At The Hill, Ruth Greenspan Bell and Janine R. Wedel describe how authoritarians silence dissent:
Here is the Polish, 1980s version of how it happens, as one of us, then a Fulbright Scholar in martial law Poland, witnessed.
From the street sweeper to the head of a hospital, university, theater or government agency, everyone was forced to navigate a steady state of insecurity, uncertain what provocations could happen in the next day or hour. All of society was made aware that nothing was firmly guaranteed, neither jobs nor status, and especially not human dignity.
One day, university presidents were fired. The next day, the regime demanded that professors sign loyalty oaths or surrender their jobs. A respected journalist who dared, in guarded language, to report facts suddenly found himself a taxi driver to support his family.
The regime honored the law when it was convenient, flouted it when inconvenient. Poles called it “uncertain tomorrow.”
This is a lesson. Humiliation can be imposed in a variety of ways: required oaths, a shocking fall from grace and position, a strip search, a searched apartment, being forced to stand in line for hours for basic food staples or watching any of that happen to family, friends and colleagues.
Whole books have been written seeking to understand how human beings respond to such conditions, whether they accept dependence or take the tougher road of refusal.
We do not think our country is Poland under communism yet. At the moment, humiliation is not a feature of every contact with the formal organs of our government, as it was there.
On the other hand, this is a new phenomenon for Americans who have, until now, been spared these specific systematic cruelties, hurled from official positions.