Laying Siege to the Institutions

From “Laying Siege to the Institutions” by Christopher F. Rufo in the April/May 2022 issue of Imprimis: The leftist dream of a working-class rebellion in America fizzled after the ’60s. By the mid-1970s, radical groups like the Black Liberation Army and the Weather Underground had faded from prominence. But the leftist dreamers didn’t give up. …

Soviets were serial re-branders.

Beware! Communists may be in charge of your government, if they keep re-branding their departments. Consider, for example, this passage from The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: In the People’s Commissariat of Justice there was the Prison Administration (December, 1917), then the Central Penal Department (May, 1918) with a network of Provincial Penal Departments and …

A Prison, No Matter What the Soviets Called It

Communists use words not only to obscure what they are doing but also to make others play catch-up with respect to what they are doing. For example, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in his book The Gulag Archipelago about how the Soviets had many names for prisons: Year after year other forms of existence for prisoners were also tried, …