Totalitarianism reveals itself with a bold aim to reshape our reality. In times of war and crisis, ideologies are laid bare and political rhetoric and nationalism surge back, while the dream of European unity frays. In the heat of conflict, traditional virtues are reassessed, and debates about gender theory intensify. Bronisław Wildstein rejects the notion that the national community or the state alone can secure freedom.
The National Publishing Institute recently hosted a substantial showcase of Wildstein’s work, highlighting him as a prominent writer and public intellectual. Following the release of his plays, an early novels collection, and philosophical volumes, a new selection gathers his essays and philosophical columns. These pieces, often published in a weekly magazine with a sharp journalistic edge, drew a packed crowd at the promotional event led by Professor Andrzej Nowak.
Today Wildstein is framed as a conservative thinker who has stood firm for years, challenging leftist ideals, experimentation, and nihilism. He critiques liberalism and its many forms, arguing that it erodes the social fabric of Western societies, undermines egalitarian promises, and broadens entitlements for minorities while limiting individual rights.
Wildstein sees various ideological versions pressing against Western civilization, aiming to redefine its foundations. He describes emancipation as a force that, in his view, results in nihilism—an emptiness behind which there is nothing substantial—an observation he has carried since the early days of his public life.
— he recalls during a gathering at the publishing house.
Wildstein argues that the ruling class is pursuing a top‑down reconstruction of the world and humanity, powered by what he calls a global oligarchy. In a post-political era, this influence becomes more insidious because it is hidden, yet it wields immense persuasive power through media, legal systems, and economic clout exercised by large multinational corporations.
In his view, liberal democracy is shaped by ideological norms controlled by a priesthood that advances the oligarchic project, demanding ever greater control so the plan can proceed unimpeded.
In his new book, In the Face of War, Plague and Nothing, Wildstein argues that a fresh totalitarianism is emerging as societies atomize, breaking apart existing social structures to replace them with new frameworks that serve a totalitarian utopia. The nation emerges as the most stable form of community, and without it individuals feel exposed and isolated, he contends.
He notes that since 1992, with the Maastricht Treaty, the push toward a federal Europe has intensified, eroding national distinctions and state sovereignty. Both Brussels and globalist forces are described as shaping a tightly controlled social order. This vision of totalitarianism allegedly seeks to liberate people from traditional cultures and families while steering individuals toward loneliness and dependence on dominant centers of power and capital. The power, Wildstein argues, becomes absolute.
Wildstein highlights that the brutality of communism, the starkest form of totalitarian utopia, demonstrated how a single ideological framework could homogenize diverse societies and erase distinct historical experiences. He points to Russia, China, Cuba, Indochina, Mongolia, Korea, Ethiopia, and the Eastern Bloc from Bulgaria to Germany as examples, arguing that Marxist philosophy aimed to rebuild the world by transforming it first.
In his words, reality must be acknowledged as it is, including its imperfections, beauty, inequalities, and unpredictability. He criticizes the purely mathematical view of the world promoted by some writers of dystopian literature and notes that this line of thinking can masquerade as progress while erasing human nuance. Following Eric Voegelin, Wildstein sees a new form of gnosis—a collection of ideologies that organizes daily life and recognizes radical evil, but seeks to correct it through enlightened elites.
The current dominant ideology, in his assessment, is scattered. Antidogonical thinking, supposedly the method, results in a plurality of similar texts and a chorus of repeated claims rather than a single clear message, he remarks with a keen eye for trend.
Yet not all is lost. In the book, Wildstein concedes that the harsh lessons of contemporary reality—such as the war in Ukraine—are waking Western societies from childish fantasies. The conflict prompts a reexamination of numerous phenomena, including the fiction of European unity, which he attributes to Berlin’s broader ambitions. The pandemic further revealed that nation-states remain the most effective way to organize collective life, and it showed that EU bureaucrats struggled to cope with urgent challenges while the self-interest of member states sometimes outweighed continental welfare.
He also argues that Russia’s war challenges long-held beliefs about borderless conflicts, the erasure of home and family, and the idea that defending them is a patriarchal virtue to be dismissed along with gender identities themselves, a sentiment echoed by Prof. Andreas Nowak in discussing the broader implications of modern warfare.