Thread by @EmpireinWinter

Fmr UK Ambassador: banned site-- replace [DOT] with "."
'A 1978 essay “The Power of the Powerless” by then dissident & future Czech President Vaclav Havel...'
https://www.strategic-culture[DOT]org/news/2021/12/01/now-or-never-the-great-transition-must-be-imposed/

'begins mockingly that, “A SPECTRE is haunting Eastern Europe: the spectre of what in the West is called ‘dissent’”. “This spectre has not appeared out of thin air. It is a natural and inevitable consequence of the present historical phase of the system it is haunting.”'

Havel:
'It was born at a time when this system, for a thousand reasons, can no longer base itself on the unadulterated, brutal, and arbitrary application of power, eliminating all expressions of nonconformity.'

'Is it appropriate to refer to “dissidents as an opposition? If so, what exactly is such an opposition within the framework of this system? What does it do? What role does it play in society? What are its hopes and on what are they based?'

'Is it within the power of the “dissidents—as a category of subcitizen outside the power establishment—to have any influence at all on society and the social system? '

'I think that an examination of these questions-an examination of the potential of the “powerless-can only begin with an examina- tion of the nature of power in the circumstances in which these powerless people operate.'

'Even this very superficial overview should make it clear that the system in which we live has very little in common with a classical dictatorship. In the first place, our system is not limited in a local, geographical sense'

'And although it quite naturally exhibits a number of local and historical variations, the range of these variations is fundamentally circumscribed by a sin- gle, unifying framework throughout the power bloc.'

'Not only is the dictatorship everywhere based on the same principles & structured in the same way (that is, in the way evolved by the ruling super power) but each country has been completely penetrated by a network of manipulatory instruments controlled by the superpower center'

'makes our systems different from other modern dic- tatorships: it commands an incomparably more precise, logically structured, generally comprehensible and, in essence, extremely flexible ideology that, in its elaborateness and completeness, is almost a secularized religion.'

'In an era when metaphysical and existential certainties are in a state of cri- sis, when people are being uprooted and alienated and are losing their sense of what this world means, this ideology inevitably has a certain hypnotic charm.'

'To wandering humankind it offers an immediately available home: all one has to do is accept it, and sud- denly everything becomes clear once more, life takes on new mean- ing, and all mysteries, unanswered questions, anxiety, and loneli- ness vanish.'

'Of course, one pays dearly for this low-rent home: the price is abdication of one s own reason, conscience, and responsibility, for an essential aspect of this ideology is the consignment of reason and conscience to a higher authority.'

'The principle involved here is that the center of power is identical with the center of truth....'

'In terms of the physical aspects of power, this has led to the creation of such intricate and well-developed mechanisms for the direct and indirect manipulation of the entire population that, as a physical power base, it represents something radically new.'

'If I refer to it henceforth as a “posttotalitarian system, I am fully aware that this is perhaps not the most precise term, but I am unable to think of a better one.
'

'I do not wish to imply by the prefix “post" that the system is no longer totalitarian; on the contrary, I mean that it is totalitarian in a way fundamentally different from classical dicta- torships, different from totalitarianism as we usually understand it.'