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The book Every Man Dies Alone[1] by Hans Fallada deals with a very similar subject. At the height of the Nazi Party's political power in Germany, an elderly cou

by rz2k 13y ago

The book Every Man Dies Alone[1] by Hans Fallada deals with a very similar subject. At the height of the Nazi Party's political power in Germany, an elderly couple left postcards to be found in public spaces with subversive messages like, "Mother! The Führer has murdered my son. Mother! The Führer will murder your sons too, he will not stop till he has brought sorrow to every home in the world." They're eventually tracked down and executed after two years and hundreds of postcards, and the question remains whether their campaign had any effect. Evidence of just how monolithic the regime was, comes from the percentage that were immediately turned into the authorities being something like 95%. On one hand the postcards absolutely terrified the people who found them, but on the other, when a society is in a state where everyone is informing on each other, they may have been the rarest of moments when anyone who doubted the regime would have seen any proof that they were not alone. I doubt that the DPRK regime could control the entire population without a relatively high level of acquiescence and even complicity of the people it is controlling. It's probably similar to how organized crime survived in communities by convincing people it was better than unorganized crime, or by building up the mythos of it having something to do with honor. In other words they have an information monopoly, because they are certain that small challenges to the official narrative do propose a real threat. [1] some reviews: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/books/review/Schillinger-t.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/books/review/Schillinger-t... http://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Every-Man-Dies-Alone-by-Hans-Fallada-3296158.php http://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Every-Man-Dies-Alone-by-... http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/07/hans-fallada-alone-berlin-rereading http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/07/hans-fallada-al...

XorNot 13y ago
Actually it's mostly that the people they control are starving (and now, addicted to meth as well). The narrative that the North Koreans are fanatical followers of the regime is basically Americanized fiction. The reality is that they're regular people who fear for their lives. The problem with a lot of western commentators on regimes they think should just overthrow the government, is they think they'd do that, but haven't had to. It's one thing to say it, it's another thing to run unarmed into machine gun fire hoping to suicide bomb a barracks so others will have a chance to arm themselves.
- rz2k 13y ago
  I think if you spoke to people who grew up in an authoritarian regime you'd be surprised by how large a role the totalitarianism of ideas and complicity of the population plays in comparison to direct violence from internal security forces or control over food. In fact it is likely to be a quiet source of shame, much as abused children might be loyal to undeserving parents. As for "Americanized fiction", what country's foreign policy community do you believe is a more credible source? China's, South Korea's, Japan's? Of the four, the US probably has the least identifiable motivation for biasing accounts in any particular direction.
  - weland 13y ago
    > I think if you spoke to people who grew up in an authoritarian regime Oh, hello! > you'd be surprised by how large a role the totalitarianism of ideas and complicity of the population plays in comparison to direct violence from internal security forces or control over food. The complicity of the population usually plays an important role, but only when it comes to the implementation of major policies. Not in the sense that there's civil disobedience about small-scale measures, but in the sense that authorities ignore how people feel about it. Even if they disapprove, what exactly are they going to when the government decides to take their cows? Stand by them and let the policemen arrest them? Yeah, that's pretty much why they're for. Civilian informers were doing just fine at the downfall of every major communist regime in Europe. In fact, their number might have been at a peak (I don't have a source to back this for every country, unfortunately), so you could say the complicity of the population was, if not at its highest, at least in a stable, well-paced rhythm. Direct violence played a big role, but only to the extent that it showed the threats of the agents weren't hollow. Control over food played a hugely important role in the more rural communities, or those that had deep-rooted education issues; these communities were largely untouched by the lack of freedom which they wouldn't have exercised much anyway, but when their ability to satisfy their basic needs degraded, things went awry quite quickly wherever armed control wasn't firm and steady enough. The idea that North Koreans, by and large, are fanatical followers of the regime is fiction, especially so late in the development of their regime.
dredmorbius 13y ago
Evidence of just how monolithic the regime was, comes from the percentage that were immediately turned into the authorities being something like 95%. You're neglecting to consider a number of factors, though compliance may have been entirely willful. In a situation such as the rise of the Third Reich, where trust is being undermined, people finding the postcards could well have considered that they were being given a loyalty test, and that to do anything but turn in the cards would have meant failing (with ... harsh penalties). I've known people who were alive during the Nazi regime, and one persistent factor they report is simply not fully comprehending what was happening. Realize that much of the truth of what happened at the time wasn't revealed, even to Germans, until after the war. The scarier thing is that, when traveling through parts of the US during the height of the 2nd (and hopefully final) Bush administration, there were periods during which a similar level of paranoia seemed to be settling in, and not just affecting me. I was walking down a city street behind a woman talking with two men about one of Greg Palast's books, though she couldn't recall the title. I recognized it and volunteered it. Her response was that she felt insecure even mentioning it in a public space like that. I could understand completely. Curiously, with all the revelations of NSA surveillance, while I'm now far less comfortable with electronics and such (particularly anything proprietary), I don't have quite the same sense of "watch what you say" when in the US as I did then.

