Category Archives: Authoritarianism

Universal Language  [Part II]

Authoritarianism, Movies, Rebel, Rebellion and Resistance

 

 

The film Universal Language continues to dig deeper into the issues of authority, obedience, and rebellion—indeed universal subjects of great importance.

 

Negin, a student, has found money frozen in the ice. It is a matter of life and death he says. 500 Riels. “We can buy so many socks.,” he says. Or perhaps she could buy the student who could not see a new pair of glasses and all the students would be released from their captivity in the closet.

 

The film moves to Quebec with a big image of the Premier and a grey wall and a man sitting at a desk beside another grey wall. There are a lot of grey walls. The man, eating, explains to Matthew, that the world is losing confidence in its governments. Everywhere. Who could disagree with that?  “I am all for freedom,” he says, “but there must be limits.”  Again, who would disagree with that?  Well, Trumpsters in the US and members of the Truck convoy in Canada. To them freedom, means absolute freedom. At least for them. For the rest of us, freedom means no freedom.

 

Matthew has to write a report about his stay in the country, but it can’t be negative or neutral. To him freedom is just another word for nothing left to choose. At least the authoritarians of Iran, or perhaps Winnipeg, have the freedom.

 

Negin and his sister Nazgo as a passerby who is wearing a Christmas tree, all around, where they can find the turkey dealer. Muslims looking like Christians.  Again, they are surrounded by brick walls. Only this wall is brown. They are in the brown district, where you can choose any colour as long as its brown.  Buildings in each district conform to the color of the district. Grey, brown, or beige. Conformity is the key in this film.

 

The children find a shop with only turkeys for sale. You can buy anything you want, as long as its turkeys. They are looking for an axe to get the money out of the ice. The merchant has photos of turkeys on the wall. He assures the children, “we only use the gentlest system of circular saws.”  The merchant, wearing a cowboy hat and riding a senior’s motor cart asks the girl what she wants to be when she grows up. She says, “a cognitive neuroscientist.”  This is a surreal world.

 

Matthew takes a bus to Manitoba. The teacher, Iraj, is going too and asks if he can sit beside Matthew, even though the bus is nearly empty.  Matthew explains that he was planning to sleep through Ontario. He is a smart tourist and Iraj says that is unfortunate, because Ontario is very romantic in the moonlight.

 

One passenger refuses to sit beside a turkey. Buses should be for humans only she says. She explains to the driver that she has experienced much suffering. Her sons died in a marshmallow eating contest. Her husband was killed by a swarm of wasps. She has neighbours who steal her rhubarb and now she must sit beside a gobbling turkey? How can that be? The bus driver dressed in pink, including pink ear muffs, explains she is lucky because the turkey won an avian beauty contest. In the land of authority be thankful for what you get.

 

 

We see seniors playing bingo with the lady pulling ping pong balls with numbers on them. She is wearing a big coat, mitts and scarf. After all it is Winnipeg—One Great City. A pyramid of Kleenex boxes guarded by a ramrod still man in white coat and tie. A woman in East Kildonan can’t stop crying and the jackpot is a year’s supply of Kleenex. What could be better? The winner rebels. She does not want Kleenex because she already has a fantastic tear collection.

 

 

Dara drives by a bridge with a group of mourners standing in the snow inside an exit ramp of the Disraeli Bridge if I am not mistaken. Supposedly it is the grave site of Louis Riel the founder of Manitoba. All wear proper winter attire except the tour leader. The tourists are told Louis Riel was the premier rebel of Manitoba who started the province. They asked the leader if he earned good money as a revolutionary. What was his salary? This is the land where inane is king. I suppose they want to know if it pays as well to resist authority as the Revolutionary Guard in Iran? He wants them to stand for 30 minutes of silence to honor Riel for the sacrifices he made for the people. But, of course, all we hear is loud street traffic as the tourists from Iran stand respectfully obeying authority in silence surrounded by snow and loud traffic.

