Why do despots despise dissidents?
Because they try to tell the truth, for themselves and for those who cannot find their own voices.* "Reluctant dissidents" may save humanity. [Part One of Two]
Image Credit: Candelario Gomez Lopez, from Pixabay
Each child entering this world has an opportunity to confer a great blessing upon humankind simply by becoming a good and loving person.
Innocent beings rely upon loving parents to help them survive and thrive and share their unique gifts with the world—in body, in mind, and in spirit.
Every individual deserves devotion, love, protection, and respect, and by receiving a modicum of these most will develop the capacity to offer the same essential care to others. This cycle of caring makes life joyful and meaningful.
We reinforce these values throughout society by encouraging and rewarding compassion, honesty, kindness, and good-willed service to fellow human beings.
No matter how humble the role a particular person may play in creating the shared stories of our lives, each begins with an equal moral status to ALL others. Only serious infractions of mutual trust resulting in tangible harm justify temporary or permanent alterations to this status, and only when made through a process deeply respectful to all concerned.
Each human being deserves broad respect for individual inalienable rights, from every other person and from institutions and systems, with certain rights retained no matter the extremity of a breach of trust. This retention of rights acknowledges our fellow human beings may make errors of judgment requiring correction.
The following brief overview, describing how people developed awareness of inalienable human rights over time, reflects a universality of the necessity of human rights to the well-being of human bodies, minds, spirits, and communities:
The belief that everyone, by virtue of her or his humanity, is entitled to certain human rights is fairly new. Its roots, however, lie in earlier tradition and documents of many cultures; it took the catalyst of World War II to propel human rights onto the global stage and into the global conscience.
Throughout much of history, people acquired rights and responsibilities through their membership in a group – a family, indigenous nation, religion, class, community, or state. Most societies have had traditions similar to the "golden rule" of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The Hindu Vedas, the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, the Bible, the Quran (Koran), and the Analects of Confucius are five of the oldest written sources which address questions of people’s duties, rights, and responsibilities. In addition, the Inca and Aztec codes of conduct and justice and an Iroquois Constitution were Native American sources that existed well before the 18th century. In fact, all societies, whether in oral or written tradition, have had systems of propriety and justice as well as ways of tending to the health and welfare of their members.
A Short History of Human Rights, Human Rights Here and Now, Edited by Nancy Flowers, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA HUMAN RIGHTS RESOURCE CENTER, (Retrieved November 10, 2021, 12:50 AM), http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/edumat/hreduseries/hereandnow/Part-1/short-history.htm.
While my assertions have not been strictly proven in an epistemological or philosophical framework, our recorded history as human beings lends them support, as described above and in the following discussion of Stoicism:
I wish to defend the role of Stoicism in the early moral development of the West: the West’s ethical bedrock ought to be located in the early Roman period, and not exclusively in the early Christian centuries.
Ben Bassett, Ancient Stoicism, Human Rights and The Dignity of the Individual, AREO, (January 31, 2019), https://areomagazine.com/2019/01/31/ancient-stoicism-human-rights-and-the-dignity-of-the-individual/.
For millennia, human beings have recognized and valued the traits we must develop in ourselves to move away from perpetual war and toward peaceful co-existence. For millennia, human beings have recognized and valued the traits we must develop in ourselves to move away from tolerating extreme poverty as well as ill-gotten wealth, toward a more cooperative existence. For millennia, human beings have recognized and valued the traits we must develop in ourselves to move away from suppression of creativity and individuality, toward a nurturing tolerance of individual expression, within boundaries defined by tangible harm.
In the sense that the Declaration of Human Rights doesn’t draw explicitly on any religious doctrines, of course, it is thoroughly secular. But if you lift the lid you find an awful lot of Christian workings underneath the bonnet.
Episode 2, The Secret History of a Cherished Concept, The Genesis of Human Rights, From the Documentary, “For the Love of God,” CENTRE FOR PUBLIC CHRISTIANITY (CPX), (July 1, 2018), https://www.publicchristianity.org/the-genesis-of-human-rights/.
To widely develop these long-valued traits, the CONDITION OF EXISTENCE human beings and human societies most need is FREEDOM.
FREEDOM comprises institutional and individual respect for inalienable human rights—Intellectual, Physical, and Spiritual.
These rights include, at minimum, complete ownership of one’s own body and mind; strong parental rights; strong private property rights; the right to bear arms; the right to self defense; the right to privacy; the right to speak freely; the right to assemble freely; the right to travel freely; and the right to be treated justly and proportionally regarding any breach of trust.
