Video of the day -- a Hell on Earth
This video is long, but the relevant section is just from 27:20 to 1:08:00 (41 minutes) -- you can skip the rest. It covers the Chinese regime's response to the rebellion earlier this week (see here for details), but it's mainly of interest for revealing what life in China is normally like anyway -- an Orwellian nightmare that Orwell himself could never have imagined, given the way advanced technology is used to monitor and control the people, though in the end it's backed up by the plain old beatings, torture, and murder which authoritarians have relied on for millennia. Seeing this, it's all too easy to see why the rebellion erupted, and why more such events in the future are inevitable. The endless fear, humiliation, and frustration implicit in living like this create pressures that eventually boil over, one way or another. And is it any wonder that China's birth rate is catastrophically low, even after the end of the one-child policy? Why would anyone want to bring a child into such a ghastly environment?
You can see why I refer to the Chinese regime as a "gangster state" -- indeed, not even actual gangsters ever aspire to this degree of control over their victims. And like all such regimes, it has no response to resistance except to escalate repression (as you'll see, reports in our media that the regime is easing its zero-covid policy are a flat-out lie). They're basically turning up the heat under a pot of boiling water, higher and higher, while trying to hold the lid down by force, tighter and tighter. This will not end well.
posted by Infidel753 at 12:06 AM
3 Comments:
In many ways Orwell was quite astute in terms of realising the potential of technology to be used to further the goals of totalitarianism.
Right on. Authoritarian regimes end up making life increasingly miserable for the people they rule in order to maintain their grip on power.
Look at Germany in WW2 compared to WW1. After the German offensive failed in 1918, the Germans were rational enough to realize they couldn't win and that it was better to end the war before the fighting was taking place on German soil. But Hitler and the Nazis in WW2 couldn't imagine trying to end the war in 1944 when it was clear that all was lost and hopeless, so the German people had to suffer for another year for no good reason.
The lives of the people of North Korea would improve immediately if the Kims were removed from power and North Korea opened up to the world. Instead, the people of North Korea continue to suffer from malnutrition and impoverishment because the Kims and their inner circle only care about their own power.
NickM: Undoubtedly so, but I'm sure he didn't anticipate most of the specific technology (smartphones, sophisticated databases) that have developed since his time.
Tommykey: Seeing the vast scale of the repression in China, I kept thinking, "What is this for? What's the ultimate goal or purpose?" Does the regime have some higher goal they think justifies all this, or is it purely a matter of preserving the absolute power of a few individuals, for its own sake?
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