Author Topic: The Price of Tyranny & Totalitarianism  (Read 74731 times)

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69135
    • View Profile
Orwell's1984 Today
« Reply #150 on: April 17, 2021, 01:01:24 PM »


Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69135
    • View Profile

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile
Couldn't happen here... Ever!
« Reply #153 on: July 12, 2021, 08:19:48 PM »
https://sovietmoviesonline.com/drama/chekist

Never give up your guns!

Ever...

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69135
    • View Profile

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69135
    • View Profile

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69135
    • View Profile
Ben Shapiro on Orwell and what he got wrong
« Reply #156 on: January 27, 2022, 05:59:57 PM »
Haven't watched this yet, but look forward to doing so:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI4VDZNyL-Y&t=1s

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69135
    • View Profile

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69135
    • View Profile

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69135
    • View Profile
Social Credit spreads to Italy
« Reply #159 on: April 25, 2022, 11:06:20 AM »
Italy Announces Rollout of Dystopian ‘Social Credit System’ to “Conserve Resources” – First of its Kind in the EU – Compliant Citizens Will Be Rewarded for “Good Behavior”By Julian Conradson

www.thegatewaypundit.com

Social credit scores (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System) are already in use in various places around the world, but nowhere more than in the communist hell hole that is China. The dystopian measurement acts in a similar fashion to a traditional credit score (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_score), however, as the name indicates, one’s score has little to do with their financial prospects or ability to pay off debt on time – social scores are all about your level of compliance to the regime and acceptance of the approved narrative.

For example, if social credit scores were in full effect in the United States and you were to donate money to a company like the National Rifle Association (NRA) or buy stocks in oil – pretty much anything deemed far-right or environmentally damaging by the establishment – your score would take a hit. Too many hits and, you guessed it, there goes your purchasing power and ability.

With this dystopian coercion tool being used in an authoritarian dictatorship like China, where there is no such thing as individual rights or free speech, it could be easily assumed that this system would not be compatible with the United States, or even the West more broadly, but sadly that’s not the case.

Governments across the western world are exploring using this tool, especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, which proved that the government can obtain almost limitless power in a crisis and set the stage for the next phase of the World Economic Forum’s project 2030 – where the plan is that you will “own nothing and be happy.”

As of right now, there is no official government-sponsored social credit system in the West, but that will change in the coming months thanks to Italy (https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/04/22/a-social-credit-system-aimed-at-modifying-climate-change-behaviors-is-being-deployed-in-italy/), which announced (https://www.bolognatoday.it/cronaca/piano-digitale-comune-bologna.html) the rollout of its new rewards-based program that aims to modify people’s climate change behavior by assigning a score based on their compliance – the first program of it’s kind (https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/04/22/a-social-credit-system-aimed-at-modifying-climate-change-behaviors-is-being-deployed-in-italy/) in the EU.

The program will kick off (https://www.bolognatoday.it/cronaca/piano-digitale-comune-bologna.html) its pilot starting in the fall of 2022 in the large metropolitan city of Bologna. Citizens who comply with the radical climate change agenda by displaying “good behavior,” such as correctly recycling or using public transportation, will be rewarded with cryptocurrency and discounts to local retailers, according to local newspaper Bologna Today (https://www.bolognatoday.it/cronaca/piano-digitale-comune-bologna.html).

Enrollees will be given a “smart citizen wallet” where their rewards can be accessed. The higher one’s score, correlating with good behavioral changes, will allow them access to more benefits.

At first, enrollment into the social credit score will be optional, however, there are justified concerns that the program will become mandatory in the future, not unlike the dystopian vaccine passport which has become a staple of everyday life in the EU.

From The National Pulse (https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/04/22/a-social-credit-system-aimed-at-modifying-climate-change-behaviors-is-being-deployed-in-italy/):

“Given the increasing interest by the European Union, some fear it is only a matter of time before more regions and nations will implement similar methods to solve ‘social issues’. Germany (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/22/new-id-law-aims-to-help-reduce-digital-shyness-in-germany) and Austria (https://tkp.at/2022/03/15/oesterreichs-naechster-schritt-in-die-totale-digitale-kontrolle-id-austria/) (ID Austria) have already accelerated their respective digital ID plans. Both countries are introducing new platforms to integrate more public services and IDs, digitize mail, and even national passports (https://www.oesterreich.gv.at/id-austria.html). These new measures have been introduced under the auspicious of solving ‘bureaucratic problems and [saving] resources.’

