Both
sides of my wife’s family were broken up during and right after World
War II. As a result, she has family in both Poland and Croatia and has
kept in close touch with both. We’ve sent our teenage sons to the
month-long Polish Scout Camp where they teach the kids fieldcraft and
basic survival skills. It isn’t basic training, but the kids build their
own camps, prepare their own food, and get ready for another Russian or
German invasion. My son’s welcome gift upon arrival was a Fiskars ax.
In
the 1970s, when my wife visited Croatia as a teenager, the country was
still clearly under communist control. She happened to be there during
the Christmas holidays, a celebration that the communist government
forbade.
Despite
this edict, Croatia has always been a predominantly Catholic country.
Therefore, many Croats, rather than abandoning Christmas, tended to
celebrate the holiday quietly, out of the neighbor’s sight, lest a
non-Christian neighbor inform on them, subjecting them to a police visit
and arrest.
When
my then-teenage wife learned of this, she loudly exclaimed that she
could not believe people could get arrested for celebrating the birth of
Christ! Her Croatian family quickly closed the windows and pleadingly
“shushed” her to prevent unscrupulous neighbors from hearing the
incredulous teen and, perhaps, informing the police.
The
Catholic Poles, on the other hand, collectively told their communist
leaders to jump in a lake if they thought they could prevent Poles from
going to church or celebrating religious holidays. Make no mistake:
There was government pressure to suppress religion, but too many Poles
were willing to stand up, and the authorities were not quite as feared
as Tito’s secret police in Croatia.
In
the past, these were things that we Americans knew about communist
oppression during the Cold War and, like my future wife, we were
outraged whenever we heard about them. Even though various groups in the
United States have been oppressed for their beliefs throughout our
history, we have made steady progress toward becoming a more
free society.
Ironically,
in the mid-20th century, we oppressed people in this country who had
ever considered being communist. Many ended up “blacklisted” and could
not get work and were cut off from association with coworkers and
friends. The U.S. has never been perfect, but it was always our general
belief that we should try to be.
Nonetheless,
today in America we are seeing the return of another round of
oppression. Cancel culture is the most obvious, but now we are seeing
neighbors and colleagues informing on each other. After the Capitol Rush
on January 6, the FBI made available on social media images of suspects
in the hope that friends, family members, co-workers, and others would
inform on them.
Recently, a Georgetown law school professor resigned under pressure simply because, during a Zoom call with another professor, he did not correct her for “racist” comments.
The other professor expressed her concerns that Black students
generally had lower academic performance every semester. That professor
was fired by the Dean of the Law School.
I
am not privy to all the information, and there may be evidence that
both professors are in fact racist. On the other hand, perhaps neither
one is racist and they were simply discussing truthful information.
Since I do not believe that systemic racism and Critical Race Theory are
the real problems faced by Black Americans today, I tend to think the
latter, but I reserve the right to change my opinion with more evidence.
Still,
the thought of one person losing a lifetime’s career because he did not
correct a fellow worker who was speaking in good conscience smacks of
the behavior we saw in those communist countries I described. I wonder
how a third party even obtained that Zoom meeting to find out what was
said. This reminds me of the “telescreen” in Orwell’s 1984 that the Party used to monitor everything anyone did that might be considered disloyal to “Big Brother.”
Leftist
Big Tech tells us what we should think, and what we cannot say on
social media. The tech companies punish anyone who violates these norms,
as in the case of Amazon shutting down Parler, or Apple deleting
content it deems white supremacist, or Disney firing right-leaning
actors.
Are
we now being monitored by our neighbors and colleagues to see if we are
loyal to the leftist agenda? Are we now prepared to turn in our
neighbors, friends, and even our families? As the left increases social
and political power, will we be able to push back as the Poles did, or
will we be terrorized like the Croats?
