The Soviet system used psychiatry as a weapon by diagnosing political opponents as mentally ill in order to confine them as patients instead of trying them in court. Anyone who challenged the state such as dissidents, writers, would-be emigrants, religious believers, or human rights activists could be branded with fabricated disorders like sluggish schizophrenia. This turned normal political disagreement into supposed medical pathology and allowed the state to present dissent as insanity.
Once labeled in this way, people were placed in psychiatric hospitals where they could be held for long periods without legal protections. Harsh treatments were often used to break their resolve. The collaboration between state security organs and compliant psychiatrists created a system where political imprisonment was disguised as medical care, letting the Soviet regime suppress opposition while pretending it was addressing illness rather than silencing critics.
Pretty sure America does that.
They certainly are trying with calling people who hate Trump by calling it “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
In the US, they do that today. Also if you’re old
Sounds oddly familiar to “If you’re against the online safety act you’re siding with pedophiles.”
Don’t let this distract you from the fact that America and capitalism and the CIA are all bad and this is all ultimately their fault
The first thing I thought was “damn so like future america” lol
Won’t distract me that’s for sure
The Soviet Union at its height had the largest percentage of incarcerated individuals, more than double the USA’s percentage of the population today. These were hard labor camps, too, where millions worked until they died.
this is only true for the stalin years i think.
in any case, living in a country without due process kinda sucks
Yeah it actually got better even before Stalin died, but yeah.
Link to source?
incarcerated
What an ugly word! Oh no no no they were being cured of their mental illnesses in dedicated institutions and provided with advanced education in special schools.
The school of digging frozen turf in Siberia while starving for instance or the hospital of getting beaten with a phonebook
Only considered it?
May want to check out what’s happening in USA and UK.
Fucking Trump wants to deport citizens for disagreeing with him.
Oh you mean like they want to do with trump derangemnt syndrome? Yeah, it’s out of the dictatorship playbook.
I’m sure this comments section is going to be thoroughly hinged
That’s why we are on Lemmy though, to have broader points of view without much censorship.
Yeah, waiting utill guys from lemmy@ml and lemmy@hexbear come here and start protecting the USSR.
Quite, I fully intend to have civil and reasonable fact based discussions about the USSR which will not trail off into tribalistic whataboutist tirades.
It’s like one of the least horrible things they did, what about genociding around 10 million people in controlled famines?
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-colonial-policy-killed-100-million-indians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)
Turns out it’s just a feature of the state.
This user has been banned from hexbear.net
ml wiped out his whole family
How does one have a monopoly on eggs in a non-hypetindustrial country? Did grandpa invent the chicken and visit every village and start renting out hens XD
Eggs aren’t exactly hyperindustrial, but after the fall of the Qing dynasty entailed a lot of private acquisition to feed the foreign business interests flooding in.
I dunno if there ever was a monopoly on eggs for all of China, but maybe in the export industry though.
Am I supposed to feel sorry for a billionaire that made money by hoarding a basic necessity?
.ml would have deleted it, and banned every account that read it.
Friendly fire included?
What an unexpected turn of events…
It is a rite of passage
deleted by creator
They also didn’t like genetics because it was anti Marxist-Leninist to them. They didn’t like the concept of inherent traits.
i believe they tried to have thier pseudo-science scientist explain it away with thier own.
No -ism is immune to hubris. I still believe in people sharing in the profit of their labor, and appreciate this post clarifying one of the many ways dissent can be crushed, albeit temporarily.
If one’s idea is genuinely good, it better be able to handle dissent. Once gulags get involved, you’ve long ago lost the people’s belief, and are on a timer.
Evil never perseveres. Never has, never will.
Evil never perseveres. Never has, never will.
Huh? Have you not been paying attention for the last several decades?
Amen for [real] democracy.
Try be a dissident in democracy, and you’re just doing more democracy.
Humanity is on a hard fought, slow, and with many setbacks, trend towards a better world. Evil is pushed out by good but not without the blood, sweat, and tears of many good people.
Trump derangement syndrome. Same shit.
It’s entirely different when the government authority not only says it but takes away your freedom & subjects you to abuse. How are so many here missing that crucial distinction?
Not even wrong.
I came in here to say the same thing. It was pointed out that the USSR did this when Republicans first started with that nonsense, and it was my first thought upon seeing this post.
That TDS bullshit is a thought-terminating cliche, but this really is different - actual imprisonment, transfer to remote Siberian work camps, etc…
The point is that that’s the end conclusion of TDS if things keep progressing
Yeah, I would not be surprised if they tried to escalate “Trump Derangement Syndrome” to this level.
“Liberalism is a mental disease!”
A phrase often said by MAGAs. It’s no distance at all saying the same thing about nationalism.
The phrase comes from a shitpile book with the title: Liberalism is a Mental Disorder by some guy trying to eclipse Rush Limbaugh in 2005.
It’s not just a thing they say - these people genuinely believe that compassion is a mental illness.
Liberalism is not as dogmatic as other ideologies, because liberalism itself encourages free thinking and going against the grain.
I’ve seen “conservativism is a mental disease” too. People love that shit.
To be fair, you have to have zero empathy—or extremely low intelligence—to still vote Conservative, when we’re literally living in the Information Age. Either way, I say both are in fact mental disorders.
A lot of it is fear, too. Those people are raised to fear anything different.
I would put their fears in the “low intelligence” category.
also LOW information to. i saw some pseudo-leftist YTUBERS(whole drama behind them if you followed them) that are magats that are very low information. pre-pandemic they brought up an OBAMA era, oil pipline(canada-usa) and they could not even formulate sentences or words how to discredit the news. (but any trump related events they were immediately silent on, hmm seems like people figured out your allegiance to which party)everyone in the comments said you shouldnt comment on things you do not know.
That’s the spirit.
fundamentalism+ actual mental illness is a dangerous mix. i once saw a video of a guy with schizo and said he fell into alt-right views, and really screwed up in the head.
How about liberalism + actual mental illness, is that dangerous?
(Or any ism for that matter.)
I think that’s far less common among the left than the saying “peer reviewed study shows conservatism highly correlates with mental disorder”.
It’s entirely different when the state authority not only says it but takes away your freedom & subjects you to abuse. How are so many here missing that crucial distinction?
Russia does it too; transexual? Mental illness.
Did I forget to say they also forbid “mentally ill” people to have a driving permit?
USSR never went away. And if you dig deeper, it’s still just russian empire in a trench coat
took off the purple robes, but on a red hat.
took off the red hat, put on a capitalist neoliberal necktie.
now took off the capitalist neoliberal necktie, put on some ironheeled jackboots.
the goal is to take off the jackboots and put on the purple robe
And Soviet Socialism never went away either, it just reorganized upper management. Instead of the state owning a few mega companies, a few mega companies now own the state. In either case, it is the people controlling the human/natural resources paying off politicians to overlook all the horrible shit they do.
Communism as a theme is definitely making a comeback if you talk to Russian people in Russian. They think theirs is different from “western Communism” though.
I speak zero Russian but would love to know what “western communism” entails in the mind of a Russian person who holds these opinions. Alas.
The word communism has less to do with the original meaning than teachings of prosperity gospel church with the bible.
Russians have very different meaning for this word because of decades of Soviet indoctrination, Americans think completely different thing entirely about what it is.
However, there is a thing that is true for all of them: they don’t just believe that their version is the only one correct, they cannot fathom the reality where different definition even exists
Imperialism?
Not just trans people— all LGBTQ+ people are regarded this way
Also the whole idea behind Trump Derangement Syndrome. Unsurprisingly, those fuckers can’t even be original in their awfulness.
