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Authoritarianism Quotes

“The First Human (Sonnet 2632) Apes have lords and ladies, I don't. Apes have kings and queens, I don't. My time is born of soil and streets, my calendar transcends rome and greece. Apes have highnesses and excellencies, for apes have compost for a brain. Ape chase the "after", over life, for apes have alcohol in their vein. No wall is tall enough to contain my height, no pulpit sacred enough to baptize my eye, no table broad enough to accommodate my shoe, no accolade is bright enough to add to my light. Apes have cops and courts, I don't, for apes have guano for a cortex. I don't need angels in the air, I carry my wings in my pocket.”

ConsciousnessSelf RealizationSelf DeterminationSufismAdvaitaHierarchyAuthoritarianismFreethinkerNonconformityAnti Authoritarian
Book:With Love From A Blue Rock
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“Britain was the last developed country where beating schoolchildren was respectable. This was outlawed last year [1988] - by one vote in Parliament. Parents are now almost the last people left who can hit children without fear of penalty, as long as it's moderate and fitting punishment...the language of authority still derives from violence, mistakenly, tragically.”

ChildrenViolenceAuthorityAuthoritarianismCorporal PunishmentSmacking
Book:Into the Dangerous World: Some Reflections on Childhood and Its Costs
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“Sooner or later, all talk among foreigners in Pyongyang turns to one imponderable subject. Do the locals really believe what they are told, and do they truly revere Fat Man and Little Boy? I have been a visiting writer in several authoritarian and totalitarian states, and usually the question answers itself. Someone in a café makes an offhand remark. A piece of ironic graffiti is scrawled in the men's room. Some group at the university issues some improvised leaflet. The glacier begins to melt; a joke makes the rounds and the apparently immovable regime suddenly looks vulnerable and absurd. But it's almost impossible to convey the extent to which North Korea just isn't like that. South Koreans who met with long-lost family members after the June rapprochement were thunderstruck at the way their shabby and thin northern relatives extolled Fat Man and Little Boy. Of course, they had been handpicked, but they stuck to their line. There's a possible reason for the existence of this level of denial, which is backed up by an indescribable degree of surveillance and indoctrination. A North Korean citizen who decided that it was all a lie and a waste would have to face the fact that his life had been a lie and a waste also. The scenes of hysterical grief when Fat Man died were not all feigned; there might be a collective nervous breakdown if it was suddenly announced that the Great Leader had been a verbose and arrogant fraud. Picture, if you will, the abrupt deprogramming of more than 20 million Moonies or Jonestowners, who are suddenly informed that it was all a cruel joke and there's no longer anybody to tell them what to do. There wouldn't be enough Kool-Aid to go round. I often wondered how my guides kept straight faces. The streetlights are turned out all over Pyongyang—which is the most favored city in the country—every night. And the most prominent building on the skyline, in a town committed to hysterical architectural excess, is the Ryugyong Hotel. It's 105 floors high, and from a distance looks like a grotesquely enlarged version of the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco (or like a vast and cumbersome missile on a launchpad). The crane at its summit hasn't moved in years; it's a grandiose and incomplete ruin in the making. 'Under construction,' say the guides without a trace of irony. I suppose they just keep two sets of mental books and live with the contradiction for now.”

DeathGriefJokesUniversityArchitectureIronyPropagandaDissentTotalitarianismNorth KoreaSurveillanceMind ControlAuthoritarianismIndoctrinationGraffitiSouth KoreaKim Jong IlKim Il SungDoublethinkJonestownPyongyangKoreansTourism In North KoreaDrinking The Kool AidMooniesRyugyong Hotel
Book:Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
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“Грубо кажучи, я виріс у культурі допиту, практики поводження на допиті. Мусиш відповісти хоч щось, коли дійде до тебе. Усе, що ти скажеш, може обернутися проти тебе. Уникни брехні, в якій заплутаєшся. І правди, яка потягне за собою близьких. І ніколи ні у чому не переконуй ідіотів, бо ідіот своє знає наперед.”

