Gulag, Western Style, Americans Finding Courage To Fight Media's False Narratives

Gulag, Western Style

There are various ways of quashing social and political dissent, some more effective than others. The “Soviet method” practiced in stringently repressive regimes—torture, imprisonment, the ever-expanding Gulag, summary execution—works extremely well in the shorter historical timeframe, until a people rise up in revolt or such demonic societies collapse from their own internal contradictions. Of course, the truly Stygian regimes, closed to the world, indifferent to economic pressures, and under the heavy boot of unbroken military control, such as North Korea, may persist indefinitely or until defeated in war. But generally speaking, the tried-and-true methods of political oppression are sufficient to the task of keeping a population in a state of enslavement for a prolonged historical period.

In the sphere of the liberal West, however, there are other means of subjection to the will of increasingly centralized governments. Because they tend to function gradually and under the radar, these tactics are enormously efficient in their deadening effects, going unrecognized until it is often too late to mount significant resistance. They operate through a process of curricular distortions, social pressure and incremental legislation targeting speech habits, facets of normal behavior, assumptions of what counts as morally legitimate, and financial and job security.

A useful technique for anaesthetizing the individual citizen and rendering him compliant is the erasure of authentic historical knowledge. We’ve remarked the success of this approach in the U.S. with the “history from below” or “people’s history” movement, associated with Howard Zinn, and the foregrounding of a bowdlerized version of Islamic history in American schools.

Canada is no different. Eric McGeer, author of Words of Valediction and Remembrance: Canadian Epitaphs of the Second World War, writes: “In my last years of high school teaching I was increasingly infuriated and disgusted at the portrayal of Canada in the history textbooks assigned for use in our courses. There was no sense of gratitude in the textbooks, no empathy with the people of the past or an attempt to see them in their own terms, no sense of the effort people made to create one of the few truly liveable societies on earth. You would have thought that this country was nothing more than a racist, bigoted, this or that-phobic hotbed. My first lesson involved taking the book and dropping it into the waste paper basket and advising the students to do the same.” (personal communication). The study of history, McGeer concludes, is nothing now but a progressive morality tale and a mechanism of social engineering. Sounds a lot like Title IX. Pride in one’s nation, its accomplishments and sacrifices, is contra-indicated. There is more than one way of burning the flag.

The oligarchic agenda can be detected in the disastrous nationalization of the health care system; the decadence of an academy which indoctrinates rather than educates; the rise of destructive feminism and the feminization of the culture; the transgendering of everyday life—in Canada, for example, Bill C-16 has been tabled, making “gender expression” a prohibited ground of discrimination and potentially mandating non-binary pronouns such as zhi or hir, as is already the case in New York City where astronomical fines are levied for contravention; the special status ascribed to the incursions of anti-democratic Islam; the “abolition of the family,” as Marx and Engels urged in The Communist Manifesto; and the regulatory strangling of the free market economy and the conjoint attrition of the middle class. 

A Romanian friend who suffered through Nicolae Ceaușescu’s dictatorship in his home country tells me that in many ways the situation in the “freedom loving” West is actually worse. 

In Romania, as in the Soviet Union and the rest of the Eastern Bloc, most people knew that the regime was founded on lies and that the media were corrupt, time-serving institutions. Here, on the contrary, people tend to believe that the government is relatively, if not entirely, trustworthy, that the judiciary is impartial, and that the media actually report the news. Citizens are therefore susceptible to mission creep and are piecemeal deceived into a condition of indenture to socialist governance, an activist judiciary, a disinformative, hireling press corps, and left-wing institutions. 

People will vote massively for the Liberal Party in Canada and the Democrats in the U.S., not realizing they are voting themselves into bondage, penury and stagnation. The process operates insensibly and takes longer to embed itself into the cultural mainstream, but the result is alarmingly effective and durable. My friend has never read F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom or George Orwell’s 1984, but his layman’s insights and practical experience bear out Hayek’s scholarly analysis and Orwell’s dire warnings.

