…and what to do about It
Introduction
The Rarity of Freedom and Democracy
“Those of us who have been so fortunate to have been born in a free society, tend to take freedom for granted, to regard it as the natural state of mankind. It is not! It is a rare a precious thing”. Milton Freeman
Most of human history has been the story of the few tyrannising the many.
Though rooted in ancient Greece over 2000 years ago, modern democracies have only developed since the 18th Century and came to prominence last century after World War II. That makes them extraordinarily young in the history of this planet. Prior to this, monarchs and autocrats prevailed, where the many were ruled by the few, largely through force.
Since World War II, democratic states have grown to encompass approximately 47% of the world’s population. This is a staggering achievement in 300 hundred years, but sadly, that still leaves 53% of the worlds people living under authoritarian rule today.
Those blessed 47% living in the relative freedom of democracy have however seen their rights and liberties under siege since 2020 and the outbreak of COVID-19.
Governments from around the world followed the lead of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the world’s most powerful totalitarian dictatorship, and locked down their citizens’, suspending their rights and freedoms to move, associate, gather, protest, and speak. Many governments even invoked emergency powers, usually reserved only for war, that suspended the rule of law, and essentially gave political leaders dictatorial powers, just like in China.
Organisations such as the World Economic Forum (WEF) also used COVID 19 to introduce their new dystopian vision for the future; the so called Great Reset. In this brave new world, by 2030, to use their words, ‘you will own nothing, and you will be happy’ and ‘you will rent everything you need’.
Now when they say ‘you will own nothing’ that’s exactly what they mean. You, ordinary plebs, will own nothing, they (the elites) will own everything, and you can rent what you need from them. It’s not too dissimilar to the present, they’ll just complete the job of taking everything from the people by 2030 and have us paying subscription fees for everything we used to own.
“Almost certainly we are moving into an age of totalitarian dictatorships – an age in which freedom of thought will be at first a deadly sin and later on a meaningless abstraction. The autonomous individual is going to be stamped out of existence”. George Orwell – Essay on Totalitarianism
George Orwell wrote this back in 1941. His prophecy may have arrived in the 2020’s as undoubtedly totalitarian winds have whipped up around the globe once more as.
It feels more and more that freedom and democracy are receding into the background. The question we face going forward is whether we can resist and reclaim that rare and precious freedom we once enjoyed or whether it will become a relic of past golden period in the west.
“It can’t happen here is always wrong: a dictatorship can happen anywhere”. Karl Popper
Checks on Power
“The line separating good and evil passes not through States, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart”.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – The Gulag Archipelago
Governments tend toward tyranny because power corrupts most individuals.
Knowing this, the founders of modern democracies established governmental systems that constrained power through multiple layers of government that had checks and balances on each other.
The modern democratic government has a Legislative, Executive and Judicial arm. This three-tiered structure is designed to provide a multi-layered protection from government tyranny.
“The fundamental threat to freedom is the power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power.” Milton Freeman
Individual Sovereignty v State Sovereignty
In addition to checks and limits on power, a central tenant of the modern democratic state is recognising the individual as sovereign. This is a revolutionary concept and is in complete opposition to most of history where the sovereign was the Monarch, Autocrat, or Tyrant, and the people were its subjects.
Individual sovereignty means the individual is paramount, not the State. This is critical, for when the State is sovereign, the individual becomes irrelevant and dispensable, effectively a slave to State power.
The idea that the State should be paramount is always presented in a seductive manner by would be totalitarians. Usually it is sold under the guise of seeking equality, fairness and the obliteration of privilege. Sound familiar? People are told that the collective is more important than the individual. What they are really selling is an impossible utopia where they have absolute power (they just don’t tell you that bit). The truth is that every totalitarian system throughout history, whether socialist, communist, or fascist, has devolved into regimes that have carried out horrific crimes against humanity.
Totalitarian regimes in the 20th Century were responsible for countless deaths. It is estimated that Mao in China, Stalin in the U.S.S.R. and Hitler in Nazi Germany alone killed more than 100 million people. The body count grows ever more from the many other murderous totalitarian regimes in North Korea, Cambodia and many more.
When the State or the collective is place above the individual, literally anything can be justified by governments.
Where are we?
We are in the midst of an all-out assault on liberty and human rights.
Since 2020 we have seen widespread lockdowns, the annihilation of freedom of movement, association, speech, expression, discussion, and even thought.
