The Soviet system used psychiatry as a weapon by diagnosing political opponents as mentally ill in order to confine them as patients instead of trying them in court. Anyone who challenged the state such as dissidents, writers, would-be emigrants, religious believers, or human rights activists could be branded with fabricated disorders like sluggish schizophrenia. This turned normal political disagreement into supposed medical pathology and allowed the state to present dissent as insanity.
Once labeled in this way, people were placed in psychiatric hospitals where they could be held for long periods without legal protections. Harsh treatments were often used to break their resolve. The collaboration between state security organs and compliant psychiatrists created a system where political imprisonment was disguised as medical care, letting the Soviet regime suppress opposition while pretending it was addressing illness rather than silencing critics.
This sounds very familiar to the CIA’s practices with MK Ultra… although in a different way.
Goes to show, that neither system would be optimal - and that it’s better to chase the path of democratic socialist movements.
Authoritarianism is authoritarianism, no matter the flavor. If there is hierarchy in an organization, it is essentially inevitable that ultimately, one day, it will terrorize it’s members. The spectre of collected abused power is more patient than the vigilance of active membership can ever persistently be.
It’s crazy to me that many people think ‘this is what communism does’ when it’s actually what authoritarianism does. You can get authoritarianism all over the spectrum, in anything from communism to fascism.
This isn’t a feature of any political ideology – rather it’s a feature of letting sociopaths gain power.
The US is trying to do this now, what with declaring the bogeyman known as antifa a mental illness AND a terrorist threat.
Part of it is that the vast majority (all?) of the communist regimes of the 20th century pretty rapidly descended into authoritarian hellscapes (Democracy/Capitalism took a few decades to catch up…). So people tend to less say “Well. The horrors that unfolded in X were a result of a misapplication of the core tenets of communism” and instead “My family literally had to flee a communist regime because we were being ethnically cleansed”
Part of it is that Democracy/Capitalism won and very much built up Communism as a bogeyman for obvious political reasons.
And the last part is that… Communism fundamentally requires a central source of power/truth. You can’t have a managed economy without folk managing it. Which, inherently, centralizes power which is one of the big first steps towards authoritarianism. Similar to how Democracy fundamentally enables populism and Capitalism oligarchy.
Good thing Americans didn’t ethnically cleanse in our history… Right.
Padme face
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
But thanks for showing your tankie ass. I have increasingly been assuming the shitjustworks instance is all right wing lunatics and libertarianisms. Good to know folk like you are trying to meet in the middle.
I have increasingly been assuming the shitjustworks instance is all right wing lunatics and libertarianisms
Your #1 mistake is assuming that users on a decentralized social media instance are a monolith.
* Hexbear has entered the chat *
Lemmy/the fediverse is a decentralized social media platform. Each instance is actually quite centralized. And, like all message boards, different cultures emerge. Whether it is because they have boards on given subjects (and shitjustworks has a shocking amount of “conservative” boards) or because people of a particular vibe have their friends join the same board.
I would say it is still very much at the dot ml level but I have increasingly noticed that most of the “The real problem are people who don’t support the troops” and similar dog whistles end up from shitjustworks.
Lol I’m just saying we’re not exactly the good guys either and maybe ethnic cleansing has less to do with the governmental system in place and more to do with other aspects
Edit: Also, tankie really? Y’all motherfuckers don’t know what words mean jfc
Edit: Also, tankie really? Y’all motherfuckers don’t know what words mean jfc.
Prrrr, shhh, let them have this. It’s been a pretty good thread, and they stand out as weird. It’s fine.
Hahaha fair enough, literally was in another thread the other day talking about exactly this, people throwing around tankie in contexts it makes literally no sense haha.
Anarchist communistic projects in Catalonia (1930s), anarchist Ukraine (around 1917), etc.: “Are we a joke to you?”
I don’t know much about Ukraine but I know the one in Catalonia had roving gangs of “law enforcers” who would execute “capitalists/fascists” without trial, so I’m not sure it’s an ideal to look up to.
It sure wasn’t perfect. But it was a libertarian socialist counter-example of revolutionary socialism to what the bolsheviks were doing.
Oh yeah, anarchists in Ukraine were doing fine until Bolsheviks decided there isn’t enough left unity
No, you don’t get it! The workers in Ukraine, who seized control of the means of production where somehow not class-conscious enough!
The workers can only
free themselvesbe freed by the most dedicated marxists!/s
The irony of the Makhnovist Movement is that it succeeded because of the Bolshevik Revolt in St. Petersburg and the subsequent splitting of Russian forces into the Red and White Armies.
But because Ukrainian agricultural production was so critical to the survival of pre-industrial Russia, the Reds weren’t inclined to let Ukraine exist independently any more than the Whites were.
