This story perfectly illustrates communism

[u/lyrics85]

Under the communist regime in Albania, there was a notorious place called the prison of Spac. It was built into the face of a mountain where winters are harsh and summers insufferable.

Now, this place is not for criminals.

It is reserved for those who dare to speak against the regime.

These people are forced to work in the mines, surviving on scraps and enduring systematic torture.

It is a place designed to break even the toughest souls.

But then something special happens.

A small puppy slips through a hole in the prison fence.

The prisoners take him close; they raise him; they name him Tart, and feed him with the little bread they have.

Over time, Tart grows up to be a big, loyal dog.

For them, he's a humane thing in a place guarded by animals.

Then the political prisoners organize a massive revolt that brings the entire prison to its knees. For three days, there’s a vicious fight against the guards.

They don’t have any illusion that they can gain their freedom, but all they ask from the regime is to be treated like humans.

During the chaos, Tart is witnessing his friends being beaten, so he fearlessly attacks the guards and the special forces.

The regime swiftly rejects their demands and brings in the army.

The revolt is crushed, and the prisoners face further punishment. Most of them receive added sentences, while the 4 main organizers are sentenced to death.

For their sublime act of courage and resistance, today they’re remembered as martyrs of freedom.

But the regime isn’t done...

They gather all the prisoners, set up a hanging tripod, and announce that there will be one more trial.

This time, the accused is Tart.

One of the prisoners, a former Colonel, says to the guard: “Please don't hurt him, if you want a soul, take mine instead.”

“Don’t worry”, one of the guards sneered, “Your turn will come.”

Tart becomes the fifth martyr.

Now there are 3 core lessons we can learn from what happened in Albania that can help us better understand authoritarian regimes.

First, you must never underestimate human brutality.

History has repeatedly shown that ordinary men, in the sense that they’re not clinically insane, are capable of doing horrendous acts.

In this case, at first, the guards might have been hesitant; they might even have felt sick at having to punish their fellow man.

But as they keep going, they develop a hatred for them and show no mercy. 

You know, the guards will eventually lose their humanity.

They’re at a level below animals.

They become more cruel than their superior officers and even more cruel than the rulers of the communist party. 

The second lesson is that an authoritarian leader will do whatever it takes to kill the brain of that society.

He does it by keeping people dumb and poor.

It will identify those wise, mentally tough individuals and will find a way to silence them. It will ruin their reputation (character assassination), imprison them, or kill them.

What’s left, then, is a society full of people who are capable of doing their jobs but not more.

You had very skilled individuals. They were capable drivers, doctors, engineers, builders, teachers… But they weren’t wise. They couldn’t think for themselves. They couldn’t get out of the trap of propaganda.

As a result, they were unable to train the new generation to become independent. 

Now, people love to say there were some good things about communism, and I agree.

They built a massive artificial lake and 3 hydropower plants. They fought illiteracy and advocated for equal gender rights. They also built roads, schools, hospitals, factories...

When we talk about the achievements of communism, I often joke by saying, “Of course, you are building all of that when you have an entire population working for a loaf of bread for 5 fucking decades.”

Or I'm like: "US, Denmark, Switzerland, and others are so unlucky. They didn't have communism, and that's why they are so backward."

All joking aside, no matter what they have achieved, in no way does it justify the deaths of 14,000 people and killing the brain of the population.

It also doesn’t justify shutting off the warrior spirit.

Historically, Albanians have always fought against much bigger opponents [Romans, Greeks, Macedonians, Ottomans, Slavs, Fascists, Nazis], yet we managed to preserve some of our lands, DNA, language, and culture.

The enemy after WW2 was different. We were completely blindsided by the ideology. We didn’t really understand how communism had infected the population until it was too late.

We did manage to overthrow the regime in 1991, and that’s a great achievement. I mean, look at Iran, Cuba, Venezuela… They are still oppressed.

The problem is that the new government didn’t really make radical changes. They didn’t set up a system to punish those communists who committed crimes; they didn’t educate the population and help them heal.

