Why any flavor of authoritarianism must be destroyed

I don’t like communists. I’ve been very clear on that here in this newsletter.

However, I also want to be very clear on something else, namely that I hate all forms of authoritarianism. I honestly don’t care if you call it communism, socialism, fascism, or fruity-froo-frooism, if it is predicated on anything but individual liberty, I’m going to have a problem with it.

I bring this up because, well, China.

Yes, China is still technically communist. However, they made some free-market reforms in years past which makes them a little less so, and some will use this to claim they’re no such thing.

Here’s the thing: I. Don’t. Care.

What they are is a totalitarian hellscape that closely monitors what its citizens do, say, or even think.

And why am I so anti-authoritarian? Because of crap like this:

Thousands of photographs from the heart of China’s highly secretive system of mass incarceration in Xinjiang, as well as a shoot-to-kill policy for those who try to escape, are among a huge cache of data hacked from police computer servers in the region.

The Xinjiang Police Files, as they’re being called, were passed to the BBC earlier this year. After a months-long effort to investigate and authenticate them, they can be shown to offer significant new insights into the internment of the region’s Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities.

Their publication coincides with the recent arrival in China of the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, for a controversial visit to Xinjiang, with critics concerned that her itinerary will be under the tight control of the government.

The cache reveals, in unprecedented detail, China’s use of “re-education” camps and formal prisons as two separate but related systems of mass detention for Uyghurs - and seriously calls into question its well-honed public narrative about both.

The government’s claim that the re-education camps built across Xinjiang since 2017 are nothing more than “schools” is contradicted by internal police instructions, guarding rosters and the never-before-seen images of detainees.

This is what happens when governments get too much power.

Think about that guy or gal you may know. You know who I’m talking about, the one who is always talking a lot of smack about how people should round up all the Republicans and shoot them for not supporting whatever, how “those people” shouldn’t even be able to have jobs.

Far too many of us know someone like that, someone who refuses to moderate their thoughts and ideas.

Now, understand that most of them don’t hold to the idea of personal liberty. Their problem isn’t that they disagree with you, it’s that they don’t think you should be allowed to disagree with them. They ultimately want control over everything you say, do, or think.

The upside is that those kinds of people don’t really have the power here. They can try—and what is Cancel Culture but an attempt to do just that—but it’s ultimately not possible to do this with everyone.

But what if they had complete control over the government, the courts, and everything else?

Then they could do whatever they want.

Suddenly, those Republicans would end up being lined up against a wall and shot. Or, as is the case in China, an undesirable ethnic minority can be rounded up and thrown into “reeducation” camps.

And that’s on top of all the stuff we’ve long known.

Of course, China continues to pretend this is really just a benevolent security measure, nothing for us to worry our western minds about. The problem is, authoritarianism simply cannot be tolerated at all.

Meanwhile, the same company that took issue with a bill that simply didn’t let teachers talk about things like gender identity before the fourth grade has tripped over itself to thank China for its cooperation in making a live-action version of one of their cartoons.

Frankly, it’s disgusting.

Yet China is hardly an isolated example.

Any form of authoritarianism will, eventually, lead to the deaths of innocent people. Authoritarians cannot handle criticism—which explains some of the leftists we see in this country, really—and they cannot handle people being free to criticize them.

So we need to stamp out any flavor of authoritarianism we find on our shores. We need to stamp it out good and hard because if it’s allowed to fester, it’s only a matter of time before they start opening up their own reeducation camps.

And you’d better believe that I’m not going to one easily.