03/12/2022
Earlier, by Steve Sailer: America’s Coming Mirror-Image Pavlik Morozov Cult: Parents Turning In Their "White Sons" For Racism
Chatting with my coeval Peter Brimelow recently — and no, "coeval" does not mean people who are evil together — chatting with Peter about Soviet leaders of an earlier generation, we reflected on how so much of the outrageous and deplorable stuff that turns up in the news media every day was prefigured by events in the old U.S.S.R.
Younger Americans don’t get this. They don’t know anything about the U.S.S.R. The only foreign history they get in their schools is Hitler Hitler Hitler. The rest is all darkness.
Well, here’s a story with a Soviet precursor.
Guy Reffitt, a 49-year-old oilfield worker from Texas, was convicted Tuesday on five felony charges arising from his participation in the January 6th, 2021 protests at the U.S. Capitol. The actual charges were two counts of obstruction and entering and remaining in a restricted building or its grounds with a firearm, two charges of civil disorder, and obstruction of an official proceeding. Reffitt could face sixty years in jail.
The Soviet angle here was that among those who testified against Reffitt was his 19-year-old son Jackson, who had turned him in to the authorities. Not the only such case: An 18-Year-Old Saw Her Mom, Aunt, And Uncle in DC In A Video–So She Named Them, by Clarissa-Jan Lim, Buzzfeed, January 8, 2021.
To us old Cold Warriors, Pavel Morozov immediately comes to mind.
Back in 1932, 13-year-old Pavel Morozov reported his Dad to Stalin’s secret police as a counterrevolutionary. The Dad was arrested and shot. However, his relatives weren’t happy about this, so they murdered little Pavel. When this became known, they themselves were all rounded up and shot.
Regime loyalists made a cult of Pavel Morozov. Says Wikipedia, quote:
His story was a subject of reading, songs, plays, a symphonic poem, a full-length opera, and six biographies. The apotheotic cult had a huge impact on the moral norms of generations of children, who were encouraged to inform on their parents.
Post-Soviet researchers have cast doubt on the details of the Pavel Morozov story. Still, young Jackson Reffitt might want to read up on it and draw his own conclusions. At least then he won’t be surprised if someone writes an opera about him.
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