[ad_1]
Almost every major pro-democracy activist in Hong Kong has been. sentenced to prison Up to last month’s multi-year prison sentences, the 45 defendants helped organize the 2020 interim primary election to decide who will run for the Legislature. which is basic participatory citizenship status which for the Chinese authorities is seen as It seems like the mistake of activists is behaving as if they actually live in a democracy.
In the 1970s, writer Andrei Amalrik described the secret power of his dissident colleagues in the Soviet Union: “They did something simple to the point of genius: in a country that was not free, They begin to behave like free people.”
Recent examples of people acting on this same humble assumption—and being slapped down for it—are numerous. In the past few weeks A 75-year-old Algerian novelist imprisoned In expressing opinions that you think are “Dangerous to the nation”; Thai human rights lawyer receives two additional years of 14-year prison sentence for apparently writing a letter to the King violate the country’s “defamation law against the king”; Belarusian police ahead of January’s presidential elections detained 100 relatives of political prisoners, fearing them. might Say. And we haven’t even gotten to Iran, Russia, or North Korea yet.
These contemporary dissidents share what Václav Havel once called an “existential attitude.” They don’t just wake up one day and decide to take over their country’s regime. They allow themselves to be guided by their own individuality, like the Iranian woman who decided not to wear the hijab anymore. Uighur teacher trying to share the history of his people and conflicts with a society that demands conformity and obedience. Dissent is made of this choice: assert their true identity or accept the mafia bargain, safety, and protection of a dictator in exchange for keeping their heads down. A few people couldn’t keep their end of the bargain—they became dissidents.
The equation is simple: the more dictators the world has, the more dictators there are. The more dissenters there will be. And we live in undeniably authoritarian times, according to report Last year by the Varieties of Democracy Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, when talking about freedom around the world We have returned to levels last seen in 1986, approximately 5.7 billion people, or 72 percent of the world’s population. Currently living under authoritarian rule, even the United States is a vaunted symbol of democracy. is about to take the oath of office as a president who openly boasts that he wants to be He is a “dictator on day one” who frequently threatens to jail opponents and attack the military from “internal enemies” and who jokes that the election will be the country’s last.
You don’t have to believe McDonald’s. Trump is plotting Gulags to look at why those who resisted totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, as well as those fighting around the world today, might be worth paying attention to. When Havel talks about existing attitudes He describes a strong feeling that certain basic principles are important. And even if society begins to deteriorate and devalue those ideals Abandoning those ideals for these people It’s not a choice. Many Americans today understand what political fatigue and political complacency look like. But those who disagree are those who hope against hope.
Modern forms for dissent emerged in the post-war Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc satellites. After Stalin died in 1953, expressing discomfort with one’s place in the Communist paradise was no longer necessarily fatal. And a new group of heretics—many poets and scientists among them—became a force of destruction. One misconception about Soviet dissidents is that they were revolutionaries. They don’t have the majority. They have no political program. They want to live authentically in a society that asks them to lie all the time. If their country should be one of law They demanded that those laws be followed by those laws. If there is an obligation to preserve human rights and civil rights Just as they were mandated by the Helsinki Treaty signed by the Soviet Union in 1975, they should be respected. The ideology behind this approach Too many unsexy names are used: Puritanism– What infuriates these dissenters to no end is the idea that they should look the other way. This is what most people do for self-preservation.
I asked author Benjamin Nathans. To the success of our hopeless ideals.It is a comprehensive new history of the Soviet dissident movement.– As for the psychological profiles of those drawn into this battle? They are the people who They “don’t want to be a version of themselves that they can’t live with,” he told me. Some of the literal thinking can make them painful to deal with. They have an almost Manichean sense of right and wrong in PatriotThe latest note from Alexei Navalny, a Russian dissident of our own time. The truth of his position was almost shocking. When asked time and time again why he returned to Vladimir Putin’s Russia after he was nearly poisoned in 2020, certain to lead to prison and possibly death (which he did and ultimately died in a prison colony) Navalny expressed annoyance at this question. “Returning to Russia I have fulfilled my promise to the voters,” he wrote. “There needs to be someone in Russia who doesn’t lie to them.” That’s it.
Nathan also points out another peculiarity of the dissenter’s personality. That is the combination of courage and despair in the same heart and the same person. These people live in situations where change feels impossible. At least during their lifetime. But they still didn’t give up. “Dissenters have a remarkable ability to appreciate the hopelessness of what they are trying to achieve. But they must be patient,” Nathans said. “They don’t view hopelessness as a reason to be cynical, lethargic, or act merely for show and symbolism.”
