Pwnallthethings: people you know go missing, and you never find out what happened to them

life under authoritarian regimes is like war: most Americans don’t know that it’s often really normal and boring, up until the rarer, horrible moments when it isn’t

Pretty much. What it mostly boils down to is that most Americans really don’t have the faintest idea what living under modern authoritarian regimes actually looks like, and how it’s often at the same time way more boring and way more scary than they’d imagined.

people you know go missing, and you never find out what happened to them

The damage this causes across generations (even if the regime is short lived!) is so hard to grasp if you haven’t lived with it. It touches every aspect of life. It makes trust impossible, and without some level of trust and a belief in the possibility of justice, *nothing in society works.*

china is the lowest trust, most every man for himself fuck you got mine place i have ever experienced. if americans think it's like that now oh boy you have no idea how much worse it can get once society itself is destroyed

It is *grim* total societal trauma

it's a completely rational response to generations of nightmare and it fucking sucks to live in a place where everyone has knives out for everyone else at all times

often had the thought in Cambodia that pretty much every adult there could use intensive therapy for trauma, which was of course not available

everyone in china needs three months off work for mandatory therapy and weed

Not that it was democratic in the first place, but the transformation of Hong Kong from 2019 to 2021 comes to mind

grim

Given the experience of social climbers right here on this Web Site I’m starting to think that some investigative agency would be among the least of our concerns once folks try to suss out Ways To Stay On Top out of greed, desperation, or outright maliciousness

It’s less the Ministry of Jackbooted Thuggery you have to fear the most when you instead have a vengeful neighbor or coworker or acquaintance who would *eagerly* sell you out to the Ministry of Jackbooted Thuggery if it makes them feel good

I think that's a significant aspect of authoritarianism. If it's us against them, then there is a society and the gov't doesn't control it; authoritarianism thus gets people to turn on one another for its benefit, leaving no competing power structure, no one to trust, and no society at all.

The fact that their work has likely made their country unstable and unsurvivable under stress doesn't matter, because as long as the people in charge get what they want nothing else matters. They know where the bus is going and don't care as long as they're the ones driving.

This website is also yet more proof that absolutely no social gathering is so small that it won’t attract people desperate to strategize their way to what they perceive as “the top” of the popularity heap

you mean people On Here aren't just shitposting/sincereposting and hoping people follow them? Like they have an actual strategy? Bizarre.

It’s baffling to me too as that is literally all I’ve ever done here

Like and RT to send a message that we won't stand for engagement farming #memes #comedy #politics

Condense the party into the kitchen.

I so despise that indeed I absolutely love everything games and gaming, but cynically playing games with people is what is bringing us to a global state of disaster

yeahhhhh

one of those things I just think about is like, how it was something I think on the order of 2.5% of East Germany's population being informants for the Stasi which is just equivalent to one in forty people.

and if you count just those part-time... it goes up from there

It’s very internalized. My dad, my partner and I were there in 2015. We were queueing for tickets for a high speed train when they opened a new ticket line. My dad sensed it open (had his back turned), booked it, and hurdled a row of suitcases to get to the front.

(That’s probably the nicest story I can tell to support this premise)

Dismayed to find myself thinking like my father did. He & family arrived in Canada 1942 after fleeing Germany to Indonesia/ Singapore in 1938. He echoed those who say "when people show & say who they are and their intensions, believe them, and prevent them". (A kind gentle man pushed to think THAT)

So true. In Spain we are still suffering the consequences of Franco's reign (1939-1975).

I lived there in 1990 and people were still afraid of the Guads. Trust was low. It is sad. (I still adored Spain though).

Thank you. I taught in post-dictatorship Albania for 2 years. The damage to the bonds of family and society over a half century of disinformation & persecution (including outlawing any religious speech or artifacts) was severe. When I teach information literacy, it’s with this as context.

In my country of origin, the latest dictatorship ended 2 years before I was born. The damage it did is still visible, 50 years on. Hell, even some of the fascist collaborators are still alive, kicking, and holding office.

🎯

happened to my mom's dentist in '64. Just...disappeared.

things you thought you were approved for get canceled, things you thought were okay you get fined for, tax bills get reassessed, you get denied to board a plane or enter a building and no one will explain why, email and online accounts announce you have unspecified 'violations'

And publicly you make a point of never noticing or mentioning that they are gone. If you know what's good for you. Privately it eats you up. Disappearances are so much worse than arrests & trials The risky counter to this is loudly mentioning it like Argentina's mother's of the disappeared.

yep. i know two people who are just gone. part of why denying china's ongoing genocides is one of my instant yeet buttons

This happened under Jim Crow in the US.

And you just have to accept that they’re gone—if you ask to many questions you’ll be the next one who gets disappeared

It’s not about the question of whether you are actually guilty of wrongdoing or “wrong thinking”; it’s about keeping you in awful jail conditions and torture long enough for you to break down and make up your crimes just so that you’re released (whatever that means at that point)

Tiger Trappers - Wikipediaen.m.wikipedia.org

www.npr.org/2020/07/17/8...

Federal Officers Use Unmarked Vehicles To Grab People In Portland, DHS Confirmswww.npr.org Agents are deployed in the Oregon city amid anti-police protests. Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli tells NPR the tactic is being used to move detainees to a "safe location for questioning."

Or you subsequently find out they are held incommunicado at an undisclosed location for nearly 30 years, as is the case with the Panchen Lama of Tibet who at the time was the world's youngest political prisoner. www.state.gov/marking-29-y...

Marking 29 Years Since the Panchen Lama’s Disappearance - United States Department of Statewww.state.gov Today marks 29 years since the People’s Republic of China (PRC) abducted the 11th Panchen Lama, one of the most important figures in Tibetan Buddhism, as a six-year-old child. Gedhun Choekyi Nyima re...

We got the first taste of that during the George Floyd protests with the unmarked vans and guys jumping out and grabbing ppl without warning or explanation.

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