this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2025
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Today I Learned

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The Soviet system used psychiatry as a weapon by diagnosing political opponents as mentally ill in order to confine them as patients instead of trying them in court. Anyone who challenged the state such as dissidents, writers, would-be emigrants, religious believers, or human rights activists could be branded with fabricated disorders like sluggish schizophrenia. This turned normal political disagreement into supposed medical pathology and allowed the state to present dissent as insanity.

Once labeled in this way, people were placed in psychiatric hospitals where they could be held for long periods without legal protections. Harsh treatments were often used to break their resolve. The collaboration between state security organs and compliant psychiatrists created a system where political imprisonment was disguised as medical care, letting the Soviet regime suppress opposition while pretending it was addressing illness rather than silencing critics.

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[–] RubberElectrons@lemmy.world 3 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (3 children)

No -ism is immune to hubris. I still believe in people sharing in the profit of their labor, and appreciate this post clarifying one of the many ways dissent can be crushed, albeit temporarily.

If one's idea is genuinely good, it better be able to handle dissent. Once gulags get involved, you've long ago lost the people's belief, and are on a timer.

Evil never perseveres. Never has, never will.

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[–] lmagitem@lemmy.zip 22 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (9 children)

Kinda how it works in our late stage capitalist societies to be honest, except that it's collective pressure/belief instead of state-imposed.

You have trouble accepting the shitty state the world is in? You don't want to be exploited and end the month with not enough to pay your rent? You're fed up with that human crushing machine that keeps on destroying the planet because There Is No Alternative?

Well, you should consult you might be a tiny bit depressed. Take antidepressants and shut the fuck up. Learn to see and focus on the beauty in life and the little things instead. Take small hobbies, a lover or a cat. How you deal with all of that is your own individual problem.

Does it seem so normal that you really can't see any other way? Congratulations, you are well programmed. Those problems aren't to be delt with on an individual level, they are political.

In the past, most people formed unions and parties and did strikes, political rallys, protested and burned the landowners' manors as a way to process those kind of feelings.

[–] kautau@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Stoicism has become commoditized as a way to convince people that their lot in life is just their attitude, and the more they put their shoulder to the wheel to produce for the top of the pyramid, the more it works out for them, rather than questioning the wheel. The hustle and grind culture is just as much the goal of something like the heritage foundation as "deport the brown people."

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[–] birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 34 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (44 children)

This sounds very familiar to the CIA's practices with MK Ultra... although in a different way.

Goes to show, that neither system would be optimal - and that it's better to chase the path of democratic socialist movements.

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[–] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 25 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (17 children)

Today it's called ODD, "woke", or "tankie" if an anarchist pisses off the wrong lib.

[–] birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (8 children)

ODD is an excuse diagnosis. It's literally "You rightfully criticise people for being authoritarian and us cops and fascists don't like that, boohoo".

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