We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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to·tal·i·tar·i·an
–adjective
1. of or pertaining to a centralized government that does not tolerate parties of differing opinion and that exercises dictatorial control over many aspects of life.
2. exercising control over the freedom, will, or thought of others; authoritarian; autocratic.
–noun.
3. an adherent of totalitarianism.
Random House Unabridged Dictionary
But are those really the best definitions of totalitarian?
When someone uses the term ‘totalitarian’, we think of Stalin’s Soviet Union or Hitler’s Germany or Pol Pot’s Cambodia or Mao’s China. Those were indisputably totalitarian states. We think of gulags and killing fields. We think of secret police and surveillance.
Yet I would argue that all those things can just as satisfactorily described as ‘tyranny’ of whatever political completion. The thing that makes a place ‘totalitarian’ is not the nastiness of it or even the repressiveness of it, but the totality of state control. The real defining characteristic of totalitarian seems obvious from the word itself.
And what is a total state? It is a state in which there is no civil society, just politically derived rules by which people may interact. And I would argue the key to that is removing the right to free association, usually on grounds of ‘fairness’ or ‘diversity’ and by declaring private property to be ‘public’.
Britain has no gulags, no killing fields, it has a relatively free press (though less so than it was), it has no internal passports (though they are working on that with ID cards and panoptic surveillance)… but every year we take more and more steps towards the destruction of a voluntary civil society of free interaction and its replacement with a state in which no aspect of life is not politically regulated. This is often described as making things ‘more democratic’… and in that the supporters of the total state are not being disingenuous, for democracy is just a type of politics after all.
We are headed for a different kind of totalitarianism than that of Stalin or Hitler or Mao, but a total state really is what a great many people have in mind for us all. They seek a sort of ‘smiley face fascism’ in which all interactions are regulated in the name of preventing sexism, promoting health, and defending the environment. The excuses will not invoke the Glory of the Nation or the Proletariat or the Volk or the King or the Flag or any of those old fashioned tools for tyrants, but rather it will be “for our own good”, “for the Planet”, “for the whales”, “for the children”, “for the disabled” or “for equality”.
But if they get their way it will be quite, quite totalitarian.
There is an excellent article in the Telegraph by Charles Moore called What if Israelis had abducted BBC man?, addressing the morally demented attitude amongst the tranzi media and government set.
But just suppose that some fanatical Jews had grabbed Mr Johnston and forced him to spout their message, abusing his own country as he did so. What would the world have said?
There would have been none of the caution which has characterised the response of the BBC and of the Government since Mr Johnston was abducted on March 12. The Israeli government would immediately have been condemned for its readiness to harbour terrorists or its failure to track them down. Loud would have been the denunciations of the extremist doctrines of Zionism which had given rise to this vile act. The world isolation of Israel, if it failed to get Mr Johnston freed, would have been complete.
If Mr Johnston had been forced to broadcast saying, for example, that Israel was entitled to all the territories held since the Six-Day War, and calling on the release of all Israeli soldiers held by Arab powers in return for his own release, his words would have been scorned. The cause of Israel in the world would have been irreparably damaged by thus torturing him on television. No one would have been shy of saying so.
But of course in real life it is Arabs holding Mr Johnston, and so everyone treads on tip-toe. Bridget Kendall of the BBC opined that Mr Johnston had been “asked” to say what he said in his video. Asked! If it were merely an “ask”, why did he not say no?
Whatever one thinks of Israel’s policies on various issues, the nauseating double standards so consistently in play by so many ‘news’ organisations are something that need to be pointed out often and unapologetically. Charles Moore is to be commended for his article. Read the whole thing.
The latest weird twist in the Alexander Litvinenko assassination has been the release by prime suspect Andrei Lugovoi of his promised ‘stunning revelations’ about the case. His claim was that Litvinenko was in fact working for the British intelligence services and that MI6 had in fact attempted to recruit him as well
Now what makes this all really puzzling to me is that even if this is all true, far from taking the heat off himself and the Russian security services, he seems to in fact be providing the Russian spooks with an excellent motive for wanting to kill Litvinenko.
Am I missing something here?
There is an interesting article about the Russian government backed cyber attacks against Estonia.
(via Instapundit)
I just saw Barack Obama on television saying that he would introduce Universal Socialist Medical Care in the USA and for people who already have insurance policies, the only difference would be such people would pay less in premiums… everything else would be just as good. Yes, you too in the USA can have something as ‘wonderful’ as our decrepit National Health Service. You lucky, lucky people.
And presumably this conjuring act of creating wealth out of nothing with government impositions will come to pass purely via the Triumph of Barack Obama’s will.
Talk about delusional.
I mean really geeky! But cool nevertheless.
Although I care very little about the arguments regarding the merits of State Comprehensive Schools vs. State Grammar Schools, it is certainly a topic that has much excited Tories over the years.
