Revolt

Is it just coincidence that Czech dissidents were arrested on January 6, 1977, for "subversion" and "hostility to the socialist state and social system"?

My thoughts on this are not fully formed, but I'll post them anyway. I've mentioned Vaclav Havel's "The Power of the Powerless" before, but here I want to note that the "post-totalitarian system" he identified way back in the 1970s has now engulfed the West. (Also, read a bit about Charter 77 and read the full translation here.)

By then, not even the Soviet bloc was a classical dictatorship, but "another form of the consumer and industrial society, with all its concomitant social, intellectual, and psychological consequences."

"It is impossible to understand the nature of power in our system properly without taking this into account," Havel wrote.

For the past 50 years, that system seduced people into having "no sense of responsibility for anything higher than his or her own personal survival." Their very identity was "dissolved" in the "accoutrements of mass civilization," and any revolt caused them to intensify their support of the system, because it could "at least guarantee a certain quasi-legality."

"Add to this the fact that the post-totalitarian system has at its disposal a complex mechanism of direct and indirect surveillance that has no equal in history and it is clear that not only would any attempt to revolt come to a dead end politically, but it would also be almost technically impossible to carry off."

Although we still see the power of the system at work in the J6 trials — where "the regime and its propaganda have been ascribing terroristic aims to the ‘dissident movements’ and accusing them of illegal and conspiratorial methods" — in my opinion the situation has changed.

Ironically, a consummate purveyor of the "consumer and industrial society" — Donald Trump — represents perhaps the most dangerous threat the system has ever seen. He has, almost singlehandedly, revived what Havel called the "polarization of political power" that was missing in the Soviet bloc countries of the 1970s.

Yes (as someone on the Internet said) "the battle is far from over and it will permeate many aspects of our daily lives," but the battle has finally been joined! More people every day are waking up to the post-totalitarian reality. Although the most successful revolts (BLM, Climate Change, etc.) are pushing the world toward a deeper totalitarianism, they also demonstrate that people regard revolt as possible.

Maybe it is just a coincidence that Havel and his fellow dissidents were arrested on January 6, 1977, for "subversion" and "hostility to the socialist state and social system." And maybe it is just a coincidence that Havel was a "criminal" who went on to become president of Czechoslovakia. But I truly believe the time is fast approaching when a successful, and peaceful, revolt of our own is possible.