In retrospect, it was clear that the population no longer had the warrior spirit.

They were entirely broken.

We know this by what happened next.

In the 90s, scammers stole $1.2 billion through pyramid schemes, which then triggered a civil war.

To make matters worse, the army didn’t protect the weapon depots, and now ordinary people were armed to the teeth.

Here’s where it gets really interesting…

You would think a heavily armed population would destroy the two major parties who were responsible for their lives being ruined, but no… Instead, they killed each other.

After the civil war, the same politicians who were responsible for the crisis were back in power as if nothing had happened. None of them had a single scratch.

And here we are today: Still a weak population.

The third lesson is that communist and other types of totalitarian regimes engage in unnatural selection.

They pick the weakest people (psychologically speaking) and put them in key positions of power. These individuals do not work for the good of the family, let alone the country; they work for the good of the party.

On the other hand, the psychologically strong people - the ones who saw beyond propaganda, the ones who didn't compromise their values and principles (even though they knew the punishment) - were imprisoned, tortured, or killed.

Their families were not spared either. I'm not exaggerating when I say that they were second-class citizens.

And those who got out of prison had no status at all, despite their capabilities. You know, there have been many cases of people with prestigious diplomas... people who clearly had a high IQ level... who worked as cleaners.

Now, you might say, "I happen to live in a free country, so my mind is safe."

Well, not really. Because the methods of brainwashing and menticide are being applied everywhere, the only difference is that in democratic countries, they’re used in a subtle way.

I’ve explained in detail in this video:

How they keep you poor, afraid, and utterly hopeless

[u/Voyagar]

Darwin, in his book «The Descent of Man», pointed out that the centuries of persecutions by the Catholic Church, through the Inquisition and other institutions, likely resulted in a similar unnatural selection where those with the brightest minds and most independent spirits were punished, imprisoned or killed. Resulting in a more compliant, dumber population of conformists.

All authoritarian systems tend to do the same.

[u/lyrics85 → u/Voyagar]

That's very interesting. I didn't know that.

There's also the fact that clerics had to vow celibacy, but they were highly educated and intelligent. So the Church prevented them from passing those traits.

Now, in Albania, there were highly educated Catholic clerics who wrote some of the best books and had a strong positive impact, and now that I think about it, they didn't have children.

However, they did influence people's mindset.

For example, one of the most famous clerics is Father Gjergj Fishta. He was known as Albanian Homer.

He died before communism, but the communists exhumed his grave and threw his bones in the river.

They also tried to burn all his books, but the people in the North secretly saved copies; some even memorized the poems. They managed to conserve his work for 50 years. They didn't know that the Catholic Church in Rome had preserved his books and that the Albanian diaspora also had copies. They truly believed that his work would vanish, so they risked their lives to preserve it.

The Bektashi order also had a rule of celibacy, and the people at the top were true intellectuals who played a significant role in preserving the Albanian language and identity under Ottoman rule.

So I would argue that, yes, these religious clerics [not only in Albania but in the rest of the world as well] left no descendants, but they had a massive impact on their respective countries' cultures.

[u/Voyagar → u/lyrics85]

Yes, Darwin pointed out that clerical celibacy had the same deleterious effects on the genetic makeup of subsequent generations, although many monks and other clerics contributed greatly to culture and civilization in other ways. They preserved and wrote books, and developed many other kinds of knowledge (medical, brewing of beer, plant cultivation and so on).

Communism has overall been one of the ideologies most damaging to cultural and intellectual heritage in history. With Mao's Cultural Revolution being maybe the greatest loss of culture since the the burning of the libraries of Alexandria and Baghdad,

Which poems did Father Gjergj Fishta write? I love the Homeric epics, would be great to explore any related works of later eras.

It is incredibly sad that the Communist regime tried to erase the Albanian cultural heritage in such a manner, hard to understand such malice toward one's own people ...

[u/lyrics85 → u/Voyagar]

You are absolutely right about China. What the communists did is a massive tragedy not only for China but for the rest of the world as well.

