We should be able to agree that, in today’s ever-coarsening discourse, there are dangerous echoes of these fictional characters who anticipated the Bolsheviks and Stalinists—the destroyers of ancient civilizations who burned it all down only so they could rebuild the world in their own image.
We know how this turned out, and for those who have forgotten, or for those who are too young or ignorant to know, we should remind them over and over: Those who questioned the revolution, objected to any of its ends or means, thought there might be something worth preserving, were deemed hostile combatants or hapless chumps whose false consciousness inhibited progress. In the end, they were all airbrushed. In the end, the way one escaped this airbrushing was to signal, with a great and inauthentic virtue, that one was not a hostile combatant by spotlighting the real enemies of progress. Whether these enemies were real or “real” was immaterial. Only idiots worried about the truth. There was no truth. What was most important was to keep one’s head down and, if need be, accuse wantonly. Accuse! Accuse! Accuse! Or as Americans like to say, the best defense is a good offense. Everyone knew this would never lead to the place they had been promised it would lead to, but what else was there to do? As the violence ratcheted up, it was necessary to signal with ever greater ferocity, to name more names, to out more wrong-thinkers, until all that was left was the pathetic, bloodless corpse of a country dislodged from itself.
When I imagine this people we are becoming, I think of old men I have interviewed, in Moscow, Minsk, Brest, Kiev, Tblisi, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, who once spent a year or two or 10 or 20 in a camp in the far north or far east of Russia. This was in the 1940s and ’50s. Their crime was usually petty or not even a crime. It often had to do with survival—stealing a stale loaf of bread. Or talking to the wrong person, or saying something impolitic. Or being accused, without any evidence, of something worse.
Peter Savodnik
July 14, 2020
Woke America Is a Russian Novel
[Via Ed Driscoll.
So, it’s not just me seeing the parallels between Russia and the U.S.—Joe]
Or being a family member of any of the above categories.
Spot on observations! This is an old play book. And the plot twists are well known to anyone who cares to look.
The biggest difference I see is that America has not been disarmed. The old guard commies understood this most important step. Because they knew there was never enough storm troopers to pull it off. (As a marine sergeant once said, There’s about 300 people in DC, if they were dragged into the street and executed. The whole bullshit game would end.) Because communism is a feeling, it can change abruptly. It requires a constant sense of powerlessness on the part of the victim to maintain control. Armed hopelessness is a communist worse fear.
This younger generation doesn’t appear to be able to sit still long enough to pull it off. The Omar’s, AOC’s, and such, appear to believe their own bullshit.
And like most feelings junkies I’ve run into in life. They just can’t understand that you wouldn’t believe them. No matter how obvious the lie their telling.
The one thing I am certain of. Is that the American experiment into communism isn’t going to end well for anyone living here. And probably not for most of the world. And to whom that is a desirable outcome only time will tell.
And the god’s of the copy book headings. With terror and slaughter return!
The second amendment will have been the way to get us to kill each other rather than having the government spend their own resources to kill us.
People vastly underestimate the number of weapons held by the Russian people. When the Russian army disintegrated in 1917, the soldiers simply went home, taking their Mosins with them. The key factor was that the Bolsheviks were organized and the peasants weren’t so they were defeated in detail. Sound familiar.
Shortly before the Soviet Union fell, the KGB estimated that there were 17M illegal weapons floating around in Russia. Some of these were undoubtedly the WWI Mosins that had been under the floorboards for 3 generations. Some more picked up from WWII battlefields and looted from depots, etc. Events suggested that this was a huge underestimate. Militias were able to come up with APCs and attack helicopters. When Beslan happened, vast numbers of weapons were brought to the scene by local citizens.
So your saying the Russian people just didn’t have the resolve to use them? Or that government tactics were that effective?
Population control is generally done with swarming tactics. Bringing in large numbers of troops and crushing areas. Then moving to the next hot spot. Leaving bodies and horror stories to do their work for them. Which is what one would expect here, if it comes to that.
It’s a good case study of human nature in crisis. Got more? Inquiring minds, you know.
That assumes it’s a relatively well organized communist government putting down the rebels. I don’t think that’s model to apply at this point in the game.
Also, I suspect the Russian peasantry didn’t have the same mindset as a significant number of U.S. citizens do. How many competitive 3-gun shooters would it take to reduce one of the communist mobs in Portland or Seattle down to a level such that they were no longer combat effective?
I know people being trained by former Rangers and Special Ops people to run urban area “operations”. These people have a much different mindset, skill level, and equipment than the Russian peasantry.
