Milan Kundera, a Czech writer, in one of his novels, recounts a true story of the period of dictatorship in his country, full of laughter and forgetfulness. He tells how the plots that the security organization had planned against two government critics had the opposite result. Security agents had eavesdropped and recorded private conversations of these two intellectuals. People are more careless and reckless in their private conversations. They may say things that they would be ashamed to repeat in public gatherings; they may make jokes with their friends that would be offensive to others; they may use insulting language about an absent person, but in their presence, they would never want to insult them…

The country’s security apparatus believes it has found a golden opportunity to discredit its critics. The release of private statements by these political critics was meant to show everyone the depravity of anti-government thinking; it was meant to show that these intellectuals, freedom-seekers, and anti-dictatorship individuals behave differently in private, and how much their private actions contradict their social behaviors…

Whistleblowing is taking place and private criticisms of society are being broadcasted. However, the reaction of the people shocks the self-proclaimed critics. Instead of expressing frustration towards these opponents of the government, the people show empathy towards the victims and protest and express disgust at the government’s takeover of private homes and conversations. The efforts of the agents of tyranny are backfiring.

But why did this happen? Why did the self-appointed rulers take control? Undoubtedly, if the people of Czechoslovakia had not respected the privacy of their own space at that time, the situation would have been exactly what the security planners wanted.

Governments with totalitarian tendencies want to eliminate the border between private and public domains. Kundera says in this book that the more power leans towards darkness, the more it wants the lives of citizens to be transparent. A citizen does not have the right to hide anything from a party or government, just as a child does not have the right to hide anything from their parents.

Kondra reminds us that everything that happens in politics at a macro level also happens in our private lives and on a micro scale. In fact, the world of politics and the personal world are not separate from each other. The fears of the political scene are strangely but inevitably similar to the fears of our private lives.

Kundera states in another place that what happens within dictatorial societies is not political disgrace, but rather the disgrace of the people. His question is how far human capabilities can be pushed. He says that everyone talks about the tyranny of the communist regime, the gulags, political trials, and Stalinist purges, but they always forget the obvious truth that a political system cannot do more than what its people are capable of. If humans are not capable of killing, no political regime can start a war.

Therefore, automatons try to institutionalize forgetting the right to privacy in individuals through this analogy, and of course in reverse ways. Undoubtedly, controlling and commanding individuals who do not have privacy is easier.

If we want to explain it, the suppression and opposition to individual freedoms and even private relationships of individuals in society by a totalitarian government happens for several reasons. These systems, being based on intimidation, are forced to isolate and alienate individuals in order to control society. Taking away personal space and relationships is the first and most important way to create this isolation and loneliness. Such a government, based on its totalitarian nature, does not tolerate any personal space or privacy and does not allow individuals to maintain their individuality in the system, turning them into shapeless masses in order to mobilize them for their own goals. Only by destroying personal space and relationships can rulers create and control these shapeless masses. In fact, there is a direct relationship between the intensity of a political system’s inclination towards totalitarianism and the level of suppression and limitation of individual rights and privacy in society. The more intense the suppression and opposition to personal space, the more totalitarian the political structure of the system will be. That is

Based on this, it is on this basis that ideological apparatuses with fascist tendencies, in their rejection and condemnation of individual freedoms and personal privacy, resort to populist slogans and compete with their rivals, namely liberals on one side and leftists on the other, accusing them of pursuing material and welfare goals and therefore being contemptible, while claiming to be advocates of a kind of collective spirituality. From the perspective of this group of self-proclaimed mass-oriented individuals, liberals are individualistic and selfish, and leftists are only concerned with their own class interests and promote materialism and base needs. Meanwhile, fascism – even if it does not identify itself by this name or, despite its totalitarian tendencies, has not yet succeeded in achieving its desired society – declares itself as the champion of the “nation” or in reality, the “ummah”.‌

Slowly and surely, the followers of spiritual values are being pushed aside in favor of economic and welfare issues in this “nation”. In this propaganda campaign for the fascist ideology of totalitarianism, which promotes the call for holiness and spirituality against its earthly and unholy rivals, the only solution left is to belittle and suppress the so-called liberal and materialistic phenomena, where at the forefront of all of them are sexual freedoms, private relationships, and ultimately the right to privacy. This structure must convince its people that they sacrifice themselves for the noble ideals and have low and insignificant personal goals, and that one must think of society and ignore their personal and private desires for the sake of the values of the “nation” or “nation”. It is obvious that in this process, personal and private space is inevitably more and more vulnerable to government intrusion..

But the truth is that even such efforts to destroy privacy and personal space do not drive people towards universal values as claimed by the self-proclaimed. In societies where its leaders are opposed to individual freedoms and personal lives, the result will be the spread of hypocrisy, secrecy, moral corruption, and the decline of society.

In the opposite point, the increase in human ability to protect and defend privacy and individual rights is self-defeating. It is not surprising that even politicians have now realized that the best and most effective way to overthrow dictators, pressure for social and individual rights, and protect the privacy of society is. Of course, it is regrettable that self-defeating individuals also understand well that the elimination and limitation of human rights is the best way to dominate them. In other words, the battle between defenders of privacy and invaders of it is a battle between self-defeating individuals and freedom-seekers.

But we must also say to Kondra that this story, although inevitable and especially due to your self-sufficiency, extends to the realm of politics, is fundamentally not a political matter but a human one. Defending one’s personal and private rights and freedoms is a human duty, even if it is seen as a political action against those self-sufficient individuals. It is also vital and crucial that we teach people who are averse to politics to not consider the right to have personal boundaries as a political matter and to not forget it, because this ignorance and forgetfulness will truly be a disgrace to human dignity and a source of humiliation and dishonor for humanity.