[87356] in Cypherpunks
Re: quote
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anonymous)
Mon Sep 29 06:11:19 1997
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 10:55:08 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
To: cypherpunks@algebra.com
Reply-To: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
On Sun, 28 Sep 1997 at 19:11, Zooko Journeyman <zooko@xs4all.nl>
farted:
> Igor Chudov contributed a quote from some government manual:
>> These anti-government extremists and supporters are convinced
>> citizens are being systematically oppressed by an illegal,
>> totalitarian government. They believe the time for traditional
>> political reform has passed, that their freedom will only be
>> secured by resistance to the law and attacks against the
>> government in several forms.
>>
>> Members of these groups bond to one another and lose contact with
>> other people who hold different opinions. The isolation works to
>> reinforce their views, which in turn gives them new purpose.
>> This new purpose may take ordinary ideas to extremes, rationalize
>> their problems into blaming government, and cause members to
>> compete with each other to make stronger statements.
> Couldn't've said it better myself.
> I see the same pattern in cypherpunks and in my non- (or
> barely-) 'Netted extremist friends of the right, the
> libertarian, and the left varieties.
> I've argued with myself for years about whether the spread of
> the Net would connect these people back to their fellow humans,
> by offering uncensorable, violence-free communication channels,
> or whether it help them to make virtual communities consisting
> solely of people who reinforce their own beliefs.
> I'm still hoping for the former...
> Z, hopeful cynic
Jerk! You don't have the slightest clue about what is going
on over here, do you?
