Social-media sites beat Joseph Stalin in mind control of the masses.

Joseph Stalin issued circa 1950 a decree on revealing state secrets, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote:

There was a good-sized wave from the new Decree on Revealing State Secrets. (State secrets included such things as: the district harvest; any figure on epidemics; the type of goods produced by any workshop or mini-factory; mention of a civil airport, municipal transport routes, or the family name of any prisoner imprisoned in any camp.) For violations of this decree they gave fifteen years.

The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 1, p 91

Did you notice the epidemics reference?

  • Stalin banished for fifteen years anyone who published any USSR figure on epidemics.

In contrast:

Yes, physical banishment is much different from banishment from a social-media site. But, as Michael Knowles points out in his book Speechless, those who control words are those who control minds.

  • A banishment by Stalin under his Decree on Revealing State Secrets meant that one person for fifteen years could not communicate with print readers, at some cost to the publisher or to the readers and typically in weeks or months.
  • A banishment by Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube can mean that one person or organization for life cannot use that platform to communicate with social-media users, at no cost to publish or receive the information instantly.

Social-media sites beat Joseph Stalin in mind control of the masses.

COVID-19 masks are hand-clapping for the masses.

Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un gets near-unending applause from North Korean audiences in 2021. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote something similar about Joseph Stalin’s USSR audiences in the 1930s:

Here is one vignette from those years as it actually occurred. A district Party conference was under way in Moscow Province. It was presided over by a new secretary of the District Party Committee, replacing one recently arrested. At the conclusion of the conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for. … For three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, the “stormy applause, rising to an ovation,” continued. … However, who would dare to be the first to stop? The secretary of the District Party Committee could have done it. He was standing on the platform, and it was he who had just called for the ovation. But he was a newcomer. He had taken the place of a man who’d been arrested. He was afraid! … And in that obscure, small hall, unknown to the Leader, the applause went on — six, seven, eight minutes! They were done for! … Aware of all the falsity and all the impossibility of the situation, he still kept on applauding! Nine minutes! Ten! … Then, after eleven minutes, the director of the paper factory assumed a businesslike expression and sat down in his seat. … To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down. They had been saved! The squirrel had been smart enough to jump off his revolving wheel.

The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 1, pp 69-70

Fast-forward to 2021.

  • Replace district Party conference with the masses.
  • Keep the fear.
  • Replace the applause with COVID-19 masks.
  • Keep all the falsity and all the impossibility of the situation.
  • Replace minutes with months or even quarters.

COVID-19 masks are hand-clapping for the masses.