 

 

The tourist meanwhile visits another highlight of Winnipeg in the beige district where all buildings are beige.  They stand around looking at a dull building. One tourist asked if anyone famous lived there, as “it seems pretty boring.” ‘No,” the guide replies. “They were all unknown people. One was an administrative assistant. Another was a fax machine operator.” Dull ordinary people in other words. The tourists have been dragged out to see views of dull ordinary people. But they are free to do so. You can do anything you want as long as it’s boring.

 

The next place of interest is a briefcase left on a makeshift bench in 1978. Someone left it there. No one has ever looked inside. No one knows who the person was that left it there. It is said he was waiting for a bus. There is a photo of former Mayor Bill Norrey. The bench and forgotten briefcase have been enshrined as a UNESCO World Heritage site. “It is a monument to absolute interhuman solidarity at its most basic and banal.” It is a monument to dull and boring.

By then the tourists were understandably complaining about standing around in the cold. A very small rebellion.

 

Next, they are taken to Portage Mall to see a poster of former premier. Pallister with the words in Farsi, “A strong economy helps to prevent feelings of worthlessness.” I guess there is nothing like a nod to consumer society go give a tourist a thrill of excitement. There is also a sign in the mall in Farsi, the universal language, “ No loitering. Zero tolerance.” One customer sits on a chair, inserts a coin and waits for a mechanical massage. Reminds me of Marshall McCluhan’s car that he called a “Mechanical Bride.” The Portage Mall clock has no minute hand nor hour hand. Because, explains the tour guide, “the Portage Mall is timeless.” And they don’t any longer show 3D films because “they were too exciting.” Just one-dimensional films now. A blind man with a cane and a camera follows the group down the stairs. Spying on them? Perhaps.

 

In a modern scene right out of Kafka’s playbook, the tour guide shows them an empty water fountain no longer working. It has no water anymore. Another highlight of Winnipeg! In 1987 though people would watch it for hours, as it was so fantastic. You can’t throw coins into the empty water fountain because “all wishes have been cancelled.” To discourage loitering. One tourist asks, “Loitering? There is nothing to see here. A fountain without water is meaningless,” she demands. “I don’t know why you brought us here.” One more tiny rebellion. The guide replies, “Perhaps I brought you here out of hope. A small hope that the water might return and dazzle us again. A police officer comes up to the group and asks them to leave, because there is no loitering allowed. But they have a permit. They are an official tour group. Sadly, the permit allows only 30 seconds of viewing and they have already been there a whole minute! The tour leader asks to be forgiven. He lost track of time. I guess it was too exciting. They must leave.

 

 

As they walk through the city at night, a woman comes by to offer to sell her paper shredder. Massoud says he doesn’t need it as he has no paper. The woman says he can use it to make noodles with it or shoelaces. That’s allowed. They have some Riel freedoms.

 

Mahmoud walks Mathew to his apartment—another brown beige apartment block—where he took in Mathew’s mother who mistook him for Mathew. He works as a customer rep at the Winnipeg Earmuff authority. He is another authority figure, no less. He always wears earmuffs in the film as do some of the kids. He is also a shoveler of snow. Of course, he also is a tour guide but there is little need for his services in Winnipeg, particularly in the winter time. “There is very little tourism in Winnipeg,” he says. But he loves to show people the places he cares about.

 

Why does he do care so much for Mrs. Rankin, Mathew wonders? She had no one else he explains to Mathew.  Mathew says, “but it’s not your problem?” Mahmoud explains it this way to Mathew: “just as the Assiniboine joins the Red River and together they flow into Lake Winnipeg we are all connected.”

 

And the characters in the film, that seem so unconnected are in the end revealed to be entirely inter connected. It is real. Mahmoud tries to get Matthew to reconnect with his mother. He suggests he go up to see her. Photos of him will be there and he should know that sometimes he noticed his mother looking at them with love. “Tell her you are home now,” he suggests. After all, love is the universal language. Not Farsi? Or French? In this Riel Winnipeg, there are no other languages.

 

What a brilliant, beautiful, and funny movie. I had to see it twice to catch on. The first time I watched this film I saw the humour but I was distracted by it. It is so much more than a brilliant comedy.  This film is fantastic. It just seems boring!