The workers can only
free themselvesbe freed by the most dedicated marxists!Makhnovshchina gets to be a purist movement because it dies in infancy. Compare Ukraine to Yugoslavia, a country that embraced many of the same socialist tenants but managed to persist as an independent entity for half a century rather than half a decade, and suddenly they’re Evil Freedom-Hating Baby-Killing Communists again.
You’re never going to find half as many Tito-lovers on Lemmy as Nestor Makhno-lovers, because Tito died in his 80s while leading his country and Nestor died at 45 - alienated even from other anarchists - of tuberculosis as a penniless exile in France.
Meanwhile, the workers in all these countries vanish from view. No armchair Lemmy anarchist seems to care how Soviet-Era Ukraine prospered. Or how the Soviet collapse in 1991 brought in the corporate vultures to pick all these countries clean. We’re always and forever living in 1917, convinced a short-lived militia movement was the Secret Sauce to Real Working Anarcho-Communism, despite all historical evidence to the contrary.
You seem to make the mistake of subsuming the whole of anarchist Ukraine under Makhno. While he was vital for the civil war, he hardly was the architect of what happend in Ukraine.
The factory councils sure didn’t rely on him leading all of a sudden.
Soviet-Era Ukraine prospered
Oh yeah man, the 1930s brought some real prosperity. But I’ve already gathered that you believe Soviet Union to be a tragically lost utopia, so you needn’t bother make up another wall of text in response.
it’s actually what authoritarianism does
“Authoritarianism” is just when the government leadership disagrees with me, ideologically. Nobody who supports the current state thinks their government is authoritarian, because it isn’t asking them to do anything they wouldn’t be doing anyway.
Meanwhile, an “insurgency” is just a group of people acting against government leadership’s intended policies. So much of the modern policy state exists to confront the contradiction between an individual pursuing their own interests and a state system that insists some share of the population to suffer in order for the rest to prosper.
If you ask liberals whether they oppose “authoritarianism” you’ll get an enthusiastic “Yes!” But then you tell them “better go out there and start doing crimes” and they’ll recoil in horror, because they don’t see a benefit to violating rules they fundamentally support.
The US is trying to do this now, what with declaring the bogeyman known as antifa a mental illness AND a terrorist threat.
They did this 40 years ago, under Reagan, with the “War on Crime” bullshit. And before that under Nixon with the “War on Drugs”. And before that under Eisenhower with the… checks notes… ah, yes, “War on Illegal Immigration”. Damn that sounds familiar for some reason.
This isn’t a feature of any political ideology – rather it’s a feature of letting sociopaths gain power.
Now if there was some kind of political ideology that focuses a lot on not letting power accumulate into the hands of the few… /hj
Ikr?
Yes. That is why I am staunchly liberal. Keep your hands off my fuckin rights which in turn means keep your hands off my fuckin neighbors rights. Given the most perfect benevolent leader the state will either corrupt or kill them, so we should rally against corruption AND the rich.
Edit: because words are hard
On the topic of the US declaring dissidents mentally ill, The Adrian Schoolcraft story is a pretty horrific account of what it looks like when a modern cop tries to whistleblow.
Also I don’t think you even need sociopaths to wreck a hierarchy. Hierarchy collects power at the top of it’s organizational structure, and power by it’s nature becomes an end to itself, so hierarchy ensures abuse of it’s power. Honestly calling every human a sociopath who gives in to that One Ring-style allure might actually be the same kind of medicalization that the state does to it’s dissidents, in the opposite direction, but equally obfuscating. Yes it’s a human failure, but the organizational structure very much sets up humans to fail.
But it’s mostly sociopaths that insist on that hierarchy. Something like 3% of any population are sociopaths, and they’re not ‘mentally ill’, they just have a diminished capacity to feel empathy. Because of that, they don’t understand altruism and think the only way society can function is if everyone is in their place – if there are strict rules governing everything, because in their worldview, they see others like themselves, and they would need those rules to keep themselves in check.
It’s very similar to people who think without laws against raping and pillaging, everyone would rape and pillage. They’re mostly telling on themselves, as most of us rape all we’d like, which is never.
Billionaires are often sociopaths. That’s how they became billionaires – because it’s all me, me, me.
Strong disagree on sociopathy being linked to a hierarchy.
The reality is that pretty much EVERY system of governance (that is meant to scale beyond five people in a field) needs a hierarchy of some form. Its the Whitest Kids U Know gag on anarchy where you quickly find out that there are people better suited to certain jobs and you need some degree of a social safety net to allow them to keep all of you alive (n that case, keeping a nuclear power plant from melting down… and then making t-shirts).
