This is exactly the opposite of the lesson here. Communist repression (and fascist for that matter) WAS of the brute force variety, like in 1984, but what we a

This is exactly the opposite of the lesson here. Communist repression (and fascist for that matter) WAS of the brute force variety, like in 1984, but what we are seeing now is something completely different. Not quite Brave new world, but definitely with aspects of that. Giants like google don't use violence, very likely they never will. They don't need to. They can nudge leaders and populations in the direction they want, and achieve their goals, through entirely legal and voluntary means. Looking back at what abuse of power looked like in the past is very dangerous, we will miss the signs of the novel ways that the powerful move their positions forward.