Re:North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed co...
by bitwize on Thursday June 15, 2023 @04:51PM
(#36346366)
> This sounds like something taken straight from https://elan.school/. Or is it the other way around?
Totalitarianism kind of tends to take the same shape no matter the initial ideology. It's kind of like how crabs keep spontaneously re-evolving across genera.
To me it sounded like the "struggle sessions" of communist China, or "sec checks" in Scientology. St. Augustine showed us that it's much easier to keep control of a population if you can infuse them with guilt and get them to police themselves (and each other). Other cults and states just applied that principle in different ways.
> I have to ask - what does the NK leadership hope to achieve here? Control? Over who - the dead?
For the Workers' Party of Korea, if the country gets run into the ground doing the right thing that beats a thriving country living outside the rules of Juche.
Totalitarianism kind of tends to take the same shape no matter the initial ideology. It's kind of like how crabs keep spontaneously re-evolving across genera.
To me it sounded like the "struggle sessions" of communist China, or "sec checks" in Scientology. St. Augustine showed us that it's much easier to keep control of a population if you can infuse them with guilt and get them to police themselves (and each other). Other cults and states just applied that principle in different ways.
> I have to ask - what does the NK leadership hope to achieve here? Control? Over who - the dead?
For the Workers' Party of Korea, if the country gets run into the ground doing the right thing that beats a thriving country living outside the rules of Juche.