SocietyConformityTotalitarianismAuthoritarianism
Book:Бурчак
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“If I ever wondered why so many people are so hostile to the tangible visible incarnations of the permeating invisible features of postmodern society, I need to look no further: according to populist narratives perpetuated by the media convergence, technology is the domain of experts who, having the wisdom of mini-deities invested with all the power of the corporate state, are not - cannot - be human.”

TechnologySocietyMediaTotalitarianismAuthoritarianismStatismCorporatismCyborg
Book:Cyborg: Digital Destiny and Human Possibility in the Age of the Wearable Computer
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“English: "Not voting means choosing totality; voting for an empty envelope means choosing democracy, but none of the candidates adequately represent your views." Česky: „Nevolit znamená volit totalitu; volit prázdnou obálku znamená volit demokracii, ale žádný z kandidátů dostatečně nereprezentuje tvé názory.”

PoliticsDecisionOpinionDemocracyRepresentationPolitical ScienceTotalitarianismElectionsAuthoritarianismRepresentative Democracy
Author:Sebastián Wortys
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“Every time I do an interview people ask similar questions, such as "What is the most significant story that you have revealed?" […] There really is only one overarching point that all of these stories have revealed, and that is–and I say this without the slightest bit of hyperbole or melodrama; it's not metaphorical and it's not figurative; it is literally true–that the goal of the NSA and it's five eyes partners in the English speaking world–Canada, New Zealand, Australia and especially the UK–is to eliminate privacy globally, to ensure that there could be no human communications that occur electronically, that evades their surveillance net; they want to make sure that all forms of human communications by telephone or by Internet, and all online activities are collected, monitored, stored and analyzed by that agency and by their allies. That means, to describe that is to describe a ubiquitous surveillance state; you don't need hyperbole to make that claim, and you do not need to believe me when I say that that's their goal. Document after document within the archive that Edward Snowden provided us declare that to be their goal. They are obsessed with searching out any small little premise of the planet where some form of communications might take place without they being able to invade it.”

DemocracyPrivacyAmerican PoliticsTotalitarianismSurveillanceEspionageAuthoritarianismDystopiaNsaBritish PoliticsSurveillance SocietyInternet PrivacyEdward SnowdenCanadian PoliticsAustralian PoliticsNew Zealand Politics
Author:Glenn Greenwald
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“There are varying degrees of evil in the world. The distinction between levels of evil is perhaps the primary moral responsibility incumbent upon each of us. Every child knows that cruelty is bad and contemptible, while its opposite, compassion, is commendable. That is an easy and simple moral distinction. The more essential and far more difficult distinction is the one between different shades of gray, between degrees of evil. Aggressive environmental activists, for example, or the furious opponents of globalization, may sometimes emerge as violent fanatics. But the evil they cause is immeasurably smaller than that caused by a fanatic who commits a large-scale terrorist attack. Nor are the crimes of the terrorist fanatic comparable to those of fanatics who commit ethnic cleansing or genocide. Those who are unwilling or unable to rank evil may thereby become the servants of evil. Those who make no distinction between such disparate phenomena as apartheid, colonialism, ISIS, Zionism, political incorrectness, the gas chambers, sexism, the 1 percent's wealth, and air pollution serve evil with their very refusal to grade it.”

ExtremismFanaticsAuthoritarianismDogmatismPuritanismDear Zealots
Book:שלום לקנאים
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“One of the distinct hallmarks of the fanatic is his fervent desire to change you so that you will be like him. To convince you that you must immediately convert, abandon your world, and move into his. The fanatic does not want there to be any differences between people. He wants us all to be as one. He desires a world with no curtains drawn, no blinds shuttered, no doors locked, no shadow of a private life, for we must all be one body and one soul. We must all march together in threes on the path ascending to redemption, whether this redemption or the opposite one. The fanatic strives to upgrade and improve you, to open your eyes so that you, too, can see the light. Indeed, in that sense the fanatic is a wondrously altruistic and extremely unselfish creature: he is interested in you far more than he is in himself. Day and night he yearns to save your soul, to unshackle you, to take you out of darkness into the light, to redeem you once and for all from error and sin. Here he comes to hug you, sick with worry about your condition, bubbling with goodwill to change your prayer habits (or lack thereof), your voting or smoking habits, your eating habits, your preferences, your entire lifestyle, which is so harmful to you. All the fanatic wants is to take you in his arms and hug you, to raise you from the lowly spot you are stuck in and place you in the sublime place he has discovered, where he has since been basking and to which you must ascend immediately. For your very own good.”

