Well, one could discuss not being actually totalitarian, but totalitarian-vulnerable. For instance, Marxism is explicitly totalitarian in order to gain the necessary power to combat capitalism. But the French Revolution was not, but...then...Napoleon (and a lot of totalitarianish stuff beforehand). So I don't think being totalitarian and being totalitarian-vulnerable are the same thing.

I would agree that CRT is vulnerable totalitarian takeover in a similar way that Critical Theory is which is basically to follow the chain of reasoning that Marxism did: we idealize this society as good; but it won't happen on its own; so we need to make it happen; and the only thing available is application of government power (if we can seize the government).

I don't think the 1619 project is vulnerable to totalitarian takeover. It's a journalistic project. It's not at all obvious how you could expand it to...anything. Sure, you could just teach it to exclusion of other things, but tons of history education is like that. Not really different.

The BLM movement is vulnerable to totalitarian takeover because it's activist, can get lots of feet on the ground, and isn't democratically organized: it's a type of populism--all that it's missing is a highly charismatic individual to guide it in that direction.

There is also vulnerability to totalitarian takeover in any sufficiently ardent opposition to these things. Fascism and Communism were virulently opposed to each other, and each used the other to promote their own brand of totalitarianism. You don't even need a real threat; an imagined or vastly exaggerated threat will do.

You can see plenty of totalitarian leanings on the right: purging of people who aren't loyal to Trump, acceptance of people who act clinically insane but who are good team players, alteration of rules to enable legislatures to more easily override votes that don't turn out right ("it was a landslide and everyone knows it").

Democracies are constantly beset by totalitarian dangers on both sides. You can slide in from the right (Viktor Orban in Hungary) and you can slide in from the left (Chavez and Maduro in Venezuela, though I guess it's arguable whether Venezuela was ever really free from totalitarianism).

I guess, given all the dangers, I don't really see why you make a big deal about CRT etc. being vulnerable to totalitarian capture.

Intolerance of dissent is a big problem, but that should be given a different label because the problems and failure modes are different, and we need to think clearly about each. (Even if intolerance of dissent is one step on the way to totalitarianism, the more immediate problems are worth tackling first.)