Hanson lists ten symptoms of what he calls "Sovietism," but before he does, he asks a couple of questions: "What ultimately ended the nihilist Soviet system? Was it not that Russians finally tired of the Kremlin’s lies and hypocrisies that permeated every facet of their falsified lives?"
Does that sound familiar?
We are ourselves surrounded by lies. Many of our political leaders, much of our media, and many social activists have no respect at all for objective truth. Their standard is a kind of pragmatism in which "truth" is whatever serves to advance their agenda or whatever they strongly feel ought to be the truth. Any assertion which meets these criteria is considered to be justified.
Hanson's ten "symptoms of Sovietism" are accompanied by a brief explanation of how each one manifests itself in our society. Here's a sample:
The Soviet surveillance state enlisted apparatchiks and lackeys to ferret out ideological dissidents.You can read the rest of Hanson's indictment of the direction in which we are moving at the link.
Recently, we learned that the Department of Defense is reviewing its rosters to spot extremist sentiments. The U.S. Postal Service recently admitted it uses tracking programs to monitor the social media postings of Americans.
CNN recently alleged that the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security is considering partnering with private surveillance firms to get around government prohibitions on scrutinizing Americans’ online activity.
The Soviet educational system sought not to enlighten but to indoctrinate young minds in proper government-approved thought.
Currently, cash-strapped universities nationwide are hiring thousands of diversity, equity and inclusion staffers and administrators. Their chief task is to scan the admissions, hiring, curriculum and administration at universities [for any heterodox actions or speech].
Like good commissars, our diversity czars oversee compliance with the official narrative that a flawed America must confess, apologize for and renounce its evil foundations.
The Soviets created a climate of fear and rewarded stool pigeons for rooting out all potential enemies of the people.
Since when did Americans encourage co-workers to turn in others for an ill-considered word in a private conversation? Why do thousands now scour the internet to find any past incorrect expression of a rival? Why are there now new thought criminals supposedly guilty of climate racism, immigration racism or vaccination racism?
The Soviets offered no apologies for extinguishing freedom. Instead, they boasted that they were advocates for equity, champions of the underclass, enemies of privilege — and therefore could terminate anyone or anything they pleased.
Our wokists are similarly defending their thought-control efforts, forced re-education sessions, scripted confessionals, mandatory apologies and cancel culture on the pretense that we need long-overdue “fundamental transformation.”
So if they destroy people in the name of equity, their nihilism is justified.
In his excellent book, Live Not By Lies, Rod Dreher makes much the same case as Hanson. He draws numerous parallels between the oppressive circumstances in which people in the Soviet bloc found themselves in the post WWII era and what's happening in the United States today. Dreher focuses on the inveterate dishonesty of the Soviet regime and cites the great Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn:
What did it mean [in the former Soviet empire] to live by lies?There are still a multitude of such "refuseniks" in America who refuse to swim with the mendacious cultural currents flowing through our institutions. They merit our support, and hopefully more of us will number ourselves among them.
It meant, Solzhenitsyn writes, accepting without protest all the falsehoods and propaganda that the state compelled its citizens to affirm - or at least not to oppose - to get along peaceably under totalitarianism. Everybody says that they have no choice but to conform, says Solzhenitsyn, and to accept powerlessness. But that is the lie that gives all the other lies their malign force.
The ordinary man may not be able to overturn the kingdom of lies, but he can at least say that he is not going to be its loyal subject.