By Oleg Atbashian
Most modern-day leftists in Western countries have abandoned the idea of a
violent revolution, having replaced it with “the long march through
the institutions” as part of the culture war to transform
the society through cultural hegemony. Instead of
commanding firing squads, they play mind games of manipulative illusions, in
which the demonization of dissent plays a crucial role. The basic premise
hasn’t changed: as much as the statists want you to love them, they want you to
hate their opponents even more.
Until a time when political opposition can be eliminated completely, having
opponents can still be useful: you can steal their ideas, take advantage of
their desire to help the economy, and blame them for any of your own
failures. In the meantime, certain rules must be followed to control the
public opinion and, through it, the opposition itself.
Maintain the perception of being constantly under attack. Don’t
examine the opponents’ beliefs, nor answer their arguments. Discredit any
media channels that offer them a platform. Enforce the following media
template: the opposition is evil, treasonous, unfathomable, and
psychotic. They can’t be reasoned with. They are inspired by
fascism and financed by a conspiracy of shady oligarchs. Defame their
donors. Whatever the mischief you’re planning to pull off, accuse them of
doing it first; then proceed as planned, describing your actions as a necessary
intervention. And ridicule, ridicule, ridicule!
This is what made it easy for Stalin to purge his opponents: by the time he
charged them with treason, the orchestrated media coverage had already made
them universally hated. Having purged all of his enemies, Stalin
continued to manufacture the evidence of their presence. There came a
time when even the true believers were being rounded up and forced to confess
publicly about one or another fabricated “crime” against the people and the
Party. Some did it to avoid torture, some to save their families, and
some even cooperated out of the altruistic desire to support the illusion and
keep everyone else’s beautiful dream alive. Unfortunately for them, that
beautiful dream required human sacrifice.
At the same time, Stalin used the only remaining high-ranking Jew in his
government, Lazar Kaganovich, as a perpetual
scapegoat. Himself a ruthless henchman who organized a number of purges,
Kaganovich ended up serving in the capacity of an unpunishable bumbling idiot,
a “token Jew,” and a darkly comic relief. Implicitly blamed for one
government blunder after another, this Joe Biden of Stalin’s regime was moved
from ministry to ministry only to be blamed again and reassigned to yet another
top-level position. As expected, the people’s reaction was a universal
loathing and bewilderment: how can Comrade Stalin be so soft and trusting of
this evil Jew? Kaganovich outlived them all; he died in 1991, among friends and
family, at the age of 97.
Across the ocean, years later, the same rules still apply. The
perception of a relentless struggle with the opposition must be permanent and
persuasive. Even in the times of calm and prosperity the people must
think that the opposition is holding them hostage and only the firm, wise
guidance of the People’s Leader is saving them from imminent ruin. When
the opponents are too few, too weak, and too disoriented to put up a real
fight, their power and influence must be exaggerated.
Ever since “crybaby” John Boehner became the GOP House Speaker, the media
grotesquely overstated the effectiveness of his fruitless, anemic
leadership. Among other things, this patent exaggeration allowed Obama to
maintain his saintly image while shifting the responsibility for the staggering
economy onto “Republican obstructionism.”
The following quotes by “citizen journalists” exemplify the public outrage
created by the media template of demonizing the opposition. Unlike the
honed professionals who can mask their agenda with superficial objectivity,
these amateurs let their emotions run wild without realizing that they are
being played. Like children, they connect the preprinted dots and eagerly
tell us what they see:
Opposition is
anti-American: The Republican leaders have remained consistent with
their agenda of obstructing the President clearly putting their party ahead of
the American people.
Opposition is racist: How far do you
think Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner and his cohorts in the
House will go in their campaign to defeat America’s first black President?
Opposition is grotesquely
absurd: The clowns - Boehner and McConnell -
ignored the needs of the nation to do what they thought was best for themselves
. . . to solidify their positions of power and secure their own political
futures by tearing down President Obama and America in the process.
Opposition is deceitful: In their effort
to make President Obama look weak, Republicans played a dangerous game with the
debt ceiling and in the process threw away America’s triple-A credit rating…
Those Republican obstructionists really know how to twist the facts to support
the anti-Obama political campaign.
Opposition is
undemocratic: They have essentially fought to block anything and
everything the Democrats have proposed and offered nothing in the way of
alternatives. So egregious is their barricade of democracy that they have
no defense against charges of deliberate sabotage at the expense of American
citizens.
