{"id":276964,"date":"2018-11-23T18:06:47","date_gmt":"2018-11-23T18:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2018\/11\/23\/unpretty-unpretty-authoritarianism-mandates\/"},"modified":"2018-11-23T18:06:47","modified_gmt":"2018-11-23T18:06:47","slug":"unpretty-unpretty-authoritarianism-mandates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2018\/11\/23\/unpretty-unpretty-authoritarianism-mandates\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

unpretty<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

unpretty<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

authoritarianism mandates a lack of critical thinking in order to function, because the whole point is that you must listen to The Authority, The Authority is always right and The Other is always wrong in order to defend The Community<\/p>\n

(there\u2019s a whole book about it here<\/a>, it\u2019s free, have fun)<\/p>\n

i\u2019m not here to defend tankie bullshit but to attribute the death of millions through famine to communism is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the regimes under which those deaths occurred<\/p>\n

under the ussr intellectuals and scientists were suspect as a consequence of having been born to privilege (in much the same way that intellectuals and scientists in nazi germany were suspect as a consequence of being Jewish [and in much the same way intellectuals and scientists under any authoritarian regime will be made part of The Other because knowledge really is power and The Authority doesn\u2019t want to share])<\/p>\n

consequently any goddamn moron is able to establish themselves as an expert by just spouting horseshit that sounds like it agrees with what The Authority is already saying<\/p>\n

trofim lyshenko<\/a> was referred to as \u201cthe barefoot scientist\u201d because that was good marketing at the time for a guy who didn\u2019t know jack shit, but happened to have grown up poor and liked to run his mouth about how the concept of genes was fascist<\/p>\n

\n

Wheat, rye, potatoes, beets\u2014most everything grown according to Lysenko\u2019s methods died or rotted, says Hungry Ghosts<\/i>.
\n Stalin still deserves the bulk of the blame for the famines, which
\nkilled at least 7 million people, but Lysenko\u2019s practices prolonged and
\nexacerbated the food shortages. (Deaths from the famines peaked around
\n1932 to 1933, but four years later, after a 163-fold increase in
\nfarmland cultivated using Lysenko\u2019s methods, food production was
\nactually lower than before.) The Soviet Union\u2019s allies suffered under
\nLysenkoism, too. Communist China adopted his methods in the late 1950s
\nand endured even bigger famines.
\n Peasants were reduced to eating tree bark and bird droppings and the
\noccasional family member. At least 30 million died of starvation.<\/p>\n

(source<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

authoritarianism and the anti-intellectualism that necessarily accompanies it has a death count that transcends ideology<\/p>\n

whether or not an authoritarian agrees with you on the matter of resource distribution is deeply irrelevant, unless your primary concern is to \u2018prove\u2019 that only people who disagree with your ideology are capable of being wrong<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/figure>\n

in retrospect i can see how posting this right after the thing about clown eggs could be a bit of a rollercoaster<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

unpretty: unpretty: authoritarianism mandates a lack of critical thinking in order to function, because the whole point is that you must listen to The Authority, The Authority is always right and The Other is always wrong in order to defend The Community (there\u2019s a whole book about it here, it\u2019s free, have fun) i\u2019m not … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[26216,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276964"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}