Political dissidents

Isn't the Twitter kerfuffle about the BBC Cotton Ceiling piece playing out as living examples of everything we're discussing here?

Thanks, Fanny. I’m staggered that your half-Russian friend’s family hadn’t heard of Solzhenitsyn. But it is frightening how quickly knowledge is lost.

I only heard of Solzhenitsyn because he was so famous after he won the Nobel prize in 1970. But we were encouraged at school and university, as well as at home, to read widely. Now most young people get most of their information through social media, which naturally focuses on current interests in fairly small areas.

I thought the huge uncontrolled Internet would mean more freedom of thought and knowledge and news etc. But as it turns out, how easy it is for vested interests to control the flow of information.

The longer it takes for enough people to realise what’s happened and protest, the more entrenched this severely enforced ideology becomes.

Yes, and as language changes to queer the words sex, woman, transphobia, etc, it gets harder and harder to describe ourselves or our needs or to explain why we need the legal protections that have disappeared before anyone even realised.

Plus, as you say, women are publicly punished for even daring to speak about what's happening, and others are so terrified that the slightest inflection in tone might be detected as doubt that they over-egg their enthusiasm for gender ideology by demonstrating just how anti-woman they are, for their own safety. But you can't point that out because then you're patronising them and robbing them of their agency to be submissive if they want to be.

It's the same old patriarchy in turbo mode.

Thanks, Andante. I think a lot of us feel the same, don’t we, staring at the king “in his new clothes”, seeing clearly that he is naked but not being allowed to say so. More and more of us are now daring to speak, but those that are heard are punished.

The longer it takes for enough people to realise what’s happened and protest, the more entrenched this severely enforced ideology becomes. So the more children have grown up believing it uncritically. Then they are the adults and in power.

Perhaps the life of Ai Weiwei is more current and relatable - I took DD to an exhibition at the Royal Academy (pr-Covid obv) which was really interesting and powerful. We had a great day out. So I might give her this for Christmas though I see it is £25 - will see if I can find a cheaper copy but then again it is probably a book that actually is worth a big investment.

www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/24/1000-years-of-joys-and-sorrows-by-ai-weiwei-review-a-life-of-dissent

Great thread OP and lots of thoughtful, knowledgeable posts and links. I've been thinking the same thing @thinkingaboutLangCleg but you have articulated it so perfectly.
I read a lot of Solzhenitsyn a long time ago and really ought to reread as I was too young to really understand the deeper messages.
I was interested to discover that DD's friend, half Russian, a very international highly educated family, had never heard of Solzhenitsyn. I gave her and several of the friends a copy of A Day in the Life if Ivan Denisovich which is a slim copy and a good introduction to life in the gulag.

I only remember him vaguely as a nice bloke - I was young at the time - but my parents were very shaken up by it. It's something that has always made me appreciate living in a democracy.

Does the loss of freedom, or the collapse of a culture, often happen like this?
I was thinking within the past couple of days about the fall of the Roman Empire. I don't know enough about it to draw comparisons, though.

However, I have lived under two different repressive governments (as in, a family friend wound up dead for expressing Wrong Think), and we aren't there yet.

I've been wondering the same thing @thinkingaboutLangCleg. I'm very worried that by the time you notice it, it's too late. That includes myself, having become interested in this only within the past three years or so, and I suspect will definitely be the case for people who fail or refuse to recognise the problem.

It's a very entrenched issue. Like @Libertaire, I've been thinking for a while that a problem was in the offing. I think I first said it when the press didn't report on Cologne... Almost six years ago now.

If the Left wasn't prepared to have a conversation about this, the Right was going to make hay. And lo...

We have ended up with a situation where a huge amount of public discourse isn't there to explore the facts, but rather is being used to push a particular political line. Not just about gender - also history, also rural affairs/ conservation. It's incredibly disheartening to realise just how many people are either deeply deluded or just not honest actors, who are prepared to cherry-pick and misquote in order to prove their point. It's even worse when they are in positions of influence and thus able to influence the tone of public debate. It's enraging when you have expertise in a particular topic and read something and think 'WTF? No, he did NOT say that. No, that was NOT how that happened - didn't you read the diary that... oh, you cite it but chose to ignore it.'

I'd also like to say that I have enjoyed @EmbarrassingHadrosaurus's posts about Solzhenitsyn and Robert Lifton. I need to go back and reread them, because I'm too knackered at the moment to take much in, but when I read them I thought, yes, this is the sort of grounding I need.

Sorry, this a rather inarticulate and muddled post compared to a lot of what is posted on this board, but I have a couple of glasses inside me and I'm knackered.

I've been wondering at this for a while. Does the loss of freedom, or the collapse of a culture, often happen like this?

Not an invasion or civil war or a military coup. Just a quiet change in the air, unnoticeable at first but spreading steadily until, just at the point where people are starting to think "Something's going on", it's there all around you and you're too late.

No one wanted it, but now no one dares protest. And you've lost something essential, which you hadn't protected because you thought it was indestructible.

Yes. It's almost like there has been a political coup and no one noticed.

Let us not forget the plan/intention to remove our right to judicial reviews, one of the few tools that amplify the voice of the powerless.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/25/judicial-review-peoples-right-fight-government-destroy-courts-undemocratic

I shouldn't be but I'm increasingly surprised at the number of times that I see FWR and football fans overlap in a shared interest in freedom to dissent and to protest without incurring a investigation.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10128457/Police-enquiry-racism-allegations-Crystal-Palace-fan-group-SLAM-Newcastles-Saudi-owners.html

This is a chilling effect and it's encompassing people who are engaging in familiar forms of dissent and protest.

There are people who see it, the problems in universities and schools, that sort of thing. But lots don't see that it's the same thinking that is in place in many other SJ movements now and will or has proved to be just as toxic.

I know - it was hard enough when we were dealing with people who couldn't see how the patriarchy was affecting every aspect of our lives, and now it's that on top of this (obviously compounded by the fact no one believed us about how oppressive gender stereotypes were before all of this).

Of course, this is just another form of patriarchal oppression, but what's so insidious about this version is that instead of the issue being something people can't see because it's everyone's 'normal' and what they grew up with, it's out in the open as a brand new regime, but billed as the only way to be if you're not mean and selfish.

It was bad enough when feminism was a dirty word and people would roll their eyes, but at least we could talk about it before all this without fear of persecution.

And TBH I find it sometimes a little frustrating in discussions here. Because while it's completely sensible that in a discussion around women's rights you will mostly talk about that aspect, none of this is independent of the bigger picture. That's what is causing this.

There are people who see it, the problems in universities and schools, that sort of thing. But lots don't see that it's the same thinking that is in place in many other SJ movements now and will or has proved to be just as toxic.

That's my current frustration, trying to convince people why they should care. Most people really dont grasp the implications.