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has also expressed keenness
(https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/SPEECH_20_1655) over introducing ‘EU ID’, which would integrate national IDs with internet sign-ups.  In 2021 she said:

(https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EFIs-oL1c4g) ‘Every time an App or website asks us to create a new digital identity, or to easily log via a big platform, we have no idea what happens with our data. That is why the Commission will propose a secure European e-identity. One that we trust and that any citizen can use anywhere in Europe to do anything from paying taxes to renting bicycles.'”

To assuage fears of the social credit score morphing into a mandatory obligation like the vax pass, Massimo Bugani, the councilor for the digital agenda in the northern city, claimed (https://www.bolognatoday.it/cronaca/piano-digitale-comune-bologna.html) that the system would not be tied to social media or other forms of online identification and would strictly be used as a tool to encourage “good behavior” that is deemed helpful to the environment.

The focus of the program is to “save resources” and increase compliance, the official added.

From Bologna Today (https://www.bolognatoday.it/cronaca/piano-digitale-comune-bologna.html):

"Isn’t there a fear of an invasion of privacy in all of this? “The interested citizen – Bugani specifies – must of course give his availability, through an application, and no one will be forced to participate in the rewards mechanism. I believe, however, that many will join”. In the meantime, as regards the ‘not very digital’, a permanent table will be opened from 6 April with various associations to bridge the gap for over 65s.”

Considering the tyrannical power grab by governments across the world over the past two years, the claim that social credit scores like this are simply benign should definitely be taken with a grain of salt – or maybe even a full-blown Paul Revere ride.

‘The Globalists are coming!’

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile
Re: Social Credit spreads to Italy
« Reply #160 on: April 25, 2022, 02:43:31 PM »
The correct response:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPWYcjypSWo



Italy Announces Rollout of Dystopian ‘Social Credit System’ to “Conserve Resources” – First of its Kind in the EU – Compliant Citizens Will Be Rewarded for “Good Behavior”By Julian Conradson

www.thegatewaypundit.com

Social credit scores (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System) are already in use in various places around the world, but nowhere more than in the communist hell hole that is China. The dystopian measurement acts in a similar fashion to a traditional credit score (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_score), however, as the name indicates, one’s score has little to do with their financial prospects or ability to pay off debt on time – social scores are all about your level of compliance to the regime and acceptance of the approved narrative.

For example, if social credit scores were in full effect in the United States and you were to donate money to a company like the National Rifle Association (NRA) or buy stocks in oil – pretty much anything deemed far-right or environmentally damaging by the establishment – your score would take a hit. Too many hits and, you guessed it, there goes your purchasing power and ability.

With this dystopian coercion tool being used in an authoritarian dictatorship like China, where there is no such thing as individual rights or free speech, it could be easily assumed that this system would not be compatible with the United States, or even the West more broadly, but sadly that’s not the case.

Governments across the western world are exploring using this tool, especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, which proved that the government can obtain almost limitless power in a crisis and set the stage for the next phase of the World Economic Forum’s project 2030 – where the plan is that you will “own nothing and be happy.”

As of right now, there is no official government-sponsored social credit system in the West, but that will change in the coming months thanks to Italy (https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/04/22/a-social-credit-system-aimed-at-modifying-climate-change-behaviors-is-being-deployed-in-italy/), which announced (https://www.bolognatoday.it/cronaca/piano-digitale-comune-bologna.html) the rollout of its new rewards-based program that aims to modify people’s climate change behavior by assigning a score based on their compliance – the first program of it’s kind (https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/04/22/a-social-credit-system-aimed-at-modifying-climate-change-behaviors-is-being-deployed-in-italy/) in the EU.

The program will kick off (https://www.bolognatoday.it/cronaca/piano-digitale-comune-bologna.html) its pilot starting in the fall of 2022 in the large metropolitan city of Bologna. Citizens who comply with the radical climate change agenda by displaying “good behavior,” such as correctly recycling or using public transportation, will be rewarded with cryptocurrency and discounts to local retailers, according to local newspaper Bologna Today (https://www.bolognatoday.it/cronaca/piano-digitale-comune-bologna.html).

Enrollees will be given a “smart citizen wallet” where their rewards can be accessed. The higher one’s score, correlating with good behavioral changes, will allow them access to more benefits.

At first, enrollment into the social credit score will be optional, however, there are justified concerns that the program will become mandatory in the future, not unlike the dystopian vaccine passport which has become a staple of everyday life in the EU.

