FOUR FUTURES PART III – REPRESSION | anarchistnews.org
We should look to places like Russia, Belarus, Turkey, Iran and China for ideas on how a competent repressive government might attempt to deal with resistance. Comrades from those countries have important things to say about operating under a surveillance/police state, what could have been done differently as those countries became more oppressive, and what they wish they had prepared for beforehand.
It is important to note that such an oppressive government will not automatically lead to a revolutionary response against its domination. People are just as likely, if not more so, to yearn for a return to mild social democracy or liberalism as they are to reject all hierarchy and turn in an anarchist direction.
Such oppression has always led to a ruling class that became increasingly corrupt, negligent and detached from reality. Competent repression lays the groundwork for oppressors to become incompetent, and for the system to collapse or be overthrown.
This future is also heavily contingent on how technology develops and is implemented. Ubiquitous surveillance and advanced data analysis could open the possibility of a permanently totalitarian state that makes organised internal rebellion nearly impossible. However, such systems could instead accelerate the collapse of the state and capitalism by removing some of the pressures that prevent them from giving in to their most self-harming tendencies. Likewise, technological development can open up new avenues of resistance just as it makes old tactics harder. This development and implementation is itself something that is not pre-determined, and can be influenced by what we do now both in terms of organising against state surveillance and developing technologies that enable resistance.
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