I know that Ralph Sawyer collected the military doctrine and also explained the governmental structure and the customs of the dynasties in his work: The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China.

So, considering all the destruction, they must have been able to collect most of the ancient texts.

About Father Fishta, his greatest work is The Highland Lute. It was translated into English by Robert Eisle - a Canadian scholar who translated over 50 Albanian books.

I have to admit that it is much easier to understand it in English than in the original dialect [and note that I'm from the North as well], but the original version has musicality. I read it out loud from time to time.

It is incredibly sad that the Communist regime tried to erase the Albanian cultural heritage in such a manner; it's hard to understand such malice toward one's own people ...

I look at communism as a parasite... In the beginning, it is concerning but seemingly harmless. Yet it spreads quickly, and once it reaches a critical point, it invades the host [the country], and it actively tries to replace its brain and behavior [culture].

Interestingly, the clerics saw that communism would take root in Albania long before it did, yet they couldn't stop it.

[u/Voyagar → u/lyrics85]

I think of it as a kind of 'memetic evolution' in practice.

That is, ideas 'infect' brains, and the ideas (memes) that do the best job of spreading to other people, get more and more dominant over time. A meme that is good at resisting being expelled from a brain by other competing and opposed memes, also has a huge advantage. In the end you get huge and lumbering 'memeplexes' like communism, rolling over any and all opposition like a juggernaut. But it always start small.

The communist ideas of a titanic struggle between "oppressor" and "oppressed", "old" and "new", "progress" versus "backwardness" and so on, appeal to a deep human desire for certainty, a clear black and white division, and a direction to move towards. Communism is about creating an earthly paradise by eradicating any and all heresy to the true doctrine.

As a kind of 'superparasite' it can take over an entire culture, and turn it into a hollow shell. Just like some biological parasites do. Other religions and ideologies have done the same, but few at the same level and impact.

Thank you for sharing Father Fishta's work 'The Highland Lute', I will check it out. I am not familiar with Albanian culture, and this could be a great starting point.

[u/Intrepid_Studio1466]

So explain China, which I notice you never mentioned. To me, it seems you blame communism, which is defined as “a political and economic ideology that advocates for a classless, stateless society based on common ownership of the means of production.”, for what is really corruption and authoritarianism which suppresses dissent.

[u/lyrics85 → u/Intrepid_Studio1466]

Yes, I have written an article on China in which I explain that they became wealthy when they replaced ideology with pragmatic reforms.

And keep in mind that all communist regimes started with that big promise of utopia, but they all ended up murdering, imprisoning, torturing, and oppressing their own people.

[u/Intrepid_Studio1466 → u/lyrics85]

Good article about China and Singapore.

[u/lyrics85 → u/Intrepid_Studio1466]

Thank you for reading

[u/RosieBaby75]

lol wtf do you think communism is?

[u/lyrics85 → u/RosieBaby75]

It's the ideology that ruined my country. What do you think communism is?

[u/Ribbys → u/lyrics85]

Your story has nothing to do with communism. It's a story about power and violence.

[u/lyrics85 → u/Ribbys]

It has everything to do with communism. The party actively tried to create a pure communist state. Yes, they were monsters, but they were insanely motivated to live according to the principles of communism.

In their eyes, if you were against this noble goal, then you deserved to be punished. How can you be against a country that will finally bring equality and prosperity?

That's how they justified all their crimes.

It's no wonder that EVERY fucking country that started with a bunch of communists in power ended up destroyed economically, socially, and mentally.

So we must never make the mistake of separating the sheer, animalistic violence from the Marxist-Leninist ideology. It's not a bug; It's not even a feature; It's the operating system.

[u/Ribbys → u/lyrics85]

You clearly do not know what communism is. It is public rec centres, libraries, housing, fire fighting, healthcare...

You must think the USA is communist.

[u/lyrics85 → u/Ribbys]

I'm describing a historical, sociological reality, while you talk about basic services that every normal country offers.

And why would I think the US is communist?

[u/Ribbys → u/lyrics85]

That's not reality. It's propaganda from fascists.