Tyranny
This article is the script for a Toastmasters speech which was based on the ideas I discussed in “Freedom is slavery” So if you are confused as to why I cover a lot of the same ground that is why.
It is 1917. Russia. The first World War. The Tsar, Nicolas the second is an incompetent tyrant, fighting a losing war the Russian people do not wish to fight. His government is undemocratic, unjust, and unfair, strict discriminatory laws keep Jews as second-class citizens, and the Russian people are poor and desperate. In the name of freedom and equality, they rise up. The Tsar and his family are killed, and a government of the people is established. Ten years later, 20 million innocent Russians, maybe more, have been killed. They were thrown out into the snow to freeze to death, their food was stolen and they were forced to cannibalize their dead family members to survive. Their clothes were set on fire, the fires were then put and relit. But for most who died their eventual fate was either a bullet to the back of the head, or being worked to death in the freezing Gulags of Siberia. The Tsars tyranny had been defeated, and “freedom” established, but at what cost?
It is the 1920’s. Imperial Germany had been a World Power with a high standard of living, a thriving industry, and a proud and optimistic people. But after Germanys defeat in the first World War, it was believed that a chance for peace had been lost because Imperial Germany had been militaristic, aggressive, and expansionist, Democratic freedom would be required to fix these psychological flaws. Germany may have suffered the most casualties of any nation during the war, but in the eyes of the World, they were now the guilty perpetrators of its many horrors. The fruits of Germanys new Democratic system of Government were many. Prostitution became Berlins new growing industry. working women lined its streets, some worked even while pregnant. It was considered odd for children 15 or 16 years old to still be virgins. Sexual scientists from across Europe took advantage of the cheap sex to engage in drug fuelled orgies with men and women, young and old, all in the name of understanding and unravelling human behaviour. The currency lost so much value that 6 million people became unemployed, and wheelbarrows of cash were needed to buy a loaf of bread. Suicide rates skyrocketed and everywhere there were signs that societal collapse was imminent. The Communist revolutionaries everywhere agitated for the destruction and disbanding of the few shreds of health, happiness and harmony that still remained. The German people were desperate for someone to explain how all this had happened, and who was to blame. And someone had the answers ready. Freedom had come to Germany, but now it’s days were numbered.
It is 2003, Iraq. Saddam Hussein rules over his nation with an iron fist. Photos and statues venerating the countries great leader in the vein of a cartoonishly evil dictatorship are everywhere to be seen. Political dissidents are openly killed, tortured, and imprisoned. Ethnic and religious minorities are persecuted, oppressed, and killed. Saddams son, Uday, chooses women at random of the street and rapes them. Those he especially dislikes are fed to his pet dogs alive. The people of Iraq live in constant fear. The whole country was a totalitarian nightmare, the likes of which it is sometimes thought do not exist outside the pages of George Orwell’s 1984. In the name of democracy America invades, hangs Saddam, and restores justice. 14 years later the country is still at war. The unseen fault lines in Iraqi society which had been kept sealed by Saddam now cracked open. Thousands of innocents have died since Saddam’s death, and Americas intervention is seen by the whole world to be a failure. Freedom had come to Iraq, but the people had rejected it.
In every one of these stories, the breakdown of tyranny was not naturally followed by freedom and fairness, but merely by more suffering and sorrow. But the history of our world is not one of failures alone. Let me share with you two stories of success, of cruelty and carnage being successfully replaced with peace and prosperity.
The first story takes place in 1945, after the Japanese surrender during WW2. America occupies the Japanese islands, and General MacArthur is given total administrative power over the nation, leading some to rightly call him the new Japanese Emperor. He was firm, but fair. He was driven by an unshakeable belief in the superiority of the Western traditions of civil liberties, human rights, and democracy, when compared to the Fascist Japanese traditions that had led Japan into the second World War. He was technically a dictator. And yet, all the stranger considering he was the figurehead for the occupation, he was well liked by the Japanese themselves. Today Japan is a prosperous first world country, and the constitution and principles MacArthur forced the Japanese to accept have been largely responsible for that. MacArthur freed the Japanese, but he couldn’t have done it without denying the Japanese the freedom to decide for themselves what was best for them.
The second story takes place in Chile, 1973. The socialist candidate Salvador Allende has been in power for three years now, and has implemented policies which have not been good for the economy. Corruption is widespread, and food shortages are common. The commander of the army Pinochet, leads a coup which topples Allende, and then persecutes and kills a few thousand of his supporters. After the national situation stabilises Pinochet brings in economic experts from the United States to liberalise the economy, in order to counteract the pseudo-communist policies of Allende. Although his violent methods and later evidence of corruption lead to Pinochet not being seen in a very popular light by some Chileans today, Chile currently ranks as one of the safest and most prosperous Latin American countries today.
I do not want to end this speech with the impression that I am in favour of dictatorships, and opposed to democracy. Only that peaceful Democracy is not an energy which naturally rushes to fill the void of any collapsed dictatorship, and tearing down the government of a corrupt country is not enough to give it peace and prosperity, a new system of government must be put in place. In Japan, it was surprisingly easy. In Iraq, it was hard, perhaps impossible. Today, hatred of dictators is used to justify intervening in wars we have no business fighting, and toppling regimes, the unintended consequences of which we have no way of predicting. In the ongoing Syrian civil war, Western media falsely portrays Bashar-al-Assad as a mad tyrant, who must be stopped at any cost, and the rebels fighting him of possessing the most liberal and tolerant virtues, with no thought for the inevitable anarchy and violence that would break out should he be defeated. When we see people around the world languishing in tyranny, we must not think that any change would have to be for the better, fate would delight in proving us wrong. For truly changing any society for the better requires the Western World possess a chauvinistic strength of conviction in the morality of its beliefs, and will to enforce those beliefs on others, that we possessed in 1945, but not today. The presence of undemocratic Dictators in the World is an almost unbearable burden for some idealistic people. But often a seemingly tyrannical force is merely the fragile curtain that holds a far worse tyranny at bay.