From The National Pulse (https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/04/22/a-social-credit-system-aimed-at-modifying-climate-change-behaviors-is-being-deployed-in-italy/):

“Given the increasing interest by the European Union, some fear it is only a matter of time before more regions and nations will implement similar methods to solve ‘social issues’. Germany (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/22/new-id-law-aims-to-help-reduce-digital-shyness-in-germany) and Austria (https://tkp.at/2022/03/15/oesterreichs-naechster-schritt-in-die-totale-digitale-kontrolle-id-austria/) (ID Austria) have already accelerated their respective digital ID plans. Both countries are introducing new platforms to integrate more public services and IDs, digitize mail, and even national passports (https://www.oesterreich.gv.at/id-austria.html). These new measures have been introduced under the auspicious of solving ‘bureaucratic problems and [saving] resources.’

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has also expressed keenness
(https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/SPEECH_20_1655) over introducing ‘EU ID’, which would integrate national IDs with internet sign-ups.  In 2021 she said:

(https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EFIs-oL1c4g) ‘Every time an App or website asks us to create a new digital identity, or to easily log via a big platform, we have no idea what happens with our data. That is why the Commission will propose a secure European e-identity. One that we trust and that any citizen can use anywhere in Europe to do anything from paying taxes to renting bicycles.'”

To assuage fears of the social credit score morphing into a mandatory obligation like the vax pass, Massimo Bugani, the councilor for the digital agenda in the northern city, claimed (https://www.bolognatoday.it/cronaca/piano-digitale-comune-bologna.html) that the system would not be tied to social media or other forms of online identification and would strictly be used as a tool to encourage “good behavior” that is deemed helpful to the environment.

The focus of the program is to “save resources” and increase compliance, the official added.

From Bologna Today (https://www.bolognatoday.it/cronaca/piano-digitale-comune-bologna.html):

"Isn’t there a fear of an invasion of privacy in all of this? “The interested citizen – Bugani specifies – must of course give his availability, through an application, and no one will be forced to participate in the rewards mechanism. I believe, however, that many will join”. In the meantime, as regards the ‘not very digital’, a permanent table will be opened from 6 April with various associations to bridge the gap for over 65s.”

Considering the tyrannical power grab by governments across the world over the past two years, the claim that social credit scores like this are simply benign should definitely be taken with a grain of salt – or maybe even a full-blown Paul Revere ride.

‘The Globalists are coming!’


ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18358
    • View Profile
'The Bloody History of Communism'
« Reply #162 on: May 04, 2022, 04:45:36 PM »



Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69135
    • View Profile


DougMacG

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18129
    • View Profile
Re: Hannah Arendt
« Reply #167 on: October 19, 2022, 07:43:27 AM »
https://greatperennialquestions.blogspot.com/2021/04/epistemology-project.html?fbclid=IwAR27sNbDzsKYBvXYcWzwjGGFXzWvgzxMNjCVa0gq-iyld_A-nMgZ46FxvHU

"Her work, The Origins of Totalitarianism (published in 1951),..."
---------------------------------------------------------------------

[Doug]  Every part of the setup sounds like she is writing about the times we live in.

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69135
    • View Profile
The Fifteen Minute City
« Reply #168 on: November 15, 2022, 12:48:51 PM »


Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69135
    • View Profile
The lessons of Solzhenitsyn
« Reply #170 on: December 19, 2022, 06:59:22 AM »

Open in app or online

Teaching Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago in Prison
There are many disturbing similarities between the brutality imposed on Stalin’s victims and the injustices endured by the incarcerated in federal and state prisons.
CHRIS HEDGES
DEC 18

 



SAVE
▷  LISTEN
 

No Justice No Peace - by Mr. Fish

Upgrade to paid

Two nights a week for the last four months, I plowed my way through the three volumes of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago with 17 students in the college degree program offered by Rutgers University in the New Jersey prison system. No one in my class endures the extremities imposed on the millions who worked as slave labor, and often died, in the Soviet gulag, or work camps, set up after the Russian revolution. The last remnants of the hundreds of camps were disbanded in 1987 by Mikhail Gorbachev, himself the grandson of gulag prisoners. Nor do they experience the treatment of those held in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and our secret black sites who undergo mock trials and executions, torture, extreme sensory deprivation and abuse that comes disturbingly close to replicating the hell of the gulags.