Social media companies have taken on the role of the Thought Police, imposing their far left agenda on the world, policing Wrong Think, and attempting to establish a totalising ideology to their liking.
Thinking for yourself is out. Individuality is out. Absolute conformity and compliance are being required. If you do not follow the herd and your overlords, you will be cancelled and you will pay the price.
We are being tracked online, on our mobile phones through sat nav, apps, and QR codes.
Wherever we go in the real world we are watched by an exponentially increasing number of CCTV and facial recognition cameras.
Vaccine mandates spread across the formerly free western democratic countries like wild fire, coercing and threatening people to take a drug or face being locked out of society and from earning a living.
If you are in the majority, those that have taken the vaccine, then you likely think this is ok. The problem is that once you introduce such a system, the list of requirements governments will demand for you to stay within the system will inevitably grow. So, if you feel safe because this doesn’t affect you, it does, they will be coming for you next with another demand.
“First, they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out –
because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and again I did not speak out –
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me”.
Niemoller – German Theologian / Pastor
To go with the vaccine mandates, they needed a vaccine passport for enforcement.
But what is this digital vaccine passport really for? Is it really about keeping people safe or is it about control and compliance? I believe we are seeing the first iteration of a digital ID that will eventually become a social credit system, similar to the one already instituted in communist China, where people can be locked out of society in an instant through their mobile phone.
Note: in late 2022 governments from around the world agreed to implement a global digital ID to plan ahead for future pandemics.
To make the emerging surveillance state even more powerful and totalising, central banks around the globe are presently creating their own digital currencies (CBDC) using the blockchain technology invented by Bitcoin. China has already completed the digital Yuan which will increase their power and control over the people exponentially.
A blockchain is essentially a ledger which records every transaction made within that system, in perpetuity. If our regular dollars are replaced with digital dollars on the blockchain, central banks and governments will be able to see every single transaction made, period.
This has frightening implications for privacy and freedom. If CBDC’s were to be instituted, governments and central banks would be able to completely control our spending. They could block spending for non-approved items or to non-approved businesses. They could, with a click of a keyboard and without any obstacle, deny and block access to your own funds. (Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at least had to coerce the banks to suspend the bank accounts of people associated with the Canadian trucker’s protest in 2022 which provided some check and accountability. If CBDC’s become a reality, there will be no obstacles whatsoever, and that creates conditions that are ripe for tyranny to reign).
CBDC’s will undoubtedly provide an ever-greater ability for governments to coerce the people into living in an approved way, and for this reason, they must be resisted in each country before they are implemented.
It would appear as though we are headed into a high tech, high control, totalitarian surveillance state and the Chinese system seems to be the preferred model for the rest of the globe.
This is not conspiracy theory. The direction we are headed is plane for all to see. The elites are not hiding it anymore, they are trying to acclimatise us, and normalise these deranged ideas. Klaus Schwab, head of the WEF, chillingly said “people assume that we are just going back to the good old world which we had, and everything will be normal again, this fiction, it will not happen”. If that’s not scary enough he also said “I respect China’s achievements, which are tremendous…I think it is a role model for many countries… The Chinese model is certainly a very attractive model for quite a number of countries”.
This is the world that is coming for all of us if we continue to sit back, comply, and fail to stand up and defend our rights and freedoms.
The real question is, what sort of society do we want to live in? Do we want to live in the free, liberal, democratic societies we enjoyed prior to 2020 or do we want to live in a totalitarian state, where the individual is completely controlled, an irrelevant and dispensable subject to the will and power of the almighty State?
The Source and Purpose of this work
“The more familiar people are with the concepts of thought control and menticide, the more they understand the nature of the propaganda barrage directed against them, the more inner resistance they can put up”. Joost Meerloo – The Rape of the Mind
I have used the following three classic texts about totalitarianism as the basis for this piece.
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Power of the Powerless by Vaclav Havel
The Rape of the Mind by Joost Meerloo
The Gulag Archipelago is an account of life in the Soviet Union and the Gulags (prison labour camps) under Stalin, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who experienced both.
The Power of the Powerless is a brilliant and concise exploration of life in Czechoslovakia under Soviet rule by Vaclav Havel who went on to become President of the Czech Republic after the country gained its independence.
The Rape of the Mind is a summary of the tools of totalitarian regimes by Joost Meerloo, a Dutch psychologist was who lived through Nazi occupation of Holland in World War 2.