 

Yes, the universal language is love. And connection, but you must obey authority. If you rebel, just don’t expect to be well paid.

 

 

Universal Language Part I

Authoritarianism, Freedom, Movies

 

Recently, I reviewed all 10 films nominated for Best Picture of the Year by the Academy of Arts and Sciences.  I saw some great films in the process, and some that were less than stellar.  Now I want to talk about the film I thought was the best film of the year, but it was not on that illustrious list. This film was called Universal Language and it was made by a Winnipegger Matthew Rankin. Can you believe it?

 

It was selected as the Canadian entry of the Academy Award for the Best International Film at the 97th Academy Awards earlier this year, but it was not chosen by the Academy for the nominations. It did receive 13 Canadian Screen Awards and won 6 of them including best Director.

 

Rankin was originally from Winnipeg and his father was Laird Rankin a long time executive director of Canada’s Historical Society. I think it was a very funny film when I watched it in Victoria earlier in the year.  Let me acknowledge however, that although my friend Ralph Friesen and I giggled throughout the film, but not that many other chuckles were heard in the room. It was an “off-beat comedy.” The film is set in Canada, but one very different from the Canada you know. It is a Canada in which Farsi is the main language. That is the language of Persia or Iran. The comedy takes place somewhere between Tehran, Quebec, and mainly Winnipeg. It tells two stories that eventually converge. One is between Negin and Naxgol who find money frozen in the ice in Winnipeg and try to claim it. The second story is about a tour guide who brings a group of tourists from Iran to Winnipeg.

 

The Winnipeg they see is unlike any Winnipeg I have ever seen. Understandably, the tour group is constantly confused, but largely obedient to their guide. Added to that, is the tale of Matthew (our Matthew Rankin) who quits his job in Quebec to come to Winnipeg to see his mother. Amazingly these stories do actually merge together to make some semblance of sense.  A semblance is all you get and that is enough.

 

In the opening scene an image of a school on a cold winter day in Manitoba where students are running wild in a French emersion class, for Iranian students, because the teacher is late.  He arrives and runs as fast as he can into the class and is really angry with them, but he is particularly angry that they do not have “the decency to  misbehave in French.” He reminds the students that he is not like other authority figures they know. “I wear an ear ring. And a turtle neck sweater. I’ve played my electric guitar for you more than once. And still, you behave like brats. I have devoted my life to making you better human beings. But look at you now.” The students are clearly rebels. And who doesn’t love rebels? The authorities of course hate rebels, in Iran, or in Canada.

 

 

One student in the class is dressed like Groucho Marx.  He is sent to a closet where he can still hear the teacher. The teacher stands beneath a portrait of Louis Riel the Metis rebel. Another student incurs his rile because he claims to want to be a tour guide when he grows up.  The teachers says, “in this town.” Another student wants to breed donkeys. The teachers says all the students will fail because of “REALITY.” The teacher says, “When I look at you I see little hope for humanity.” The students must say, in unison, “We are lost forever in this world.” Now they are not rebelling, they are following instructions from their authoritarian teacher.

 

He tells all the students in the closet even though they obviously can’t all fit.  It is their problem, not his. He expels all the students from class until the one student who could not read his notes from the class figures out how she can see the blackboard.  Arbitrary punishment for an arbitrary non-existent crime.  There is no justice in this Canadian autocracy. He lights a cigarette in the class room. After all he is the lord in the classroom. All-in-all as absurd as any authority figure.

 

As the students go out to play in the snow, in perfect order, they encounter another authority figure—their fellow student in a Groucho mustached and glasses.  He directs traffic to the one swing. Students line up and each get 3 swings. No more. then they must go back to the end of the line and wait again while each student has their turn. No questions allowed. Everyone must follow the rules in this authoritarian regime.

