Word: totalitarianism
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Anthropologists admit that some scholars might not print anything at all about so controversial a subject. Field research in some totalitarian countries, says Columbia University's Thomas Bernstein, demands "a great deal of tact and sensitivity." He concedes: "If I knew that my publication of some material would cause my colleagues to be barred from China, I would think really hard." Some U.S. scholars working in India and Pakistan are careful not to offend their host governments for fear of being expelled. Americans who work as exchange scholars in the Soviet Union can afford to be a bit more...
...Liang's conviction that political movements must be founded on personal motives. In a simple, direct style he describes the special motives of members of each mass movement he witnessed--motives which vary from true love of Mao to a yearning for rank and privilege--and shows how the totalitarian system manipulates these individual motives to assure that the mass remains loyal, Criticism of Mao appears as virtual sacrilege in this society, and no one dares voice it directly, Instead, politics becomes a competition to prove who is the most zealous supporter...
...based on human rights was the only system which would yield the ends he desired, and that Soviet communist society could not. "Communist ideology is not a complete fraud," he writes. "It arose from a striving for truth and justice, like other religious, ethical and philosophical systems. But the totalitarian structure of the government, he adds, has led the nation to "the deepest historical dead...
...sort of Jimmy Dean rebel, seizes the microphone during a Party leader's speech at the school and shouts "Long live the idiots!" Later, Pierre leads a race through the halls, ripping down photographs from the walls, "Jailhouse Rock" playing in the background. Just before running into the totalitarian Vice Headmaster, he throws himself through a closed window...
Even more bizarre was Watt's assertion in a recent Business Week interview that the American environmentalist movement is a totalitarian front. In Watt's view, environmentalists only pretend to care about fish, fowl, and forests. Their more sinister real purpose is to bring "central planning" to the American economy and to "subordinate the dignity of man." It's night-malish vision to be sure--just imagine Woodsy the Owl in jackboots with a club--but a little improbable...