People unfortunate enough to live under tyranny must swallow bitter poison between every breath.
That poison is fear.
Fear strips away humanity and leaves behind a panicked animal, hoping only to survive.
Fear demands obedience, conformity, sycophancy — the adulation of all that one hates most.
Each moment is an anguish of doubt.
Children know, or soon learn, that some topics of conversation will destroy their parents.
One ill-chosen word and you will never find work again.
One careless letter, written in frustration, and you end up in the gulag.
One act of open defiance and you are dead.
French revolutionaries coined the word “terrorism” to mark the amount of government-induced fear needed to subdue the population. It worked quite effectively then, and it works still.
But the method has a vulnerability: the fearless individual.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post
______________________
Martin Gurri is a former CIA analyst and the author of The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium. Adapted from City Journal online
Photo by Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images