Resurrected Soviet Ghosts in America
“Cancel culture,” a pernicious concept involving harassment, censorship and intimidation, is sweeping our collective social landscape like a prairie firestorm. For some odd reason, people have gotten it into their heads that differing opinions are not only dangerous, but legitimate targets for violence and threats. Under this new social contract, one must hold approved positions on a panoply of issues or face banishment from the “privileges” of society. You know, privileges like employment, or safety from slavering mobs.
Indeed, one may find themselves “canceled” for acts and opinions of long ago, many of which one no longer holds or advocates. In some cases, mere association with the disfavored is sufficient to merit treatment reminiscent of the pogroms of Stalin.
The reasons for this are many, and the mechanisms by which these deplorable tactics have achieved mainstream approbation are a subject for book-length treatment, not a blog post, but suffice it to say the cycle of history has once again ensured the body politic will suffer for its failure to teach the mistakes of the past, to prevent them from becoming the tragic errors of our future.
As I’ve long said, the are only two sorts of people - those who just want to be let alone and those who cannot keep their hands to themselves. The former recognize the dangers of ignoring human nature when crafting public policy. The latter depend on historical ignorance to grease the skids for new iterations of tired, discredited ideologies and the toxic policies flowing from them.
In the Stalinist era of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the Communist Party – known simply as “the Party,” (given the nonexistence of any others!) had a vast nation to govern, and only mismanaged resources for doing so.
Like all creatures of the Left, Stalin instinctively looked to a solution based on restriction, not expansion. Rather than unleash the ingenuity of his people, he initiated programs designed to both reduce population, and better control those who remained. Tens of millions died in the Holodomor, a forced famine/starvation program directed against the Ukrainian people, but this was by no means the only such initiative; millions more were sacrificed to foolish schemes of collective farming and micro-managed industrial production, both of which failed utterly to achieve even a fraction of the output of the systems they replaced.
Once people have been forced to see the torment of starvation assail and conquer those they love, it is unsurprising that loyalty to the state was in precariously short supply. Communism requires obedience, regardless of motivation. However, where volition is absent, the Leftist is gleefully willing to settle for coercion.
The “Party line” was enforced with no exception. Nonsensical claims and demonstrably false narratives were propagated to the citizens as unquestionable truth. While acceptance of these fantastical claims remain bewildering to us, the poor souls living under these regimes knew all too well that accepting and parroting these narratives was the ticket to drawing their next breath.
Used as a tool to control behavior, tightly crafted narratives were employed to gauge citizen loyalty. Tenets of Party doctrine were applied to every circumstance of daily life, with no quarter given to any who disagreed. Neighbors, co-workers, even family members were expected to inform on dissenters. An arrest would be made, evidence gathered (or manufactured) and all those connected to the prisoner were expected to “denounce” them publicly. All orchestrated to give the State their ultimate prize - evidence that loyalty to the Party supercedes even the bonds of love and family.
Refuse to denounce their target, and you would join them in prison, or be executed alongside them. Then, the whole circle would revolve again, this time revolving around you, drawing all connected to you into its orbit, an insatiable black hole of endless fear threatening to swallow whole any who failed to behave as directed.
The culture of denouncing informed Soviet rule for the better part of the 20th century, as the primary tool of the Police State. The list of narratives over which millions lost their lives is astonishing. The most alarming detail being the sheer inanity of the State’s position. In hindsight, we see so much death and suffering over ludicrous Party claims, such as “there is no mental illness in the Soviet Union. That is a phenomenon of the corrupt Capitalists.” Clearly, a government enforcing adherence to such a demonstrably false assertion would not be a government concerned with the mental health of its citizens, nor able to protect the innocent from the predations of the criminally insane.
Likewise, the official denial of venereal disease in the Soviet union (again, decried as a product of a corrupt Western promiscuity) kept military doctors from properly treating soldiers, as all manner of STD’s spread like wildfire through the Red Army. Civilians who contracted an STD were arrested and shipped away as moral defectives, with their families and friends expected to denounce them as such, or join them in the boxcar. These are just two among the countless thousands of similarly indefensible excuses to apply the “final solution” to those who refused to worship the State.
It’s a startling thing, to see millions of people forced to accept, even propagate obvious nonsense, to avoid the wrath of the powers that be. Much like those who would “cancel” you for not trumpeting the existence of more genders than versions of Heinz steak sauce (57 and rising?) Or the fury directed at an honest, good father who takes exception to a fully-grown man “identifying” as a 7 year old girl in order to use the Women’s rest room.
These are the narratives of the “Woke” in America, and “Canceling” is just a westernized version of Soviet denunciation.
If the "woke" mob is still nursing a grudge against people who haven't been alive for centuries, mindlessly tearing down monuments and memorials to anything dating back further than the date of their own birth, do you really think changing your business logo or tossing them money is going to protect you?
Will you evade “cancellation” when you object to having your businesses looted? Or when you express doubt that transgenderism is anything other than a grotesque mental defect requiring treatment, not indulgence? How about when you use a gun to save yourself from being beaten to death by a riotous mob? Better come up with a plan quickly.
The ghosts of Soviet rule are being resurrected right here in America.