EvangelismFanaticsAuthoritarianismSelf RighteousnessDogmatismDear ZealotsPreachiness
Book:שלום לקנאים
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“I don’t think that authoritarianism rises out of economic conditions. I think that there are complicated, difficult, and, in some cases, incredibly oppressive economic and social conditions that give rise to all sorts of things. The question is whether or not authoritarianism will rise. And authoritarianism rises because you get a talented demagogue who uses the constant grievances that are always there and channels them into a simple solution: I will take care of you, I will be your protector. All of these things in politics that vex you and that you worry about and that we’ve been fighting about for so long, you will no longer have to worry about them, you will no longer have to think about them, they will be settled. You will not have to vote again. The people who annoy you and who make you uncomfortable and who disagree with you will disappear.”

PoliticsSolutionsAuthoritarianismDonald TrumpSocial ConditionsSimple SolutionsDemagoguesGrievancesAuthoritariansEconomic Conditions
Author:Rachel Maddow
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“Heiner Müller zeroed in on this contradiction by noting ascerbically that the main economic activity of the Eastern regimes was always the production of state enemies (in other words, the system produced vast numbers of literate, well-educated workers who could not fail to notice the yawning gap between the ideal of a people’s democracy and the despotism of the one-party state).”

AuthoritarianismEastern Europe2003Enemy Of The State
Book:The World is Watching: Video as Multinational Aesthetics, 1968-1995
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“The Constitution, the National Assembly, the dynastic parties, the blue and the red republicans, the heroes of Africa, the thunder from the platform, the sheet lightning of the daily press, the entire literature, the political names and the intellectual reputations, the civil law and penal code, the liberté, égalité, fraternité and the second of May 1852—all have vanished like a phantasmagoria before the spell of a man whom even his enemies do not make out to be a magician. Universal suffrage seems to have survived only for a moment, in order that with its own hand it may make its last will and testament before the eyes of all the world and declare in the name of the people itself: Everything that exists has this much worth, that it will perish.”

RevolutionConstitutionSocialismFranceFascismDictatorshipDictatorMagicianMonarchyBourgeoisAuthoritarianismSuffrageRepublicansDynastySpellPressNapoleonAuthoritarianThird RepublicCoup D EtatFrench RepublicBrumaireCipollaLouis BonaparteMario And The MagicianMountebank
Book:The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
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“They had him. Far down the platform we heard the sudden fifing shrill of the engine whistle. The guard cried warning; all up and down the platform doors were slammed. Slowly the train moved from the station. We rolled right past him, very slowly. They had him. They surrounded him. He stood among them, protesting volubly, talking with his hands now, insisting all could be explained. And they said nothing. They had him.”

TerrorAuthoritarianismArrest
Book:I Have a Thing to Tell You
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“Logically, federalism, brought to its ultimate consequences, applied not only to the different places people inhabit but also to the various functions they perform in society, right to the commune, to whatever association, up to the individual, means the same thing as anarchy - free and sovereign units that associate for the common benefit.”

FreedomTheoryOrganizationSocialismAnarchismAnarchistAuthoritarianismFederalismFree Association
Author:Errico Malatesta
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“Time for Pestcontrol (Naskaristana 2624) It's a sad state of affairs when the geopolitical jungle of our world makes me wish as a biologist, that politics were a genetic characteristic, then we could engineer a virus to wipe out every single politician from the face of earth - and the beauty of it is that, you won't even notice their absence, because every democratic nation has a capable body of civil servants, though partially lazy and corrupt, who would keep the wheel of democracy turning, with the guidance of scholars and scientists, like it's just another Tuesday, because these people are the real engine of democracy. Let's call it "Operation Pestcontrol". But alas, politics is not a genetic trait, and killing the fascist doesn't end fascism, only delays it, so we'd have to take the only other, more tedious but actually lasting alternative, which is, no more compromise with fascism - either be the human citizen of planet earth and confront the authoritarian elements of your part of the world, or do not call yourself human!”

