One of the most terrifying aspects of life in a totalitarian society is the way the State demands that loyalty to the regime and its ideology takes precedence over all other human bonds…
In Stalin’s Soviet Union the government relied heavily on mutual surveillance; urging families to report on each other for disloyalty. The Whisperers: Private Life In Stalin’s Russia. BBC broadcast, 12-22-2007.
So important was this idea that there arose a cult of martyrdom around a 13 year-old boy named Pavlik Morozov. Morozov was a member of the Soviet youth group, the Young Pioneers, in 1932, when he turned in his own father for the heinous crime of hoarding grain. (This was during the period when Russian agriculture was being “collectivized,” i.e. the peasant’s land being taken over for government collective farms.)
After Pavlik’s father was taken to a labor camp by the secret police (the GPU) and executed, Pavlik’s family members supposedly murdered him out of revenge.
The Soviet government quickly used this incident to start a propaganda campaign enshrining the youngster as a true hero of the Soviet Union. Morozov was held up as a model for emulation for all patriotic youth and his memory enshrined through schools and youth groups renamed in his honor.
It was only 60 years later, after the fall of Communism, that the truth came out, i.e., the whole story was fabricated. Stalin’s allies in the press and among intellectuals had eagerly promulgated this myth because it suited the purposes of the regime, i.e. to keep the populace frightened and compliant for fear of being betrayed by their own families.
Fast forward from 1932 to 2021…
We now have dozens, if not hundreds ,of American Pavlik Morozovs who have been lauded by the Federal government and the American news media for betraying family and friends for their participation in January 6th. (A dedicated web site has been set up for informants to contact the F.B.I., fbi.gov/us capitol.)
The following stories appeared in American news outlets following January 6th:
*** Dozens of Capitol rioters were turned in by childhood friends, family members, colleagues and ex-lovers who watched them storm the building. CBS News, 3-9-21
*** The people who turned in their parents for their role in the Capitol attack. The Guardian, 1-7-22
*** A son explains why he turned in his father over the January 6th attack. N.P.R., 3-3-22
*** Pushed to the edge by the Capitol riot, people are reporting their family and friends to the F.B.I. Washington Post, 1-16-21.
*** Capitol rioter sentenced to 7 years in prison was turned in by his teenage son, which broke up his family. Business Insider, 8-2-22.
*** A Mass teen reportedly spotted her family at a MAGA event prior to the Capitol riot. He decided to call them out. The Boston Globe, 1-13-21.
There are a number of other stories in the same vein.
George Orwell
press pic
What is striking about all such accounts is that nowhere is there any doubt expressed on whether we really want to have a society where informing on family and friends is considered the highest form of patriotism. In fact, the authors of these accounts undermine their own credibility by making lame excuses for these acts of betrayal:
1. ‘Family members who turned in January 6th protesters were no different than Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s brother, who turned him into the Feds.’
Sorry folks, the Unabomber killed or maimed thirty-two people before he was arrested. None of the 968 people charged for January 6th have done anything remotely comparable to Kaczynski’s actions.
2. ‘Family members were driven by concerns over their loved ones increasingly radical extremist beliefs. ‘I thought the protesters were prosecuted for their actions on January 6th. Is challenging the outcome of a presidential election, which is, after all, based on an opinion or belief, now an indictable offense?
3. ‘The January 6th protesters were predominantly white so asking for equal treatment with the George Floyd protesters is to highlight the racial tension inherent in their arguments, since the Floyd protesters were more diverse. ‘How dare you ask for equal treatment under the law, you white supremacist! (Never mind that a large percentage of the January 6th protesters were non-white, with Asian-Americans particularly numerous.)
4.’ The January 6th protesters were just the latest and worst manifestations of white nationalist extremism.’ The problem is that the liberal press has since learned that the January 6 protesters did not match the profile of members of right-wing extremist groups. Those arrested and charged were older (average age 40), better educated (professionals and business owners, as well as retired military) and not members of recognized extremist groups. Of course, this just makes them more dangerous, according to liberal pundits!
5. ‘The January 6th protesters were different from the Floyd protesters in that the latter wasn’t an attack on the very core constitutional processes, nor were they an attack on the United Sates Congress.’ Kent Greenfield, a professor at Boston College Law School.
