Kafka Predicted Totalitarianism—In the 1910s #Kafka #Totalitarian #Kafkaesque #BookTok #Philosophy

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]The trial is not exactly a totalitarian kind of dystopian novel, but it it fundamentally is really a novel about terrifying bureaucracy. A man is arrested for an unspecified crime by officials who barely understand the system themselves. But at first, the novel it feels really kind of absurd and funny in in some ways. Um when you're looking at the individual, you have these incompetent officials and this crazy opaque procedure, and everything feels irrational and mundane. And but reading Kafka after the events of the 20th century, this sheds a completely different light on the novel. Because 20 years later, that same bureaucratic system, that same mentality that is funny with Josef K, it's no longer funny. It becomes transport lists, labor classifications, state files, and millions of people dead in death camps.

[00:00:47]Reading Kafka feels surreal, which is part of why I love him, but sometimes he also feels unnervingly prophetic. So, absolutely read this at your own caution.