Nevertheless, what Solzhenitsyn underwent during his eight years as a prisoner in the labor camps was familiar to my students, most of whom are people of color, poor, often lacking competent legal representation and almost always coerced into signing confessions or accepting plea deals that include crimes, or versions of crimes they were involved with, which were often false. Over 95 percent of prisoners are pressured to plead out in the U.S. court system, which is not capable of providing jury trials for every defendant entitled to one, were they to actually demand one. In 2012, the Supreme Court said that “plea bargaining . . . is not some adjunct to the criminal justice system; it is the criminal justice system.”

My students, like Soviet prisoners, or zeks, live in a totalitarian system. They too work as bonded laborers, putting in 40-hour work weeks at prison jobs and being paid $28 a month, money used to buy overpriced basic necessities in the commissary, as was true in the gulag. They too are identified by their assigned numbers, wear prison uniforms and have surrendered the rights that come with citizenship.

They are deprived of nearly all personal possessions; stripped of all the outward markers of biography and individuality; forced to endure humiliation, including stripping naked before the guards; cannot express anger at their captors without severe retribution; endure military-style regimentation; cope with constant surveillance, including, as in the gulag, a network of prison informers; can be sent to prolonged isolation; are cut off from their families, as well as the company of women; and given lengthy sentences that, short of a miracle, will mean many will die in prison. They, too, have been demonized by the wider society, forced, as were those released into exile from the gulag, into a criminal caste system that punishes them for the remainder of their lives.

They live in what the sociologist Gresham Sykes called A Society of Captives, with its peculiar customs, slang, rituals and codes of behavior, all of which were replicated in the gulag as they have been in prisons throughout the centuries.

U.S. prisons, which hold around 20 percent of the world’s prison population, although we are  less than five percent of the global population, are forms of social control, along with militarized police, propaganda campaigns that seek to make us fearful and therefore passive, wholesale surveillance of every citizen, and a court system that has stripped legal protection from the poor — in effect, criminalizing poverty. The deindustrialization of the U.S. and impoverishment of the working class, especially people of color, has effectively severed many from society, turning them into outcasts who live in internal colonies under the boot of paramilitary armies of occupation.

The U.S. legal system, as under Stalin, shares a fondness for quotas, laying out in advance the number of arrests it needs, often for such non-crimes as selling loose cigarettes or having broken tail lights. Many police departments, prosecutor’s offices and even counties in the U.S. depend on revenue generated by imprisonment, tickets, fines and civil asset forfeiture — a form of legalized theft whereby the state can seize assets, including cash, cars and homes, alleged to be connected to unlawful activity, generally without requiring a conviction or even a criminal charge. A 2019 report by Governing, a research and analysis journal that focuses on local and state policies, found that nearly 600 small towns and cities across the U.S. obtain over 10 percent of their overall budget from such means. This increased to 20 percent of the budget for at least 284 towns and cities and to over 50 percent for 80 of them.

“Look for the brave in prison,” Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago echoing an old proverb, “and the stupid among the political leaders!”

The power of his book, arguably one of the greatest works of nonfiction from the twentieth century, is that it is as much a meditation on power, resistance and living a moral life, as it is a chronicle of the gulag. Solzhenitsyn, a university graduate and a Captain in The Red Army when he was arrested, wore his old officer’s coat to remind the guards and his fellow zeks of his former status. He had to learn to shake off the arrogance and hubris that came with his elevated position in society. Pride, he wrote, “grows in the human heart like lard on a pig.” The intoxication of power is a strong inducement to commit evil. Few are exempt.

“If my life had turned out differently, might I myself have become just such an executioner?” he wrote, suggesting that everyone should ask themselves that question.

“If only it were all so simple!” he lamented. “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

The initiation into this society of captives begins with arrest, a “shattering thrust, expulsion, somersault from one state into another.” It tosses the victims into what he calls a subterranean “sewage disposal system.”

“Each of us is a center of the Universe, and that Universe is shattered when they hiss at you, ‘You are under arrest,’” he wrote.

Upgrade to paid

But that is only the start. The interrogation is next, designed to coerce a confession. The tactics differ little across cultures or periods of history Sleeplessness. Physical intimidation. Lies. Threats. Prolonged isolation. The “conveyor” — continual interrogation for hours and days on end. My students knew from experience what Solzhenitsyn found out for himself, that “it is much smarter to play the role of someone so improbably imbecile that he can’t remember one single day of his life even at the risk of being beaten.”

