Totalitarian control thrives on the totality of power over every space of articulation. In turn, totalitarian control is intrinsic to the reproduction of absolute power.
Power works through every corner of totalitarian societies, from the schools and universities in such societies, to work spaces, to neighborhoods, to homes.
The effect of power is felt at the cellular level, in the everyday being of life in the regime.
Totalitarian control is exercised not only through direct tools of repression, but also through various everyday norms that constitute interactions.
One such form of normative control exercised in totalitarian systems is in the threat to reputation. The threat to reputation works to keep intact the practices of the regime, without questions or criticisms.
Any criticism of the system and/or its corrupt processes can be controlled by attacking the reputation of the person raising the criticism. Such forms of attacks on reputation can work powerfully to silence academics, activists, and opposition politicians.
The sophistication of the attacks lies in their ability to erase opposition without the need for resorting to overt repressive tactics. A voice of dissent is systematically destroyed through the manufactured discourses that are disseminated.
Amid global connectivity, articulations of human rights, and pressures on totalitarian regimes, regimes have increasingly turned to forms of reputational attacks. Totalitarian regimes of the twenty first century therefore are also often reputational economies, having developed various forms of strategies for attacking the reputation of critics that challenge the hegemonic control of the regime. Attacks on reputation can take a wide variety of forms, from direct attacks to insinuations to planting uncertainty about a dissentor.
Across institutions, organizations, and neighborhoods of totalitarian regimes, regime workers are planted to hold up the reputational economy. Communicative inversions are cooked up and disseminated systematically to keep intact the power of the regime. The subjects of the regime are given the message, "you will pay a high price with your reputation if you don't keep in line. Collaborate with the regime and you will be handsomely rewarded, Even better, become an accomplice of the regime, and you will climb to the very top." The regime maintains this reputational order by placing its accomplices at the head of institutions, organizations, communities, and neighborhoods.
In the web of reputational networks, one is made to believe that challenging the regime is futile.
What then are the possibilities of resistance to the reputational economies that form the infrastructures of totalitarian control? These possibilities perhaps lie first and foremost in making visible the immorality of the reputational economy and by refusing to participate in it. The refusal to participate in the reputational economy renders powerless the totalitarian tools of reputation management. To the extent that I don't give a f$$$ about how you attack my reputation, I am not subject to the workings of reputational power. When enough number of people stop giving a f$$$, the power of the reputational regime disintegrates. Forming collectives that together challenge the reputational logics and render visible their oppressive logics forms the basis of dismantling totalitarianism.