The New COVID-19 Authoritarians Will Only Give Up Power If They Fear Blowback
It was autumn 1989. Momentous things were taking place in the world.
The Berlin Wall had fallen. The people of the Eastern Bloc had succeeded at getting to the West through Hungary. The firm line between east and west was wavering. The situation was moving away from the course that Warsaw Pact communist governments had charted: that their populations must remain captive within the borders of the Communist Bloc.
It was unclear whether this social contagion for freedom would spread into Czechoslovakia.
But then November 17, 1989, arrived, a day etched in history. This was Students Day, a legal holiday. Everything had to close under government fiat. People were off school and off work. But some folks were agitated about prior government actions which many saw as abuses.
When the government gave the people of Czechoslovakia that day off, it was like a match to tinder. The small flame grew into a big one.
It was a revolution noted for its bloodlessness. The Velvet Revolution, we call it today, leaning on what the Czechs called it. People, for as far as the eye could see, gathered in a giant square in Prague and called for the ouster of their government.
In the face of the idea that saying the wrong words politically could be toxic to one’s health, much like in America today, some did not resort to speaking words against their government. They merely pulled their keys out of their pockets and jingled them.
The message was clear.
Imagine tens of thousands of people jingling their keys at once.
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