PoliticsHuman RightsNationalismFascismDictatorshipPoliticiansAuthoritarianismFascistAnti FascismAuthoritarian Regimes
Book:With Love From A Blue Rock
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“It is in connection with the deliberate effort of the skillful demagogue to weld together a closely coherent and homogeneous body of supporters that the third and perhaps most important negative element of selection enters. It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program — on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off — than on any positive task. The contrast between the "we" and the "they," the common fight against those outside the group, seems to be an essential ingredient in any creed which will solidly knit together a group for common action. It is consequently always employed by those who seek, not merely support of a policy, but the unreserved allegiance of huge masses. From their point of view it has the great advantage of leaving them greater freedom of action than almost any positive program. The enemy, whether he be internal, like the "Jew" or the "kulak," or external, seems to be an indispensable requisite in the armory of a totalitarian leader. That in Germany it was the Jew who became the enemy until his place was taken by the "plutocracies" was no less a result of the anticapitalist resentment on which the whole movement was based than the selection of the kulak in Russia. In Germany and Austria the Jew had come to be regarded as the representative of capitalism because a traditional dislike of large classes of the population for commercial pursuits had left these more readily accessible to a group that was practically excluded from the more highly esteemed occupations. It is the old story of the alien race's being admitted only to the less respected trades and then being hated still more for practicing them. The fact that German anti-Semitism and anticapitalism spring from the same root is of great importance for the understanding of what has happened there, but this is rarely grasped by foreign observers.”

ResentmentAuthoritarianismNazismAntisemitismDemagogueryRussian RevolutionCommon EnemyAnticapitalismTotalitarian Propaganda
Book:The Road to Serfdom
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“Some want to turn the clock back, harkening back to some golden age of nostalgia, when women, children, the lower class, parishioners, and people of other races and creeds knew their place; not back to the 1950s, but further back: to Dickensian times and to (corporate) feudal fiefdom. They want to wind the clock back to a time before the hard-won battles for civil rights, social reforms, and worker representation. A time long, long before the “woke virus”, “illegal immigrants”, and gender identity, when life was more conservative and white lives mattered; though with a new, fundamentalist, Christian nationalist (or Islamist, or ultra-Zionist, or even atheist) and isolationist twist. And some will go to any lengths – and I do mean any desperate, violent, draconian lengths – to bring this vile and unholy vision about. [From Preface]”

ResistanceAuthoritarianismSocial ReformClass WarRightwing
Book:Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt: A crash course in Psi-fi, Romantic idealism, depth psychology, the daemonic, and Resistance
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“Even innocent people find themselves in trouble, Adolfina is innocent. We're all innocent. The only ones at fault for the bad things that are happening are the authorities. They with their way of being. Their behavior. Yes, the only ones who go to jail or end up wounded or dead along the roads are the poor. And that's because the authorities have a predilection--they know who to hassle. They exist to boss the poor around. To order the poor about, to beat up on the poor and to carry them off as if they were animals. Someday the good life they're living will end. Always doing it to the people, always. They've never suffered the slightest hurt. That's where they get their pride from. Once they're in uniform they think they're kings of the world, and they themselves say they're disposed to anything”

Police BrutalityAuthoritarianismPolice StateEl Salvador
Book:One Day of Life
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“We have to be well fed, the gringo tells us, so we can defend the country. In exchange for these pleasures, we cannot let these people down. One must be ready to defend the country against its enemies even at the expense of our own brothers. And, though it's unnecessary to say so, even at the expense of our mother. This might seem like an exaggeration, but the Western world is in danger and we know that the worst danger to the Western world is what they call 'the people.' The trainer shouts, 'Who is our worst enemy?' And we shout, 'The people!' And so on and so on, 'Who is the worst enemy of democracy?' And we all respond, 'The people!' Louder, he says. And we shout with all our might, 'The people, the people, the people." I'm telling you this in the strictest confidence, of course. They call us the Special Forces.”

