Parallels between WT and USSR leaders: Desperately seeking Pestroika!

by Check_Your_Premises 7 Replies latest jw friends

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  Check_Your_Premises

  This occured to me in the car today.

  Lenin - the true believing idealist who launched the revolution. The dream was to throw off the shackles of oppression (this system of things) and create a new utopia of a worker's paradise (paradise earth)

  CT Russel

  Stalin - The utterly ruthless and cold blooded dictator who took over the party (WTBS) removed all opposition (Bible students) and ruled his communist nation (cult) with an iron fist

  Joseph Rutheford

  Kruschev - While acknowledging the cruelty of the Stalinist regime, he nevertheless adhered to the communist ideal (faithful and discreet slave)and worked tirelessly (field service) to dominate the globe (worldwide preaching work) with it's vision.

  Nathan Knorr

  Leon Trotsky - The true believer who had a crisis of conscience (Crisis of Conscience). He still held to the communist ideal (faithful and discreet slave), but he became disillusioned with it's application in Soviet Russia. He fled to Mexico but was hunted down and assasinated (disfellowshipped).

  Ray Franz

  The three stooges : The Soviet politburo (Governing Body) produced Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko to lead the internally crumbling, yet outwardly bold and expansionist worker's paradise. They tried desperately to keep the people ignorant the democratizing and modernizing forces of the global economy. (internet, freedom of information). And of course there were three people who knew all to well that the "evil empire" was going to "crumble under the weight of it's internal contradictions" They knew it was "doomed to the ashheap of history". The last pages of that "sad and bizarre chapter in human history" were being written.

  Reagan, Thatcher, and Pope John Paul (JWD, BRCI, Freeminds, SilentLambs, AJWRB) spoke openly, and confronted them with the impossible task of matching the economic and military might (intellectual honesty, free thought, and love of truth) of the free world. Even as their world crumbled around them (law suits, sending people home from Bethel, cutting back on printing, disbanding the Bethel Elders), they kept on as always deluded and tired. They sensed their danger, and moved to supress all dissent (wrote stupid articles against education, having a career, and not listening to new ideas). This only left them more detached, and unable to react to reality.

  All the boobs who have been in charge since Freddie Franz

  Gorby - Unable to deny reality any longer, a new leader emerged. He tried to hold on to power, while also opening his society to measured freedoms. But freedom long suppressed, once tasted, becomes an insatiable desire. The dam broke. The hardliners tried to force a failed coup. The dream of the workers paradise (paradise earth) was dead.

  ???

  Let Freedom Ring

  CYP
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  sir82

  Awesome!

  Apart from the mismatched timing on the Ray Franz - Leon Trotsky thing (Trotsky was a contemporary of Lenin, while Ray Franz came along long after Russell), that is a spookily accurate parallel.

  However, I am not holding my breath for a "Gorby" to rise up. Then again, as a child of the 70's I never would have imagined the USSR crumbling until it actually did, so who knows?
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  greendawn

  They are good parallels the common denominator is that both are totalitarian, authoritarian styles of government that oppress the human spirit and destroy its creativity something that will finally totally undermine them.
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  Will Power

  how long was that car ride?
  
  No wonder WT is compared to Orwell's 1984 - you nailed it!
  
  wp
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  DanTheMan

  Your post parallels Eric Hoffer's observations of the stages that a fanatical movement goes through in his book The True Believer. First comes the the visionary-prophet (Russell), then the charismatic man of action to get the revolution really moving (Rutherford), then the administration man to take the movement from the revolution phase to the institution phase (Knorr).

  By joining in 1992 I witnessed the very tail end of the institution phase, and through the 90's I witnessed first hand the transition to the current phase - the Paranoid/Crumbling phase. I too find it difficult to imagine a reformer like Gorby reaching a position of power in the org and effecting serious change. Most dubs want to be controlled and gladly heed the org's cries for loyalty. So a long slow fade into oblivion is my prediction for JWism.
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  Leolaia

  A lot of this follows Max Weber's routinization of charisma thesis, btw, and parallels can easily be found elsewhere in religion, business, and politics.
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  Big Dog

  Pretty slick stuff, I'm impressed. Rank and file dubs vs. Russian citizens, the defections, the seeing how life was on the otherside (the West) while the administration continued to them them we were the devil incarnate and they lived in a perfect society.

  So, is Bethel the Berlin wall, are we going to be around to take that bad boy down?
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  Check_Your_Premises

  I realized something else in the car today.

  A warning for those of us with family in the org when the tower finally does fall...

  Cult leaders don't like it when their little world comes crashing down. Rather than face the death of their deluded dreams, rather than accept and admit to the world that they were fools rather than great and annointed men, they end their lives.

  And before they do, they attempt to validate their delusions the only way they know how; by demanding from their followers the greatest single act of devotion.

  Waco, Jonestown, and even the utter leveling of Germany were all examples of tyrannical cult leaders willing to sacrifice all their followers in order to cling to their megalomania until the last moments of their grotesquely misguided lives.

  How will the jw leadership spend the last few moments of their grand delusion? How will they use the sheep to hide from the reality of their sadly misguided folly?

  CYP