Thus when Dave Cameron suddenly decided to jettison his party’s long standing support for Grammar Schools, calling their Tory supporters ‘delusional’, he has been rewarded by losing a member of his front bench, European spokesman Graham Brad MP, who has resigned in protest. And of course regardless of the fawning resignation letter, resigning the front bench is the political equivalent of publicly screaming “bite me, you halfwit loser!” in Cameron’s face. He was ticked off by the chief whip for his support of Grammar schools but rather than kowtow, he has taken his leave. I can respect that.
Who would have thought it? A Tory with principles? Damn! Brady is well out of it as he is clearly a man who was going to be very uncomfortable on the front benches with a weathervane like Cameron as leader.
And now I shall return to my profound indifference to the antics of inane party politics.
Venezuela is a case study of how democracy is no sure defence against tyranny and how it can actually be the means by which it comes about. I realise we already have the example of Germany in the 1930’s, but unlike the NSDAP, the democratic majority for Chavez was far less ambiguous than the ones that incrementally brought Hitler to power.
It was interesting to note how many on the left (with many honourable exceptions I must add) have supported the establishment of a state television monopoly in Venezuela once the Chavez regime announced it was going to shut down anti-government station Rádio Caracas Televisión.
However is good to see people on the street marching in defiance of Hugo Chavez. Will it make any difference? In the short run, probably not, but it is never wrong to make a stand against a tyrant regardless of how popular he may be.
There is an article on the Guardian site called Throw a pebble at Goliath: don’t buy Israeli produce, by Yvonne Roberts, in which she urges people to boycott Israel because of its human rights record.
Now I know nothing about Yvonne Robert and have never even heard of her before, but I assume she also an avid campaigner for people to boycott products from Cuba, Burma, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, China (good luck doing that), Iran, Syria, Belorus, Zimbabwe, North Korea (assuming they actually produce any products) etc. etc. etc… after all, if she is such a tireless campaigner for human rights, surely she could not possibly feel it was alright for people to trade with all those places, given the state of human rights in those places. Right?
Anyone want to take any bets on this?
The latest developments in the investigation into the assassination of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, who was killed last November in London, is interesting, to say the least.
To no one’s surprise (at least no one who is not a Kremlin stooge), the person the British Director of Public Prosecutions has charged with the murder is an former(?) member of the Russian security services, just as his victim was. The Crown Prosecution Service is formally demanding Andrei Lugovoi’s extradition from Russia.
What makes this really fascinating is that the CPS is well aware that the Russian state has a policy of not extraditing Russian nationals to other countries (nor are they in the habit of surrendering their assassins to foreign police no matter how politely they are asked). The fact they went ahead and made the demand for extradition anyway shows that the government is at last taking the threat Putin and his cronies pose seriously and this is an excellent way of dealing him a no-win hand politically, even though it will not result in Lugovoi being brought to justice. Although no one in an official capacity is saying the Putin regime ordered this murder on British soil, you do not have to squint very hard to see the writing between the lines.
Update: an new article in the Telegraph seems to confirm what I was suggesting about a determination to face Putin down. Good.
The other day I was watching the news and saw a story about a sudden influx of Romanian gypsy children into Slough (of all places). Several things struck me about the story.
Firstly, the children they interviewed were entirely candid about the reason they arrived in the UK: state welfare. They had come to Britain because they learned that all you have to do is turn up and you will be provided with free housing and food which is better than what they had in Romania.
They were entirely honest what their motives were. So I suppose unlike in Romania, they do not have to steal to support themselves, they are counting on the British state to do it for them. That said, several shopkeepers were also interviewed and they were aghast at the prospect of these new arrivals.
The second thing that really stuck me was the sheer idiocy of the spokesman that was quoted (I assume he was from Slough Council), who said “we are working to figure out how to reunite these children with their parents”, or words to that effect… as if these parasites were washed up after a storm rather than having intentionally travelled from Romania to Slough. Quite rightly the reporter commented that there was no indication these children were likely to oblige as they were clearly very satisfied with what they were being given.
However my guess is that once they have established themselves, they will indeed be “reunited with their parents”… who will arrive in the UK to do exactly the same.
It is interesting to contrast this with the highly successful influx of Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian and now Baltic immigrants into the UK over the last few years. High initiative, quickly integrating Eastern Europeans attracted by the more dynamic economy of Britain, have joined the work force and broader British society generally to the noticeable benefit of everyone… but in this case in Slough, the welfare system has attracted the worst kind of bare faced parasites from a predatory sub-culture. An interesting contrast and proof yet again that ‘immigration’ is not a problem, it is immigration-plus-welfare-handouts that causes the problems.
There is an excellent article in the Telegraph by Boris Berezovsky, the exiled anti-Putin Russian politician and businessman, called Why modern Russia is a state of denial.
First, Yeltsin lacked the will (or, maybe, the courage) to indict the communist regime as a criminal one – no less so than the Nazi regime, with all the resulting consequences for the communists themselves, and for their vanguard, the Soviet secret police. Second, Yeltsin also failed to lead Russia to repentance, to make every Russian acknowledge his own responsibility for the crimes of the communist regime. Without repentance, however, those who were oppressed and raped by Russia, such as Estonia and the other Baltic states, will never trust it again.
Great stuff and much the same point I have been making on the issue of former communist countries. Read the whole thing.
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