OWL’S EYE: Death in print

Published 11:43 am Tuesday, August 30, 2022

We who fly about our county have noticed that a lot of people find comfort in beliefs different from our own. As a rule, there is certainly no danger there. We need to learn from others, the better to discern if what we believe is true or can be made better. Open discussions and dialogue are famously democratic, going back to the days of ancient Athens. We try to encourage critical thinking as a foundation of our very school system. Critical thinking is how we and our children determine truth from lies. Here’s how we know.

“Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be ‘governed’ without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct. It is certain that today every honest German is ashamed of his government.” This sentence was sufficient to have its author, Sophie Scholl, beheaded by the Nazis. She was a college student.

Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, has declared that anyone who writes contrary to Russian government statements about their War in Ukraine will be sentenced to 15 years in prison. His predecessor, Joseph Stalin, would have dissenters shot after torture, or sent for decades to Siberia.

Truth telling is dangerous in dictatorships. In dictatorships, there is a doctrine and a leader. To oppose either can cost the writer or speaker his position, his freedom, or maybe even his life. The Nazis believed in the bogus “scientific” superiority of the “Aryan Master Race.” Anyone who argued against this was considered an enemy of the state. In 1939 under the Hitler regime, a priest, Father Jakob Gapp, told his Bavarian students that Nazism was a divisive danger and Hitler was not their savior. Gapp was murdered by Nazis. In 1978, Georgi Markov, a dissident against the Communist regime in Bulgaria, was murdered on a public street in London. He defected there because his plays, novels, and criticism were banned in Communist Bulgaria. In denouncing the lies of that dictatorship he said, “Today, we Bulgarians present a fine example of what it is to exist under a lid which we cannot lift and which we no longer believe someone else can lift … And the unending slogan which millions of loudspeakers blare out is that everyone is fighting for the happiness of the others. Every word spoken under the lid constantly changes its meaning. Lies and truths swap their values with the frequency of an alternating current … We have seen how personality vanishes, how individuality is destroyed, how the spiritual life of a whole people is corrupted in order to turn them into a listless flock of sheep. We have seen so many of those demonstrations which humiliate human dignity, where normal people are expected to applaud some paltry mediocrity who has proclaimed himself a demi-god and condescendingly waves to them from the heights of his police inviolability.”

How like what Sophie Scholl wrote only a few years before, under another dictatorship. For this, Markov was murdered by poison.

Communists proclaimed they were following “scientific dialectical materialism,” which “proved” their right to govern forever. No one could therefore dare to contradict them. After all, their rule was “scientific.” Dangerous, too, is a dictatorship of religion. Salman Rushdie was condemned to death by a theocracy in Iran, which deemed he had fallen afoul of the very will of God. At the Chautauqua Literary Festival — an annual event in New York dedicated to the value of free expression — this summer, Salman Rushdie was repeatedly stabbed as he addressed his audience. His assailant justified himself and claimed the author ridiculed his religious beliefs. Those who judge on behalf of God should worry us. The Taliban keeps Afghani women in ignorance because they claim it is the will of God. No one would care how others interpret their own religious texts, were it not that some use those readings to imprison, torment, or execute violators.

It is because America is a free country that we even have dissent, have differences clearly argued in print, public forums, and media. Mr. Putin has turned his country’s dictatorship ever closer to the Soviet Communist model he laments having seen collapse. Today, his clique of wealthy thieves starts wars and threatens anyone who opposes their will. Surely, we see Russian dissidents around the world, even today, treated like the Bulgarian Mr. Markov from the Cold War years. He was exiled, then murdered with an umbrella laced with ricin poison. Poison is a preferred method of killing used by dictators like Putin today.

It is true that only in a free country can people know the truth. In a dictatorship, the “truth” is whatever the powers say it is. To contest that assertion can be what your life is worth. Never listen to someone who claims the free press in a free country is “the enemy of the people.” A free press is free because it fearlessly pursues the truth, no matter whose ox is gored. Let’s remember what Sophie Scholl, who gave her life to tell the truth, stated honestly those many years ago. These words used against the Nazis could be used against any dictatorship, anywhere. “At its very inception this (Nazi) movement depended on the deception and betrayal of one’s fellow man; even at that time it was inwardly corrupt and could support itself only by constant lies.”

A free press is powerful because it is free. This is why there is no free press in a dictatorship. The press can challenge those in power. Why else would good writing be hounded to death in dictatorships? A free press is free of humbug, party hack slogans, and lies. It rewards serious investigations, and avoids pre-judged conclusions. When you wonder about the reality of truth, know there is truth; knowing it will set you free. Don’t remain chained in the wilderness of mirrors. Don’t believe those whose constantly changing, self-serving lies make you wonder if you’re not hearing the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland. The Hatter said, “Words mean what I say they mean.”

You have to want to be rid of your shackles. You have to be brave and challenge even those you might like when they say something that’s not true. One clue you are being deceived is when someone says our American free press is the enemy of the people.