It is why there are basically no flat Democracies. You inherently end up in some form of a Democratic Republic where The People elect representatives who can then (theoretically) spend all day educating themselves on important issues and figuring out how to make an educated vote that represents the will of their constituents.
The core concept is just the reality of needing special skills and knowledge to make many decisions. There can be arguments that the people in charge of Directing The Military are still equal to the custodial staff keeping the streets clean but… moving on.
Where sociopathy comes into play is that those roles tend to inherently attract power mad people (there is a DIFFERENT WKUK gag on this…). But hierarchical systems are a natural knock on from just having to have a socioeconomic system that scales.
Sociopathy is just vernacular for ASD, which is medically considered a disorder, and in my opinion it’s just as prescriptively hierarchy-brained, scapegoated, and invented as ODD which is in some ways it’s inverse. They’re just medicalizations of what I feel is more or less normal human behavior when encountering either extreme of a hierarchy - The boot that does the stomping gets assigned ASD when things don’t go well. The one to be stomped gets assigned ODD when they resist.
I really think that hierarchy creates these personality types. They’re not necessarily pre-existing mental types in a hypothetical blank state society. And I think that our belief in them as “natural” just serves to further legitimize the power structure that actually generates them. To add: I don’t think you have to be at the top or bottom of a hierarchy to exhibit the behaviors associated with these labels, existing anywhere in the hierarchy can get you hierarchy-brained. Like America’s “temporarily embarrassed millionaires”, you can learn these traits before you arrive at the social stations they’re associated with.
I should emphasize, as far as I’m aware this is largely my own opinion.
I love your opinion, it makes much more sense to me.
It’s not, though. There are extremes in all human thought patterns, and some have extreme low empathy (sociopaths), whilst others have extreme high empathy (which can also be detrimental).
All humans are somewhere on that curve, but when we give people with very low empathy a lot of power, very bad things happen.
My point was that these extremes aren’t necessarily ‘mental illness’ – they’re natural extremes, but giving them a lot of power is absolutely detrimental to society, because they can’t understand how the rest of us work, and they need to inflict their unnecessary and unconventional rules on the rest of us.
Well I suppose the fact that I disagree is entirely besides the point, as either way we can trust that a critical mass of people will abuse a power hierarchy. It doesn’t really matter if, as I think, the hierarchy created them or if, as you think, they already exist and are merely drawn to it. A hierarchy will abuse it’s power.
…so hierarchy ensures abuse of [its] power.
Very well put.
I have a discussion with my wife every so often about what our own little utopian island would be like, like how the government would be, how roads would be managed, what homes would be like, etc. I brought up the other day this exact point about how if there’s a position of wealth and power at the top controlling too much, then sociopths would gravitate towards that for the same of having power and wealth, which ruins the government system. It would have to be a heavily distributed system of government, but too distributed where it would make it difficult to implement standardizations, get stuff done, etc.
Idk how that would work exactly, because then you’d also have to make sure no greedy, power hungry Trump-likes get into a position with too much power. There has to be a way, though.
Today it’s called ODD, “woke”, or “tankie” if an anarchist pisses off the wrong lib.
Has been spiteful or vindictive at least twice within the past six months
We all have ODD on this blessed day.
It’s fuckin insane that ODD is still in the DSM. That alone is enough for me to want to dismiss the entire text.
I think it’s more like if you’re so opposed to what any authority figure tells you to do that you will do the opposite of what your doctor tells you, for example, sometimes out of spite or vindication.
Yes but I think that perspective puts all the onus of change on the harmed individual and none on the institution that abused and broke their trust of authority, and therefore functions as a scapegoat for abuse of authority, or authority itself. “Healing” under this understanding involves getting a traumatized individual to trust their doctor, who’s authority likely chains back to the same powers who hold the reigns of their abuser, and to move on with their lives while that normalized abuser - The one creating the trauma in the first place - Continues to do untold harm. Someone labeled ODD is traumatized by authority yet the label exists not primarily to aid the victim, but to externalize blame away from the authority and onto the victim.
Furthermore I’ve at least read that more and more these days ODD “symptoms” are being reunderstood as expressions of various non-normative neurotypes that may place things like justice and ethical reciprocity at a higher priority than most. I myself have been introduced by my therapist to PDA type autism, Pathological/Persistent Demand Avoidance, which before it’s relatively recent recognition used to get a lot of people slapped with the ODD label. I don’t express my demand avoidance externally unless cornered, more it informs my entire lifestyle strategy in advance, so I escaped having a direct confrontation as a kid that would have gotten me labeled. But I identify strongly with and my heart goes out to ODD-labeled people.
