2 Quotes by Arun Kundnani

Totalitarian rule thrives on its subjects’ ignorance of the extent to which the surveillance system is monitoring their lives. The possibility, rather than the fact, of surveillance is enough to generate fear, anxiety, and informal pressures to conform, to downplay dissenting opinions, to declare one’s absolute loyalty. Thus an enforced culture of self-censorship emerges in communities that used to express their political opinions freely.

But the experience of the war on terror suggests that, if the same tools of totalitarian rule are applied only to racialized groups rather than the population as a whole, the trappings of democracy can be maintained for the majority.