IN THE NEWS The last few years of political discussion have resurrected old topics: What are the warning signs of tyranny? How much distance is there between our own democracy and forms of government we’d find execrable? Was fascism something limited to a particular place (Europe) and time (the 1930s and 1940s), or was it an early eruption of a political force we’ll see again?
Obviously, all of these questions deserve better treatment than I can give in a short blog posting. However, there are warning signs that you are headed in the wrong direction. How inexorable the momentum is, or how far you have to go before you slip into the abyss, are vitally connected, but separate, questions. In any case, once you spot a sign of danger, you should hit the brakes.
This article chronicles the story of an Army intelligence expert who witnessed prisoner abuse in Samarra. For taking a stand on the subject—something which makes practical sense, since the torture and detention incidents are only deepening the political gulf between the United States and the very people whose cooperation we hope to win—Sgt. Frank Ford found himself labeled as mentally unbalanced, strapped to a gurney, and shipped out on the next plane to Germany. At the end of the article, the author, a fellow Army intelligence officer, says that the Army has used the same tactic—declaring a whistle-blower to be mentally imbalanced, and therefore subject to immediate constraint and detention—with at least one other soldier.
As I said, I won’t wrestle with the question of how much certain ideological strains in our current polity resemble fascism or generic totalitarianism. I will point out the obvious: a very, very big red flag just went up. Shutting politically suspect individuals into psychiatric prisons (Psikhushka ) was, of course, one of the ways the Soviets crushed dissent. The Chinese government is carrying on this proud totalitarian tradition with the Falun Gong, and Cuban exiles have accused Castro's government of the same misdeeds.
Totalitarian societies go to great pains to justify themselves, hence the towers of Stalinist tracts that the Soviet Union published. In the case of the USSR and its Eastern European satellites, China, and North Korea, the refrain is always the same: the accused has committed the crime of social disruption. Anyone who wants to create trouble for the great society on its great mission is clearly insane. Therefore, the state is justified to put him into immediate, involuntary psychiatric custody, for his own safety as well as that of his fellow citizens.
Of course, this account isn’t the final word on this incident (and we don't have hospitals full of dissidents yet). Many of the people involved aren’t talking—most notably, the people who stand accused of ordering and executing this psychiatric detention of Frank Ford, an American military intelligence specialist. If the truth fits the general outlines of the story as written, I just have to ask the people who ordered Ford’s detention, Didn’t the horrifying resemblance to the Great and Recently Defeated Enemy, the Soviety Union, cross your mind? Or didn’t you care?
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