This is not merely a literary observation; Hannah Arendt identified similar factors as the prerequisites for a totalitarian society:
Loneliness and Social Atomization
Losing Faith in Hierarchies and Institutions
The Desire to Transgress and Destroy
Propaganda and the Willingness to Believe Useful Lies
A Mania for Ideology
A Society That Values Loyalty More Than Expertise
Not sure if there will be posts the remainder of this week; I’m currently engaged in a project that will see a series of reviews next week for my annual Blast from the Past series, so I’ll be finishing titles but not listing or reviewing them until after the launch post on Monday. If you want an oblique idea of what’s coming, I guess you can click here — but I emphasize oblique.
Reading Freely 
I’ve dipped into her stuff before. I’d dipped into this one too when it dropped but hadn’t watched it all. I’ll re-watch/complete it this time. I can see why you like her analysis of this one…..
Oh, and I LOVE the way she stops her narrative to drink her coffee! Funny.
I wonder if the coffee-drinking gives her an easy stopping point for integrating takes. Surely she can’t delivering 30-minute monologues seamlessly, without a single “but um” or “ahh,..
Its definitely a nice little ‘pause for reflection’ moment….
She makes an interesting argument. Not one I agree with, but an interesting one nevertheless.
Watched most of it this morning, though tuned out towards the end when she got into her politics. I actually think we are struggling with the opposite problem these days… people hold very powerful beliefs in different, sometimes opposing forces (I would say spiritual forces). There is a religious fervor about everything, from big issues to small ones. Maybe such fervor was hollow 10-15 years ago, when flippancy was especially in vogue, but it seems to me that people have gotten genuinely serious since the pandemic. Part of me is also hesitant to frame the topic around “Western” culture or the “West” at large, since cultural divisions have shifted significantly since the Cold War, and even before that, Europe had a generous share of internal division and hostility.
I am also surprised she puts this novel in contrast with Brave New World, as I believe Huxley highlights the same core themes as Chesterton does (apathy, absurdity, and self-indulgence). I’ve just started rereading BNW so maybe the differences will become clearer as I go along. Either way, The Napoleon of Notting Hill is going on my TBR – sounds like a good addition to my dystopian novels “repertoire”!
I’ve been meaning to do a re-read of Brave New World for a while now. Haven’t read it since 2009, and a LOT of water has run under the bridge since then — not simply in time, but in my thinking.
I think I can agree to some degree about the spiritual forces — I’m hoping to read ‘The Return of the Strong Goods” (on nationalism and populism). The rise of genuine proto-fascists like NF is disturbing.
Her argument about a growing indifference really didn’t gel with me. Sure, there are people who don’t care about very much (if anything) but they have always been with us – its difficult to ‘care’ about many of the BIG issues if, for example your focus is on making it to the next day or next meal – and the careless might even be growing as people give up in the face of overwhelming forces, but I think that there are a growing number of people who care VERY much about things both on the Right, the Left and the in the Middle. There are many things to care about and I think many, many people who care passionately about them. I really don’t think that we are going to get a careless world *any* time soon.