Why conservatism must roll the warning against totalitarianism up every new hill.

Lars Møller | October 2, 2026

From Wikimedia Commons: Sisyphus (Titian, 1548–1549)

Conservative intellectuals—and allied champions of personal freedom—confront an unending labor: the empirical and philosophical demolition of revolutionary totalitarianism in its socialist guise. Egalitarianism, as a utopian project, generates by intrinsic logic a progressive extinction of freedom. The pattern declared itself in the French Revolution of 1789–1794, the prototype of a cannibalistic orgy in the name of ideology, matured through the Bolshevik seizure of 1917, the Maoist catastrophe, and the Khmer Rouge experiment, and persists as a recurring temptation.

Like Sisyphus, conservatives roll the stone of argument uphill each day, while the larger culture behaves as though the twentieth century’s mountains of corpses had never existed. Humanity’s capacity for historical amnesia appears nearly absolute; the attraction to collectivist perfection remains undiminished. Paradoxically, universities are recurring breeding grounds for totalitarianism.

Specific population segments in the West—including student groups indoctrinated against Western civilization, with limited access to the housing market, and urban subcultures accustomed to welfare dependency—continue to find socialism and communism alluring because these doctrines advertise economic equality and comprehensive care irrespective of individual merit. Capitalism’s visible defects supply the necessary pretext. Wealth concentrates; a minority accumulates large holdings while substantial numbers struggle with ordinary expenses. Healthcare, higher education, and housing impose costs that strain average earners. Market fluctuations produce unemployment and a sense of precariousness that government safety nets only partially relieve. 

Against this backdrop of perceived inequality and social injustice, the socialist ideal presents itself as a remedy: resources held in common rather than private hands; cooperation substituted for competitive struggle; food, shelter, and medical attention redefined as unconditional rights. The vision promises an end to the anxieties of market life.

Adherents of “democratic socialism” typically concede the genocidal record of the Soviet Union, Maoist........

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