Meanwhile, a “real tour guide’ shows up, holding a small white flag, so his 3 tourists, in the middle of a yard of snow, can see him clearly, even though there are no other tourists and white might not be the best colour for the flag.   The guide who is the next authoritarian leader tells the tourists  if they don’t follow him they will miss the “jewel of the Grey district.” It is the Centennial Parking Pavilion in the winter. Nothing else. They stand in in the snow in front of a bare grey cement wall. Is this the best thing to see in Winnipeg? But the authority says it is the highlight of Winnipeg. And thhe must be right. Not? He has to end the tour, but he has hired students to re-enact “the Great Parallel Parking Incident of 1958.” What could be greater or more interesting than that? One tourist asks, “since when is a parking lot of great importance?” Well, of course, since the authority says it is.

Teh authorities must be right. Just like authority always works. Even in Winnipeg.

 

[to be continued}

The best Defense is our Mind

Authoritarianism, Books, Critical thinking, Death of Democracy, Death of Truth, Fascism, Tyranny and Fascism

 

When the capacity to think is destroyed, as it seems to have done in the United States, we must realize we have entered very dangerous waters filled with dangerous predators and we have no defenses. For example, in the wars of Yugoslavia people were driven by demagogues to attack their former friends and neighbours for the vital goal of ethnic cleansing. Sort of what Trump has done by claiming that illegal immigrants have poisoned the blood of the country.  We must always remember, as Carol Off makes clear in her book At a Loss for Words, that

 

“words are freighted with ideas. They carry meaning but also hide it. They inspire great acts of kindness and incite people to kill. We live in a moment…where we need to pay very close attention to the language around us—and the language we use—because it holds the secrets of what might be coming.”

 

 

We must always remember as Voltaire told us, “If someone can make you believe an absurdity, he can make you commit an atrocity.” If Trump can make you believe that the 2020 election was stolen against all the amazing amount of evidence to the contrary, he probably would be able to persuade you to attack immigrants with your bare hands. That is what might be coming.

 

Similarly, when Trump persuaded his followers that the rioters on January 6th were engaged in a love in, we must understand that his oratory was important. His words were important. As Carol Off explained,

 

“The January 6 insurrection provoked by the oratory of Donald Trump demonstrated the connection between words and actions and revealed the darkest qualities of this threat: that the language that Trump and his supporters shared is coded. Everyone in the crowd knew what the outgoing president meant when he told the mob that they needed to “save America” and “fight like hell,” just like …that Serbian politician meant when he said that Christians and Muslims could no longer share the same space. What we saw in Bosnia during the war, in the UK during Brexit, and in the United States during Trump’s speeches is the power of demagogues to speak to people in the language of fear, uncertainty, and anger using rhetoric to break down our trust in our governments, our societies, and each other. Our only defence is language that’s clear, rational and unambiguous.”[2]

 

I would summarize these thoughts as follows: our only defence is our ability to think critically. If we lose that we are sunk.

 

Why do Countries that Know Fascism Slip Back into Fascism?

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Authoritarianism, Death of Democracy, Fascism, Hungary, Populism, The Sleep of Reason, Tyranny and Fascism

 

 

During the entire time I was cruising through the Balkans along the Danube River I kept coming back to a question that was haunting me:  Why do so many countries that experienced fascism and know how awful it is, slip back into it?  You would think they know better and would avoid it, but so often they don’t.  Perhaps the best example of this is Hungary.  It was a long-time vassal state of the Soviet Union. Then for a very short time it was a genuine democracy. Yet it seems to be sliding back into fascism and some even suggest it has already gone all the way back. What happened and why?

 

After I got back to Canada without solving the problem on the trip, I heard an interview by Fareed Zakaria with a very interesting Bulgarian born political scientist, Ivan Krastev. Zakaria was interested in the same question as I was.  He put the question this way: “One of the biggest threats to liberal democracy these days comes from a region that was once considered its brightest horizon, Eastern Europe.” He, like me, was particularly interested in Hungary because of its sharp turn towards autocracy after Viktor Orbán was re-elected after losing his Parliamentary majority after the first election.