The Bill of Rights of the United States of America (1791) enshrines basic inalienable rights, as do other documents, but these rights ALWAYS belong to us, regardless of what may be officially written, regardless of all violations of them.
Our freedom to travel, for example, may be broadly restricted by corrupt authorities, and these restrictions violate our human right, causing us harm. But the harm inflicted does not negate the existence of our right. Rather, it serves to highlight the existence of and the high value of it. The violation compels us to remind the violator of our right, and we act properly when we peacefully attempt to assert it.
History shows whenever human beings move away from protecting and respecting inalienable human rights, destruction ensues, and it may take various forms:
I have used the term democide for murder by government, where murder is understood as it is defined in civil law. This is clear enough. And, I have used the term mortacracy for a regime that commits mass democide, such as did Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, communist China, and Pol Pot's Cambodia, among others. The key understanding of democide is that it is intentional. Yet what about those regimes that unintentionally cause the deaths of their citizens as a natural consequence of their actions, or their lack of action? One example might be a regime where corruption has become so pervasive and destructive of a people's welfare that it threatens their daily lives and reduces their life expectancy.
RJ Rummel, Who Were the Mortacracies of 2005?, POWER KILLS, University of Hawaii, (Retrieved November 9, 2021, 12:53 AM), https://hawaii.edu/powerkills/DEFINING_THE_MORTACRACIES.HTM.
In other words, cultivating individual and societal respect for inalienable human rights and insisting on their protection DEFINES the Common Good.
The best possible lives for as many as possible flow from systematic protection of inalienable human rights.
Arguably, the most compelling motivation for the existence of human [rights] may rest upon the exercise of imagination. Try imagining a world without human rights!
“Human Rights,” INTERNET ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY, (Retrieved November 9, 2021, 12:49 AM), https://iep.utm.edu/hum-rts/.
Protecting and valuing freedom lifts up everyone. Every violation of an inalienable human right even when (perhaps, especially when) committed in the name of protecting the Common Good actually has the opposite effect.
Whenever others insist upon solving a collective problem through imposition of force, they destroy the possibility of achieving a cooperative and voluntary solution. Each time this happens, the creative life energy of individuals is drawn away from serving families and communities and society and into serving powerful despots and those maintaining the structures built by the despots to enable and maintain their illegitimate control of humanity:
Matthew Ehret, From COP26 to COVID-19: Two Sides of the Same Lie, A Stiftung Corona Ausschuss Presentation, Matt Ehret’s Insights, (October 31, 2021).
Most people who have experienced living in a relatively free society for any length of time seem to understand some of this intuitively. However, many fail to comprehend the prevalence of despotic tendencies in their fellow human beings.
By design, most people have been taught to view so-called democratic authorities, whether elected or unelected, as inherently benign. They have been taught to assume the authorities’ motives and means of achieving goals are necessary and proper for maintaining a functional society and an orderly world. Significantly, they have been taught to perceive persons who achieve dominant positions in democratic societies as morally and intellectually superior.
This widespread belief has allowed despots to create organizations designed to make them appear benevolent, legitimate, and even philanthropic. Yet in reality, dishonest and coldblooded people have thereby gained in power and wealth. From protected pinnacles of power, they use stealth means to keep societies in chaos and discord because doing so increases their control and their power and wealth. It allows them to manipulate the world. And in the end, subtracting all harms from benefits, the efforts of the “benevolent ones” elevate and enrich them and their cronies not most individuals and society.
Despots take full advantage of the human tendency to believe people deserve what they get, even when gains seem vaguely ill-gotten. Thus, the more power and wealth the despots obtain, the more people view them as deserving of it, and the easier it is for the despots to sustain the illusion of benevolence. Charismatic despots, like Anthony Fauci, hold a special kind of charm.
Despots create illusions, and many people accept illusions as realities because this relieves them from taking energy and time to assist society. There is little enjoyment to be found in attempting to identify and restrain charming and powerful criminals. Alas, this human tendency allows despots to engage in criminal behavior for decades, even lifetimes, without hindrance or punishment. They may even be honored while they live and memorialized as heroes after death.
One could call despotic energies the epitome of spiritual evil or one could see them merely as manifestations of a biological tendency of certain persons towards gaining power over others. Either way, widespread failure to acknowledge despots: 1) exist in democracies and democratic republics and 2) cause great harm when not held in check, gives the despots lots of latitude—and they willingly take it.
Despotism
by Encyclopaedia Britannica Films
Measures how a society ranks on a spectrum stretching from democracy to despotism. Explains how societies and nations can be measured by the degree that power is concentrated and respect for the individual is restricted. Where does your community, state and nation stand on these scales?