Read what was linked, it’s literally only diagnosed in children. In which case, yes, if they disregard all authority (including their parents), it is a problem.
It’s a problem for a hierarchical society that requires continual compliance for next to no explanation, not a problem for the child. It’s not a medical condition internal to an individual, it’s a social illness external to them, and therefore has no place in a medical text.
ODD is an excuse diagnosis. It’s literally “You rightfully criticise people for being authoritarian and us cops and fascists don’t like that, boohoo”.
It’s basically a perfect example for the sociological model of disability.
We need a diagnosis instead for people who are needlessly authoritarian and intolerant.
It’s called being a “fascist”.
(But seriously, is there no diagnosis for it?)
It fits in the authoritarian captalist system we’re living in. The system rewards this behaviour.
There’s no direct diagnosis as such, because being a fascist is more a description of the outward effect than what is happening inside the person, and other factors have a very strong influence as to if a person becomes a fascist leader or not (in other situations that person would “only” be abusive to the people around them, for instance). But there are diagnoses such as psychopathy, antisocial personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder, which are often present in these cases.
Side note: ODD is a diagnosis that is only people under 18, so it’s explicitly not a political thing.
ITT: A lot of people who have no clue what ODD is.
Something like this could never happen in a civilized country like Germany… Just ask Gustl Mollath about that…
not much different than the current era in modern nations - cf: a gov firebombing an entire philly block because one house had some anti US brown folk in it.
Russia does it too; transexual? Mental illness.
Did I forget to say they also forbid “mentally ill” people to have a driving permit?
USSR never went away. And if you dig deeper, it’s still just russian empire in a trench coat
Communism as a theme is definitely making a comeback if you talk to Russian people in Russian. They think theirs is different from “western Communism” though.
Imperialism?
I speak zero Russian but would love to know what “western communism” entails in the mind of a Russian person who holds these opinions. Alas.
took off the purple robes, but on a red hat.
took off the red hat, put on a capitalist neoliberal necktie.
now took off the capitalist neoliberal necktie, put on some ironheeled jackboots.
the goal is to take off the jackboots and put on the purple robe
And Soviet Socialism never went away either, it just reorganized upper management. Instead of the state owning a few mega companies, a few mega companies now own the state. In either case, it is the people controlling the human/natural resources paying off politicians to overlook all the horrible shit they do.
Not just trans people— all LGBTQ+ people are regarded this way
Also the whole idea behind Trump Derangement Syndrome. Unsurprisingly, those fuckers can’t even be original in their awfulness.
OP misspelled “United States”.
I feel like some random Austrian painter did the same thing.
I’m sure this comments section is going to be thoroughly hinged
This is exactly what the GOP is pushing for with “Trump derangement syndrome”.
The fascist and communists are very similar in regard to population control. Fuck them both.
what they have in common here, historically, is authoritarianism. that’s the best word to describe this, whether it dresses itself up as left or right.
and what about the capitalists?
One should hide their oil reserves.
“Liberalism is a mental disease!”
A phrase often said by MAGAs. It’s no distance at all saying the same thing about nationalism.
I’ve seen “conservativism is a mental disease” too. People love that shit.
To be fair, you have to have zero empathy—or extremely low intelligence—to still vote Conservative, when we’re literally living in the Information Age. Either way, I say both are in fact mental disorders.
That’s the spirit.
Sure they did Wikipedia, sure they did
Thats government 101. It was done in the USSR, its still done today in the USA and China.
Really? I am not seeing Soviet style weaponization of mental illness in China or the U.S. Like rightwing nut jobs talk about “Trump Derangement Syndrome” but that isn’t recognized in the U.S. or China.
What are you referring to?
The only times I’ve ever seen mental illness weaponized against someone is when they’re running for office and all of a sudden HIPPA doesn’t exist anymore and if Depression pops up. Hoh boy.
I think it’s a case of bothsidesing.
I suspected so, but I am open to evidence.
It something both sides do.
Tho has nothing to do with Soviet style weaponization of mental illness.
This is plain old political prosecution which the U.S. is well known for.
Kind of like the GOP.
I mean, sure. But that’s neither here nor there with regards to the article.
This user has been banned from hexbear.net
ml wiped out his whole family
How does one have a monopoly on eggs in a non-hypetindustrial country? Did grandpa invent the chicken and visit every village and start renting out hens XD
Eggs aren’t exactly hyperindustrial, but after the fall of the Qing dynasty entailed a lot of private acquisition to feed the foreign business interests flooding in.
I dunno if there ever was a monopoly on eggs for all of China, but maybe in the export industry though.
.ml would have deleted it, and banned every account that read it.
It is a rite of passage
Rite*