 

Krastev started said this:

 

“This is very interesting about the liberal revolutions. After every revolution, people were leaving the country. But normally this is the defeated party. This is the white Russians who left after the Bolshevik Revolution. After the liberal revolution of 1989, the first to leave with the liberals because they went immediately to study, to work, to live abroad. And suddenly the idea was that what they should do is to imitate the West.”

 

Every expected them to follow the west. The people who were left in Poland after Communism collapsed, just as in Hungary as well, were resentful that they were told by the political elites that were left, that they ought to copy the west. They were left out, just like non-college educated people in the United States, have felt left out by the liberal elites. And, as Friedrich Nietzsche knew, resentment is a very powerful emotion. Resentment is dynamite.

 

If they were expected to be like Germany, for example, then why not rather just go to Germany. No one likes to slavish follow someone else. They felt like losers. And as the American Democrats have learned the hard way, no one likes that.

 

Added to that, if the west won the war so conclusively, as it seemed, why did the “winners,” from the west leave the country? That is highly unusual, yet in so many of the former satellite countries, the liberals left the country, leaving a mess behind.

 

According to Krastev, after the fall of communism when the liberals were gone, the people were expected to imitate the west who won the cold war, but none of them wanted to do that. As Krastev said,

“But you know what? Imitation is not a fun business. If I’m imitating you, it means that I recognize that you are better than me. And then, if I’m imitating you, what about me? So, this resentment against imitation, in my view, was the reason why in eastern Europe, much earlier than in other parts, you have this kind of populist resentment saying, OK, you are not better than us.”

 

The pride of the people left out was hurt. Many of the people felt like they were looked down upon by the west and very much resented that.

Added to that, as Krastev  Orbán was a “very gifted politician”  who  could manipulate the system in Hungary so that the rules of the game would be rigged to ensure his election. For example, he made sure all of the media supported him. If they didn’t’ they lost their licences.  Trump has been threatening the same thing in the US and the threats have worked. As a result of all of this, the former Russian satellites became  more like Russia and eastern Europe than America, even though Russia lost the Cold War. And they are transforming the west to be more like Russia! And as if that is not weird enough, the American right-wing is making America more like Russia too. The world is topsy-turvy. Led in part—a large part—by Donald Trump.

 

Orbán could cleverly navigate that world so his victory would be ensured. That was more important to him than democracy. Trump was pretty good at that too

 

+2 + 2 = 5

American Fascism, Authoritarianism, Death of Truth, Fascism, Populism, Tyranny and Fascism

 

I had a surreal experience yesterday. First, I went for a walk in our new Events Centre in Steinbach. While I walked on the track, I listened to a podcast  on the topic of George Orwell and a film made about him by Raol Peck. who was interviewed on the podcast.

The podcast was very interesting, because George Orwell was very interesting. Orwell was a brilliant thinker and critic of totalitarianisms of both the left and the right. Peck had recently made a film about George Orwell and he called it 2 + 2 = 5. The title of the podcast is based on a scene where Winston was asked questions by his interrogator.  He was asked ‘what is 2 + 2 equal to?”  Winston replied, ‘4.”  The interrogator then asked what if the Big Boss says 2 + 2 =5? What would say? I would say ‘2 +2=4.’ Then he was promptly zapped with an electric shock. He was zapped often enough that he begged to say, 2 + 2 = 5.  That is how totalitarianism works. You believe what you are told to believe. At least, you profess to believe. The more absurd the belief you are persuaded to believe, the better. The Bigger the lie the better, as Adolf Hitler pointed out.

 

When I got home after my walk, I sat down and watched CNN news on TV  about a male  nurse being shot and killed in Minneapolis.  I was pooped and thought I was not hearing things right. I was hearing things right.

 

I.C.E. officers in Minneapolis in search presumably of dangerous illegal immigrants,  shot and killed a young man who was an American citizen and not an illegal immigrant. He was not the worst of the worst as Trump said they were after. He was a nurse in a Vet’s hospital.

 

The  male nurse had watched as I.C.E. officers were assaulting a woman and he, unwisely, but bravely, stepped in to help the woman. There were a large number of witnesses watching what happened. Many taped in on their phones. The I.C.E. agents repeatedly pushed the woman  and man back and then down to the ground. Presumably they were interfering with the officers arresting someone. Perhaps they just did not like being taped at work.