by rz2k 13y ago

XorNot 13y ago

Actually it's mostly that the people they control are starving (and now, addicted to meth as well). The narrative that the North Koreans are fanatical followers of the regime is basically Americanized fiction. The reality is that they're regular people who fear for their lives. The problem with a lot of western commentators on regimes they think should just overthrow the government, is they think they'd do that, but haven't had to. It's one thing to say it, it's another thing to run unarmed into machine gun fire hoping to suicide bomb a barracks so others will have a chance to arm themselves.

rz2k 13y ago
I think if you spoke to people who grew up in an authoritarian regime you'd be surprised by how large a role the totalitarianism of ideas and complicity of the population plays in comparison to direct violence from internal security forces or control over food. In fact it is likely to be a quiet source of shame, much as abused children might be loyal to undeserving parents. As for "Americanized fiction", what country's foreign policy community do you believe is a more credible source? China's, South Korea's, Japan's? Of the four, the US probably has the least identifiable motivation for biasing accounts in any particular direction.
- weland 13y ago
  > I think if you spoke to people who grew up in an authoritarian regime Oh, hello! > you'd be surprised by how large a role the totalitarianism of ideas and complicity of the population plays in comparison to direct violence from internal security forces or control over food. The complicity of the population usually plays an important role, but only when it comes to the implementation of major policies. Not in the sense that there's civil disobedience about small-scale measures, but in the sense that authorities ignore how people feel about it. Even if they disapprove, what exactly are they going to when the government decides to take their cows? Stand by them and let the policemen arrest them? Yeah, that's pretty much why they're for. Civilian informers were doing just fine at the downfall of every major communist regime in Europe. In fact, their number might have been at a peak (I don't have a source to back this for every country, unfortunately), so you could say the complicity of the population was, if not at its highest, at least in a stable, well-paced rhythm. Direct violence played a big role, but only to the extent that it showed the threats of the agents weren't hollow. Control over food played a hugely important role in the more rural communities, or those that had deep-rooted education issues; these communities were largely untouched by the lack of freedom which they wouldn't have exercised much anyway, but when their ability to satisfy their basic needs degraded, things went awry quite quickly wherever armed control wasn't firm and steady enough. The idea that North Koreans, by and large, are fanatical followers of the regime is fiction, especially so late in the development of their regime.

dredmorbius 13y ago

Evidence of just how monolithic the regime was, comes from the percentage that were immediately turned into the authorities being something like 95%. You're neglecting to consider a number of factors, though compliance may have been entirely willful. In a situation such as the rise of the Third Reich, where trust is being undermined, people finding the postcards could well have considered that they were being given a loyalty test, and that to do anything but turn in the cards would have meant failing (with ... harsh penalties). I've known people who were alive during the Nazi regime, and one persistent factor they report is simply not fully comprehending what was happening. Realize that much of the truth of what happened at the time wasn't revealed, even to Germans, until after the war. The scarier thing is that, when traveling through parts of the US during the height of the 2nd (and hopefully final) Bush administration, there were periods during which a similar level of paranoia seemed to be settling in, and not just affecting me. I was walking down a city street behind a woman talking with two men about one of Greg Palast's books, though she couldn't recall the title. I recognized it and volunteered it. Her response was that she felt insecure even mentioning it in a public space like that. I could understand completely. Curiously, with all the revelations of NSA surveillance, while I'm now far less comfortable with electronics and such (particularly anything proprietary), I don't have quite the same sense of "watch what you say" when in the US as I did then.