Reply to What’s it going to be like living in a dictatorship?

Forum Index » Political Discussion

Reply to "What’s it going to be like living in a dictatorship?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Can someone say more about what life is like in a dictatorship?  In particular Turkey.  I believe there is a Turkish festival
This weekend and I’m
Thinking of attending that, plus the No Kings rally.  Hoping there may be people
At the festival that have direct experience that they can share.[/quote]

What do you want to know? I have lived in two countries that were democracies and went through a period of dictatorship. I also have close Turkish friends and I’m quite familiar with the situation there. I can tell you that no two authoritarian regimes look alike, but they all share common elements.

One thing that immediately comes to mind is fear of political expression such as fear of speaking freely in public. I was recently with a European friend in a downtown DC coffee shop speaking in a language we share and we were discussing the current administration. At one point when I became a little animated, my friend looked around with a worried expression and said “lower your voice because someone might hear us.”  When we were younger, we had both lived through a period of dictatorship in that country, and those words chilled me since I had heard them before in the context of living in a dictatorship. The reality is that no one around us would have understood a word we were saying, but that instinctive fear was still there. That’s one of the things that living under an authoritarian regime does to you. It makes you feel palpable fear.[/quote]

This is what maga wants. [/quote]

Yeah, the other day I found myself using a phrase I haven't used since we lived in the Soviet Union "This is not a telephone-type conversation -- ne telephonii razgovor".  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics