Open Your Mouth, and You Might Just Change the World...
Totalitarian and communist regimes were built on a combination of violence, emotional manipulation, and the wall of silence built by citizens who were too afraid to speak the truth. When those who support an orthodox perspective, no matter how absurd, are trumpeting their opinions from the rooftops, while their critics are hunkered down in their homes, terrified to open their mouths, this gives an artificial boost of legitimacy to the orthodoxy in question. After all, if the only voices you hear in the public sphere are all saying the same thing, the orthodox position can’t be all that bad, can it?
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Something similar happens in Western societies today. So many people are afraid to be publicly identified as critics of vaccine mandates, mask mandates, lockdowns, the use of puberty blockers in children and adolescents, the teaching of transgender ideology in our schools, abortion, assisted suicide, and radical climate change measures like coercive expropriation of farmland in the Netherlands, that the public sphere is effectively neutered, or reduced to an echochamber of “politically correct” voices congratulating each other on their political correctness, ad nauseum.
The only way to break this wall of silence is for citizens to overcome their fear, open their mouth, and speak up for the truth.
The first wave of truth-tellers is like the front line of soldiers: things can get rather unpleasant for them, to say the least. Unlike a soldier, you are unlikely to lose your life for being in the front line of truth-tellers. However, you might very well lose your job, your reputation, your income, and quite a few of your friends.
Those who spoke out against draconian pandemic measures and vaccine mandates from the very beginning were on the front line. Just look what happened to them: some of them lost their jobs; others saw their reputations shredded into pieces; others were debarred from practicing medicine; and those of us who got off relatively lightly saw our social media accounts censored or shut down.
But the Truth Tellers on the frontline are making it easier for the line behind them to follow their example. For the more people speak out against lies and injustice, the more the lies and injustices are exposed to the light of day. Little by little, they become an embarrassing thorn in the side of the Establishment, and major media and politicians start to turn their back on the old orthodoxy, as they see which direction the wind is now blowing. A similar story can be told about slavery, apartheid, the persecution of Irish Catholics under British rule, and the oppression of Indians by British colonial rulers.
Speaking in the Irish Senate earlier this week, during a debate on the Hatred and Hate Offences Bill 2022, Senator Lisa Chambers touched on the silence surrounding certain issues in our society. This bill, which creates a hopelessly vague category of speech “likely to incite hatred” against protected groups, raises very serious concerns about privacy and freedom of speech.
Yet certain NGOs, politicians and journalists have done a very good job at making people feel ashamed to openly criticise almost any aspect of the hate speech agenda, including the way it selectively menaces certain forms of speech deemed politically incorrect (such as robust criticism of the behaviour or opinions of certain “protected” groups) with the prospect of criminal prosecution:
There are many things that won’t be said in the chamber…the point that Senator Mullin made about cancel culture is real. And there are many topics that many of us are afraid to speak about publicly, or speak about in the chamber…but we say it outside, and we say it in the hallways, and people say it to us…the issues being raised..are real and genuine. And it’s not from crazy people…it’s not from far left or far right. There are many ordinary, middle-ground people, that are not quite sure what we’re legislating for, if it’s needed, if it’s reasonable…
Senator Chambers did very well to draw attention to this disconnect between what people actually think and what they say in public. Unfortunately, the more people cower in the corner and keep their mouth shut about the positions being defended by the Woke lobby, trans activists, radical environmentalists, and the despotic technocrats leading WHO and the European Union, the more these radical positions will acquire an artificial veneer of legitimacy.
After all, as a wise man once said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
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Me gusta lo que acabo de leer y me anima a apoyar y seguir el ejemplo. Gracias
> The only way to break this wall of silence is for citizens to overcome their fear, open their mouth, and speak up for the truth.
Nope. Far better to just shut up and don't make waves.
Twenty-one years ago, Glenn Reynolds ( @instapundit ) popularized the idea of the "preference cascade".
> Social pressures cause people to express sentiments that differ from those they really feel. As social scientist Timur Kuran noted in his 1995 book Private Truths, Public Lies, there are all sorts of reasons, good and bad, that lead people not to show how they truly feel. People tend to read social signals about what is approved and what is disapproved behavior and, in general, to modify their conduct accordingly. Others then rely on this behavior to draw wrong conclusions about what people think, and allow those conclusions to shape their own actions.
> This illustrates, in a mild way, the reason why totalitarian regimes collapse so suddenly. (Click here for a more complex analysis of this and related issues). Such regimes have little legitimacy, but they spend a lot of effort making sure that citizens don't realize the extent to which their fellow-citizens dislike the regime. If the secret police and the censors are doing their job, 99% of the populace can hate the regime and be ready to revolt against it - but no revolt will occur because no one realizes that everyone else feels the same way.
> This works until something breaks the spell, and the discontented realize that their feelings are widely shared, at which point the collapse of the regime may seem very sudden to outside observers - or even to the citizens themselves. Claims after the fact that many people who seemed like loyal apparatchiks really loathed the regime are often self-serving, of course. But they're also often true: Even if one loathes the regime, few people have the force of will to stage one-man revolutions, and when preferences are sufficiently falsified, each dissident may feel that he or she is the only one, or at least part of a minority too small to make any difference.
>
> - "Patriotism and Preferences", March 13 2002
> http://web.archive.org/web/20030910002544/http://www.techcentralstation.com/031302A.html
I used to believe that. Maybe it did happen in the past.; even the recent past. But the last dozen-or-so years have convinced me that so-called "spontaneous" social movements -- while not necessarily initiated by some shadowy organization from their secret volcano lair on the moon -- would not gain any traction unless there was some powerful special interest(s) behind them.
It was in _somebody's_ interest for Black Lives Matter, the transgender ideology, the backlash at mask and vaccine mandates, etc. to happen; so they were allowed and encouraged.
Do I have any evidence? Nope. But it is consistent with my own personal experience.
Or maybe I _am_ just some out-of-touch tinfoil hat * wearing lunatic tilting at simulated windmills.
* Actually aluminum foil. When was the last time you ever saw tin foil available at the super market? And why is that?