The most insightful theorist about dissociative personality is Havel. The author wrote about the meaning of resistance in his remarkable 1978 essay “The Power of the Powerless,” as he saw it. That battle line runs through everyone: you agree to “Living in a lie” or do you want to? Is it “in the truth”? Doing the latter does not mean going to the barricades. It means choosing your own existence. Havel points out that in Czechoslovakia The dissident movement had its first break with the trial of the rock band Plastic People of the Universe, whose popularity was seen as a threat. Havel wrote on the one hand that it was The regime’s “sterile puritanism” And the other side is “Unknown young people who want nothing more than to … play the music they like.” Dissonance arises from empathy. It is “life in its essence” which “moves towards diversity, diversification, independent self-establishment. and self-organization”
As Havel understood Denial of life does not only occur from accommodations. But it’s also a reasonable trade-off for more convenience. But it is the result of disrespecting others. The feeling that nothing is worth sacrificing. for– in the weeks since the US presidential election I hear mixed feelings, as Timothy Snyder states in his latest book. about freedom“Everything sucks” This resignation is almost as deadly as it is. with the suppression of the ability to “Live the truth,” as Havel praised it. Snyder wrote: “If we accept that ‘It’s all bullshit’ if nothing is better than anything else. We simply have no basis for sovereign decision-making. and will not be trained in identity formation.” We will mutter under our breath and accept our place in the system.”
What the dissenters teach us is to not normalize. Just look at Republicans’ dramatically changed attitudes about Trump to understand how easily this can happen. Leaders who were once concerned enough to publicly call a former and future president a “con” (Marco Rubio), a “disgusting” (J.D. Vance) who “discredited the experiment in America by Self-Governance” (Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.) .) is now his closest adviser and lawgiver.
Bypassing the concept that Havel describes, thinking and acting in a way that is consistent with one’s true self. It involves blocking the system of rewards and punishments that every society offers to its members. It took effort to master what the Soviet poet What historian (and exiled dissident) Joseph Brodsky once called “the science of ignoring reality,” looking beyond the surface of the transactional and ephemeral into the depths of meaningful principles.
Dissenters don’t just sit behind glass waiting for it to break in an emergency. They are maintaining the power of repression and conformity that they currently have in the world. This is how Masih Alinejad sees it: she is an Iranian dissident. Who was almost kidnapped because of her feminist activism. and was twice targeted for assassination by Iran. (The second time in the plan that Aimed at Trump– “The Islamic Republic of Iran tried to assassinate me on U.S. soil,” Alinejad told me. “Russian dissidents face poison in exile. These regimes are no longer content with repressing dissent at home. They are exporting repression. Dissenters are therefore at the forefront of protecting not just our country. But it also protects the idea of global freedom.”
To that end, she helped create the World Liberty Congress, which is essentially the Avengers of dissent. Alinejad leads the group along with Russia’s Garry Kasparov and Venezuela’s Leopoldo López. “Democracy thrives on responsibility. And we remind them that ignoring totalitarianism abroad is an invitation to take root at home,” she said. “The Iranian regime’s attacks on me who were dissidents who were exiled It’s not just personal vendetta. It sends a message to the world that no one is safe.”
Her expression revealed another kind of bravery—a man was sitting outside her house with a gun. AK-47—but I also like Havel’s warning about what really motivates dissenters. They are unusual not because they rush to opposite opinions. But it is because they only insist on seeking profit. Curiosity, desire, and the unique way of being human. It was Alinejad who wore her hair like a feather. with brightly colored flowers protruding from the natural curls. As Snyder told me when I speak Join him this fall as part of The Atlantic Festival, “What You Really Love Say something about you (that) cannot be discounted. There’s no math at all. And that’s what freedom is. Freedom is the ability to know what those things are. Find other people who like them. Go out into the wide world and be aware of those things.”
I was reminded of these words recently while reading the Instagram account of Kianoosh Sanjari, a famous Iranian dissident. leaping to his death last month from a building in central Tehran. Protesting the continued jailing of four political activists, he wrote, “for expressing opinions.” Sanjari himself first ran into trouble with the government as a high school student for his blogging. and was thrown into adult prison and placed in solitary confinement. After serving a two-year prison sentence, he fled Iran in 2007 and moved to the United States. In 2016, he returned to care for his ailing mother. He thought that enough time had passed that the officials would not disturb him. But he was arrested shortly after his return to the country. and was imprisoned for another 5 years, mostly in and out of psychiatric wards. They received electric shock therapy. and give sedatives
This is a tragedy that many dissenters must face. Sanjari’s suicide, though, marks a particularly terrible end to two decades of counter-fighting. But on his Instagram accountI see something else The intensity of life as he wanted to live it. That’s definitely where his defiance comes from. He’s tall, young-faced, always wears neat suits and ties, and smiles. He posts photos of nature. In one video, he is walking along the seaside with an excited retriever. Another is a close-up of a rose trembling on a branch during a snowstorm. Under the photo of red tulips He quotes Hermann Hess (“Happiness is in the means, not in the things, in talents, not in objects”).
Before his death, Sancharee Post His last words, written on X, which is also a belief: “My life will end after this tweet. But never forget that we die and die for the love of life. not death”
[ad_2]
Source link
