Repression & censorship didn’t start in March 2020 (Eugene Debs & the legacy of dissent)
Know yer history and keep yer guard up
Preface: The Powers That Shouldn’t Be are counting on us to lack any sense of historical context. This enables them to successfully rehash the same techniques over and over.
More than a century ago — on September 14, 1918 — Eugene V. Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison for opposing U.S. entry into World War I.
Learn more about the PR effort to sell WWI to the public here:
Debs was one of the most prominent labor organizers and political activists of his time. America's entrance into World War I, however, provoked a tightening of civil liberties, culminating with the passage of the Espionage and Sedition Act in June 1917. This totalitarian salvo read in part:
“Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment of not more than 20 years, or both.”
One year after the Espionage and Sedition Act was voted into law, Debs was arrested in Canton, Ohio for making a speech deemed "anti-war" by the Canton district attorney. In that speech, Debs declared:
“They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people. Do not worry over the charge of treason to your masters, but be concerned about the treason that involves yourselves. Be true to yourself and you cannot be a traitor to any good cause on earth.”
These words lead to a 10-year prison sentence and the stripping of his U.S. citizenship. At his sentencing, Debs famously told the judge:
“Your honor, years ago, I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
President Woodrow Wilson ignored all pleas to release Debs from prison. But, after serving two years and eight months behind bars, Debs ahs his sentence commuted by President Warren G. Harding on Christmas Day 1921.
FYI: Although Congress repealed the Sedition Act of 1918 in 1921, many portions of the Espionage Act of 1917 are still law today in the Land of the Free™. (People charged under this act include Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Daniel Ellsberg, Julian Assange, and Donald Trump.)
Know yer history and keep yer guard up…
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Propaganda and lies have been a tool of control for hundreds of years, if not since the beginning of human speech. It's always easier to turn folks against each other if one group is seen as being somehow inferior or misbegotten
We the people do not need the military. We are well enough armed to defend our soil if some fool invaded. Hell, our military invaded Afghanistan, who had no real modern military to speak of, and look how that turned out. We would be fine without, but the military owns us now, there is no escape.