Snitching is essential to totalitarian regimes. Both Stalin’s and Castro’s Gulags were filled primarily by acting on tips from snitches. This snitching has a snowball effect. The very fact that you’re snitching gives some people a (usually false) sense of protection from regime police because they’re assisting them. Then as more and more people get rounded up, more and more people feel threatened, so more and more of them snitch–more fear, more arrests; neighbor snitches against neighbor, cousin against cousin, even sons and daughters against parents.
Recall the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers. “Is he a pod, too?…Can we trust him?..should we hush-up? Run? Hide?!” Some say the 1956 movie was an allegorical treatment of a Communist takeover. Please excuse the apparent flippancy, but this writer is not the only eye-witness to such a takeover who has noted the chilling parallels with the movie.
With a little imagination almost everyone can visualize the Communist snitch-and-survive or snitch-and-reward process. At work, we’ve all seen that insufferable brownnoser who hopes to mitigate or camouflage his incompetence or laziness by sucking up to the boss. We’ve all seen that gossipy little backstabber, that sniveling little a** kisser, that busybody shrew get promoted over their betters. Somehow after every flush of “downsizing” many of these Eddie Haskells and Mrs Kravitzes keep bobbing back to the surface.
To some extent this is human/corporate nature. All organizations favor “team players.” In the private sector these kinks are eventually straightened and the brownnosing incompetents axed. Either that, or the company goes under. There are stockholders and customers to keep happy.
But under Communism this swinishness is the very essence of the system. There is only a Maximum Leader to keep happy.
This is off topic. I have come to notice that the Cubans that come now compared to the 1960’s and 70’s are a completely different group of people. For example, my family owns several apartment buildings in North New Jersey and lately we’ve had pretty bad experiences with new arrivals. I personally don’t like renting to new arrrivals, unfortunetaly from my experience they always break something or are just pains in the ass. For example, recently my mom rented an apartment to a Cuban family, they’ve been here about 5 years. My mom bieng old school and Cuban, she was like ah don’t worry thier Cuban and didn’t have them sign a lease. Thier verbal contract stated that it would only be the mother and two kids living in the apartment. Mind you the apartment is only a one bedroom, but they still wanted it. Well of course I had a bad feeling about it. Anyway about two months into the agreement, all of sudden a live in boyfriend pops up and a cat and a ferret…WTF? So not to go into further details they have packed the apartment with daughters boyfriend as well as the visiting grandmother from Cuba. Well of course I’ve increased thier rent, hopefully getting them to leave…to no avail…Anyway the latest complaint is that thier electricity keeps going out…Mind you they have two computers, two A/C’s and Two TV’s always on…They don’t comprehend that the electric will short circuit. oh don’t get me started on them always clogging the toilet and bath tub….Pains in the ass I tell ya. Oh last point, they want access to the electric box, but it’s cut off from access because they would probably fill that room with more shit and create a fire hazard….Wow the Castro Regime really fucked with the Cuban peoples minds.
This is an excellent synopsis of the escalating nature of collaboration.
Ready: Low class is low class.