Quotes About Authoritarianism

A regime which is nominally liberal can be oppressive in reality. A regime which acknowledges its violence might have more genuine humanity.

A regime which is nominally liberal can be oppressive in reality. A regime which acknowledges its violence might have in it more genuine humanity.

following the playbook of strongmen such as Viktor Orban, Vladimir Putin, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who silenced the press not by imposing censorship but by imposing financial pressure on independent news organizations to either force them out of business or into the hands of friendly owners.47

In the Orwellian language of the far right, someone who wants to combat Russian aggression is a "Russian propagandist," whereas someone who echoes Russian propaganda is putting "America first."4

Stalin's policies had driven millions more to starvation and even cannibalism.

He has nothing useful to say about fascism who is unwilling to mention capitalism.

Sick minds like to prohibit; healthy minds like to free!

Social pressure is the fascism of the democracies. Fascism is the democracy of the ruthless. Social engineering is the opiate of romantic intellectuals.

The tyranny of merit arises from more than the rhetoric of rising. It consists in a cluster of attitudes and circumstances that, taken together, have made meritocracy toxic.

The personal is the political" is a totalitarian progressive decree that I reject entirely.

Soon thereafter, Tom asked me to write up dozens of one- to two-page case studies of transitions from authoritarian rule over the last fifty years,

A new ideological struggle has emerged between Russia and the West, not between communism and capitalism but between democracy and autocracy.

America's greatest national security nightmare would be the emergence of an authoritarian, imperialist Russian regime supported by a thriving market economy."13 A decade later, that's exactly what happened.

How odd that fewer police were needed in the communist police state than in the free-market paradise.

Close your eyes & imagine a world full of self-replicating little Stalins. Now open your eyes. You live in that world. It's called social justice & the little Stalins are SJWs. SJW = Stalin, Just Weirder.

Árbenz ordered the expropriation of 380,000 acres (154,000ha) of United Fruit land – a substantial chunk of its holdings, of which 85 per cent was left fallow, supposedly in case of banana diseases

So clear was his inability to take any criticism or to participate in any honest argument about policy that the attempt was almost never made.

We should not be comparing Hillary Clinton to our mothers, and we certainly don't owe her filial obedience. She is a politician who now must make major promises if she wants our support in any political race.

Given political history in Chile, it seemed to me that there was a critical task of consolidating a democracy and creating healthy civic-military and political-military relationships.

it doesn't make sense." He is frustrated. "It doesn't have to," I tell him. "You must simply learn the rules and obey." "Is that what liberty means?" he asks earnestly. The three of us are silent. "No," I say. "That is what tyranny means.

according to Sorokin. More recent and disturbing examples might include the Nazi interlude in Germany, the communist regimes in Russia and China, and the Islamic revival in Iran.

In other words, they were unwilling to tolerate conservative speech, which they were intolerant of conservative speech.

No, there are no special places in hell. Hell is a democracy.

In the end, the "model" that came into existence in the USSR was not socialist but totalitarian. This is a serious matter to be reflected on by all who seriously aspire to progress for the benefit of the human race.