Mansplaining the Public Space

Column by Ian Witte

Figure 1: The Course of Empire: The Consummation of Empire. Painting by Thomas Cole (1836). Wikimedia Commons. PD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cole_Thomas_The_Consummation_The_Course_of_the_Empire_1836.jpg

Now that I am about to leave the editorial team at TOPOS, I am very much looking forward to taking on the role of regular columnist. I am taking over this honour from Pim Buijs, who has been our regular columnist for the past three years. I would like to thank him enormously for all his inspiring columns, drawing on the insights and experiences he has gained at the Municipality of Utrecht. Throughout this time, TOPOS has also grown to be part of me and now I find it hard to part ways indefinitely. Writing these periodic columns seems like the perfect opportunity to remain a small part of that which we rebuilt over the past few years.

Ironically, I have never written a column before. I have never even bothered to question what distinguishes a column from an article. Heck, now I’m here, having to write about totalitarianism – a topic I was never particularly knowledgeable about. To my high school history teacher: I know you kept repeating this one quote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. I hope you are happy knowing this column required me to dive deeper into a topic that may nowadays be more relevant than it has ever been.

Because it made me think. How could I write about totalitarianism?

Needless to say, the answer was not hard to find. I’m a man after all. And something men are particularly good at, is mansplaining. So why not mansplain totalitarianism, and try to discover how it manifests itself in the world around us?

For start, totalitarianism is perhaps the most oppressive form of governance (hence why the TOPOS editorial team picked it as the antagonist of our next provocative theme, ‘anarchism’). Totalitarian governments aim to go beyond their less-radical counterpart, authoritarianism. It is not just politics and economics they wish to control, but every part of citizens’ daily lives. Most of you probably recall George Orwell’s 1984, where it is not just public spaces that are littered with propaganda, but the home environment too. The television only broadcasts the state news. The walls may only be decorated with the leader’s portrait. All of your actions are recorded. Everything the government says is the absolute truth, and all that seems to stray from this truth is masked by rose-coloured fables. Take the army, for example, which fights a never-ending war. It is commanded by the Ministry of Peace.

In March 2026, De Speld, a satirical Dutch website, published an article titled, “What made George Orwell in 1984 so optimistic about the future?”. Part of the answer: because Orwell believed people needed lies and manipulation to remain under control. Presently that is not even the case anymore. Trump’s government, which proclaimed to end big wars, rebranded the Ministry of Defence to the Ministry of War. This act was not even an attempt to hide their intentions! The US still has a constitution, but to which extent is it still valid if the president does not seem to care about it? And public buildings are now mandated to be built in neoclassical style – you know, the style that is influenced heavily by Roman imperialistic architecture. But why? Probably because the internet says that men think about the Roman empire at least once a day. Reusing their architecture will only reinforce the naïve fantasies they have from this bygone era (figure 1). Legions marching across the broad boulevards; axes, steering not just your path, but your entire vision, your complete attention to the very single thing they want you to know that matters; standing proud, overseeing and, perhaps, inviting, at the very end. A building, a monument, or often a statue, breathing the power of those who are in charge. How many men would want to stand in its place.

Presently, power relations in the landscape are not exclusive to a nation’s leadership. States that adopted capitalism now offer the stage to companies to display the might they achieved. Some of them ascended so high up the ladder that spaces once defined by governmental authority have now opened up to corporate authority. What once were Roman boulevards have now turned into stroads and highways, where the most influential companies can buy the biggest billboards to show their importance to your lifestyle (figure 2). And over the last decade, the corporations with the greatest power of all embrace the very trait that distinguishes totalitarianism from all other forms of governance: control over your everyday life. It is probably in your hands right now. The screen showing you what the algorithm wants you to see, what you shall eat tonight, which products you absolutely need in your life, which people you should date, and the stereotypes in society whom you should disgrace.

Figure 2: countless advertisements around Times Square, New York. Source: Terabass (2009). Wikimedia Commons. CC-BY-SA 3.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:New_york_times_square-terabass.jpg

I find it frightening, really, just how dependent we have become on our devices that the landscape of power has broken through our front door. And because of it, power relations in the public space are shifting, now it is no longer the greatest stage for control. As of 2026, Wageningen is the first town in The Netherlands that banned advertisements from bus stops. Just to remove a small stressor in our burned-out society. A miniscule attack on the men in power. Will this be the spark that lights the fire to burn down present-day totalitarianism? Probably not. We’re human, after all. So long as we listen to our own nature, I believe there will always be this niche of totalitarian control that is filled somewhere, somehow. Think of Orwell’s other book, Animal Farm, where the power vacuum left by the farmer’s absence was filled by the pigs, who turned into the farmer themselves. A cycle that plays out at different times and in different parts of the world. North Korea’s Mansudae Grand Monument (figure 3) can’t be expanded with a dozen more future leaders. Their stories lose significance. A revolution sparks. People are reminded of what it means to be free. Perhaps it is us, the free west, whom are next on the list. We cherished liberty for so long that we forgot what it means to be oppressed, and welcome a new totalitarian downfall with open arms, simply because many of us are inclined to be ignorant.

Figure 3: Mansudae Grand Monument in Pyongyang, showing North Korea’s two past leaders. Source: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen (2014). Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mansudae-Monument-Bow-2014.jpg