The companion Encyclopedia Britannica Film "Democracy" can be found here.
One of the most well-known examples of an individual possessing despotic energy is Anthony Fauci. As noted above, he also has plenty of charm, often called charisma.
Even though a number of influential and highly-intelligent individuals have warned the world about Dr. Fauci’s destructive tendencies for many years, he retained his prominent position and even grew his influence.
Journalist Celia Farber was among first to sound the alarm. She researched and wrote “Sins of Omission” published in SPIN in 1989, republished in 2015:
At the end of 1989, two years after we had started the highly controversial AIDS column in SPIN, we published an article by Celia Farber called “Sins of Omission” about the truly bad and corrupt science surrounding promoting AZT as a treatment for the syndrome of diseases.
SPIN Staff, AIDS And The AZT Scandal: SPIN’s 1989 Feature, ‘Sins Of Omission,’ SPIN, (October 5, 2015), https://www.spin.com/2015/10/aids-and-the-azt-scandal-spin-1989-feature-sins-of-omission/.
Another brave soul, Peter H. Duesberg, wrote “Inventing the AIDS Virus,” published in 1996, and it contains a forward by Nobel Laureate Kary Mullis, ironically, the inventor of the Polymerase Chain Reaction, who also blew the whistle on Fauci in 1996, as you will discover if you watch the fascinating interview linked below. Here is an excerpt from the summary text accompanying it:
T[h]e primary diagnostic tool used for determining a virus infection is the PCR test which Anthony Fauci has helped to establish as the gold standard for testing.
Kary Mullis, the inventor of the PCR test has stated that no infection of illness can be accurately diagnosed with PCR.
He discussed his thoughts on Dr. Fauci and the scientific and medical establishments with Dr. Gary Null in 1996."https://archive.org/details/Kary-Mullis-Full-117-Min-Interview-by-Gary-Null
As Duesberg detailed in his book, Dr. Anthony Fauci himself promoted giving toxic AZT to pregnant women who tested positive for HIV, to “learn more about the risks and benefits of the treatment” (page 338). Duesberg explains further:
‘There is of course a double irony in this apparent caution. First, the benefit of being HIV-free is currently not known, because there is no proof that HIV causes AIDS. Second, the risk of AZT is certainly not “unknown”—thirty years after it was first developed to kill human cells for cancer chemotherapy.’
Peter H. Duesberg and Bryan J. Ellison, “Inventing the AIDS Virus,” REGNERY PUBLISHING, INC., (1996).
Of course, Anthony Fauci knew AZT was toxic. Anthony Fauci did not care. As Duesberg noted on page 339, one test involving 104 HIV-positive pregnant women given AZT resulted in: ‘Eight spontaneous abortions, eight “therapeutic” abortions, and eight serious birth defects including extra digits.’
Anthony Fauci has been playing his deadly games for years, apparently serving as PR Man and money launderer for the Department of Defense and their partners in the pharmaceutical industry. Moreover, it appears Fauci dusted off his AIDS playbook as a guide for “managing” COVID-19.
In a June 2021 piece for her Substack newsletter “Through the Looking Glass,” Margaret Anna Alice mixed storybook characters with humor to document and expose Fauci’s most recent preposterous lies:
And veteran Fauci journalist Celia Farber, in a recent piece for her Substack newsletter “The Truth Barrier,” channeled Charles Dickens and called forth Fauci’s “Ghost of Crisis Past.”
By the way, like AZT, the “vaccines” for COVID-19 never worked as claimed, NEVER, and like AZT, they are deadly and toxic. The injections do not support health and well-being nor were they intended to:
Ronald B. Brown, Outcome Reporting Bias in COVID-19 Vaccine Trials, MEDICINA (Feb. 26, 2021), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7996517/.
It is no coincidence Dr. Fauci’s wife, Christine Grady, serves as chief of the Department of Bioethics for NIH’s Clinical Center and has for over a decade if you count her time as deputy chief. Anticipating your question, she and Anthony have been married since 1985:
Christine Grady, Ph.D., was recently named chief of the Department of Bioethics of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center, NATIONAL INSTITUTES FOR HEALTH (NIH), (March 2, 2012), (July 12, 2021, 4:30 PM), https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/international-voice-human-subjects-protections-named-nih-clinical-center-bioethics-chief.