These three books layout a powerful representation of the tools and mechanisms of totalitarian regimes.
I feel it is essential for us to be aware of this history, as disturbingly, we can see that much of what is going on today, played out last century in many different countries around the world. Germany before the world wars was a progressive liberal democratic poster child, yet it descended into a totalitarian land of terror just years later. So, if you are reading this thinking this couldn’t happen in my democratic country, it can!
Remember, if we are not aware of history and do not learn from it, we are doomed to repeat it, so I am hoping that in bringing light to this subject we can be better equipped to deal with what is going on and we can figure out how to resist the rise of totalitarianism.
In the following pages I present quotes from these three main texts to give you the essence of each so you can understand the key components of totalitarian systems, and to highlight the similarities with what is happening now.
I have presented the body of this work in two sections: The Totalitarian Playbook, which outlines the tools of totalitarians; and Resisting Totalitarianism, which outlines what we can do to resist and push back.
I conclude this work with some thoughts of my own and some inspirational quotes from extraordinary beings such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela that can help us to move forward.
This is a sombre journey, but essential. Stay with it.
“There is but one choice: to rise to the task of the age”. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Totalitarian Playbook
Fear, Mass Psychosis, Divide and Rule
“Totalitarian leaders, whether right or left, know better than anyone else how to make use of fear. They thrive on chaos and bewilderment… The strategy of fear is one of their most valuable tactics”. Joost Meerloo – The Rape of the Mind
“Feelings of terror, feelings of fear and hopelessness, of being alone, of standing with ones back to the wall, must be instilled”. Joost Meerloo
“The totalitarian systems of the 20th Century represent a kind of collective psychosis. Whether gradually or suddenly, reason and common decency are no longer possible in such a system, there is only a pervasive atmosphere of terror and a projection of the enemy imagined to be in our midst. Thus, society turns on itself, urged on by the ruling authorities”. Joost Meerloo
“He is always conscious of control and surveillance, of spying, leering powers lying in wait to chase and punish him”. Joost Meerloo
“Anxiety can inspire suspicion and the need for scapegoats”. Joost Meerloo
“Totalitarianism needs the images of outside enemies – imaginary cruel monsters who spread plague and disease”. Joost Meerloo
“Sudden fright, fear and terror were the old-fashioned methods used to induce hypnosis”. Joost Meerloo
“Fear and terror freeze the mind and will; they may create a general psychic paralysis”. Joost Meerloo
“The enemy is fear. We think it is hate, but it is fear”. Mahatma Gandhi
“The average person doesn’t want to be free he simply wants to be safe” H.L Milkin
“Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety”. Benjamin Franklin
“Collective fear stimulates herd instinct and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd”. Bertrand Russell
“The greatest danger humanity faces is not from any external force, rather from collective psychosis” Carl Jung
“Indeed, it is becoming ever more obvious that it is not famine, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer but man himself who is man’s greatest danger to man, for the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating that the worst of natural catastrophes”. Carl Jung
Apathy, Indifference and Helplessness
“Fear and intimidation also have their paradoxical expressions in indifference and apathy… It is of the utmost importance to realise how passive, paralysed, indifferent and submissive people can become under circumstances which should demand the utmost activity”. Joost Meerloo – The Rape of the Mind
“…they become bitter, sceptical, passive and ultimately apathetic – in other words, they end up exactly where the system wants them to be”. Vaclav Havel – The Power of the Powerless
“We are approaching the brink; already a universal spiritual demise is upon us; a physical one is about to flare up and engulf us and our children, while we continue to smile sheepishly and babble: “but what can we do to stop it? We haven’t the strength… But we can do everything! Even if we comfort and lie to ourselves that this is not so. It is not they who are guilty of everything, but we ourselves, only we!”. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – The Gulag Archipelago
“The cult of passivity and so-called relaxation is one of the most dangerous developments of our time. Essentially it is a camouflage pattern, the double wish not to see the dangers and challenges of life and not to be seen”. Joost Meerloo
“The system depends on this demoralisation, deepens it, is in fact a projection of it into society”. Vaclav Havel