When the nurse, by the name of Pretti, stepped in the I.C.E. officers immediately transferred their attention to Pretti. Pretti was repeatedly shoved to the ground. The officers were extremely rough and belligerent. The men piled on top of Pretti. Really there was nothing that he could do. The agents were on top of him and he was pinned down. One of the agents then could be seen leaving the edge of the melee with what was clearly a gun in his hand. They had relieved Pretti of his gun.

 

Later I.C.E. officials claimed he had walked towards the agents with a gun. technically, that was true. He did have a loaded gun in his back pocket or pants but he never pulled it out. The only thing he waved around was his phone/camera.  Later we learned Pretti had a permit for the gun so was carrying it legally, and, as members of the American right-wing constantly remind us it is lawful for citizens to do so, even to protect themselves from government law enforcement official such as the I.C.E agents.

 

There was no sign of belligerence on the part of Pretti; only on the part of the officers.  About  one second later, after the gun was removed by the agent, a shot could be heard. It turned out one of the agents  shot Pretti while he was unarmed and pinned to the ground surrounded by burly masked I.C.E. agents. Pretti was already disarmed of his lawful weapon, when someone shot him.

As if that was not enough, within seconds there was a barrage of more shots by I.C.E. agents. CNN counted 9 further shots. All 10 shots were fired  after I.C.E. agents  had removed Pretti’s gun and there was no risk of harm to them. There was no need to shoot him once. Let alone 10 times. He was already totally disarmed.

 

All of this was highly disconcerting, but what happened next was even more disconcerting. Within hours Kristi Noem, the Secretary of  Homeland Security, the top position in the department, made a rushed statement saying Pretti had walked up to the agents aggressively with a gun.  In no time at all she figured out it was all his fault. Shortly after that, a few other senior members of the department quickly made other statements assuring us that Pretti was a “domestic terrorist” who intended to harm the I.C.E. agents. No evidence of this was offered. We were told by department officials that he was a terrorist and the I.C.E agents who shot Pretti did so as a “defensive shooting.”

 

In other words, just as George Orwell had predicted 75 years ago, we were being told that “2 + 2 = 5”.

 

Here is what people learn when they are not allowed to believe that 2 + 2 =4: “War is Peace.”  “Freedom is slavery.” “Ignorance is strength.”

 

Orwell taught us about it 75 years ago and we did not listen. We did not think it was possible. Well now we know. It is not just possible. It is here and now.

As Orwell also said,

 

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful. And murder respectable ”

We don’t have to fear it. It is here staring us in the face Right now. From the TV set you and I have been watching. Here and Now. 2 + 2 = 5.

Autocratic Leaders take advantage of our weaknesses

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, American Fascism, Authoritarianism, Critical thinking, Death of Democracy, Death of Truth, Fascism, Populism, The Sleep of Reason, Tyranny and Fascism

 

Populist, Machiavellian, and autocratic leaders have learned to take advantage of our natural (evolved) biases against us.  Goodman used the example of Andrew Tate in England to illustrate his point. I would use leaders with autocratic tendencies instead, like Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán. And of course, it seems to me, that the young people, being even more impressionable than the older people, seem to be most attracted to such strong man leaders.  Perhaps they are more impressionable, or perhaps, even more likely, they are the most unhappy with themselves.  In modern society, young people are starting to realize that their parent’s generation has screwed them by rigging the rules of society against them. It is no accident that this current generation, for the first time in history, is likely to live less well off than financially than their parents.

 

Strongmen, like Trump, are masters at using deceit and manipulation to create absurd trust in their abilities, against all evidence to the contrary, and then use that ability to propel themselves into positions of authority where they can use that authority to improve their own financial position at the expense of those who supported them. It’s a nasty trick if you can get away with it, and none is better at it than Donald Trump. Trump has done it many times and continues to do it as his supporters don’t seem to notice or don’t seem to care.