Grady named to new bioethics role
Dr. Christine Grady recently assumed the role of deputy chief of the Clinical Center’s Bioethics Department to assist in oversight of budget, personnel, and other administrative matters. Additionally, while Bioethics Chief Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is on an extended detail to the Office of Management and Budget, Grady has agreed to serve as acting chief of the department. As special advisor to the director for health policy, Emanuel is working on a variety of health policy issues but mainly leading the Office of Management and Budget’s health care reform efforts.
Grady joined the CC in 1983 as a clinical nurse specialist, focused primarily on HIV and other immunological and infectious diseases. After a few years as assistant director for clinical science at the National Institute of Nursing Research and completion of a doctorate in philosophy, she returned to the CC to join the Bioethics Department, where she has served as the head of the Section on Human Subjects Research for the last 10 years. As a tenured scientist, Grady’s research areas include informed consent, subject recruitment, incentives, vulnerability, and international research ethics.NIH Clinical Center News, NATIONAL INSTITUTES FOR HEALTH (NIH), (March 2009), (June 30, 2021, 6:52 PM), https://clinicalcenter.nih.gov/about/news/newsletter/2009/march09/newsletter.html, https://web.archive.org/web/20090323195645/https://clinicalcenter.nih.gov/about/news/newsletter/2009/march09/newsletter.html.
In this time of pharma-fraud and mandated injections, isn’t it ironic the list of Grady’s areas of focus includes “informed consent” and “international research ethics”?
It is also not a coincidence Grady replaced Ezekiel Emanuel in the NIH post, after he had held it for about a decade. Ezekiel Emanuel, another despot, brother to Rahm and Ari (Trump’s pal), advisor to three presidents, Clinton, Obama, and now Biden, also serves as Special Advisory to the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO)—and this is the short list of his conflicts of interest. By the way, Deborah Birx is Fauci’s old buddy, too, dating back to AIDS days.
Despots often use the optimistic and better tendencies of human nature as a tools of oppression and may even derive pleasure from employing this insidious technique. They twist concepts and language to their advantage and induce fear to stun people into accepting even the grossest of perversions.
Ezekiel Emanuel has mastered this art, as demonstrated in this painful-to-read May 2020 journal article aimed at “enhancing the liberty of individuals who have been infected with COVID-19”:
The Ethics of COVID-19 Immunity-Based Licenses (“Immunity Passports”)
‘Conclusions
Immunity-based licenses have the potential to help realize important values, including enhancing the liberty of individuals who have been infected with COVID-19 without worsening the situation of those who have not been infected, maximizing benefits to individuals and society by allowing immune people to engage in economic activity, and protecting the least advantaged by allowing safer care for vulnerable populations. Importantly, immunity-based licenses do not violate equal treatment because the factors used to grant a license are not discriminatory, like race or religion, but instead grounded in relevant evidence. While immunity-based licenses require careful implementation and scientific support to be ethical in practice, nothing makes them unethical in principle.
Govind Persad, JD, PhD and Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD, COVID-19: Beyond Tomorrow, Viewpoint, The Ethics of COVID-19 Immunity-Based Licenses (“Immunity Passports”), JOURNAL OF AMERICAN MEDICINE (JAMA),Volume 323, Issue 22, pp. 2241-2241, doi:10.1001/jama.2020.8102m (May 6, 2020), (June 28, 2021, 3:41 PM), https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2765836.
No doubt, thanks at least in part to Emanuel and his tactics, we now have a president with the nerve to say to Americans objecting to mandated experimental injections: “This is not about freedom or personal choice.”
Only a despot could or would make such a statement.
Of course, EVERYTHING MEANINGFUL is about freedom, relates to maintaining freedom. Freedom is the key to human well-being—pandemic or no pandemic. It is the rightful condition of every human being on this earth.
Protecting and respecting freedom, our inalienable human rights, far from being selfish, defines the most generous contribution one person makes to another and to our world.
I cannot claim to know much about Vaclav Havel: playwright, dissident, human rights leader, and former President of the Czech Republic. It seems he may have been appropriated at some point by “Mr. Global,” as Catherine Austin Fitts calls the chief despots in charge. In one instance the possible appropriator was Madeleine Albright, a notably horrible despot, an uber Ms. Global.
Whatever the truth about Havel as a person and as a moral and political force, I find many of his words particularly apropos for these times. Here is a sampling:
In 1979, Vaclav Havel responded to fellow Czech dissident Ludvik Vaculik, who had commented on ordinary people’s role in combatting authoritarianism. Havel was arrested shortly after the rebuttal was published in Index on Censorship
Without exaggeration: none of us can know in advance how much we can bear, nor what we may be made to bear. That can only be known by your calculating model of a sensible, decent man within the limits of the law. None of us decided in advance that we wanted to go to jail, indeed none of us made a conscious decision that he or she wanted to become a dissident.
