The Root of Totalitarianism is Social Engineering

This is certainly one root! Or call it socialist/big government central planning, which also occurs to often in Western democracies.

How some ruling elite wants to impose their vision on the rest of us in Western democracies!

When government paternalism becomes overbearing as it often does in Western democracies!

Western democracies too often have a tendency to veer off to some soft totalitarianism/despotism (e.g. global warming/climate change).

Caveat: I did not read the entire article.

"Isaiah Berlin and Friedrich Hayek were both knights of classical liberalism in the twentieth century — an age dominated by statism. Scholarly work has often focused on the differences in their views on liberty. Their contrasting definitions of liberty are significant for anyone interested in liberal theory. In a famous 1958 lecture, Berlin distinguished between positive and negative liberty. Negative liberty, in his view, is the absence of obstacles to human action, whereas positive liberty is the freedom to act on one’s will and pursue one’s goals. Hayek, on the other hand, defined liberty as the absence of arbitrary coercion and “independence of the arbitrary will of another.” They also differed in their views on the importance of economic freedom. For example, Berlin, in his letters, criticized Hayek for placing too much emphasis on economic freedom. 

Despite these differences, however, they shared a common definition of what constitutes totalitarianism. ..."

The Root of Totalitarianism is Social Engineering | The Daily Economy "Planners who want to ‘perfect’ society often resort to coercion to impose their preferred outcomes. The result has been unthinkable government violence and cruelty."