 

One of the techniques that strongmen in the past have used to gain influence over the populace include attacking science and knowledge. Hitler did it. Stalin did. And now Trump is doing it. When the Bolsheviks took power in Russia they quickly attacked the scientific community with claims that they were merely, “bourgeois” scientists who were acting on behalf of their financial supporters and then replaced them with more compliant and ideologically pure scientists. This is precisely what Trump has done by attacking woke scientists.

 

We must be careful to avoid allowing this to happen. As Jonathan Goodman said in his Guardian article,

 

“Where we see brute power combined with ignorance, we can throw our support behind knowledge, peaceful protest and education.

 

And finally, when reigns of terror end – and eventually, they always do – it is critical to learn and absorb the lessons. That way, we inoculate ourselves afresh against our natural tendency to trust the untrustworthy, carrying that wisdom forward into the future so that we’re better able to stymie the autocrats who seek to close our minds.

 

The best tool we can muster to defend ourselves from such attacks is our ability to think critically. We must cherish and protect that skill, as it is our most powerful weapon of self-defence. This is always our most powerful tool. When we give it up we submit to arbitrary and ruthless authority. That is why autocrats are so quick to attack it because that makes us defenceless to their attacks.

 

Are we hard-wired for autocracy?

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, American Fascism, Authoritarianism, Critical thinking, Death of Democracy, Fascism, The Sleep of Reason, Tyranny and Fascism

 

Jonathan R Goodman in an article in the Guaridan earlier this year asked this question “Are we hard-wired for autocracy? That is the big question.

 

Here is what he said,

A recent piece of research [in the UK] suggested that more than half of people aged between 13 and 27 would prefer the UK to be an authoritarian dictatorship… The way we evolved predisposes us to place trust in those who often deserve it least – in a sense, hardwiring us to support the most Machiavellian among us and to propel them into power. This seems like an intractable problem. But it’s what we do in the face of that knowledge that matters.

 

Yascha Mounk, Associate professor  at Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C. made similar claims about the US and backed it up with personal research. If both the US and UK are headed toward autocracy the world is in trouble. Sadly, there is a lot of evidence that this is the case.

 

Part of the problem is that humans have a strong liking to be led by strong men. Like our primate cousins. As Goodman wrote,

 

“Recent work in anthropology and primatology shows how this wiring evolved. Our ancient ancestors, like most primates today, lived in groups dominated by violent and aggressive alpha males. Yet over the course of our biological and cultural evolution, unlike our primate cousins, we learned to work together to counter those bullyboys, organising to diminish their influence.We learned that cooperation was more effective than bloody competition. We don’t have to be ruled by bullies, but it is natural so we must be careful, diligent and smart to resist the “natural” tendency. In fact, many now realized that it is through cooperation much more than individual initiative that humans have mastered the globe, where our primate cousins have fallen behind us in development.  As Goodman said, “Where we see brute power combined with ignorance, we can throw our support behind knowledge, peaceful protest and education.”

 

Our nearest evolutionary neighbours, chimpanzees,  also cooperate but not to the extent that we do. They are much more likely to be led by strong alpha males, though sadly and unwisely, in my view, we seem to be evolving towards their approach. Goodman put it this way in his article: “It’s human nature to trust strongmen, but we’ve also evolved the tools to resist them…”

 

The researchers  pointed out we have more recently evolved to cooperate more and compete less. That has come about from learning biases. In other words humans have evolved to believe what other people around us believe, particularly those we see as being successful. For example, in the US many people see Trump as successful. I don’t but they do. People evolved to believe the strong men in their group because that was where they could find protection. Scientists call these conformity or prestige biases.

 

There was an interesting scientific work by the  psychologist Solomon Asch that showed people would tend to believe what successful people around them believed, even when they were wrong. For example, he devised a test where people were asked a simple question. He asked them to compare 2 lines on a piece of paper that were actually the same length. But when they heard others around them say one was longer than the other, they tended to believe it as well.  This probably evolved with us when we lived in small hunting groups. However, those overly trusting beliefs can lead us into serious trouble. Autocratic leaders for example can exploit this natural tendency. Many of the autocrats  are very skillful at manipulating others. Goodman put it this way:

 

Some people call this trait proactive aggression, others, Machiavellian intelligence,  or the ability and inclination to dominate not with violence, but via social manoeuvring and deceit.