We became dissidents without actually knowing how, and we found ourselves behind bars without really knowing how. We simply did certain things we had to do and that it seemed proper[] to do: nothing more, nor less. Happy are those who are decent and haven’t landed in jail. But why should those who had that misfortune be set apart from the others? Is it not usually quite arbitrary who lands in it and who doesn’t? Those whom you call heroes, suggesting that they are overdoing things, didn’t get locked up for their ambition to become martyrs — they were locked up because of the indecency of those who put people in jail for writing novels or for playing tapes with the music of unofficial musicians.
Havel with Graham Greene at the Prague Writers’ Club, 1969
No one wants to go to jail. If people were to take your advice and calculate the risks involved in the fashion of a thief deciding whether to burgle a[] supermarket, there would, for long time now, have been in our country not a single expression of solidarity with an unjustly persecuted person, not a single truthful novel or free song, not even a single feuilleton. For how can we be sure that tomorrow that won’t start putting people away for single feuilletons?
Maybe all you meant to say was that the quiet and inconspicuous humiliation of thousands of anonymous people was worse than the occasional arrest of a well-known dissident. Undoubtedly. But the question surely is, why did they arrest the dissident? Mainly, if you think about it, just because he had tried to tell the truth about that quiet and inconspicuous humiliation of thousands of anonymous people.
Natasha Schmidt, Vaclav Havel: "We became dissidents without actually knowing how,” INDEX ON CENSORSHIP, A Voice for the Persecuted, (December 19, 2011), http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2011/12/vacla-havel-index-on-censorship-ludvik-vakulik/.
Excerpt from “The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe”:
The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the working class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation; depriving people of information is called making it available; the use of power to manipulate is called the public control of power, and the arbitrary abuse of power is called observing the legal code; the repression of culture is called its development; the expansion of imperial influence is presented as support for the oppressed; the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom; farcical elections become the highest form of democracy; banning independent thought becomes the most scientific of world views; military occupation becomes fraternal assistance. 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 persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.
Vaclav Havel, Translator Paul Wilson, “The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe” edited by John Keane (but taken from http://www.vaclavhavel.cz/index.php?sec=2&id=1&PHPSESSID=6353c37f52b627bd51adde4e5299918a&setln=2#), GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY, Center for History and New Media, (Retrieved November 9, 2021, 11:21 PM), https://chnm.gmu.edu/1989/items/show/700.
Excerpt from Havel’s Liberty Medal Acceptance Speech:
Yes, the only real hope of people today is probably a renewal of our certainty that we are rooted in the Earth and, at the same time, the cosmos. This awareness endows us with the capacity for self-transcendence. Politicians at international forums may reiterate a thousand times that the basis of the new world order must be universal respect for human rights, but it will mean nothing as long as this imperative does not derive from the respect of the miracle of Being, the miracle of the universe, the miracle of nature, the miracle of our own existence. Only someone who submits to the authority of the universal order and of creation, who values the right to be part of it and a participant in it, can genuinely value himself and his neighbors, and thus honor their rights as well.
Vaclav Havel, President of the Czech Republic, Liberty Medal Acceptance Speech, (July 4, 1994), Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, NATIONAL CONSTITUTION CENTER, (Retrieved November 9, 2021, 1:28 AM), https://constitutioncenter.org/liberty-medal/recipients/vaclav-havel.
What more appropriate way of ending Part One of my essay than by sharing a recent interview featuring kindred spirits. The podcast host, James Delingpole, a reluctant dissident, so to speak, formerly a traditional journalist, interviews a fellow reluctant dissident, CJ Hopkins, an American playwright, novelist, and satirist living in Berlin, Germany.
November 8, 2021
Support the delingpod: https://www.subscribestar.com/jamesdelingpole
C. J. Hopkins is an American playwright, novelist, and political satirist. Among his works are the plays Horse Country, screwmachine/eyecandy and The Extremists.
How many have lately been placed into the position Havel so eloquently described, of reluctantly taking up the mantle of dissident simply by insisting on proper responses to deep injustices?
For the sake of humankind, let us hope the answer is A LOT.
Owing to Substack’s length limits for sending posts to email subscribers, I have decided to break this long exploration into two parts. To read Part Two, “We Need to Protect Our Children,” please see my next post.
*Credit for the title goes to Vaclav Havel, see just above; credit for the amazing photo goes to?