The gulag comes to you

During a recent show a viewer asked me, “When do you think we will see the open political oppression of conservatives?” My reply was simple: “That future has already arrived.”

When people imagine a total state, they usually envision a dystopian science fiction novel full of jackbooted thugs and gulags full of thought criminals. This is understandable. Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia are the examples that dominate our minds when it comes to the violent enforcement of ideological conformity. But our modern total state is not ruled by leaders who are either capable of or competent in the large-scale use of force. Unfortunately for the modern dissident, they do not need to be. Technology has proven a far more effective tool of control. In the totalitarian states of old, the government had to put its enemies on a train to the gulag, but in the modern total state, the gulag comes to you.

The overwhelming use of violence is undoubtedly effective at silencing political dissidents, but it also comes with serious drawbacks. First a regime needs a group of men willing and able to unleash brutal acts upon their neighbors, and even if leaders can compel men to commit such horrific acts, a regime has to worry about the cost. People tend to notice violent action and register it as an immediate existential threat. A population is far more likely to take action and defend itself against horrific violence than against the slow and steady technological suppression wielded by our current elites.

A ruling class also has to be concerned about the optics of widespread violence. It can be difficult to sell particularly heinous acts to the more moderate segments of your population. Soft power does a much better job of suppressing opposition without triggering the fight-or-flight reflex in your average citizen.

The ability of the regime to punish conservatives begins with the education of their children. The children of conservatives must report to government-operated learning facilities unless their parents have the affluence and awareness necessary to provide alternative education. In those facilities, the children of conservatives are taught that their parents are backwards and evil and likely seeking to oppress them.

If these students are Christian, they are taught that their faith is ignorant and responsible for unspeakable atrocities. If they are white, they are taught that their skin color makes them irredeemably racist, automatically guilty of a grave sin for which they can never atone. Most children are taught that the morals of their parents are silly or hateful, especially the ones around restricting sexuality, and that they may need to use the state to shield their newfound sexual identity from the ignorant bigotry of their family. And all children are taught that the historical American nation is basically one extended war crime that moves from atrocity to atrocity and must be fundamentally transformed if it is to be cleansed of its inequity.

The next stage of political oppression occurs as those students consider moving on to a university. The college system has become the de facto credentialing mechanism that almost all high- and mid-status jobs use to sort their applicants. These progressive seminaries actively discriminate against conservatives by forcing applicants to write admissions essays that essentially serve as statements of faith requiring students to find creative ways of expressing their total devotion to woke ideology.

Even if a conservative student does make it past this process, all he has won is the honor of going deeply into debt to pay professors who hate him to preach fiery sermons denouncing every value he holds dear. Any attempt to stand up and offer an alternative viewpoint puts his $100,000-plus investment at risk, possibly destroying his career before he even obtains the degree in question.

Read the rest at The Blaze