Elite libertinism creates totalitarian hypocrisy when coercion disappears

Evidence

It is worth insisting on the fact that in the sexual field the most depraving and “regressive” ideological factor is the enlightened and libertarian conception proper to those classes which are not tightly bound to productive work and spread by them among the working classes. … This element becomes particularly serious in a state where the working masses are no longer subject to coercive pressure from a superior class and where the new methods of production and work have to be acquired by means of reciprocal persuasion and by convictions proposed and accepted by each individual. … In this case one gets the formation of what can be called a situation of totalitarian social hypocrisy. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1114

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the concept of ‘totalitarian social hypocrisy’ — when virtue is affirmed but neither coerced nor internalized, producing a psychophysical gap that blocks the new work methods
• XREF: Connects forward to Islamophobia readings on how elites’ liberality from above meets masses’ exclusion from below — internal self-coercion of a class by its own elite parallels racialized civilizing missions