The Socialist AOC Should Read This

 Budapest now.

Rod Dreher writes:

I spent part of this afternoon sitting with Maria Wittner, a hero of Hungary’s failed 1956 Revolution against Communism. I interviewed her for my book project on how to resist the coming soft totalitarianism. Like every other person I’ve interviewed who lived through “hard totalitarianism” (that is to say, Communism), Mrs. Wittner believes that we are well on our way to a new and very different version of the same.

“Back then, you knew where your place was, and where the enemy’s place was,” she said, of the Communist years. “Those two were opposing each other. The present situation is a bit like when a young child has Play-doh. Originally there are distinct colors, but if the child keeps mixing it together, it all becomes one big brown lump.”

This is a familiar refrain from my interviews with former dissidents: that it’s much more difficult today to discern the enemy lines....

She spent 11 years in prison for her role in the Revolution.

She recalled jail thus:

Every single day we could hear the people being brought for execution. There was an execution either every day or every other day, by hanging. The people who were being brought to the execution, each one said their name aloud, and left some sort of message in their final words. Some sang the national anthem, others praised their country, there were people saying ‘avenge me’. There were days when several people were hanged, even seven a day. My friend Catherine was also sentenced to death. We spent our last night together in the cell. We said our goodbyes in the morning. The guards took her. The last sight I saw of her was that she straightened herself up, and went with her back ramrod straight. The door closed, and then I was left alone. I started to bang on the door, shouting, “Bring her back!” even though I knew perfectly well that it wouldn’t matter. Then I fainted. When I came to my senses, I swore to myself that I will never be silent about what I have seen, if I have the opportunity to bear witness.

And this:

This evening I interviewed my friend and interpreter Anna Salyi’s parents, Tomas and Judit, both of whose fathers were political prisoners under Communism. It’s hard to reconcile the beauty and grace of these Budapest meals and domestic interiors with the hideous suffering Communists inflicted on the people of this country.

Judit’s father, for example, was diagnosed as insane by Communist physicians, because under the principles of Soviet psychiatry, political dissidents were by definition crazy. What had he done? In 1968, after visiting northern Romania and witnessing how horribly oppressed the ethnic Hungarians there were under the Ceausescu regime, Judit’s father tore down an image of the Romanian dictator on display in Budapest, and stomped it. For that, he was thrown into prison and administered 50 electroshocks over the course of his imprisonment. This left him mentally incapacitated, and permanently disabled. 

Will we dodge the communist bullet?

I have no idea but there is little reason for optimism. It is difficult to spot all the twists and turns that can develop in a society over time but it would take a hard turn to save us.

Dreher's book project on how to resist the coming soft totalitarianism is very important right now.

 -RW