Opposition is mind-boggling: Missing from
President Obama’s acceptance speech in Charlotte last Thursday is one potent
argument: An attack on obstructionist Republicans in Congress. … It’s a mystery
because a major reason the economy has not done better under Mr. Obama is that
Republicans have blocked virtually every initiative he has proposed, even when
the president, especially in the early months of his administration, tailored
many of his proposals to attract Republican support.
Opposition is guilty of
treason: If an enemy declared war on the American economy,
the United States would spare no effort to remove that threat to its prosperity
and national security. So it was with Osama Bin Laden… But when the
Republican Party threatens … to sabotage the U.S. economy if its debt ceiling
demands are not met, the media instead calls that treason a “debate.” … And
that’s not politics as usual. That’s treason.
Just like painting by numbers doesn’t make one an artist, actors or singers
who are good at articulating prepared lines don’t automatically become
articulate thinkers. Being in the business of selling emotions rather
than rational arguments, they connect the same old media dots as any other
amateur — but do it with extra flair and aplomb. Extrapolating the lines
allows them to see horns on the head of the opposition. Voilà! They can’t
shut up about such an amazing insight.
Harry Belafonte even went as far as suggest that Obama should “work like a third world
dictator and just put all these guys in jail” — because,
obviously, since the Republicans “are violating the American desire,” the “only
thing left for Barack Obama to do” is to pull a Stalin: praise Barack and jail
the opposition.
Even if he said this in jest, Belafonte’s call for political repressions is
a logical extension of the ideas shared by many celebrities who have been
swayed by and are now promoting the leftist cultural hegemony. That
includes Woody Allen, who said this in an
interview to a Spanish-language magazine: “It would be good… if [President
Obama] could be dictator for a few years because he could do a lot of good
things quickly.”
This begs a question: if Obama is not a socialist, why do his supporters
interpret his reelection as “the American desire” to establish a totalitarian
dictatorship — and think this would be a good thing? So much for “socialism
with a human face.”
No wonder the “hegemonized” Hollywood filmmakers (starting with Charlie
Chaplin inThe Great Dictator), can never truthfully depict either the
Soviet or Nazi totalitarian regimes. Unable to fathom the motives of
their fictional villains, they wind up supplanting the collectivist realities
of socialism (be it national socialism or international socialism) with
grotesque caricatures of improbable monsters, uncultured brutes, neurotic
sociopaths, or sadistic, sexually repressed perverts. It never occurs to
them that unspeakable crimes could be committed in the name of “the common
good” by very ordinary, altruistic people — out of an all too familiar desire
to “do a lot of good things quickly” through dictatorial powers. Such a
notion would be too terrifying, of course, because they might just recognize
their own reflection in the mirror.
Though many of them may have seen this quote by C.S. Lewis, it is doubtful
that their conditioned minds are capable of grasping its meaning: “Of all
tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the
most oppressive… [T]hose who torment us for our own good will torment us
without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
Their young audiences, deprived of adequate education and learning about
history and current events from Hollywood movies and TV shows, will not
recognize the symptoms of an encroaching totalitarianism either. Upon
hearing a dissenter who disparages the benevolent guidance of the state, they
will immediately recognize a stereotype that is being relentlessly demonized
and dehumanized on their screens: the ignorant, close-minded, right-wing nut
job. Chances are they will smugly ridicule him with the jokes they heard
from their favorite media personalities. In another generation, they may
as well feel morally obligated to report the dissenter to the authorities — and
be thrilled at the chance to partake in the historic mission of crushing the
remnants of the evil reactionaries, even if they happen to be their parents.
Today’s American intellectuals are retracing the steps of their Soviet
predecessors in the early days of the socialist dictatorship. Having had
hopes to see the workers’ paradise in their lifetime, many came to regret their
misguided enthusiasm, as they themselves fell victim to the popular illusions
they helped to induce, when a mere slip of a tongue, a drunken remark, or an
accusation by someone in the new generation of socialist intellectuals who
wanted to take their job, wife, or apartment, led them to be lumped with any of
the large assortment of the thoroughly demonized and dehumanized “enemies of
the people.”
There is only one way to redistribute wealth: human sacrifice, with
optional variations of manipulative mind games to ease the pain and maintain
control over the population. All those who claimed they can do it
differently were doomed, sooner or later, to retrace the same path.
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