They are not the good guys.

Hello, Anticitizen.

Stalin was one of the most terrifying leaders in history. Unfortunately, our governments in the West seem to be taking tips from his playbook, using the control of truth as a powerful weapon of control.

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📖 ESTIMATED READ TIME: 6 minutes 5 seconds

Empire of lies.

In the shadowy corridors of Soviet Russia, where people lived under the crushing weight of Joseph Stalin's iron fist, the air was thick with fear and suspicion.

The mid-1930s marked the onset of the Great Terror, a period of intense paranoia and brutal repression where the crushing of free speech became central to Stalin’s strategy for consolidating power. Here, the Soviet Union had morphed into a dystopian landscape where any form of truth or dissent had been obliterated.

Stalin’s grip on media, literature, and art was absolute; only voices that praised socialism and the state were allowed to exist. Propaganda was omnipresent, painting the Soviet government as a great protector against ever-looming threats of enemies internal and abroad, as well as being the ultimate source of truth.

The state encouraged ordinary citizens to act as agents of Stalin’s regime, and to report their neighbours for saying the wrong things, or for holding “incorrect” views. Denunciations became commonplace as friends, colleagues, and even family members turned on each other, accusing the ones they loved of thought crimes against society.

To further eliminate dissent, Stalin orchestrated show trials, designed as public spectacles to humiliate and eradicate his rivals. High-ranking members of the Communist Party, military leaders, and intellectuals were paraded before the nation, accused of treason, espionage, and sabotage. However, the trials were mostly theatrical, and the verdict was always predetermined: guilt, followed by execution or a life sentence in the Gulags.

The psychological toll on the populace was immense. Trust dissolved into paranoia as quickly as acid eating through paper. People became afraid to speak openly, as the threat of denunciation loomed large.

Words had become a weapon of fear, control, and death.

Between 1936 and 1938, Stalin’s purges mercilessly claimed the lives of up to 1.2 million individuals. These were lives extinguished not for committing crimes, but for the audacity to question or challenge the iron grip of a tyrannical, power-obsessed regime.

Watch your words.

You’ve probably seen the current social unrest in the United Kingdom.

The accurate depiction of the ongoing events varies significantly depending on which media you choose to consume or believe. But in a nutshell, sparked by the mass-stabbing and resulting death of three young girls at a Taylor Swift dance event in Southport England, violent clashes have been taking place across the country between majority Muslim groups, and cohorts of Brits who are protesting open borders and mass immigration.

However, this story doesn’t focus on these events. Instead, I want to discuss the UK government’s response to them.

Speaking to Sky News, a spokesperson for Britain’s CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) said that sharing any online material relating to the riots could be a criminal act, stating, “…if you retweet that, then you’re republishing that, and then potentially you’re committing that offence.”

It was suggested that if someone is acting innocently and retweeting a post that could cause harm—even without any malicious intent—it could result in a person being arrested.

Being handcuffed for a retweet is now a potential reality in the UK. And it’s already happened; several people have reportedly been arrested as a result of sharing posts relating to the protests.

This is obviously insane.

It should worry anyone when the government of a supposedly “free” country arrests people who are merely sharing information.

Retweeting a video of an event today is no different than discussing that event around the dinner table. Yet, in the same vein as Stalin’s Soviet Union, the overlords of Britain want to criminalise disseminating information that’s inconvenient to its narrative.

The British Government believes it owns a monopoly on truth.

Unfortunately for us, it's not the only Western government with similar views.

Like in New Zealand, where former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern spoke out about rampant “misinformation” being distributed on social media in our post-pandemic world, stating that citizens should only trust information that comes from the government.

Her words could have been pulled directly from a dystopian novel: “We will continue to be your single source of truth.”

Or how about just this month in Germany, where police in Bremerhaven threatened to persecute and arrest anyone who shared the video of an attack by a gang of immigrants on a 15-year-old German schoolboy.

This comes only months after politician Marie-Thérèse Kaiser was convicted of sharing on social media the government’s own statistics that showed Afghan migrants were 70 times more likely to commit gang r*pe than German citizens.

Finally, in Australia, opposition leader Peter Dutton, the man who will almost certainly become the next Prime Minister, recently encouraged people to report their friends and family to the Australian Federal Police if their thoughts or feelings about the government “change.”

Do you see a pattern here?

What you want to say no longer matters.

The information you want to share no longer matters.

The truth no longer matters.

All that matters is what your government allows.

We in the West are very swiftly moving towards a society where government censorship and control of the information we’re allowed to share and see may soon become the rule, not the exception.

It’s terrifying.

If you need any evidence of where this kind of control goes, you only need to examine human history. Whenever a government has carried out mass censorship or had complete control of narratives, it’s never ended well for the people.

Or, to simplify, the simple truth is this:

At any time in human history, whenever a government tried to censor or suppress the free speech of its people, they were not the good guys.

Whenever a government in the past has alleged they have a monopoly on the truth, they were not the good guys.

If your government is doing the same thing now—exactly like what’s happening in Australia, the UK, Europe, and beyond—I can promise you they are not the good guys.

Sure, our governments don’t maintain Stalin-levels of totalitarian control. At least not yet.

But how long until they do?

How long until a retweet, a Facebook post, or the fact that you opened this newsletter gets you put on some watch list or finds you languishing in a prison cell?

The only way this kind of authoritarian control will succeed is if we allow it. If, in the name of “safety” and “security,” we relinquish our sovereign right to access and discuss the information, news, and events we choose to and hand it over to our governments.

It’s happened in the past, and it could happen again.

If it does? Then at least for me, it will be time to say bye-bye to the West forever.

This is why it’s so essential to be prepared.

Get another passport. Get a backup residency permit. Prepare a ‘Plan B.’

And do it now.

Written by Leon Hill.
Founder, Anticitizen.

This newsletter is for educational purposes, and is not financial advice. Please do your own research, and consider risks involved with investing or purchasing any asset.