Our Common Enemy: Totalitarian Theocratic/Ideological Patriarchal Power Brokers
Over 20 years since 9/11/2001, we must name the enemy we see here, there, and nearly everywhere
Our Common Enemy: Totalitarian Theocratic/Ideological Patriarchal Power Brokers
By Michael Alan Dover, March 2, 2025
Since the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001, we in the United States of America, and I think many across the globe, have been trying to understand how to characterize those who carried out the attack. In many ways, I will argue, we still have not come to a comprehensive understanding of the nature of the world view which motivated that attack. We often assumed it was pure anti-Americanism. Or we have labeled it radical Islam or Islamist and so forth. I will argue it is something else entirely, and it transcends religion. In fact, we have met the enemy, and it is us! At least those of us, even here in the US, who want to control women’s lives, trans lives, immigrant lives; you name it.
As I first argued in my Letter from the Editor published May 2017 in Reflections: Narratives of Professional Helping, the ideology of those who attacked the World Trade Center was totalitarian, theocratic, patriarchal terrorism. Since then, I have referred to Totalitarian Theocratic Patriarchal Power Brokers, although I now amend this to refer to Totalitarian Theocratic/Ideological Patriarchal Power Brokers, as theology is not always what the power brokers use as the demagogic basis of their appeals. Such power brokers falsely use religion or ideology to justify not only violence and other uses of power—including elections—to achieve totalitarian control over the lives of women and all the inhabitants of the territory they rule or aspire to rule.
Our failure to properly recognize this has led to growing expressions of xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Arab chauvinism, anti-Semitism, racism, misogyny, and other manifestations of male supremacy in global political life. Empirically, were I to have the multilingual capacity to properly study this, I would produce a table documenting the numerable instances when—contrary to the notion of the ancient enmity we hear a lot about these days—women have gained enhanced civil rights within various societies. In each case this resulted in increased intermarriage rates between spouses of different skin colors, ethnicities, religions, and nationalities.
Based on my reading so far, this was true of a goodly number of nations before genocides, attempted genocides, civil wars, wars, or fundamental political shifts removed those enhanced women’s rights. When the new governments or paramilitary forces—both controlled by totalitarian theocratic patriarchal power brokers—took over, they removed those rights in the false name of whatever religion or ethno-religious-nationlist cause they championed.
It is essential to recognize this, as it is relevant to the Israel/Gaza war, the Sudan conflict, Myanmar, and these United States of America. Take Israel and Palestine. In Israel, totalitarian theocratic/Zionist patriarchal power brokers now have a virtual veto power over the Israeli government lead by Benjam Netanyahu. Likewise, totalitarian theocratic patriarchal power brokers (TTPPBs) in Hamas continue to rule Gaza, in alliance with smaller paramilitary groups, at least one of which, Islamic Jihad, also fits that label.
Here in the United States, the growth of the influence of far-right Christian nationalists is another example of the TTPPB phenomena. One hundred years ago, Ku Klux Klan members and supporters paraded down Detroit Avenue at 77th Street. The KKK today and many of the “Christian nationalists” and far right groups in the US today fit the TTPPB label.
In Myanmar, there were and are TTPPBs among both the Buddhists and the military they influence and among the Rohingya people and the small-scale Muslim paramilitary force which arose.
In Rwanda, before the Hutu genocide against the Tutsis, there were growing Hutu/Tutsi marriage rates, but there were TTPPBs among both ethnic groups. In former Yugoslavia, under Tito, there were growing intermarriage rates between Croatians, Serbs, Bosnians, Christians and Muslims. So the problem isn’t ancient enmity. When women have human rights and there is some degree of democracy, intermarriage rates will climb, and tht TTPPBs hate that.
According to The Holocaust in Croatia, prior to the holocaust, there was fascist concern about growing Croatian/Jewish marriage rates. In Iraq under Saddam Hussein, nearly half the marriages were between Shia and Sunni. I could go on. So much for the “ancient ethnic enmity” argument. The world’s oldest form of group-based social oppression—patriarchy, and male supremacy—was the primary source of the problem. It is disguised in various theologies and ideologies.
When totalitarian theocratic/ideological patriarchal power brokers use terrorism and other means of projecting power, male elites and far too many men collaborate to propagate extremist ideologies to restore and keep male power. TTPPBs used that power to control not only the lives of women but also to exercise totalitarian control over geographical areas and even entire societies.
Such elites then use repression, ethnic cleansing, and war to impose their will and remain in power. The origins of these efforts at seizing power—which take many organizational and political forms—are efforts to reinforce forms of patriarchal power were more extreme prior to women winning the above-mentioned civil rights, often with the historical memory of latter-day TTPPBs.
Today’s TTPPBs look to return to men—and those women they designate as collaborators—the very forms of totalitarian theocratic patriarchal power discussed here, but in a more technologically advanced manner than was in place in pre-modern expressions of patriarchal power. Today, our common enemy is such totalitarian theocratic patriarchal power brokers, and they are often closer to home than we realize.
P.s. (Followup Posts): This is a good account of how TTPPBs are opearating now in the US with pronatalist policies.