Repression of Dissent Quotes

The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of it's powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State.

All critics should be assassinated.

Trotsky appeared later and after assembling Foreign Office force, announced himself Minister for Foreign Affairs whereupon entire force declined to serve and left department which is now closed, not even responding to telephone calls. Only department responding to telephone is Ways of Communication but Minister of Ways of Communication imprisoned.

In America–as elsewhere–free speech is confined to the dead.

The Arab world is facing its own version of an Iron Curtain, imposed not by external actors but through domestic forces vying for power.

We do not believe in government through the voting booth. The Spanish national will was never freely expressed through the ballot box.

People in Cuba are victims.

In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.

For many Mexican human rights defenders, confronting the military does not end so well.

We were behind the iron curtain at last.

Madam, I have come from a country where people are hanged if they talk.

The Russian government doesn't like me; Vladimir Putin doesn't like me.

You feel sometimes when you hear analysts and knowledgeable people talking about Iran that they fear so much about the survival of the regime, because deep down it's not a legitimate regime, it doesn't represent the will of the people, it's kind of morphed into kind of a military theocracy.

Where did Islamic radicalism grow in the past years? It grew under dictatorships.

Turkey jails more journalists than any other country in the world—more than China, more than Iran

Despite elections and the experience of post-Soviet personal freedoms by the Russian people, the fate of democracy in Russia is perhaps more ambiguous now than at any time since the collapse of the Communist system.

We study, as Americans, the extreme aspects of repression under the Stalinist era. We're focused on them. The vast majority of Russian citizens, it was a much softer type of being disconcerted.

All oppressing classes of every description need two social functions to safeguard their domination: the function of a hangman and the function of a priest. The hangman is to quell the protest ... the priest reconciles them to class domination, weans them away from revolutionary actions.

Singling out political opponents for working against the ruling party is precisely the tactic of every tyrannical government from Red China to Venezuela. The first step in the process is creating unfounded public suspicion of political opponents, followed by arresting and jailing any who continue speaking against the regime.

My chief weapon is public opinion: The Spaniards, incapable of directing it, have prohibited its use; but now they are experiencing its force and importance.

I haven't heard of any cases of anti-American blog posts being censored or bloggers encountering consequences for anti-American speech on the web in China.

Our experience was that when we closed the door to democracy, maybe for a short while there was quiet and security, but in the long run we suffered a lot. Our closing the door to democracy did not settle the problems of our country. The problems only accumulated.

Not all political prisoners are innocents.

If I were a Chinese dissident, I'd be grateful that Cisco had helped bring the Internet to China, but I'd also be outraged that Cisco may have helped the cops keep me under surveillance and catch me trying to organize protest activities.

I hope that I will be the last victim in China's long record of treating words as crimes.