Who resists totalitarians and why?

Via MR, I found this link of an article by Robert Higgs about who is the most likely to resist totalitarianism.  It turns out that historically people of faith were the most likely resistors. Some individual atheists did resist, but atheism was also a key part of some of the more brutal totalitarian regimes ranging from the USSR to China and North Korea.

Higgs is worried that as society becomes more secular, the faith based groups who resisted state expansion in the past are going to be weaker going forward. He attributed this resistance to these groups having a strong belief in something other than the state. It's actually much simpler than that, these religious groups historically have been one of the few groups that are powerful in civil society and separate from the state. Today, there are many more groups, but they may be less tightly knit because they are easier to leave or less likely to share a similar belief system and therefore would presumably be less able or willing to counter a totalitarian state. A group of people today such as a gaming clan (I did not score highly on Charle Murray's quiz) might spend a lot of time together working on the same goals, but their goal is to play a video game not build a society. 

On the other hand, the pessimism of Higgs isn't completely warranted. The internet means that these groups aren't as necessary for coordinating resistance to the state. Religious institutions weren't the only drivers of the Arab Spring. They were just the only ones organized enough to really take advantage of the political void in the aftermath. If what matters is the ability to coordinate and people knowing that they are part of a broader movement, the internet would facilitate a lot of that resistance. The internet's usefulness to those resisting a potential totalitarian threat is why attempts like the UK's government's proposal to increase their monitoring efforts of the interent are so scary.