Reuters news service ran the following story:
‘The FBI has found scant evidence that the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result.The FBI at this point believes the violence was not centrally coordinated by far-right groups or prominent supporters of then President Trump.” Reuters, 8-21-2021.
If there was no organized plot or conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election by those who entered the capitol, how was this a direct assault on American democracy?
By contrast the BLM movement started in 2014 in the wake of the Trayvon Martin incident.There were numerous protests over black men allegedly murdered by the police in the years before George Floyd’s death, e.g., Eric Garner, Freddie Grey, Michael Brown, etc. (BLM had representatives traveling with Hillary Clinton as part of her 2016 campaign, i.e. Mothers of the Movement). Within three days of the news of Floyd’s death, there were protests in 75 cities and the next day in over 120 cities.
Eleven policemen have been killed during BLM protests and a thousand policemen injured. Twenty-five other people have died. 1.5 billion dollars in private property has been destroyed. Government buildings have been fire bombed; including a police station, a federal courthouse and an ICE office. All told, the damages due to the George Floyd protest were 1,000 times greater than the damages to the Capitol on January 6th, 2021.
14,000 rioters were arrested during the Floyd protests. So far less than 1% of them have been tried and convicted, i.e., 120 people all told. The Guardian, a British publication not noted for its right-wing bias, stated: “The vast majority of citations and charges against George Floyd protesters were ultimately dropped, dismissed or otherwise not filed according to a Guardian analysis of law enforcement and media reports in a dozen jurisdictions around the nation.”4-17-21. By contrast, almost all the January 6th protesters have been zealously pursued and prosecuted, with suspects still arrested every day and the government vowing to arrest another thousand people so that everyone that was at the Capitol will be criminally prosecuted. 475 of the 968 arrested have already been prosecuted and convicted, fully fifty percent of those apprehended versus less than 1% of the Floyd protesters.
In short, there is no comparing the two events, a protest that got out of hand but was quickly suppressed (January 6th) and a planned series of riots that went on four months but only stopped at the express direction of BLM’s allies in the media and among Democratic office holders (the Floyd protests).
See The Secret History of the Shadow Plan to Save the 2020 Election, Molly Ball, Time Magazine, February 4, 2021.
While the BLM/ANTIFA toll of violence and destruction has been deliberately suppressed, the aftermath of January 6th has been exaggerated and blown way out of proportion.
There’s nothing surprising about that, given that any semblance of objectivity has long been dropped by the national media. What is surprising, as I noted earlier, is that no individual journalist has expressed any qualms about family members, work colleagues, and childhood friends being turned in for political reasons.
In fact, some commentators took it as hilarious that ex-spouses or romantic partners were turned into the authorities, i.e. ‘I will never find it not hilariously funny that over 300 insurrectionists were turned into law enforcement by their ex-wives.’
This awkward and pretentious gibe has been made into a meme on the internet, found hilarious by the feeble minded, hateful woke propaganda from the Deep State. I’m sure that all these ex-spouses and romantic partners were driven solely by worry about Our Democracy. Personal animosity or revenge didn’t play into their motives at all! Nor did the $42 million dollars paid out in 2021 by the FBI to tipsters!
FBI Field Agent Anthony D’Antuono, not coincidentally involved in the Whitmer kidnapping hoax ,made the following announcement right after January 6th:“Even your friends and family are tipping us off. So, you might want to consider turning yourself in instead of wondering when we’re going to come knocking on your door-because we will find you.”The Independent (U.K.) 1-28-21.
All this was anticipated more than 75 years ago by George Orwell in his book, 1984.
The protagonist, Winston Smith, is being tortured to confess to a series of political crimes(you know, like believing misinformation or engaging in election denial). His interrogator, known only as O’Brien, and he have the following exchange:
“How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?’
Winston thought: ‘By making him suffer? ‘,he said.
‘Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. We have cut the links between child and parent and between man and man and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer’.”
Orwell’s dystopian future – based on an authoritarian present he personally lived through – has finally arrived.
Thumbing through Wednesday’s Arizona Republic I found myself a bit stunned…