“The fear of freedom is the fear of assuming responsibility”. Joost Meerloo
“We have to become increasingly aware of the internal dangers of democracy: laxity, laziness and unawareness”. Joost Meerloo
“If…if… We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation… we hurried to submit. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward”. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“No man loses his freedom except through his own weakness”. Mahatma Gandhi
“It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once”. David Hume
Propaganda and Indoctrination
“Readymade opinions can be distributed through the press, radio, and so on, again and again, till they reach the nerve cell and implant a fixed pattern of thought in the brain… the seducer conditions him to catchwords, verbal stereotypes, slogans, formulas, symbols… endless repetitions and constant sloganizing… Such is the Pavlovian device: repeat mechanically your assumptions and suggestions, diminish the opportunity of communicating dissent and opposition. This is the simple formula for political conditioning of the masses”. Joost Meerloo – The Rape of the Mind
“Threat, tension, and anxiety, in general, may accelerate the establishment of conditioned responses, particularly when those responses tend to diminish fear and panic”. Joost Meerloo
“Freedom of discussion and free intellectual exchange hinder conditioning. Feelings of terror, feelings of fear and hopelessness, of being alone, of standing with ones back to the wall, must be instilled”. Joost Meerloo
“Official oversimplifications induce the captive audience into acceptance and indoctrination… People become herds – indoctrinated and obsessed herds”. Joost Meerloo
“Sudden fright, fear and terror were the old-fashioned methods used to induce hypnosis… Another easy technique is to work with especially suggestive words, repeating them monotonously”. Joost Meerloo
“Man learns to think in words and in the speech figures given to him, these gradually condition his entire outlook on life and the world”. Joost Meerloo
“Through daily propagandistic noise backed up by forceful verbal cues, people can more and more be forced to identify with the powerful noisemaker. Big Brother’s voice resounds in all the little brothers”. Joost Meerloo
“Continual suggestion and slow hypnosis in the wake of mechanical mass communication promotes uniformity of the mind”. Joost Meerloo
“…so that finally they will no longer see and hear with their own eyes and ears but will look at the world through the fog of official catchwords and will develop the automatic responses appropriate to the totalitarian mythology”. Joost Meerloo
“…facts are replaced by fantasy and distortion. People are taught systematically and intentionally to lie. History is reconstructed, new myths are built up whose purpose is twofold: to strengthen and flatter the totalitarian leader, and to confuse the luckless citizens of the country”. Joost Meerloo
“People have to be aware of the tendency of technology to automatise their minds. They have to become aware of the fact that mass media and modern communication are able to imprint all kinds of suggestions on our brains”. (This was written in 1956 – imagine what he would think now!!) Joost Meerloo
“Peace is war and war is peace. Democracy is tyranny and freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Virtue is vice and truth is a lie”. George Orwell – 1984
Conformity, Herding and becoming Automatons
“The manager of a fruit and vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: “Workers of the World, Unite!”. Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world?
He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life ‘in harmony with society’ as they say. If he were to refuse, there would be trouble. He could be reproached for not having the proper ‘decoration’ in his window; someone might even accuse him of disloyalty.
The slogan is really a sign, and as such it contains a subliminal but very direct message. Verbally, it might be expresses this way: ‘I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace.
The sign helps the greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power.
(The sign) reminds people where they are living and what is expected of them. It tells them what everyone else is doing, and it indicates to them what they must do as well, if they don’t want to be excluded, to fall into isolation, alienate themselves from society, break the rules of the game, and risk the loss of their peace and tranquillity and security.
The greengrocer and the office worker have both adapted to the conditions in which they live, but in so doing, they help to create those conditions. They conform to a peculiar environment and in so doing they themselves perpetuate that requirement.
In reality, by exhibiting their slogans, each compels the other to accept the rules of the game and to confirm thereby the power that requires the slogans in the first place. Quite simply, each helps the other to be obedient. Both are objects in a system of control, but at the same time they are subjects as well”.
