Ignore the Dissidents of Our Time at Your Peril
The political prisoners of our age are harbingers of what is to come for us all.
Most have already turned a blind eye to America’s political prisoners, who are still held in the jails of Washington D.C. for “crimes” akin to mundane trespassing in the Capitol building. Those who are still incarcerated are invariably not held for being violent or destructive, as has become the standard presumption. They are held for the non-crime of association. Those whom the government could find no slander that they could credibly relay to willing media organizations have been released on bail, albeit with grossly exaggerated charges. However, it is those who are part of patriotic groups that remain behind bars.
The Proud Boys, a right-leaning men’s drinking club, protected Trump supporters and conservative speakers for years in areas where police refused to confront violent Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters. Some of those patriotic men showed up on January 6th, to heed President Trump’s call. They expected more Antifa violence that evening, targeting small groups leaving the protest, as had become normal. In the fervor of the event, some entered the Capitol building. They would later be charged and arrested in raids that involved armored military vehicles and SWAT teams. The incarcerated people who occasionally get messages out to the public tell of their long-term solitary confinement without cause, sleep deprivation techniques, beatings at the hands of guards while in restraints, and threats of harsher treatment for speaking to the media.
Their real crime wasn’t that they walked through an already open door. It was that they were part of a group that is politically antagonistic toward the current administration. Federal prosecutors under the Biden regime have been attempting to redefine the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, 3 Percenters, and similar groups as either gangs or domestic terrorist organizations. In so doing, Biden’s Administration seeks to reframe its political opposition as the opposition of the country itself. Therein lies the clear path to tyranny. It’s in the reclassification of one’s enemies as the enemies of all, so that one might justify the mistreatment of those enemies, and society at large will shrug with indifference.
Similarly, the same administration sees an enemy class in those who refuse the COVID vaccine. It has become a partisan issue, largely because the vaccines are not promoted like a medicine, but like a Stasi loyalty test, replete with a card that one must show to demonstrate obedience to the Party. Mandates were promoted with zealous fervency by leftist figures before eventually, the Biden Administration itself saw an opening. It was an opportunity to make unemployable those who are traditionalist, conservative, or just distrustful of the administration. They would be forced into compliance, or they would be removed from influence within their own private hierarchical structures. Perhaps they would simply be neutered as they became distracted with the new task of feeding their families while they are without employment, during a time of inflation and widespread shortages.
These perceived enemies of Biden’s regime have been tarnished by the media such that few seek to defend them outright. The protest on January 6th, 2021 was quickly redefined by the media as first a riot and then an insurrection, making those arrested into traitors. Those who have refused to bend the knee to COVID mandates are said to be either superstitious anti-science nuts or willful murderers of the elderly, motivated by selfishness. Thus, those who speak for these groups are few.
The problem is that tyranny rarely happens overnight. It creeps in and dehumanizes large groups, starting with those who would have the greatest capacity and will to resist it.
Around the world, the light of freedom is being dimmed. Other countries are leading the way, as one Australian politician brazenly put it, toward a New World Order. Australia has forbidden protesting, and videos now circulate the Internet showing uniformed officers on the doorsteps of those who even share Internet photos that encourage protests. They seek to silence dissenters through terrorism.
Canada was one of the first countries to require that those who enter (or return) be placed into hotels that have been re-vamped into quarantine centers, to which people are sent without being told of their location, with prison-like food options, and with release only upon government approval. Now, inter-province travel is prohibited without proof of vaccination status, enforced by checkpoints. Many face the prospect of being forever separated from their family members.
There is no point at which the power-hungry become satiated. It will never be possible for things to “return to normal” if only enough people wear the right masks or take enough booster shots or stop posting memes on the Internet. Those who seek dominion do so without limit, and they only stop when they feel that they cannot continue.
The silence with regard to the early-stage political prisoners will only lead to more people being incarcerated under more grandiose excuses. Those who stay mute now will be the most deserving of their eventual incarceration, for they were those who didn’t think freedom was worth fighting for, and thus they will lose theirs.
You're right. I try to tell people what's really going on and 90% of them don't believe it. They seem to believe the media hype on TV and else where. I've been telling people that right now is like the early days of fascism in Europe or I compare it to the book 1984 by George Orwell where they want to rewrite history and punish you for wrong thinking and watch everything you do. It's getting scary out there and most people don't even realize what's happening right in front of their faces.
Well said, Sarah. Let me refer you to Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison. He makes an interesting point that helps to explain why the West has become so self-destructive. It is in the section entitled "The Past Ten Years," in the subsection entitled "Folly." He says that folly is perhaps the greater threat to good than malice. Malice, he says, can be exposed. One can even stand against it by force. But folly cannot be touched by protests and force. Even reason is useless against it. It remains undamaged by reason and argument. Reasoning with a fool, he says, is both futile and dangerous. He had cause to know, for fools had put him in prison, and the malicious would eventually execute him.
His words strike home to me as I see what is happening in our culture. There is malice enough to go around, to be sure, but what makes that malice so effective is the folly of those who tolerate and protect it. They will foolishly extend their protection even in the face of reason. So, we have made ourselves fools so that we refuse to stand in the way of malicious evil; instead, we surround it as fools to protect and disguise it. So Bonhoeffer tells us to recognize folly for what it is. “To deal adequately with folly it is essential to recognize it for what it is. This much is certain, it is a moral rather than an intellectual defect. There are men of great intellect who are fools, and men of low intellect who are anything but fools, a discovery we make to our surprise as a result of particular circumstances….”