Friedrich was among the first scholars of totalitarianism to address this experience of improbability, writing in 1954 that “virtually no one before 1914 anticipated the course of development which has overtaken Western civilization since then… none of the outstanding scholars in history, law, and the social sciences discerned what was ahead… which culminated in totalitarianism. To this failure to foresee corresponds a difficulty in comprehending.” Not even the most farsighted of the early-century interpreters of industrial society, thinkers such as Durkheim and Weber, had anticipated this murderous turn.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 1135