Quotes About Authoritarianism

Repressive regimes do not endure change willingly - and Venezuela is no exception.

If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win.

Sure, I considered myself an anarchist; I considered myself - I still am, obviously - distrustful of the government. But I also understand the virtues of civility or democracy and kindness, of course. I wasn't throwing garbage cans through shop windows.

Who is against human rights in Belarus today? Of course, no one should view human rights as the right to smash shop windows or stir up unrest in the streets.

Detention cells in Hong Kong are not pleasant. In Thailand they are even worse. In Hong Kong you are at least allowed to see your lawyers.

Throughout his career, Bloomberg has repeatedly shown blatant disrespect for individual rights and civil liberties. The first thing that comes to mind is probably the way he tried to micromanage New Yorkers' food choices during his time as mayor.

The problem with Russia is not corruption per se, or even Putin per se. Russian government is not corrupt because Vladimir Putin has absolute power. Russian government has been corrupt and will always be as long as anyone has absolute power.

The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is not the novel that previews what's coming; it's rather Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. The contemporary social critic James Poulos calls this the "Pink Police State": an informal arrangement in which people will surrender political rights in exchange for guarantees of personal pleasure.

This was a revolution even more radical than the 1917 Bolshevik event, said Rieff. For the first time, humankind was seeking to create a civilization based on the negation of any binding transcendent order.

than the Communist Manifesto. The political religion that murdered tens of millions, imprisoned and tortured countless more, and immiserated the lives of half of humanity in its time, and the defeat of which required agonizing struggle by allies across borders, oceans, political parties, and generations—this hateful ideology is romanticized by ignorant young

Depictions of communism on campus paint the ideology as revolutionary or idealistic, overlooking its authoritarian violence," she writes. "Instead of deepening our understanding of the world, the college experience teaches us to reduce one of the most destructive ideologies in human history to a one-dimensional, sanitized narrative."2

Podemos observar tendencias posdemocráticas en el Brasil de Jair Bolsonaro, la Hungría de Viktor Orbán, la India de Narendra Modi y, sin duda, también en el México de López Obrador.

No hay un proceso de regeneración para mejorar lo que se ha descompuesto, sino un movimiento de restauración del viejo régimen político autoritario.

El gabinete que anunció López Obrador era claramente de derecha. Los ministros que ocuparían las secretarías de Gobernación, Hacienda, Comunicaciones, Economía, Agricultura y Educación no eran ejemplos de radicales izquierdistas. Eran políticos que provenían del antiguo régimen o tecnócratas tradicionales. El jefe de gabinete era un mal empresario, multimillonario de extrema derecha.

el debilitamiento del Estado es compensado con el fortalecimiento del autoritarismo presidencial.

En México están volviendo a soplar con fuerza los viejos vientos del nacionalismo autoritario.

The fascist authoritarianism, characterized by sado-masochism and destructiveness, had a function which is comparable psychologically to a neurotic symptom - namely, fascism compensated for powerlessness and individual isolation and protected the individual from anxiety-creating situations. If one compare fascism to a neurotic symptom, it can be said that fascism is a neurotic form of community.

people grasp at political authoritarianism in the desperate need to be relieved of anxiety.

Don't steal - the government hates competition!

My mind flashed back to the Cultural Revolution, when a group of Red Guards pulled our neighbor, Granny Li, out of the opera company's dormitory block and ordered the rest of us to bring out our thermos flasks. We then had to stand and watch as the Red Guards poured ten flasks of boiling water over Granny Li's head.

Incompetence annoys me. Overconfidence terrifies me.

It has been said that most revolutions are not caused by revolutionaries in the first place, but by the stupidity and brutality of governments," Seán MacStiofáin, the provisional IRA's first chief of staff, said once, looking back on those early years.

Keynes, far from being a wholehearted lover of freedom, viewed with some sympathy the fascist and Communist 'experiments' of the 1930s.