It is far nastier than it seems at first glance:
One of the quirks of living in Russia was being among people just coming out of the USSR strictures whilst at the same time, things were being reported back here that the UK was moving towards a new serfdom, an EUSSR or UKSSR. If that seemed fanciful to many over here, it wasn’t to me as I saw the last vestiges and one of those was the policy of Denunciation.
This wasn’t just snitching anonymously – it was a formal process, with forms to sign and anyone could do it. If a neighbour’s behaviour annoyed you, you went along to the local office for these things and filled in the forms. Of course you didn’t report them for that – you found something on them and reported that.
In my first year there, I brought back a young lady one afternoon [for English of course] and the landlady went beserk, pushed the young lady out of the door and she meekly accepted it, a smile on her lips.
Turns out her mother had Denounced my landlady years before.
You can just imagine what that does to a society, to it’s character, to its cohesion and it is only possible where the elite ensconces itself and encourages the people to turn on each other. This is why people were still loathe to talk years later, why eyes were avoided, why no one smiled up front. I heard many tales, mainly from the late middle-aged, about the Black Mariahs which came at midnight and they were no film producer’s fiction. I’ve walked on the ex-lake which everyone knew the bodies were beneath.
So this exhortation for kid’s to snitch needs to be nipped in the bud right now.
It was this behaviour that gave the Gestapo their legend of being all seeing and subsequently terrifying. They didn’t have agents everywhere. What they had a was the people settling old scores by reporting everything to the Gestapo.
Who would have thought we aspired to the very structures that our ancestors fought and died to repel. It’s no wonder Cameron and his ilk shunt our current crop of war dead out the back door. How could you stand and watch the dead come home knowing that you’re betraying them on all fronts.
Yes, quite. In the early days, the Gestapo relied on neighbours reporting someone for being a bit “odd”. After all, the mentally ill were one of the target groups. The Stasi took up the mantle after the war – everyone spying on everyone and no one knowing who informed on them, the whole edifice built upon snitches.
Now, god forfend, their ghost is being awakened here. Any reasonable, rational person should be horrified. That they are not makes it all the more disturbing.
It is even worse. The teachers used to ask their classes if their parents had “said anything about the Fuhrer today.” The childeren wouid always reply one way or another. If the parents had said anything that the teachers disaproved of, the parents would have dissapeared by the time the childeren went home. Do not let it happen here.
A colleague has just sent me this.
There are 81 000 ex policemen now in the National Association of Retired Police Officers NARPO (no I had not heard of them either until they started flexing their muscles), all on generous pensions, now employed by HMRC, VAT,Local Authorities, Business Innovation and Skills, Debt Collectors and Insurance Companies.
That is virtually the same size as the reduced army of 80,000 servicemen. Half of them imagine they are in an episode of ‘spooks’ and have a urge to carry on ‘policing’ the public.
“Who would have thought we aspired to the very structures that our ancestors fought and died to repel.”
Anyone who supports the EU?
“it is only possible where the elite ensconces itself and encourages the people to turn on each other”
Which as you say is exactly what they are doing. George Orwell wrote about the state using children as trainee spies and now we have it. The most chilling aspect for me is that people sat round a table and agreed that this is okay, that it isn’t vile, destructive and uttely repulsive behaviour.
“The most chilling aspect for me is that people sat round a table and agreed that this is okay, that it isn’t vile, destructive and uttely repulsive behaviour.”
..and one day I pray that we may be in a position to name them.
With a length of hemp in one hand…
Good man!
The difficult one is if a neighbour is being unreasonable over a hedge or a dog or loud noise or whatever, the procedure should be:
1. talk to him and voice the concerns
2. ask if some sort of compromise can be reached
3. say that as he’s being unreasonable and anyway, is out of order legally, you will report this particular issue and only this one and give him a timeframe to become reasonable within
4. mention it once more near the end of that timeframe and say what you’re going to do
5. absolutely don’t snitch on any other issue and certainly not on anything the government would wish to know.
Another thing which has always stayed with me is a blogger in 2007 who threatened a fellow blogger that he knew the name and address of the fellow blogger’s employer and he was going to send to that employer what was supposed to have happened.
That’s low – it should be the provider who gets contacted. Better still is not to be so sensitive.
We have a neighbour who is currently doing some work involving taking an angle grinder to some patio slabs. He’s been making a godawful racket every evening this week. A couple of days ago he was going at it at nearly 11pm. Then there was a shout that could be heard across the neighbourhood:
“Shut the fuck up!”
Did the trick
Purely from the sound of the voice the “grinding neighbour” has no idea if the “shouty neighbour” is 6 stone soaking wet or 15 stone and built like a brick shithouse…and so errs on the side of caution.
Well played.
A swift kick in the teeth is just as effective, and infinately more satisfying.
I don’t think it’s far nastier than it appears. I don’t see how it COULD be nastier than it appears. It’s about as nasty as things can get straight out of the box.
It’s another attack on the family, the little battalions, and another attempt at making everyone a supplicant of the State first and foremost.
A nation of clypes – how delightful.
Pavlik Morozov. Again.
If the proles are attacking each other, they are not attacking the “Government”.
Quids in.
Not very long ago (a couple of months), hereabouts, a report appeared in the local press. A publican had been arraigned before the magistrates for ‘permitting’ smoking in her pub. It seems that environmental officers accompanied by the police entered her pub at 2am and found her and half a dozen others smoking.
It’s hard to believe that such a raid could have been organised without the help of a snitch. Isn’t this sort of thing the pits? It isn’t even as though the snitcher was suffering in some way. Did the snitcher have a personal grudge? Maybe, but not necessarily. Some people seem to take pleasure purely in the act of snitching. Power? Excitement?
Bit of both. There have always been people like this and always will. It’s the darker side of humanity.
Y’know…there’s nothing to stop us getting our kids to snitch on “authority”. All it takes is a smartphone, photographic/video evidence and the phone number of local/national media.
Kids are mercenary little buggers and their first loyalty can be bought most quickly, efficiently and easily by their own parents