Thought for today

[mlknchz]

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

If that happened, you'd not be saving yourself - if they've come for you, you're already dead. You'd be saving someone down the line.

Comments

[chocolatebark.livejournal.com]

Which book is that quote from?

[mlknchz.livejournal.com]

"Gulag Archipelago"...but it's true of EVERY terror

It's a good quote

[chocolatebark.livejournal.com]

Man, I don't remember much of Gulag---maybe I should try and use it for beach reading this Summer!

[turkchief.livejournal.com]

.....One of my primary concerns, a deep, real, intense one is weather or not I'm TOO paranoid, or not paranoid ENOUGH!!!!

[mlknchz.livejournal.com]

Yes, and Yes

[turkchief.livejournal.com]

It is as I feared.....

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Collectivism vs collectivism.

Yah, well, that didn't work for the same reason boycotts don't work, and ironically, why Communism itself did not work: Humans don't think like that. He's describing the beehive, where drones who die in the doing, nevertheless throw themselves against the attacker in waves - like mindless insects. Sure, it works in that the hive is saved, but tough luck for the poor drones!

The only reason Ghandi got “passive resistance” to work, where enough people actually participated that it had its intended effect, is because all they had to do was… nothing. Inertia is easy. Action is hard. Sure, if ten thousand people charged a machine gun nest the weapon could not kill them all before it was overrun - but somebody is going to be in the front row that is mowed down. Do you want to volunteer? Didn't think so.

[This is why riots and restive mobs can be routed by police or troops firing weapons over their heads - of all that mob those single shots are not likely to hit you - but nobody wants to roll those dice.]

I was intrigued when I heard about how plans tio mass-airdrop the cheap, singleshot “Liberator” pistol into Occupied Europe - use it to get a better gun off the guy you shoot! - were quietly cancelled. Obviously no government is going to actively provide the means for armed mass resistance against central authority! It was all we could do - and that only temporarily! - to keep our government from prohibiting arms to its subjects citizens.

[mlknchz.livejournal.com]

Every kid who's stood up to a schoolyard bully knows you're wrong and WHY you're wrong.

But that's not even really the point of what Alexander Isaaivich is saying; he's saying IF that'd happened the whole thing would have crashed. he's saying that even the worst oppressive dictatorships will fall if the people stand up. And he's right.

[mlknchz.livejournal.com]

Oh, and BTW
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenstrasse_protest