The tendency of the state to slide into totalitarianism was examined decades ago by Hannah Arendt in her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Photograph: Tyrone Dukes/New York Times/Getty Totalitarianism has been a cultural bugbear in the modern age. Its implications have been explored particularly in literature (by Yevgeny Zamyatin, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell) and film (THX 1138, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Minority Report.) The danger seemed to have receded with the collapse of the Soviet Union towards the end of the 20th century, but in more recent times it has raised its head again in alarming ways. These include…