Young Communists saluting as they pass Lenin’s Tomb in the U.S.S.R., May 1, 1924.
Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesRegarding David Satter’s op-ed “Soviet Politics, American Style” (Dec. 23): As a younger man serving in our military, I saw an extraordinary thing on two continents. In both Europe and Asia, the idea of a border wall was turned on its head. No longer were walls built to keep invaders out but to keep people in. I have seen governments so loathed that minefields, guard towers and canine patrols were required to keep inmates, euphemistically called citizens, from escaping their borders. At its most benign, socialism requires compulsion and control of state media. A fair telling of this ill-conceived experiment might disabuse our young of its allure.
Conan M. Ward
Princeton, N.J.
A warning against groupthink is useful. But a warning like Mr. Satter’s, solely against groupthink on the left, is only a warning against the left styled as a defense of liberal norms. Today’s right doesn’t like dissent, either. For many Republican politicians, accepting the election result would have “ended any hope of a career,” to use Mr. Satter’s words. Talk about an “attempt to impose a deluded version of reality.” The right’s leader cultivates a personality cult and campaigns against “enemies of the people.” These are core Soviet practices.
Want to be anti-Soviet? Fight all bad Soviet things. Especially in your own political tribe, where you have street cred. But hanging bogeyman labels on opponents? That’s such a Soviet thing to do.
Ilya Shlyakhter
Allston, Mass.
Addressing the same problem as Mr. Satter—the historical drift of nations to the left—in 1978 Alexander Solzhenitsyn explained it thus: “The current of materialism which is most to the left always ends up by being stronger, more attractive and victorious, because it is more consistent. Humanism without its Christian heritage cannot resist such competition. We watch this process in the past centuries and especially in the past decades, on a world scale as the situation becomes increasingly dramatic. Liberalism was inevitably displaced by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism and socialism could never resist communism.”
Mr Satter suggests as an antidote that the U.S. find “a lodestar for society’s moral development.” That lodestar is Christ.
Juliet Kane
Portland, Ore.
Mr. Satter rightly decries the left’s expanding intolerance, but he overlooks the elephant in the room. The dominant Covid narrative justifies lockdowns, social isolation, mask-wearing at all times, and even snitching on friends and colleagues, destroying community by reducing every other person to a potential virus vector. Meanwhile, those who challenge that fear-focused narrative or question its enforcement mechanisms are castigated as evil “deniers,” and their mere speech is attacked and blocked as “dangerous.”
Paul F. Simpson
Houston
There is no state control of political speech in the U.S. as there was in the Soviet Union, but none is necessary. All on its own, the press became a communications office for Democrats, the sports and entertainment industries led the anti-Trump charge, universities and academic journals censored speech, social-media gatekeepers and influencers pushed the left’s agenda, corporations and money managers competed to be the most socially-conscious, and bureaucrats undermined an outsider administration from within.
Soviet-style totalitarianism couldn’t gain traction in America but, as Mr. Satter observes, the intellectual hodgepodge of “wokeism” has brought us totalitarian habits. If, as Mr. Satter argues, the antidote to a totalitarian urge is fidelity to higher values, the U.S. is in trouble. Our traditions and history are rejected as vestiges of white privilege. Besides, a seductive social-justice message has been part of every totalitarian movement in history.
Dana Davis
St. Augustine, Fla.
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Appeared in the December 29, 2020, print edition.
The Link LonkDecember 28, 2020 at 11:46PM
https://www.wsj.com/articles/seeing-red-in-americas-totalitarian-habits-11609173961
Seeing Red in America’s Totalitarian Habits - The Wall Street Journal
https://news.google.com/search?q=Red&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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