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> It turned out to be the most costly email I ever sent to anyone. Not 100% applicable, but worth thinking about IMHO: One dissident in the Soviet Union, I th
by hackuser 10y ago
> It turned out to be the most costly email I ever sent to anyone.
Not 100% applicable, but worth thinking about IMHO:
One dissident in the Soviet Union, I think Joseph Brodsky, said not to talk about the abuses that oppressors inflict on you. You only magnify their impact: They do those things to scare and intimidate, and every time you repeat the story you help them do it again, to an ever wider audience (who themselves will repeat it). Let their attempts to terrify their victims die, without an echo, in the room where they occur.
It's hard to oppress hundreds of millions or billions of people; you can't really control them all if they don't submit. Terror is a tool for keeping them in line.
(In fairness, it doesn't necessarily apply to this situation, and sometimes talking about things helps people organize, find support, and alert the world to the abuses. But how many people who read this story will now hesitate to help a critic of the Chinese government?)