John Derbyshire Quotes

The real evil of the Russian communist state is not communism. It is the secret police and the concentration camp.

Stalinism is linked with a cult of personality and massive violations of the law, with repression and camps. There is nothing like that in Russia and, I hope, will never again be.

Authoritarian systems evolve. Authoritarianism in the Internet Age is not your old Cold War authoritarianism.

Dystopian novels, such as Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four,' often tend to site their despotised or deformed civilisations in urban environments.

I wanted to analyse and understand how the Chinese people could have their lives so crushed by fear.

In general, literature is a natural adversary of totalitarianism. Tyrannical governments all view literature in the same way: as their enemy. I lived for a long time in a totalitarian state, and I know firsthand that horror.

The death of dictator Kim Jong-Il has cast all eyes on North Korea, a country without literature or freedom or truth.

A state that suppresses all freedom of speech, and which by imposing the most terrible punishments, treats each and every attempt at criticism, however morally justified, and every suggestion for improvement as plotting to high treason, is a state that breaks an unwritten law.

In 1984, George Orwell wrote of a world where the only colour to be found was in the propaganda posters. Such is the case in North Korea. Images of Kim Il-sung are depicted in vivid colours. Rays of yellow and orange emanate from his face: he is the sun.

Nondemocratic regimes imperil the security of the world. They stay in power by controlling their populations. This control invariably requires an increasing amount of repression. To justify this repression and maintain internal stability, external enemies must be manufactured.

The National Socialist Party will prevent in the future, by force if necessary, all meetings and lectures which are likely to exercise a depressing influence on the German state.

Even the most repressive regimes seek to maintain the fiction that they have the people’s interest at heart.

Fig leaves of democratic procedure … hide the nakedness of Stalinist dictatorship

… the inhuman communist police state tyranny

… the unfortunate but inevitable connection between the word “socialism” and the unmitigated crucifixion of Civil Liberties in the East [Eastern Europe dominated by the Russian Communist Party.

In its mad passion for power, the Communist State even sought to strengthen and deepen the very ideas and conceptions which the Revolution had come to destroy. It supported and encouraged all the worst antisocial qualities and systematically destroyed the already awakened conception of the new revolutionary values

Nothing can excuse the cruelties of Communist Russia, though in the East torture does not provoke revolt as it would in the West.

Since he took power over half a century ago, Fidel Castro proved to be a brutal dictator who must always be remembered by his gross abuses of human rights, systemic exploitation of Cubans, unrelenting repression, and stifling censorship upon his own people.

The Chinese are good at repression and can be pretty ruthless about it.

In their efforts to discredit human freedom, the Putinites denounce the sins that may occur under the reign of liberty with the same ardor, the same sincerity, and the same purpose that animated their Soviet forebears.

What this man did, Fidel Castro, is he oppressed his people for nearly six decades. That legacy is firing squads. It's poverty. It's denying human rights.

The left takes credit for being the political aisle promoting human rights and fighting oppression, but in the case of Cuba, its adherents promoted oppression and human rights abuses for decades by glorifying the Castro regime and its savage enforcer, Che Guevara.

North Koreans are tragically oppressed. Despite the risks to my personal safety, I feel a strong obligation to tell the world about the Orwellian nightmare that North Koreans face.

How a man who holds the entire population of a country as his prisoners, and punishes the families of those who escape, can be admired by people who call themselves liberals is one of the many wonders of the human mind's ability to rationalize. Yet such is the case with Fidel Castro.

Judged by every standard which history has applied to Governments, the Soviet Government of Russia is one of the worst tyrannies that has ever existed in the world. It accords no political rights. It rules by terror. It punishes political opinions. It suppresses free speech. It tolerates no newspapers but its own. It persecutes Christianity with a zeal and a cunning never equalled since the times of the Roman Emperors. It is engaged at this moment in trampling down the peoples of Georgia and executing their leaders by hundreds.