Vaclav Havel – The Power of the Powerless
“The need to conform, to be accepted, to be safe and respectable, is deeply embedded in man”. Joost Meerloo – The Rape of the Mind
“To create man in the totalitarian image through levelling and equalization means to supress what is essentially personal and human in him, the uniqueness, and the variety, and to create a society of robots, not men… The ordinary citizen becomes as dependant and obedient as a child”. Joost Meerloo
“The mechanisation for modern life has already influenced man to become more passive and to adjust himself to ready-made conformity”. Joost Meerloo
“This protection seeking instinctual reaction is also directed against dissent and individualism… We see in this a regression toward a more primitive state of mass participation”. Joost Meerloo
“Fear and catastrophe fortify the need to identify with a strong leader. They lead to a herding together of people, who shy away from wanting to be individual cells any longer”. Joost Meerloo
“Even delights of self-chosen silence are forbidden. Every citizen must join in the singing and the slogan shouting”. Joost Meerloo
“Totalitaria is constantly on the alert for social sinners”. Joost Meerloo –
“The post-totalitarian system demands conformity, uniformity and discipline”. Vaclav Havel
“In everyone there is some willingness to merge with the anonymous crowd and to flow comfortably along with it down the river of pseudo-life”. Vaclav Havel
“…blind automatism which drives the system. No matter what position individuals hold in the hierarchy of power, they are not considered by the system to be worth anything in themselves, but only as things intended to fuel and serve this automatism”. Vaclav Havel
“The mental automaton becomes the ideal of education”. Joost Meerloo
“A general state education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another, and as the mould in which it is casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government”. John Stuart Mill
“He could not fight against the Party any longer… It was merely a question of learning to think as they thought… He wrote first in large clumsy capitals: FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. Then almost without a pause he wrote beneath it: TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE… the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.” George Orwell – 1984
“Crimes the individual alone could never stand are freely committed by the group”. Carl Jung
“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth”. John F. Kennedy
Free Speech, Censorship, and Isolation
“…there is no open policy, no free discussion, no honest difference of opinion; there is only intrigue and denunciation, with their frightening action on the masses”. Joost Meerloo – The Rape of the Mind
“…civilian populations of the totalitarian countries are not permitted to travel freely and are kept away from mental and political contamination”. Joost Meerloo
“If one can isolate the mass, allow no free thinking, no free exchange, no outside corrective, and can hypnotise the group daily with noises, with press and radio and television, with fear and pseudo-enthusiasms, any delusion can be installed. People will begin to accept the most primitive and inappropriate acts”. Joost Meerloo
“(Totalitarians) know they can condition their political victims most quickly if they are kept in isolation”. Joost Meerloo
“Puzzlement and doubt are however already crimes in the totalitarian state. The mind that is open for questions is open for dissent. In the totalitarian regime the doubting, inquisitive and imaginative mind has to be supressed. The totalitarian slave is only allowed to memorise, to salivate when the bell rings”. Joost Meerloo
“All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility” John Stuart Mill
“Intellectual freedom is essential to human society – freedom to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and unfearing debate, and freedom from pressure by officialdom and prejudices. Such freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorship”. Andrei Sakharov
Lies upon Lies
“(The system) is built on a very unstable foundation. It is built on lies. It works only as long as people are willing to live within the lie”. Vaclav Havel – The Power of the Powerless
“Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but the must behave as though they did… they must live within a lie… For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfil the system, make the system, are the system”. Vaclav Havel
“Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to prosecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing”. Vaclav Havel
“And the lie has, in fact, led us so far away from a normal society that you cannot even orient yourself any longer; in its dense, grey fog not even one pillar can be seen”. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – The Gulag Archipelago
“Logic can be met with logic, while illogic cannot – it confuses those who think straight. The Big Lie and monotonously repeated non-sense have more emotional appeal in a cold war than logic and reason. While the enemy is still searching for a reasonable counter argument to the first lie, the totalitarians an assault him with another”. Joost Meerloo
“Flowery catchwords help the individual to rationalise immorality and evil into morality and good… the totalitarian dictator destroys the conscience of his followers…The process of criminalisation requires deculturization of the people… People are told not to believe in intellect and objective truth”. Joost Meerloo
The State as Omnipotent and as Religious Ideology
“(The totalitarian state) is almost a secularised religion. It offers a ready-made answer to any question whatsoever. In an era when metaphysical and existential certainties are in a state of crisis, when people are being uprooted and alienated and are losing their sense of what this world means, this ideology inevitably has a certain hypnotic charm. To wandering humankind, it offers an immediately available home: all one has to do is accept it, and suddenly everything becomes clear once more, life takes on new meaning, and all mysteries, unanswered questions, anxiety and loneliness vanish… the price is abdication of one’s own reason, conscience, and responsibility, for an essential aspect of this ideology is the consignment of reason and conscience to a higher authority”. Vaclav Havel – The Power of the Powerless
“Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human being the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them… It enables people to deceive their conscience and conceal their true position and their inglorious modus vivendi (mode of living), both from the world and from themselves… It is a veil behind which human beings can hide their own ‘fallen existence’, their trivialisation, and their adaption to the status quo…” Vaclav Havel
