive. Their are in danger of being political expressions and unwitting  accomplices of the disintegration.  

Let me conclude, by observing that, at the end of the day, the appeal of totalitarian politics is always  that it seems to fill (but in the end it doesn’t) an existential void of meaning and purpose. The ultimate  necessary response, therefore, is truly filling that void, and politics can aid the work, but cannot it do it  itself. It is important to be aware of the dangers of the new totalitarianism, but we should not let such  awareness become an obsession, which would actually be harmful, because it would distract us from  what is really needed to reverse the process of disintegration. Del Noce calls it a “religious awakening,” and the whole passage is worth quoting. “A religious awakening is needed, because religion country  and family are supreme ideals and not practical instruments. And it is certainly a valid point that the  formula corruptio optimi pessima [the corruption of the best is the worst] applies to the deterioration  that befalls these ideals when they are viewed, at least primarily, as pragmatic instruments of social  welfare. In order to be socially useful they must be thought within the categories of the true and the  good; the opposite is impossible. Certainly, such a reawakening cannot be a merely human work. But  nevertheless it requires, in order to be realized, that the hearts of men be attentive.” He goes on to say  that people’s attention can be helped by removing the “multitude of idols” that obstruct it in the modern world, and this was really, at least for me, the great contribution of Del Noce’s work.

We’re thrilled to announce – WYA Executive Director Lord Leomer Pomperada’s book You’re Never Too Young To Lead‘ is now available for worldwide shipping. 

Learn how he became the youngest ever President-elect of WYA at age 23. You’re Never Too Young To Lead is a collection of personal anecdotes containing Pomperada’s thoughts on how to grow into a global youth leader. 

In this book, his first ever, he answers questions commonly asked by young people he has met, detailing his journey to leading WYA, practical insights on effective networking and successful fundraising, and advice on building small but healthy habits that lead to excellence.  

November 4, 2023 – World Youth Alliance Europe hosted the Emerging Leaders Conference 2023 (ELC) with a strong delegation. In collaboration with the Southeast Europe office, the event was carried out in Zagreb, Croatia, under the theme European Consensus on Humanitarian Aid. 

For the first session, a panel discussion was conducted by Aleksandra Markić Boban, Head of the Zagreb Office of the Hanns Seidel Foundation, and Hrvoje Debač, Head of Division for Development Policy and Humanitarian Aid in the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, with Ramón Barba Castro, Regional Director of Public Policy at WYA Europe, as the session moderator. 

The conference continued with the presentation by Croatian Parliament member and associate professor of political philosophy at the Catholic University of Croatia in Zagreb, Stephen Nikola Bartulica. Mr. Bartulica addressed topics such as immigration, culture, population control, sustainable development, and ideological colonization from a perspective that places the human being at the center and as the solution.

To conclude the event and recap the entire day, Ramón Barba Castro synthesized the discussions, comparing and sharing the perspective of WYA along with its programs and projects.

The conference attracted more than 35 young people representing 13 countries and numerous institutions. Most delegates envision their engagement in opening chapters in their countries. 

WYA Europe is grateful for its exciting partnerships and networks that continue to aid the planning and execution of the ELC and looks forward to the next Europe Emerging Leaders Conference in 2024.

“I was a little bit shocked,” Jervis admits. “But this one question got the class moving.” At the end of the lesson the students assigned themselves homework: “They wanted to write about their personal purpose, in reaction to the question of personal importance.”

In lesson two, there was silence when Jervis read the definition of treating persons as objects aloud: “using persons for personal pleasure or benefit.” “They knew what it meant,” he says, “They were real philosophers about it.” 

Jervis led his class in discussing Martin Buber’s classic text, I and Thou. “We discussed questions that tied deeply to their day to day lives. HDC bridges that connection between what they have inside of them and what their expectations are for themselves. I think because it’s the one academic class that’s ‘all about you,’ the HDC fits well into their daily lives and students share their feelings.”

