From the "Center" — Technocratic Authoritarianism
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Perhaps the greatest current danger comes not from political extremes, but from the seemingly reasonable “center”:
”There is no alternative” (“TINA,” first prominently used by Margaret Thatcher):
- Rhetoric of necessity that delegitimizes alternatives from the outset
- Technocratic rule by “experts”
- The absence of alternatives as a conversation-ending argument
- Negates: self-determination (citizens are meant not to choose but to accept), dialectic (deliberation is no longer possible)
Permanent state of emergency government:
- Governing by decree instead of by law
- “Crisis mode” as a permanent condition (financial crisis, refugee crisis, pandemic, climate crisis…)
- Suspension of democratic processes “temporarily” — a suspension that never ends
- Negates: self-application (power no longer controls itself), recognition (citizens as recipients of commands)
Digital surveillance and control:
- Social scoring, tracking, predictive policing
- Algorithmic decisions without transparency
- “Smart cities” as total registration of the population
- Negates: self-determination (the transparent citizen), recognition (people as data points)
The danger of this “center”: it does not appear extremist. It invokes reason, science, efficiency. But precisely for this reason it is hard to criticize — who wants to be “against science”? Who wants to be “inefficient”? Criticism is delegitimized preemptively.