“The primary excusatory function of ideology, therefore, is to provide people… with the illusion that the system is in harmony with the human order and the order of the universe”. Vaclav Havel
“… the totalitarian state sets up unquestionable dogmas, and it alters them from day to day. It needs dogmas, because it needs absolute obedience from its subjects, but it cannot avoid the changes, which are dictated by the needs of power politics”. George Orwell – Essay on Totalitarianism
“The fear of freedom is the fear of assuming responsibility… They long to take flight into a condition of thoughtless security. Often, they would prefer the government, or some individual personification of the state, to solve their problems for them. It is this desire that makes totalitarians and conformists. Like an infant, the conformist can sleep quietly and transfer all his worries to Father State”. Joost Meerloo
Resisting Totalitarianism
Truth
“Let us now imagine that one day something in our greengrocer snaps and he stops putting up the slogans… His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth… The greengrocer has not committed a simple individual offence, isolated in its own uniqueness, but something incomparably more serious. By breaking the rules of the game he has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game. He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie… He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal… everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety. This is understandable: as long as appearance is not confronted with reality, it does not seem to be appearance. As long as living a lie is not confronted with living the truth, the perspective needed to expose its mendacity is lacking… If the main pillar of the system is living within a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth”. Vaclav Havel – The Power of the Powerless
“For the crust presented by the life of lies is made of strange stuff. As long as it seals off hermetically the entire society, it appears to be made of stone. But the moment someone breaks through in one place… when a single person breaks the rules of the game… everything suddenly appears in another light and the whole crust seems then to be made of a tissue on the point of tearing and disintegrating uncontrollably”. Vaclav Havel
“And therein we find, neglected by us, the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation: a personal nonparticipation in lies! Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the smallest way: Let their rule not hold through me! Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – Live not by Lies
“Our way must be: never knowingly support the lies!” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – Live not by Lies
“One man who stopped lying could bring down the tyranny”.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – Live not by Lies
“This power (living within the truth) does not participate in any direct struggle for power; rather it makes its influence felt in the obscure arena of being itself”. Vaclav Havel
“(Living within the truth) is an existential solution, it takes individuals back to the solid ground of their own identity”. Vaclav Havel
“Living within the truth… is an attempt to regain control over one’s own sense of responsibility”. Vaclav Havel
“Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of the truth”. Albert Einstein
Courage
“Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others”. Aristotle
“There is also spiritual bravery, a mental courage that goes beyond the self. It serves an idea. It asks not only what the price of life is, but also for what that price is being asked…It requires continual mental alertness and spiritual strength to resist the dragging current of conformist thought. Man has to be stronger than the mere will for self-protection and self-assertion; he has to be able to go beyond himself in the service of an idea… Such courage dares to break through old traditions, taboos, prejudices and dares to doubt dogma… these brave heroes fight their inner battle against rigidity, cowardice, and the wish to surrender conviction for the sake of ease. This courage is like remaining awake when others want to soothe themselves with sleep and oblivion… the true hero is true to his ideals”. Joost Meerloo
“There is nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity”. Dr Martin Luther King Jnr
“It’s easy to stand in the crowd but it takes courage to stand alone”. Mahatma Gandhi
“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” Nelson Mandela
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in moments of challenge and controversy”. Dr Martin Luther King Jnr
“Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly”. Mahatma Gandhi
“In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through tyranny, that people should be eccentric”. John Stuart Mill
Love
“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated is stronger than evil in triumph”. Dr Martin Luther King Jnr
“Hatreds do not ever cease in this world by hating but by love…overcome anger by love, overcome evil by good, overcome the miser by giving, overcome the liar by truth”. Buddha
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that”. Dr Martin Luther King Jnr
“Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfil them, for it alone takes them by what is deepest in themselves”. Teilhard de Chardin
“The real love is to love those that hate you, to love your neighbour even though you distrust them”. Mahatma Gandhi
“Love is the expansion of the self to include another. My happiness is your happiness. I am not separate from you”. Charles Eisenstein
“He who is filled with love is filled with God”. St. Augustine
“To love our neighbour as ourselves is such a truth for regulating human society, that by that alone one might determine all the cases in social morality”. John Locke
Conclusion
“There is but one choice: to rise to the task of the age. Very soon, only too soon, your country will stand in need of not just exceptional men but of great men. Find them in your souls. Find them in your hearts. Find them in the depths of your country”. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“A small group of determined spirits, fired by a faith in their mission, can change the course of history”. Mahatma Gandhi
Many think that complying with the demands of government is the quickest way back to freedom, but it’s not. Compliance only emboldens would be totalitarians. Many are burying their head in the sand, obeying all commands, and hoping this will all blow over and that things will go back to the way they were pre 2020. But they won’t. They won’t unless we the people demand it.