A totalitarian regime will control its citizens through propaganda, censorship, and outright violence, modes of oppression that are at least publicly demonstrable, evident to most. But knowing that the enchainment of the spirit is ultimately more reliable than the enchainment of the flesh, a democratic polity veering towards oligarchy will focus on propaganda and censorship as well, but in a far more subtle form. It will function mainly through public shaming rituals, social ostracism, rigid speech codes, Orwellian disinformation, and legal or quasi-legal assault. It does not need to depend on physical violence.

Fear of social rejection, the lure of groupthink, the pestilence of political correctness controlling what one may say and think, public apathy, historical ignorance, and especially the Damoclean sword of selective hiring, job dismissal, and financial reprisal go a long way to subdue a people to the will of its masters and consign them to a Gulag that may be less observable a such, but one that is nonetheless socially and economically crippling to individuals, families and businesses.

In the last analysis, this system of subjugation looks to be even more effective than the cruder techniques of its tyrannical counterparts. In the absence of public awareness and concerted pushback, we will have sold our birthright for a mess of political potage.

Americans Finding Courage to Fight Media's False 'Racism' Narrative

During the presidential campaign, Republicans were warned repeatedly -- and often with hysterics -- that if Donald Trump were elected, the GOP would become the “racist party,” thus losing all legitimacy and power.

Now that Trump has won the election, these fear-mongers are doubling down, redefining the GOP with their own racist imaging and with their own stigmatized labeling. They have created an outrageously false version of reality for purposes of knocking it down, now accusing Trump of remaking the Republican Party in the image of the (historically Democratic) KKK.

A prime example comes from Jonathan Chait, who has written a disgraceful, disingenuous article for New York magazine. Chait brings false allegations of racism against Trump and his proposed team, and then concludes:

See, it’s turning out just as we said: Trump has redefined the GOP as the racist party.

Chait is hoping, of course, that if he repeats this lie often enough it will become true. He writes:

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign bludgeoned modern norms about the acceptability of racism.

Absurd, and cowardly. What Trump bludgeoned was the Left’s “norm” of labeling anyone who doesn’t agree with its agenda as “racist.” That norm won’t be acceptable anymore, Jonathan.

Trump and his followers punched through the Left’s manipulation and control of racial politics that have been holding American principles -- such as free speech -- captive. This wasn’t a “whitelash,” as Van Jones called it, but a backlash against the false bigoted stereotyping employed by Jones and Chait.

Of course, “whites” weren’t the only ones on board with the breaking of the Left’s norms. African Americans have seen how the Left has used the label of racism as a means to incite white guilt in order to manipulate, and they have spoken out against it. For two excellent examples, read Shelby Steele’s White Guilt and Burgess Owens’ Liberalism, or How to Turn Good Men into Whiners, Weenies and Wimps.

For decades, any pushback against the authoritarian, anti-American agenda of the Left has been labeled “racist” in one way or another. The tactic was meant to silence opposition (something I explained in “The Sordid History of Liberals Calling Republicans Racists”), and it worked -- until good people got tired of it and fought back.

The overwhelming majority of Republicans were sick and tired of being labeled racist due to a rejected fringe of actual racist hangers-on. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party accepted a much larger segment of actual racists and terror supporters within its tent -- see the New Black Panthers, CAIR, La Raza, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Yet, Chait insists on advancing the false narrative that Trump has made the GOP racist. Perhaps he feels he must lie, of course.

Because the only way the Left can enact its agenda and regain power with its anti-individual, anti-liberty policies is by lying about the opposition.

Analysts Tally at Least 52 Uses of Chemical Weapons by ISIS

Appeals Court Upholds School District’s Order for Teacher to Cleanse Christianity From Classroom

Merkel Declares War On "Fake News" As Europe Brands Russia's RT, Sputnik "Dangerous Propaganda"

Russia, China Boost Military Ties to Jointly Battle Terrorism

Syrian Army Prepares to Storm Aleppo's East