back to basics

Here you are:

Mr. Bukele, el presidente de la República de El Salvador, praises his labor camps as the way to rehabilitate the lost souls of the criminals he harvested in his widely popular campaign of crime eradication.

The prisoners not just are removed from the street, – they become an integral part of the new, better Salvador, to the benefit of the society and, obviously, to themselves. They learn a skill!

Mr. Musk, presiding over too many entities to list here, approves.

I found it disappointing however that los presidentes didn’t acknowledge the key intellectual predecessors of the notion that forced labor makes one a better person.

This, below, could have been a tweet, but 90 years ago the tech was more down-to-earth: the slogan1The photo is borrowed from BELOMOR by Julie Draskoczy, Academic Studies Press, 2014 was posted in a workers cantina of Belomoro-Baltijskij Kanal, White Sea-Baltic Canal, – one of the earlier Stalinist massive labor camps. It reads:

The USSR’s corrective-labor politics does not punish, but rather corrects on the basis of socially beneficial labor and political re-education.

I wonder sometimes what the correct historic rhyme to Mr. Musk is, and lately I’m more and more inclined to think of him as a Western Beria. While Belomor was initiated by his pre-predecessor, Yagoda, Beria, with immense drive, relentless focus and enormous success (he was the key leader of Soviet nuclear effort in 45-49) is a proper incarnation of Musk and his likes.

Say what you want, but the spirit of viewing human masses as mere malleable workforce usable only as a fuel for the dear leader visions blossomed in our tech elites as a veritable Titan arum

Notes
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    The photo is borrowed from BELOMOR by Julie Draskoczy, Academic Studies Press, 2014