the timboucher experience

I just came across something really cool in a Jacques Ellul excerpt:

As in Nazi Germany in 1943, there was a period of apparent liberalism when expressions of all sort of criticism, deviationism, idealistic and religious inclinations, and so on, were tolerated, authorized, even encouraged. Then, after all opponents had spoken, the wave of repression hit them: arrests, jail sentences, and, above all, political re-education took place. The purpose of the “Hundred Flowers Campaign” was to make opponents come out in the open so they could be arrested and eliminated…

Based on my research, the term, “Hundred Flowers” campaign is actually from Communist China, and was a period between 1956-7 where much the same thing happened. Mao Zedong encouraged the nation’s intellectuals to freely speak their minds and criticise the government. And then when they did, they were purged. It’s really sort of a genius idea, actually. Supposedly, the intellectuals at first weren’t buying it, and smelled a trick, but Mao and the CCP kept at it, until letters were pouring in by the millions. This is the kind of trick that only works once though, unless people haven’t heard of it before. So consider yourself warned.

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