The Manosphere is the Modern Samizdat

Today’s self-publishing men, the men a socialist revolution in America has marginalized and thrown overboard, are challenging the authority of the once mainstream, now legacy media as well as the government puppet masters who supposedly legitimize them. Online publishing by dissidents is the modern version of an old concept called Samizdat, which also happened in response to a Marxist revolution.

Samizdat is a term from the days of Communist Russia that means self-publishing. The term sounds innocuous enough but samizdat has a dark historical context, one that in modern times applies to the dissidents who are gathering around the modern-day manosphere, MGTOW, and Alt-Right movements. Many of its publishers and commenters are the same people derided and silenced by mainstream politicians and the media for their support of the Trump candidacy, though many have far more to discuss than a mere political candidate.

In Soviet times, samizdat referenced government-suppressed literature with political opinions the State did not agree with that was clandestinely printed and distributed. Just as politically incorrect opinions are suppressed by the left today, politically incorrect opinions were suppressed then by the Communist left.

Samizdat originated within the Russian Intelligentsia, a group which could include anyone from artists to teachers to scientists who were engaged in disseminating ideas that ran counter to the leftist ideology of Communism. In parallel to the self-publishing world of bloggers today, most of the texts were personal statements, protests, or opinions which differed from the mainstream. Many suggested alternative ways of handling social problems. Others included news suppressed by the âofficial mediaâ of the time such as Pravda (The one and only Truth, which published government-approved propaganda).

The publishers of samizdat were subjected to censorship, harassment and surveillance of the type we are just beginning to witness in America. Facebook has been caught up in a recent scandal for suppressing conservative viewpoints while promoting liberal viewpoints. Twitter has also been caught up in censorship scandals, and Social Justice Warriors swarm and harass anyone who doesn’t conform to their hivemind groupthink. A swarming by the SJW fascists will involve at the minimum a job loss, while often an entire career can be destroyed for not conforming to the mandates of the politically correct thought police. The echoes of Orwell’s 1984 are all around us.

Looking back, we can find historical precedent to this type of behavior from leftists. In 1973, in an effort to intimidate and silence its political opponents who were publishing samizdat, the KGB concocted a show trial involving one of its most prominent publishers, Victor Krasin.

Krasin Goes Up Against the State Apparatus

Victor Krasin was an economist who had long been a critic of Marxism-Leninism who was arrested for his opinions as early as 1949 and sent to Ozerlag to do hard labor as a political prisoner. Krasin spent the next five years of his life in different labor camps as a political prisoner until Stalin’s death in 1954, when he was released after being ârehabilitatedâ (effectively considered brainwashed) by the state. He went on to become a professor at the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute where he continued to self-publish until he was fired for it, and was arrested again years later for anti-Soviet propaganda. That arrest led to the show trial.

The stark contrast between today’s politically correct climate of censorship and suppression of Free Speech in America, and the championing of Free Speech then is astonishing. Only two weeks after Krasin’s conviction in the KGB’s show trial, the United States House and Senate adopted resolutions stating Krasin had âdemonstrated enormous courage and intellectual honesty in advocating and defending the importance of fundamental civil and political liberty,â and that he had âserved to illuminate the plight of hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens.â That was then. It is not likely the publishers of today’s samizdat which challenges female privilege, bias against men in the family court system, and the marginalization of men will be lauded for their defense of fundamental civil and political liberty, since their views do not conform to those of today’s Marxist American government.

Krasin later emigrated to the United States and became a citizen in 1981. When studying the history of Krasin, one wonders how far away from such arrests and persecutions we are in America for the crime of illuminating men.

Bukovsky Fights the System

Vladimir Bukovsky was another samizdat publisher. A neurophysiologist and dissident of the Marxist movement, he started self-publishing shortly after entering Moscow University in 1960. One of his first pieces as portrayed the Soviet Union as an immoral society that no longer had moral and spiritual authority over its citizens. (The parallels between present-day America and Communist Russia are easily recognizable!)

For this âcrimeâ of questioning authority and self-publishing, he was placed under investigation, and in 1961 was expelled from Moscow University. Unfazed, he continued his writing and self-publishing. By 1963, he was arrested by the KGB and convicted of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. Bukovsky would spend a total of 12 years in and out of Soviet prison and labor camps, and forced-treatment psychiatric hospitals. Speaking of this experience, he would later say:

I myself create it, edit it, censor it, publish it, distribute it, and get imprisoned for it.

One of the ways Soviet psychiatric hospitals treated political opponents like Bukovsky was by diagnosing them with sluggish schizophrenia. After all, why would anyone oppose the greatest sociopolitical system in the world, Communism? (Just as in America today, who would oppose multicultural enrichment, diversity, and the marginalization of the Evil White Male?) Self-publishers like Bukovsky who didn’t agree with the party line were diagnosed as being unable to grasp reality. The Soviet psychiatrists were also told to look for traits such as reform delusions or struggles for truth and justice and refusal to submit to authority so that those disorders could also be treated.

The treatments usually involved locking political opponents up in a Special Psychiatric Hospital, and drugging them with high doses of psychiatric medications.

Because of this spurious definition of schizophrenia, the Soviet Union had at least three times the number of schizophrenics as other nations. Bukovsky’s later appeals to Western psychiatrists helped expose the political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union. But, what better way for an authoritarian state to deal with political dissidents than diagnosing them as mentally unstable! These appeals led to reforms, including glasnost, which called for increased openness and transparency in government activities.

Once again, showing how political winds can shift dramatically from one generation to the next, the U.S. helped negotiate Bukovsky’s emigration from the Soviet Union. Bukovsky would end up in the U.K.

Looking at this case begs the question: How far are we from seeing conservatives and those who believe in traditional sex roles and traditional families diagnosed with a mental disorder, then rehabilitated with Obamacare in a state-run hospital in America?

America Heads Down Path of Politically Correct Censorship

Even though today there are no official edicts as of yet damning the authors and commenters on self-publishing web sites, we live in an environment of militant feminism and authoritarian political correctness that is becoming increasingly inhospitable to tradition and masculinity. There have even been bills introduced in the House of Representatives to curb speech the state determines is inappropriate.

Today’s internet world of Samizdat self-publishing blows a huge hole in the what the media and government previously took for granted: Control of the dialogue. The gatekeepers were able to select which topics were appropriate to discuss, decide what emphasis to place on each topic, then frame those topics in a way that’s appropriate for their interests, while limiting debate to certain prescribed limits which were also suited to their interests. It’s not easy for them to hide dissent and alternative points of view anymore. We are just beginning to see the results of a the fundamental change in the way the world communicates ideas, brought on by the internet.

One thing is for sure, self-publishing is easier, faster, and more prevalent now than it ever could have been back in the days of the Soviet Union. Men are self-publishing politically unpopular, unapproved, rational ideas that are important to their own self-interest in increasingly large numbers with an increasingly confident voice. What remains to be seen is how those in power will respond. A corporate censorship model and advertising blacklist looks to be the first volley in this assault on those who publish idea that don’t conform to those the thought police approve of.

Will we see arrests for the newly invented PC term âhate speechâ soon? Will the government resort to outright censorship in the name of ânational security?â Will Google and other web companies impose restrictions which content it indexes? In any case, storm clouds are gathering on the horizon, and as history shows, a Communist government will go to great lengths to suppress dissent.

Help us grow by making a purchase from our Recommended Reading and Viewing page or our Politically Incorrect Apparel and Merchandise page or buy anything from Amazon using this link. You can also Sponsor The New Modern Man for as little as $1 a month. This article originally ran on Return of Kings.