By Victor Davis Hanson | Real Clear Politics
What ultimately ended the nihilist Soviet system?
Was it not that Russians finally tired of the Kremlin's lies and hypocrisies
that permeated every facet of their falsified lives?
Here are 10 symptoms of Sovietism. Ask yourself whether we are headed
down this same road to perdition.
1. There was no escape from ideological indoctrination --
anywhere. A job in the bureaucracy or a military assignment hinged not so much
on merit, expertise or past achievement. What mattered was loud enthusiasm
for the Soviet system.
Wokeness is becoming our new Soviet-like state religion.
Careerists assert that America was always and still is a systemically racist
country, without ever producing proof or a sustained argument.
2. The Soviets fused their press with the government.
Pravda, or "Truth," was the official megaphone of state-sanctioned
lies. Journalists simply regurgitated the talking points of their Communist
Party partners.
In 2017, a Harvard study found that over 90% of the major
TV news networks' coverage of the Trump administration's first 100 days was
negative.
3. The Soviet surveillance state enlisted apparatchiks
and lackeys to ferret out ideological dissidents.
Recently, we learned that the Department of Defense is
reviewing its rosters to spot extremist sentiments. The U.S. Postal Service
recently admitted it uses tracking programs to monitor the social media
postings of Americans.
CNN recently alleged that the Biden administration's Department
of Homeland Security is considering partnering with private surveillance firms
to get around government prohibitions on scrutinizing Americans' online
activity.
4. The Soviet educational system sought not to enlighten
but to indoctrinate young minds in proper government-approved thought.
Currently, cash-strapped universities nationwide are
hiring thousands of diversity, equity and inclusion staffers and
administrators. Their chief task is to scan the admissions, hiring,
curriculum and administration at universities. Like good commissars, our
diversity czars oversee compliance with the official narrative that a flawed
America must confess, apologize for and renounce its evil foundations.
5. The Soviet Union was run by a pampered elite, exempt
from the ramifications of their own radical ideologies.
Now, woke Silicon Valley billionaires talk
socialistically but live royally. Coke and Delta Airlines CEOs who hector
Americans about their illiberality make millions of dollars a year.
What unites current woke activists such as Oprah Winfrey,
LeBron James Mark Zuckerberg and the Obamas are their huge estates and their
multimillion-dollar wealth. Just as the select few of the old Soviet
nomenklatura had their Black Sea dachas, America's loudest top-down revolutionaries
prefer living in Martha's Vineyard, Beverly Hills, Montecito and Malibu.
6. The Soviets mastered Trotskyization, or the rewriting
and airbrushing away of history to fabricate present reality.
Are Americans any different when they indulge in a frenzy
of name-changing, statue-toppling, monument-defacing, book-banning and
cancel-culturing?
7. The Soviets created a climate of fear and rewarded
stool pigeons for rooting out all potential enemies of the people.
Since when did Americans encourage co-workers to turn in
others for an ill-considered word in a private conversation? Why do thousands
now scour the internet to find any past incorrect expression of a rival? Why
are there now new thought criminals supposedly guilty of climate racism,
immigration racism or vaccination racism?
8. Soviet prosecutors and courts were weaponized
according to ideology.
In America, where and for what reason you riot determines
whether you face any legal consequences. Politically correct sanctuary cities
defy the law with impunity. Jury members are terrified of being doxxed and
hunted down for an incorrect verdict. The CIA and FBI are becoming as
ideological as the old KGB.
9. The Soviets doled out prizes on the basis of correct
Soviet thought.
In modern America, the Pulitzer Prizes and the Emmys,
Grammys, Tonys and Oscars don't necessarily reflect the year's best work, but
often the most politically correct work from the most woke.
10. The Soviets offered no apologies for extinguishing
freedom. Instead, they boasted that they were advocates for equity, champions
of the underclass, enemies of privilege -- and therefore could terminate anyone
or anything they pleased.
Our wokists are similarly defending their thought-control
efforts, forced re-education sessions, scripted confessionals, mandatory
apologies and cancel culture on the pretense that we need long-overdue
"fundamental transformation."
So if they destroy people in the name of equity, their
nihilism is justified.
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Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson
Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The
Case for Trump. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.
