When I wrote yesterday’s Insight article, comparing Victoria under Wuhan pandemic lockdown to past tyrannies like communism, even I worried that I was being overly hyperbolic. Lo and behold, the very next day, a refugee from Poland’s communist regime makes the same comparison.
The restrictions in Victoria on our movements, our work, and even our thoughts bring back chilling memories for those of us who escaped totalitarian regimes.
My family and I left Poland for Melbourne in 1981, fleeing martial law imposed by dictator General Wojciech Jaruzelski, who was determined to hold on to power and crush the rise of the Solidarity movement[…]
The communists couldn’t risk the Solidarity movement gaining more ground so hit back with restrictions under martial law to prevent further dissent. Those martial law restrictions enacted by Jaruzelski in 1981 are oddly similar to those Victorians are living with under Daniel Andrews’s rule four decades on.
Curfew, zero-tolerance police patrols, closed borders, restricted internal movement, closed schools, monitoring of communications, arbitrary arrest of dissidents.
Never did I think our basic freedoms would be removed in Australia. Never did I think a pregnant woman would be handcuffed for merely saying she would protest against the government. This is not the Australia in which my family sought refuge[…]
Andrews’s rhetoric is worryingly reminiscent of the former Eastern bloc’s socialist leaders. He blames Victorians for the actions he has had to take to protect us while removing civil liberties that no democratic government should ever touch. He is relying on unelected and unseen “experts” to justify removing our freedoms, much like Jaruzelski did with his Military Council of National Salvation.
My mother cannot believe that at 78 she again finds herself under effective house arrest in a democratic Australia.
But – and this is something which has troubled me deeply – why is Daniel Andrews so eerily imitating, in his “small, mean way”, the worst tyrants of history?
A crisis can lay bare the instincts of leaders. Once a government takes away civil liberties, it doesn’t always find it easy to give them back without a fight.
Andrews is a socialist, which means that by definition he believes that the state must supersede individual rights. But, more than that, Andrews is a politician. Politicians, with very few exceptions, are drawn to power – and the more power they are granted, the less easily they surrender it. The bureaucratic class, such as the public health mavens, are even more drawn to attaining and holding on to power because they are unelected.
The Andrews government and its bureaucratic toadies have granted themselves ultimate power – and ultimate power corrupts absolutely.
This is why Daniel Andrews in 2020 is defaulting to the same totalitarian strategies as General Jaruzelski in 1981: the determination to cling to the dizzying high of ultimate power.
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