 

It is easy to see how this can apply to autocratic or wanna be autocratic leader, such as Victor Orbán in Hungary  or Trump. In other words they found that we can favor those among us who pretend to cooperate at least until they stop. Then they become rivals. We have to be smarter and think more critically.

 

These evolutionary traits can be helpful or dangerous.  When we realize we have these traits, as do most people around us, we have to be careful to look out for bad signs of trouble ahead. We can resist these tendencies, but too often don’t,

Hungary: From Communism to Democracy to Fascism?

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Authoritarianism, Fascism, Hungary, The Sleep of Reason

Ever since we signed up for the tour of the Balkans, tour without adequate thought as I have said, I have thinking about Hungary?  Why would a country that came so close to a successful revolt against Soviet Union domination in 1956 that it became for a while the darling of the west, now, after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, and Hungary became a democracy  not very long ago, be sliding back into autocracy?  Hungarians  know what Communism was like? How and why could this happen? Why would they allow it to happen? These are the questions that have haunted me and for which I have sought an answer, or at least an insight. I never have answers, who am I kidding? I just get more questions.

 

It seems like such a long journey: from Communism to Democracy to Fascism, but Hungary seems to have moved there in a flash. Not that is completely fascist yet, but it sure seems to headed in that disturbing direction. To me it seems like that is the journey Hungary has embarked upon under the direction of its populist leader Viktor Orbán. But is that really such a long journey? I actually think not. After all, communists and fascists agree on one very important thing—democracy is bad; autocracy is good. It is a movement from extremism on the left communism, to democracy and then to extremism on right namely fascism.

 

It is actually a very short journey from communism to fascism. Communism began with a dream of universal brotherhood of man—i.e. from each according to his means to each according to his needs. A beautiful dream that turned into a nightmare.  As Max Eastman, said, communism was “the God that failed”. The dream curdled from hope to violence. Lenin may have been the cook that switched the recipe when the proletariat, working people, gave up the hopes of freedom and justice in favor of a dictatorship of the proletariat. When the communist leaders crushed the dreams of fellow feeling in their citizens  the  dreams of the proletariat turned inward and their hate and pain transformed  them into wolves instead.

 

When there is no longer room in the heart for empathy, it dies and kills part of us and the result is, as the singer song-writer Martyn Joseph said, “the good in us is dead.” Joseph feared would happen in that other Balkan state, Kosovo. What was left there were vicious dogs snarling and biting each other. And the brotherhood of man was given up as an empty dream. The best in them was dead. Leaving an empty burnt-out husk, incapable of love, empathy or fellow feeling. Only a corpse remained. That is the power of hate. It is as transformative as the power of love but in the opposite direction.

 

A couple of decades later, the world was left with another leader, Donald Trump who as I have said before, has the empathy of a turnip. His hatred turned a nation of brave men and women into a nation that feared itself, and found a scapegoat, the immigrants, who could be dispatched by a crowd in a packed arena at the 2020 Republican National Convention chanting gleefully, “Deportation Now.”  All of this while holding signs underneath smiling faces that read “Mass Deportation.”  This looked to me like the brownshirts of Nazi Germany who viciously turned on their Jewish neighbours. That was how the American MAGA crowd turned on their brown immigrant neighbours, demanding they be deported or sent to Latin American jails for torture. When your empathy is shredded what else could you do but shout for joy around calls to “lock them up?” The ugly ideology of Nazi Germany’s Kristallnacht had taken over in America. To me it felt viscerally, like there was a direct lineal line of descendant, from the Night of Broken glass in Germany against Jews led by the Nazi Party’s SS troops and aided by the hateful Hitler youth and then ordinary, but rancid, Germans to those American Republicans. The bullies again were in control, only this time in America.