What, he asked, “do you need to make you stronger than the interrogator and the whole trap?”

He wrote:

From the moment you go to prison, you must put your cozy past firmly behind you. At the very threshold, you must say to yourself: ‘My life is over, a little early to be sure, but there’s nothing to be done about it. I shall never return to freedom. I am condemned to die — now or a little later. But later on, in truth, it will be harder, and so the sooner the better. I no longer have any property whatsoever. For me those I love have died, and for them I have died. From today on, my body is useless and alien to me. Only my spirit and my conscience remain precious and important to me.’

Confronted by such a prisoner, the interrogator will tremble.

Only the man who has renounced everything can win that victory.

Solzhenitsyn argued that hope not grounded in reality is one of the greatest pacifiers in tyrannical societies: the belief that justice will ultimately prevail, that amnesty is on the horizon, that a life sentence will be commuted, that new evidence will surface which will result in a fair trial and freedom. This false hope, which Solzhenitsyn says is akin to religious belief among prisoners, is debilitating.

“Does hope lend strength or does it weaken a man?” Solzhenitsyn asked. “If the condemned man in every cell had ganged up on the executioners as they came in and choked them, wouldn’t this have ended the executions sooner than appeals to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee? When one is already on the edge of the grave, why not resist?”

He went on: “After all, we have gotten used to regarding as valor only valor in war (or the kind that’s needed for flying in outer space), the kind which jingle-jangles with medals. We have forgotten another concept of valor — civil valor. And that’s all our society needs, just that, just that, just that! That’s all we need and that’s exactly what we haven’t got.”

Hope is far more intangible. It is the ability in extreme situations to retain your humanity, your dignity and your self-worth, all of which prisons attempt to crush. Solzhenitsyn wrote of an incident at the Samarka Camp in 1946 when a group of intellectuals were facing imminent death, worn down by hunger, cold and punishing work details. They formed a seminar and delivered lectures to each other, even as participants slowly expired and were taken to the morgue.

This intangible hope is why the hours spent in a prison classroom are sacred. They restore and nurture the humanity and dignity of the demonized. In the experiences of others, it is possible to see one’s own experience and to be reminded that we are not who those in authority tell us we are.

Solzhenitsyn saw in those who rebel — even if the rebellion is doomed — the only route to freedom. Each act of rebellion, he wrote, creates imperceptible cracks in totalitarian edifices.

Solzhenitsyn described one solitary rebellion in the gulag:

In the spring of 1947 in the Kolyma, near Elgen, two convoy guards were leading a column of zeks. And suddenly one zek, without any prior agreement with anyone, skillfully attacked the convoy guards on his own, disarmed them, and shot them both. (His name is unknown, but he turned out to have been a recent front-line officer. A rare and bright example of a front-line soldier who had not lost his courage in camp!) The bold fellow announced to the column that it was free! But the prisoners were overwhelmed with horror; no one followed his lead, and they all sat down right there and waited for a new convoy. The front-line officer shamed them, but in vain. And then he took up the rifles (thirty-two cartridges, “thirty-one for them!”) and left alone. He killed and wounded several pursuers and with his thirty-second cartridge he shot himself. The entire Archipelago might well have collapsed if all former front-liners had behaved as he did.

Solzhenitsyn’s journey through the gulag was spiritual as well as physical. This journey resonated with my students, some of whom came into the prison illiterate or barely literate, and who doggedly worked their way into the college program. Those with long sentences had often told their wives to get divorces; their girlfriends to find someone else; their mothers, fathers and siblings to stop visiting; their friends and relatives to think of them as dead.

Those who survive best in prison are endowed with an antenna and emotional intelligence that allows them to quickly read the people around them, knowing whom to trust and whom to avoid.  Snitches are especially dangerous in prison. They are usually the first people in a prison uprising, including those in the gulag, to be killed by fellow prisoners.   

Solzhenitsyn wrote:

And always the secret sensor relay, for whose creation I deserved not the least bit of credit, worked even before I remembered it was there, worked at the first sight of a human face and eyes, at the first sound of a voice — so that I opened my heart to that person either fully or just the width of a crack, or else shut myself off from him completely. This was so consistently unfailing that all the efforts of the State Security officers to employ stool pigeons began to seem to me as insignificant as being pestered by gnats: after all, a person who has undertaken to be a traitor always betrays the fact in his face and in his voice, and even though some are more skilled in pretense, there was always something fishy about them.

