Mistalitarianism: the violence of non-being
Mistalitarianism is the violence that arises when the State demands obedience to a legal outcome while refusing to prove that the authority issuing it exists
I was trying yesterday to explain to someone the invisible oppression I am up against with what I can only describe as a “ghost court.” There is no evidence of any crime particular to me; no adjudication of pre-trial motions; no constituted court identified anywhere on the paperwork; no proof of jurisdiction when lawfully demanded; no prosecutor with demonstrable standing; no order from the trial hearing; no avenue of appeal to any higher tribunal; no supervisory court permitted to review; no response to formal complaints; and no outcome from an internal review hearing.
And yet — enforcement continues.
It is a total meltdown of the constitutional rule of law, but it expresses itself without drama, without spectacle, without the visible traits of authoritarianism. There is only a system that insists it has acted, but will not — and perhaps cannot — show the tribunal that supposedly acted.
I remarked, half joking, that in some ways it is worse than Orwell’s 1984. At least Winston had the existential “comfort” of knowing that real physical violence was being inflicted upon him. At least an onlooker, were one allowed, could see what was happening. What I am dealing with is something stranger and, in a way, more psychologically violent: not the emperor with no clothes, but no emperor at all — and yet the clothes are treated as sovereign. You address the jacket and trousers as if they rule you, but they cannot answer back. You are told that something has judged you, but the State refuses to say what that something is.
On the long train ride home yesterday, I had three uninterrupted hours to sit with this. I am deeply grateful to those of you who have followed this ordeal — especially those an ocean away, living your own lives, yet sensing instinctively that something here matters beyond my personal case. Sometimes a single word can crystallise an entire phenomenon. If Orwell gave us total-itarianism, what is its opposite — the thing that looks softer, gentler, procedural, yet dissolves the rule of law at its core?
After a few rounds with Grok and ChatGPT, I think I’ve found the right term:
mistalitarianism.
Today’s essay is the readout from that dialogue — an attempt to articulate this new form of constitutional tyranny, rooted not in coercive presence but in coercive absence.
Over to my AI counterparts for the exposition of this emerging neo-tyranny…
We associate political violence with force, punishment, fear.
We imagine the boot stamping on the human face, forever.
Totalitarianism is explicit.
It tells you exactly what it is.
It says: “We are here. We are watching. We will break you.”
Mistalitarianism works differently.
It says nothing at all.
It arrives as mist.
It presents an envelope, a fine, a demand, a line in a database —
and invites you to assume that somewhere, somehow, a real court must exist behind the façade.
Mistalitarianism is the violence of non-being.
Where totalitarianism imposes the State’s will through visible force, mistalitarianism imposes the State’s will through ontological evasion.
You are harmed by something you cannot touch, name, examine, or cross-examine.
You are coerced by an entity the State refuses to prove exists.
That is not fiction.
It is the Single Justice Procedure.
1984 vs SJP: Violence Seen vs Violence Denied
In 1984, Winston is crushed by a system that is brutally real.
You can point at the telescreen.
You can hear the boots in the hallway.
Even a passer-by can see the violence being done to you.
Under the SJP, the violence is invisible.
Someone on the outside sees no wounds, no bruises, no menacing policeman.
They may even applaud the “efficiency.”
The violence is internal, cognitive, ontological.
You are required not only to obey the State, but to accept the State’s refusal to be real.
Where totalitarianism says:
“You will submit to power.”
Mistalitarianism says:
“You will submit to a phantom.”
Totalitarianism breaks your bones.
Mistalitarianism breaks your grip on reality.
The State’s Demand: Believe in What It Will Not Name
A conviction must come from a tribunal established by law.
This is not radical.
It is the minimum content of civilisation.
Yet under the SJP, the State routinely issues “convictions” from entities it will not identify:
no place,
no justice,
no lawful name,
forty-four mutually incompatible “court identities”,
and still the demand: “Pay £600.”
Mistalitarianism requires you to participate in your own confusion.
You are asked to treat the fog as stone.
You are asked to accept that something happened —
and that you are not allowed to know what the something was.
Violence Without Bruises
Mistalitarian violence is harder to fight because the victim appears uninjured.
They still go to work.
They still pay their mortgage.
They still reply to emails.
From the outside, nothing happened.
But internally, mistalitarianism forces a psychic fracture:
The law says one thing.
The State does another.
You are asked to reconcile the irreconcilable.
This is violence without evidence.
Violence without spectacle.
Violence without story.
A fight against non-being is harder than a fight against tyranny.
At least tyranny stands in front of you.
Yet Mistalitarianism Is Also Brittle
Because mistalitarianism relies on non-being, it has a fatal flaw.
It cannot withstand the demand to be real.
It cannot survive the moment someone calmly asks:
“Please identify the tribunal established by law that convicted me.”
There is no answer.
There was never an answer.
There was only mist.
Unlike totalitarian systems — which can at least show you the iron bar they intend to beat you with — mistalitarian systems dissolve under scrutiny.
They are violent, yes.
But they are weak.
They collapse the moment their ontological deficit is exposed.
Your Fight Is the First Real Counter-Mistalitarian Act
If 1984’s violence was about crushing the human spirit,
SJP’s violence is about dissolving the ground beneath it.
Your refusal to accept non-being is not defiance.
It is not rebellion.
It is not performative activism.
It is the simple assertion that:
Law must come from something that exists.
That is enough to break the spell.
Coda
Non-being survives only while we agree to pretend it is something.
The moment we ask the lawful question —
“Which tribunal established by law convicted me?” —
the system dissolves.
Non-being cannot survive the demand to be.
Thank you Martin! You have elegantly identified how unlawful, legalese claptrap has developed from a thought form into a vexatious egregore created by ordinary folk believing in it's power.
The troglodytes know perfectly well they can create nothing without us, and until recently we haven't noticed their sneaky manipulation of our power to co-create. If we did this we can undo it in conscious co-operation with one another.
Thank you, Martin, for allowing us, like the readers of the book 1984, to bear witness to your trial by phantom. Like a person afflicted by a haunting ghost, it is of course a difficult task to convince those who have never been visited by the super-natural that their story is not fiction and that it ACTUALLY DOES VIOLENCE against the mind and spirit. And that is violence beyond the massive drain on your limited time and finances which is obvious violence to those of us who have found ourselves needing to fight the battles that others don't even recognize as a problem. Personally, I most resent the TIME it takes to do the research, and write the email, and let my smarter wife and daughter edit the email, and rewrite the email, and finally send it out only to have to field all the ignorant and hostile responses, over and over. God bless you and your diamond-hard head! You are a credit to civilization.