The snowflakes found out about that mindset in Austin the other night, looks like.
Of course: It’s the same movement today as 100 years ago, as six thousand years ago. As Savodnik said in the first paragraph, “destroyers of ancient civilizations”. If you’d ever been involved in a small time street gang, you’d find the structure and culture similar. If you’d been around in Ancient Rome you’d find it familiar. If you been around in Ancient Greece you’d find it familiar. If you’d been around in Babylon in the time of Nimrod, or during the time of Nebuchadnezzar which was the time of Daniel the prophet, you’d recognize the same elements still operating today.
Hmmm…. It’s almost is if all these “different” movements have the same advisor, using the same playbook.
I can not but help to think of today’s mob and rioters along with their enablers as the modern-day equivalent of the Russian revolutionaries. The parallels are just too eerie to think otherwise.
What really bothers me that are too many people that are simply unwilling to accept this view. I suspect that part of the reluctance is that outcome is too extreme/horrible for people to accept. I got the same reaction years ago when I mentioned SJWs. And then again with Project 1619.
You point to a lack of the understanding of history, to poor education. If those who fail to understand the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it, and if the perpetrators of the historical evils were in charge of the schools, well, we’d get what we’re getting of course.
Perhaps, but I think it is more of a reluctance to accept that some people are evil. Then note that early warning signs of evil are vague, uncertain, and unknowable as is a lot of life.
Captain! It’s the Zenite gas! (Babylon);
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/f7dc8572-abb3-43c1-b58f-0ce819a72d8f
And it isn’t as though the current powers are all oblivious to their Babylonian character. A few of them know exactly what they’re doing;
https://architecturehereandthere.com/2016/12/28/eu-new-brussels-hq/
You’ll find depictions of the Tower of Babel in the seals and symbology of government institutions and fraternal organizations throughout the world today. If anyone is tempted to believe that those symbols are all around us all by random chance, over and over again, then one must ask himself; why are they there, or anywhere, at all? Why are the Roman faciae and the “goddess of reason” found in practically all of our capitol buildings? Why is there an obelisk (reference to the sun-god, Ra) in WA DC, in the Vatican and in the City of London? Why is the laurel wreath (a crown of the Cesars of Rome) encompassing the world in the United Nations logo., etc., etc., etc?
And if modern governments are all so secular and scientific as they’d like us to believe, then why are they so infused with Pagan, Roman, Greek, Medo-Persian and Babylonian religious symbology and nomenclature? One could produce a list of examples a mile long, but if you think about it just a little bit you’ll notice that it’s quite common, even prevalent, notably among the scientific fraternity as well: They at times even revel in it.
So what’s my point? Far from being secular, far from rejecting religion because it is irrational and they are rational and practical, the powers that be embrace paganism and even outright Baal worship, and specifically reject and oppose every aspect of the narrative of the Bible which is the narrative of Jesus Christ.
You, Joe, are standing up bravely and pointing a finger at the anti-Christ, the conglomerate Beast of Revelations and that whore (the institution of the papacy) which rides the beast. You have some penetrating discernment and yet some remaining confusion: You think this is a contest between reason and superstition, with some people’s evil (lust for power) complicating the matter. In fact it is a conflict between the two opposite religious doctrines; they being the doctrine of the serpent together with Man’s own laws, and the doctrine of Christ and God’s law.
This is the ultimate “red pill, blue pill” decision: Do I look upon the conflict between the two doctrines, which has been raging throughout all history, which never changes, and the evidence of it which surrounds me, or do I insist on attributing the conflict to various other things which pop up randomly and for a host of unrelated reasons, or indeed to anything BUT the war of the two doctrines? One can readily see it either way, at least for now, but I submit to you that the doctrine of Christ is by far the more logical (the main problem being that it’s been so misrepresented as to make it seem as illogical and stupid as anything).
This is no simple conflict of brute force, of push verses shove, either. THAT would be too easy! The enemy is extremely intelligent, a master of psychological operations, of ideological subversion and manipulation. NO one escapes it! But once you begin to see the tactics at play, and the strategy, and take a look through time at the consistency with which the conflict has been perpetrated, as you are now doing, you’ll eventually begin to see who the enemy of the prideful and power-hungry enemy really is: The enemy of the enemy is the Creator himself, and His law, and His justice and His mercy embodied in Christ. To put it another way; the enemy of the prideful and power-hungry enemy is reality, something which, I submit, you’ve known at some level all along.