Prisoners do not have the luxury to be nonviolent. Those who will not stand up for themselves in physical altercations are crushed. “People with soft, conciliatory expressions die out quickly on the islands,” he warned. No one will fight to protect you, although sometimes they will fight alongside you.

Prisoners, he insisted, have one composite commandment: “Don’t trust, don’t fear, don’t beg!”

It is only by letting go of pride, material possessions, a lust for power, personal advantage and even your life that you can protect your conscience and your soul.

“Do not pursue what is illusory — property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night,” he wrote. “[D]on’t be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn’t last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.”

I begin each class by having a student summarize the chapter being discussed. I assigned a chapter in the second volume titled “The Ascent” to Luis, who grew up in poverty in a housing project and was arrested at the age of 16 after robbing a jewelry store. His co-defendant shot and killed the jewelry store owner. Luis spent 31 years in prison for felony murder.

Solzhenitsyn wrote that prisoners can choose to survive at any price, which usually means “at the price of someone else.” Or they can undergo a “profound rebirth as a human being.”

Luis turned to the passage that read: “Let us admit the truth: At that great fork in the camp road, at that great divider of souls, it was not the majority of the prisoners that turned to the right. Alas, not the majority. But fortunately neither was it just a few. There are many of them — human beings — who made this choice.”

“It is not the result that counts! It is not the result — but the spirit! Not what — but how. Not what has been attained — but at what price,” Solzhenitsyn wrote.

I heard Luis’s voice break. He fought back tears. He was not only speaking of Solzhenitsyn’s transformation, but his own — and that of the other students in the classroom.

“Looking back, I saw that for my whole conscious life I had not understood either myself or my strivings,” Solzhenitsyn recalled. “What had seemed for so long to be beneficial now turned out in actuality to be fatal, and I had been striving to go in the opposite direction to that which was truly necessary to me.”

“And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me: ‘Bless you, prison!’,” he wrote.

A week after that class, I took the witness stand in a Jersey City courtroom at Luis’s resentencing hearing. I told the court about the class. I told them Luis was overcome with emotion because this was a chapter he, and most of my students, could have written.

Luis was released on December 15, a boy who grew up inside a prison, a man who became, as Solzhenitsyn did, a moral human being. I am not romantic about suffering. I saw a great deal of it as a war correspondent. Suffering can destroy you. But it can also elevate you. The tragedy is that Luis leaves so many good men and women behind.

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile
An interesting bit of history
« Reply #171 on: February 26, 2023, 04:18:37 PM »

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69135
    • View Profile
Re: The Price of Tyranny & Totalitarianism
« Reply #172 on: February 26, 2023, 07:53:01 PM »
Well that is inconvenient , , ,

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69135
    • View Profile
It is a lot easier when you are stupid
« Reply #173 on: August 17, 2023, 07:22:21 AM »
https://danconiajournal.substack.com/p/its-a-lot-easier-when-youre-stupid?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1016875&post_id=136129249&isFreemail=false&utm_medium=email&fbclid=IwAR3_bwqzItzrWdWMp4Tg33sjme-s09YtM5fftCt3hKLQBdcrgMbZwtDhKmY


It's a Lot Easier When You're Stupid

FRANCISCO D'ANCONIA
AUG 16, 2023
“Talking to her, he realized how easy it was to present an appearance of orthodoxy while having no grasp whatever of what orthodoxy meant. In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.”

— George Orwell, “1984”

I wish it were more difficult to apply Orwell’s writing to our current social and political situations. I wish Ayn Rand had not predicted the breakdown of a flourishing society of explorers and innovators with such alarming accuracy. I wish that so many of Fredreich Hayek’s writings had not proven as prophetic as they are informative. I wish that more people would read and understand the writings of people like Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Eric Hoffer, and HL Mencken, among many others. Why they thought what they thought. What created the worldview they expressed. What compelled them to share it with the world in print. I wish a lot of things in this vein, in fact. Wishing, however, won’t make a thing true anymore than hopes and dreams will. So here we are. For you small handful who’ll spend the time reading this reflection of a devoted individualist, it falls to my less capable mind and my less eloquent expression to try to drive home a fundamental point not only about what it means to be free, but what it ultimately means to be alive at all. It is my hope, my wish, at least, that you’ll think on it and share it with someone you know, someone who needs to hear it, some stranger to you who by their bearing and actions shows you that this is a lesson they might desperately need.