But it was the lesson on Freedom that really changed the tone in the classroom. 

Jervis asked the students if they thought they had freedom. They did not think they did. “We discussed the freedom to be here at this school or this choice or that to break rules . . . We discussed this for a long time.” Then, after reading Viktor Frankl, “about how everything can be taken away from you, and yet in that moment being able to somehow decide your attitude . . . It changed everything,” Jervis says. “Their approach to things was different after that.”

By week five, students would be looking for Jervis in the halls. “They were like, where were you? When are you coming back to school? I said, don’t worry, I told you I’ll be back! They loved it. Every day they were following up, asking questions from the previous lessons.”

Jervis included Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” song in the lesson on The Power of Art, to further the discussion: “I said listen to the lyrics, what does it say about freedom? Is it freedom for excellence or indifference?” The Human Dignity Curriculum had given these high school students a vocabulary for thinking philosophically about their lives and the world we inhabit.

He created quizzes and evaluations so that the students would take the material seriously, since there is no formal grading for HDC. “It was a rich experience for the students, as they were really making connections between what they were learning in other classes and these deeper questions in the HDC.”

Before leaving for Christmas break, the students received their HDC graduation certificates in a closing ceremony in the school auditorium, attended by teachers and parents. If class scheduling permits, the hope is that in the new year, the juniors at Bishop Rogan College will start HDC next. 

“People think that human dignity is the same as human rights. But it isn’t. Human dignity is the basis for human rights,” says Jervis. And so, the Human Dignity Curriculum helps students learn something about themselves. As for his personal experience, “I’ve learned a lot,” he says. “All of this has changed my scope. And I think for me, my field of studies is not unrelated—it has helped me a lot in terms of my personal development.” 

For Jervis and his students, that development is well worth the three-hour commute and extra class.

Foreign aid typically entails the transfer of capital, goods, or services from a country or international organization for the benefit of the recipient country. In targeted disaster relief and humanitarian efforts, it often succeeds. But foreign aid in itself is fraught with problems. 

Most troublingly, foreign aid can be used as a tool for coercing recipient nations into adopting policies and legislation that undermine national laws and the principles of human dignity alike. In such cases, foreign aid becomes a form of ideological colonization. It is sometimes deployed to force countries to implement population control policies or so-called reproductive rights.

Such a situation may be unfolding in Kenya. WYA is closely monitoring the connection between The Global Fund and recent healthcare policy developments in that country. 

The Global Fund is the world’s largest financier of AIDS, TB, and malaria care programs. As of 2017, the Global Fund’s Baseline Assessment on Kenya called for a “comprehensive response to human rights-related barriers to HIV, TB and malaria services in Kenya.” Foremost on the list of the Fund’s desired interventions: “Standardization and coordination of . . . training for healthcare workers on human rights and medical ethics.” 

And what, one might ask, are The Global Fund’s priorities for human rights and medical ethics? A clue can be found in a September 2022 statement from President Biden, who announced record-level funding for The Global Fund and said that “advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights” was part of the larger fight against HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria.  

Just a few months later, in February 2023, the Kenya Ministry of Health announced a successful meeting with The Global Fund team, covering a “wide range of topics” including “ways to make Universal Health Coverage (UHC) work” and “secure its financing.” According to the article, the manager of The Global Fund spoke about “a balance of $13 million yet to be given.” 

On October 19, 2023, the President of Kenya signed four Universal Health Care Bills into law, laying the foundation for “the biggest change in the healthcare system ever witnessed.” The four new bills introduce “new funding mechanisms” although the full details of the financing “have not yet been established.”

Then in December, Kenya’s Director General of Health launched the Healthcare Providers Training Manual on Human Rights, HAPCA [HIV and AIDS Prevent and Control Act] and Medical Ethics. Chapter One of the training manual focuses on:

1. Abortion, contraception, and reproductive rights

2. Contraception

3. Assisted reproductive technologies and surrogacy