PolicePolice BrutalityAuthoritarianismEl Salvador
Book:One Day of Life
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“The internal disunion of human nature, the schism of the soul, leads to the schism of the ruling class. And as with Heraclitus, war, class war, is the father and promoter of all change, and of the history of man, which is nothing but the history of the breakdown of society. We see that Plato’s idealist historicism ultimately rests not upon a spiritual, but upon a biological basis; it rests upon a kind of meta-biology of the race of men. Plato was not only a naturalist who proffered a biological theory of the state, he was also the first to proffer a biological and racial theory of social dynamics, of political history.”

PoliticsRacismPlatoPolitical PhilosophyTotalitarianismAuthoritarianismFar RightPlatonismRacial TheoryIdealist Historicism
Book:The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato
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“(On Engels' critique of anti-authoritarianism) “Nobody was talking about the use of revolutionary violence being authoritarianism. That's always been an invalid thing to point out. You know, is a slave rising up and overthrowing their master, is that "authoritarian"? Is a woman trying to escape her abusive husband or defending herself against her abusive husband, is that "authoritarian"?”

ViolenceAnarchismDominanceAuthoritarianismEngelsLibertarian Socialism
Author:Anark
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“Democracy can exist only in the countries where people are brave! Coward nations always live under the authoritarian regimes!”

NationsDemocracyMehmet Murat Ildan QuotesBraveCowardTurkish LiteratureTurkish QuotesTurkish WritersMehmet Murat Ildan QuotationsIldan Wise SayingsTurkish Wisdom WordsTurkish PlaywrightsTurkish QuotationsTurkish AuthorsIldan WisdomIldan WordsAuthoritarianismTurkish AphorismsTurkish SayingsTurkish ThinkersDemocracy QuotesAuthoritarianDemocracy QuotationsBrave NationsCoward Nations
Author:Mehmet Murat Ildan
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“Solemnly, for once looking a little awed, a little like a small-town boy on Broadway, Windrip took the oath, administered by the Chief Justice (who disliked him very much indeed) and, edging even closer to the microphone, squawked, "My fellow citizens, as the President of the United States of America, I want to inform you that the real New Deal has started right this minute, and we're all going to enjoy the manifold liberties to which our history entitles us—and have a whale of a good time doing it! I thank you!" That was his first act as President. His second was to take up residence in the White House, where he sat down in the East Room in his stocking feet and shouted at Lee Sarason, "This is what I've been planning to do now for six years! I bet this is what Lincoln used to do! Now let 'em assassinate me!" His third, in his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, was to order that the Minute Men be recognized as an unpaid but official auxiliary of the Regular Army, subject only to their own officers, to Buzz, and to High Marshal Sarason; and that rifles, bayonets, automatic pistols, and machine guns be instantly issued to them by government arsenals. That was at 4 P.M. Since 3 P.M., all over the country, bands of M.M.'s had been sitting gloating over pistols and guns, twitching with desire to seize them. Fourth coup was a special message, next morning, to Congress (in session since January fourth, the third having been a Sunday), demanding the instant passage of a bill embodying Point Fifteen of his election platform—that he should have complete control of legislation and execution, and the Supreme Court be rendered incapable of blocking anything that it might amuse him to do. By Joint Resolution, with less than half an hour of debate, both houses of Congress rejected that demand before 3 P.M., on January twenty-first. Before six, the President had proclaimed that a state of martial law existed during the "present crisis," and more than a hundred Congressmen had been arrested by Minute Men, on direct orders from the President. The Congressmen who were hotheaded enough to resist were cynically charged with "inciting to riot"; they who went quietly were not charged at all. It was blandly explained to the agitated press by Lee Sarason that these latter quiet lads had been so threatened by "irresponsible and seditious elements" that they were merely being safeguarded. Sarason did not use the phrase "protective arrest," which might have suggested things.”