I written much and thought a good deal more about collectivism in all its sorts and the threats it poses to the liberty of Man and the freedom of thought. I’ve read the works of collectivists, trying to understand the appeal of the collective. I’ve worked my way, often disgusted but attempting to remain open-minded, through the philosophies of Socialism, of Communism, of Fascism. I’ve read and pondered other philosophical and political ideologies which have at their root the requirement of submission as a core tenet for belonging and acceptance. With so few exceptions that I cannot think of one as I sit here writing this, all share a common thread no matter how different their aims, structures, or methods seem to be. While it is possible to break this singular foundation into many disparate parts and ideas, they all grow from the same seed: As a member of this collective, you exist for the benefit of someone else. You, the individual, has no value. Your only measure of worth is how completely you are willing to submit to the desires of your masters. Everything else is meaningless.

It’s a big statement, I know. But let’s look at some common themes within Collectivist ideologies. To be clear, when I use the word “collectivist,” what I mean specifically are those ideologies which require a high degree of social, political, and economic conformity to a totalitarian or authoritarian set of standards. Systems like Communism and Socialism would fit this definition, but so too would fringe ideologies like radical Islamism or fundamentalist Christian groups. If a system of government, morality, economics, political thought, or social norms is defined by a small group or individual with total control, I am defining that as a Collective. When I wrote the entry “How to Make Radical Extremists” a little over a year ago in this Journal, I put forward the notion that “An extremist radical is an extremist radical regardless of their chosen ideology.” In that same vein, a collectivist is a collectivist regardless of their chosen “ism.” The way to tell is simple.

Like any map or field guide used in identification, there are signposts all over the place. They are things like “Centralized Control,” the need to keep power localized and in the hands of a small few who can dictate as many aspects as possible of daily life and thought, who can control money and movement, who can influence information and thought. Those in power will very often try to sell you on the notion that this centralization is intended to promote a sense of unity and eliminate perceived inequalities. Whatever the intent, that is not the effect. Another signpost is the so-called “Common Good.” Collectivist ideologies tend to emphasize the common good over individual interests. Their stated idea is that by prioritizing the needs of the community or the state, they can create a more equitable and just society. Again, this has never once been the end result in the whole of human history. All that happens is that individual liberties, individual expression, the individual pursuit of purpose, and individual innovation are crushed in the name of protecting the common good. Still another signpost is Economic Redistribution. This one has a bit of leftover stink on it still, a hanger-on from the days of the Red Scourge, but it’s making a comeback for reasons I’ll detail later. Like Amway, it keeps changing its name in order to confuse and disorient those who might correctly associate it with the scheme it is, but that doesn’t change the mechanics of the ideology. Collectivist systems advocate for some degree of economic redistribution to reduce “socioeconomic disparities.” This often involves government control or ownership of key industries or the seizure of individual assets, aiming to ensure that wealth and resources are more evenly distributed among the population. Ultimately, no matter what disguise it wears, it is a kleptocracy plain and simple. Still another signpost is the authoritarian control of information and the censorship of dissent. Collectivists tend to control information and communication to maintain their authority. Censorship and propaganda are often used to shape public opinion and suppress dissent, with the aim of maintaining ideological purity and preventing challenges to the ruling regime. This is evolving now, in the era of privately owned global communications platforms, but it is ultimately the same game by new rules. What the authorities cannot own or steal, they simply co-opt through abuses of power, political favors, corruption, or legal maneuvering to force compliance. Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Now I’d like to discuss a few of Collectivism’s more insidious tools. First is their presumed authority to define a collective moral or ethical framework. Many collectivist ideologies claim first and foremost to be underpinned by a strong moral and ethical framework. This framework guides behaviors and decisions in line with the ideology's core principles, and deviation from these principles can be seen as a threat to the collective's well-being. No matter how sincere the authoritarian leaders of a collective might be in devising this moral code, no matter how justified they may be in their claims that it is necessary, it always ends the same way - with subjects existing only in the form and fashion their leader says they may. Again, I’m not just talking about governments here. Your social collective does the same to you. If you step out of line, make a joke we don’t like, challenge an assertion we’ve made, pack your bags - you’re out of here, Jack. Another of the insidious tools of the collective is the promotion of (or demand for) uniformity and conformity. Collectivist systems may promote a sense of uniformity and conformity within society and will punish harshly those who deviate from or challenge it. This can manifest in standardized education, cultural expression, and even dress codes. Their stated goal is often to foster a sense of shared identity. More commonly, the real goal is to foster loyalty to the state or ideology. “Be Yourself,” they’ll preach, just as long as you do it the same way we do. Finally, we come to perhaps the most poisonous Collectivist idea of all. Collectivist ideologies often view society as divided into classes, with the dominant class oppressing the working class or other marginalized groups. This perspective supposedly drives their push for social and economic change to eliminate these perceived inequalities and create a more equal society. What happens, then, when they are in charge? What happens when the “oppressed” control things? When the oppressed minority sits in the highest seats of government, controls the media, controls private information sharing platforms, controls the legal system and wields the power to imprison and silence dissenters and opposing voices? Do they act then as unifiers? Or do they simply up the ante and deepen the divides so that no matter how much power they have managed to amass, they’re still seen somehow as “the minority?”

