When Society Tolerates Evil |
CounterPunch Exclusives
CounterPunch Exclusives
When Society Tolerates Evil
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
In communist Prague, my father was repeatedly arrested, imprisoned, and tortured for his dissident activities. My mother suffered, and in her attempts to halt that downward spiral, she made small gestures to appease the authorities. Her concessions consisted of the fact that, like most people, during communist holidays—the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, Labor Day, and others—she would place small Czechoslovak and Soviet flags in the windows of our Prague apartment and let them fly together, even though doing so was not strictly mandatory, but was well-regarded by the regime.
My parents are an example of the two attitudes displayed by citizens whose country becomes authoritarian, dictatorial, or totalitarian: a small group of people rebels and maintains its opposition to the regime despite the circumstances (which may include frequent interrogations, threats, imprisonment, and torture, as in my father’s case). The vast majority of citizens, however, choose to make concessions to the regime (like my mother), or to engage in full-fledged collaboration.
During my student years in the United States, where my parents eventually fled with their teenage children thanks above all to my mother’s courage, I spent a few months in Argentina, which at that time was under military rule. There, too, I observed behavior similar to the totalitarianism of my childhood. I saw a resigned society, because dissidents were in prison or in exile. In Buenos Aires, people rarely went out; the cafés were almost empty. People had little money and much fear. However, some people from various professional backgrounds told me that at first they had welcomed the military because, after years of guerrilla warfare, they wanted peace and security. And I asked them if it was possible to enjoy peace under a regime that controlled and mistreated society.
When the Argentine junta eventually expelled me from the country for having questioned a military........