DictatorshipDictatorAuthoritarianismAuthoritarianCoup D éTatCoup
Book:It Can't Happen Here
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“The world of today can only be uplifted through positive authoritarianism, not through the so-called democracy. But the point is, whenever you think of authoritarianism or dictatorship, you relate it to tyranny, yet that’s only the negative side of authoritarianism. You never see the true, compassionate leader, as a dictator, because you don’t feel oppressed by him or her.”

LeadershipLeaderPoliticianDictatorshipDictatorPolitical PhilosophyAuthoritarianismPolitical PsychologyAuthoritarian
Author:Abhijit Naskar
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“The world of today can only be uplifted through positive authoritarianism, not through the so-called democracy. But the point is, whenever you think of authoritarianism or dictatorship, you relate it to tyranny, yet that’s only the negative side of authoritarianism. You never see the true, compassionate leader, as a dictator, because you don’t feel oppressed by him or her. So, it is all about the willingness of the people. When the people willingly give authority to a politician that politician is called a leader, whereas, when that authority is gained by force by a politician, he or she is hailed as a dictator. A father can be either a good, caring and responsible guardian or a drunkard, but a father is not necessarily a drunkard. It is the same with a politician. A politician can be either a good, caring and responsible guardian of his or her society, or a psychological drunkard, but a politician is not necessarily an oppressor. Now the question is - what are you - a leader or a tyrant?”

LeadershipLeaderPoliticianDictatorshipDictatorPolitical PhilosophyAuthoritarianismPolitical PsychologyAuthoritarian
Author:Abhijit Naskar
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“The mass only follows, regardless of what any naive thinker proclaims, because the mass as I said earlier, is not yet wise enough to take their own decisions. They despise manipulation consciously, yet subconsciously they crave for it. That is why they have so many gods in the first place. They just love the idea of somebody else deciding things for them, and it gives them a kind of comfort.”

LeadershipLeaderDictatorshipDictatorPolitical PhilosophyAuthoritarianismSocial PsychologyPolitical PsychologyAuthoritarian
Author:Abhijit Naskar
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“I am not interested in having freedom from burdens. I don't need any authority to free me from responsibility. I am not interested in having freedoms within an authoritarian's parameters. I am only interested in self-determination. I have only respect for liberty as I am a libertarian.”

FreedomLibertyRightsLibertarianCivil RightsLibertarianismAuthoritarianismBill Of RightsIndividual LibertyGovernment RegulationAuthoritarianStatistIndividualist
Author:A.E. Samaan
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“Equality of condition, though it is certainly a basic requirement for justice, is nevertheless among the greatest and most uncertain ventures of modern mankind. The more equal conditions are, the less explanation there is for the differences that actually exist between people; and thus all the more unequal do individuals and groups become. This perplexing consequence came fully to light as soon as equality was no longer seen in terms of an omnipotent being like God or an unavoidable common destiny like death. Whenever equality becomes a mundane fact in itself, without any gauge by which it may be measured or explained, then there is one chance in a hundred that it will be recognized simply as a working principle of a political organization in which otherwise unequal people have equal rights; there are ninety-nine chances that it will be mistaken for an innate quality of every individual, who is “normal” if he is like everybody else and “abnormal” if he happens to be different. This perversion of equality from a political into a social concept is all the more dangerous when a society leaves but little space for special groups and individuals, for then their differences become all the more conspicuous.”

RacismEqualityCommunismPatriarchyMulticulturalismEqual RightsRace RelationsTotalitarianismHomophobiaAuthoritarianism1968AntisemitismTransphobiaSupremacismHarrison Bergeron
Book:The Origins of Totalitarianism
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“But he knew his Boss. One must never work full force for Stalin, never go all out. He did not tolerate the flat failure to carry out his orders, but he hated thoroughly successful performance because he saw in it a diminution of his own uniqueness. No one but himself must be able to do anything flawlessly. So even when he seemed to be straining in harness, Abakumov was pulling at half-strength—and so was everyone else. Just as King Midas turned everything to gold, Stalin turned everything to mediocrity.”

MediocrityAuthoritarianism1968StalinAbakumov
Book:The First Circle
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