Something is happening to you right now, isn’t it? It’s happening to me as I list these signposts and describe them for you here. With each one, I see examples all around me. I see each and every signpost in bright neon, spotlighted against the scenery to make sure it isn’t missed, worn in various logos on hats and T-shirts for all to see. I see the collectivists walking around proud that they belong to the collective, aghast that anyone wouldn’t want to be counted among their numbers. If it’s not walking down the sidewalk outside your window, then open any news outlet in your browser and take stock. How is it possible that so many warnings can exist about the end state of this sort of thinking and at the same time so many people who ignore it all completely? How can the members of the collective ignore with such willful blindness the treatment of those who offend the collective? Treatment for the dissenters is harsh enough, but my God, the punishments saved for those members of the collective who dare to think or act outside the lines! How is all of this lost on them? Perhaps Orwell was right. Perhaps it really is a defense mechanism. The only way to stay even remotely sane amidst such madness is to keep oneself as ignorant as possible. Refusal to understand what’s happening, the scope and the gravity of it all, is the only way to exist within such a system and still manage any sense of contentment. They are the zombie-like patients at the old insane asylums, ambling up each day to take their medication, then ambling on again to wait for tomorrow’s dose, trusting that their medicine will keep out any real comprehension of what’s being done to them. They’d simply rather laugh at the idiots of Tik Tok or smirk at the free-thinkers and all their wild theories, going on about their day as an accepted and protected member of the collective. It’s easier that way. And as long as they stay that way, as long as they can be kept in that state, anesthetized to comprehension, they are good little members of the hive. In that state, clothed in the fervent faith in Party ideals, they’ll accept the “flagrant violations of reality” fed to them by those in control. Waking up to such control or to its consequences, understanding it even a little bit, is a threat to the whole house of cards. It’s why their punishments are so much more intense for apostates than for garden variety infidels.

The collective sleep works best for those who begin as outsiders seeking acceptance. Come in, get warm. We’ll protect you and empower you. Just don’t ask any questions and don’t try to exert any of that so-called “power.” It’s not really yours. It’s ours, and you can enjoy it vicariously so long as you don’t attempt to think for yourself. Just crawl into the cage we’ve made for you here and you’ll have food and security and a place to sleep. Nevermind that freedom and individuality nonsense. Where has that gotten you? Shhhh. Go to sleep now. For some, you can see how attractive a prospect that might be. For some. That’s why it works, of course. Because there are an awful lot of disaffected people out there who cannot fathom or accept the notion that they have the power, the agency, to change their lives and their world by their own thoughts, words, and deeds. That’s a hard path, both because it takes courage and resilience, and because the path is never clear - it isn’t defined for you, so you have to make your own roadmap as you go. Trusting the Collective’s “They” seems so much easier. It’s an idea that all collective authoritarians use. It’s a strategy they’d try to employ on the whole world if they could. And most times, if we’re honest with ourselves, it works. But it’s a lot easier if you’re stupid.

DougMacG

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18129
    • View Profile
Re: It is a lot easier when you are stupid
« Reply #174 on: August 17, 2023, 09:17:29 AM »
Yes, lots of things are easier to take if you're stupid or ignorant. Bob Seger connected with a lot of people with this line, "wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then".
« Last Edit: August 17, 2023, 09:22:06 AM by DougMacG »



Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69135
    • View Profile

Body-by-Guinness

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 1780
    • View Profile
Burn in Hell Vladimir Ilyich
« Reply #178 on: January 24, 2024, 09:50:22 PM »

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69135
    • View Profile

Body-by-Guinness

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 1780
    • View Profile
Remembering the Khmer Rouge
« Reply #180 on: March 28, 2024, 05:19:05 PM »