There is an ever-increasing belief in elite circles that the populous are too ignorant to be allowed the freedom to rule their own lives, and that accordingly, the state should take ever increasing levels of control. The belief in democracy and liberalism, and their corresponding values of liberty and personal responsibility, is waning.
The seductive, socialist, collectivist ideas have been repackaged for a new generation and are on the rise once more. These utopian systems sound wonderful on paper, but they do not work and always devolve into much suffering and death for the people.
To ensure we do not head down that deadly road once more, the individual must be affirmed as sovereign and the primary unit of society. We must affirm that the individual is endowed with inalienable human rights by virtue of their existence alone and that these rights do not need to be earned by good behaviour as defined by government.
“The dissident movement grows out of the principle of equality, founded on the notion that human rights and freedoms are indivisible.” Vaclav Havel – The Power of the Powerless
“Every actual state is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
“When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw”. Nelson Mandela
“We have a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws”. Martin Luther King
We must resist the constant barrage of propaganda aimed at us indoctrinating us into their narratives of fear, hate and blame.
We must have the courage to live our lives in the truth, to say what we believe, to not comply with unjust laws, to not conform to a uniform way of thinking and being and thereby retain our individual sovereignty.
“A no uttered from the deepest conviction is better and greater than a yes merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble”. Mahatma Gandhi
“Disobedience is the true foundation of Liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” Henry David Thoreau
There is only one power that the individual should subordinate to and that is the voice within. It is this voice within delivers to us the guidance of our true Self / Soul / God. We stray from this guidance at our own peril.
“Conscience is God’s presence in humans”. Emanuel Swedenborg
“Never do anything against conscience, even if the state demands it”. Albert Einstein
“The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within”. Mahatma Gandhi
We must resist the temptation to bury our heads in the sand and we must get involved. There is no longer a choice for people who wish to be free to direct their own lives. I too waited and watched, hoping it would all blow over and that we’d be back to pre-2020, but it won’t.
The old world isn’t coming back unless we demand it. Unless we defend it.
“You do not become a dissident just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them”. Vaclav Havel
It is up to us. If we don’t let world leaders know that we are not willing to go along with a global dictatorial totalitarian state, then freedom will become a long-lost dream.
“The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one. Don’t let it happen. It depends on you”. George Orwell
The good news is we have the power, the power of numbers. As the historian Neil Oliver recently said; they (the ruling elites) are few, but we are many (billions in fact), and it’s up to us to stop the advance. I agree with this absolutely.
Totalitarianism cannot prevail without our acquiescence. It requires us to surrender to fear and propaganda. It requires us to accept their stories, not think for ourselves, to lie, and lie constantly. It requires us to comply with their demands, follow their rules and conform to a singular way of thinking, living, and being.
“If…if… We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation… we hurried to submit. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward”. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – The Gulag Archipelago
Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Mandela, and many other great and wise beings have advised us that it is our duty not to obey unjust laws which breach our human rights. They also demonstrated that with truth, love and courage, virtues we can all access, we can change the world. We must heed that call and follow in their footsteps now.
Non-compliance is essential. Our fate is still within our hands. We can think for ourselves. We can refuse to partake in the lies. We can refuse to be ruled by fear. We can refuse to close our hearts to others, and we can instead be open and kind. We can refuse to conform and comply. We can be conscientious objectors to a society losing its mind. We can stand up, speak the truth, and resist totalising control with non-violence and love. We will not let them divide us.
“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.” Dr Martin Luther King Jnr
Every human being deserves to have liberty and responsibility for their own life. Our western democratic countries were built on these two primary and corresponding values, and I will defend them with everything I have.
“I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery”. Benjamin Franklin
I am hoping that you feel the same and figure out how you can join the resistance.
“Only when people have learned to accept individual responsibility can the world be helped by the combined efforts of many individuals”. Joost Meerloo