bs2Jan 24, 2024

> “The Land of Propaganda is built on unanimity,” he said. “If one man says, ‘No,’ the spell is broken and public order is endangered. The rebel voice must be stifled.”
...

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/72786

#AJMuste #OfHolyDisobedience
quotes #IgnazioSilone #BreadAndWine #DonPaolo on #LandOfPropaganda and #Unanimity

Of holy disobedience by A. J. Muste

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Project Gutenberg
Show threadbs2Jan 24, 2024
> I have thought for a long time now that if... the increasing efficiency of the technique of destruction finally causes our species to disappear from the earth, it will not be cruelty that will be responsible for our extinction and still less, of course, the indignation that cruelty awakens and the reprisals and vengeance that it brings upon itself ... but the docility, the lack of responsibility of the modern man, his base subservient acceptance of every common decree... #GeorgesBernanos
Show threadbs2Jan 24, 2024
>>The horrors which we have seen, the still greater horrors we shall presently see, are not signs that rebels, insubordinate, untameable men, are increasing.. throughout the world, but rather that there is a constant increase, a stupendously rapid increase, in the number of obedient, docile men. #Bernanos
> It seems to me that this is a true and timely warning. It might serve as a text for a general appeal to.. youth to adopt and practice the great and urgent virtues of #HolyDisobedience
Show threadbs2Jan 24, 2024
> .. in every social movement there are varied trends or emphases, and methods of working. Those who hold to one approach are likely to be very critical of those who take another. Disagreements among those within the same movement may be more intense or even bitter than with those on the outside. I suppose it can hardly be denied that every movement has in it individuals whose contribution is negative, and that such individuals do not all come from within one wing...
#SocialMovements
Show threadbs2Jan 24, 2024
> It is one thing for a young and immature draftee to follow a course which amounts to “making the best of a bad business” and for others to give him sympathetic understanding and help. It is a very different thing for pacifist organizations or churches to advocate such a course or to rationalize it into something other than it really is.
#DiversityOfTactics #BestOfABadBusiness
Show threadbs2Jan 24, 2024
> ... both in Great Britain and in the United States the sufferings which the COs endured in World War I when there was virtually no legal or social recognition of[14] them, were, according to all competent observers, largely responsible for the fact that fairly liberal provisions for COs were made in World War II. The Army did not want to “be bothered with these fellows again.”
#ConscientiousObjectors #TheArmy #WWI #WWII #USA #UK
Show threadbs2Jan 24, 2024
> .. once a man has appealed to the State... to remain in his job and has been granted such permission, it is not exactly the same job as it was before. Others will not be given the same permission, and he should not evade the question whether he can acquiesce in and to a degree benefit from such discrimination.. his case arises from the fact that officials regard his work as.. a contribution to the #WarEffort or from a desire to placate and silence an influential person.
#TheState
Show threadbs2Jan 25, 2024
> Bernanos reminds us, “things are moving fast, dear[29] reader, they are moving very fast.” He recalls that he “lived at a time when passport formalities seemed to have vanished forever.” A man could “travel around the world with nothing in his wallet but his visiting card.” He recalls that “twenty years ago, #FrenchMen of the middle class refused to have their fingerprints taken; fingerprints were the concern of convicts.”
#FingerPrints #PreWWI #Bernanos #GeorgesBernanos #VisitingCard
Show threadbs2
> .. in a day when the individual appears to be utterly helpless, to “have no choice,” when the aim of the “system” is to convince him that he is helpless as an individual and that the only way to meet regimentation is by regimentation, there is.. no hope save in going back to the beginning. The human being.. must exercise the choice which he no longer has.. accorded him by society.. understand that this naked human being is the one real thing in the face of the mechanics and the mechanized
Jan 26, 2024 at 2:52amWeb
Show threadbs2Jan 26, 2024

> Our generation will not return to a condition under which every man may sit under his own vine and fig tree, with none to make him afraid, unless there are those who are willing to pay the high cost of redemption and deliverance from a regime of regimentation, terror and war.

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/72786/pg72786-images.html

#AJMuste #Muste in 1952 #Peace #NoWar

Of holy disobedience