| > It seems to me that the unique characteristic of the technological society is that, through mass surveillance, tactical applications of violence, propaganda and “social death,” traditional fixtures of totalitarianism like prison camps and beatings are unnecessary to enforce unprecedented political control. This is definitely true, for a less-charged example: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/17/world/europe/serbia-media...: > BELGRADE, Serbia — When Covid-19 reached Eastern Europe in the spring of 2020, a Serbian journalist reported a severe shortage of masks and other protective equipment. She was swiftly arrested, thrown in a windowless cell and charged with inciting panic. > The journalist, Ana Lalic, was quickly released and even got a public apology from the government in what seemed like a small victory against old-style repression by Serbia’s authoritarian president, Aleksandar Vucic. > But Ms. Lalic was then vilified for weeks as a traitor by much of the country’s news media, which has come increasingly under the control of Mr. Vucic and his allies as Serbia adopts tactics favored by Hungary and other states now in retreat from democracy across Europe’s formerly communist eastern fringe. > “For the whole nation, I became a public enemy,” she recalled. > Serbia no longer jails or kills critical journalists, as happened under the rule of Slobodan Milosevic in the 1990s. It now seeks to destroy their credibility and ensure few people see their reports. |