Theodore Dalrymple on the dangers of a culture that welcomes and supports denunciation as a political mechanism:
Believed to be the only photograph of Pavel “Pavlik” Morozov (centre, wearing cap), circa 1930.
… a culture of denunciation is an important step in the direction of totalitarianism. Is there anyone whose life is such that the discreditable things done or said by him or her could not be woven into a reason for public execration or worse? The habit of denunciation was a powerful weapon in the hands of every totalitarian dictator.
In the Soviet Union, for example, the story of Pavel Morozov — little Pavlik — was used to inculcate the habit of denunciation as a social duty into Soviet children. Little Pavlik denounced his own parents and grandparents as kulaks, that is to say as rich and exploitative peasants, to the Soviet authorities, and was thereafter “martyred” for his truthfulness. Soviet children were encouraged to emulate lovely little Pavlik by snitching on all around them. There were posters in school of heroic children denouncing their fellows for something that they had done wrong. This was the Soviet version of truth-telling.
We should not complacently suppose that it couldn’t happen here — wherever here is. In Britain recently, which is suffering from a shortage of water because of unusually hot weather, residents of some areas have been prohibited from using hosepipes to water their garden — and have been encouraged to denounce neighbors or others to the authorities who flout the prohibition.
One can just hear the arguments in favor of such denunciations. It’s only fair and right, for example, that everyone should share the hardship caused by the shortage of water. It’s almost psychopathic of some not to obey the rules while most do so: Who do they think they are, that they are not obliged to obey? Moreover, we live in such times that, if you approach such a person directly, he’s likely to become furious and violent. It’s safer to call the authorities and let them deal with him.
This overlooks how easily the culture of denunciation can establish itself, and lead to a society in which everyone fears everyone else. Such is the way in which people are constituted that for many, at least, it’s a pleasure to bring harm to others in the name of doing good for society. That was the justification of denunciation in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Maoist China, as well as in a host of other totalitarian fiefdoms. And Maugham — he who actively solicits denunciations of Nick Cohen — even admits, perhaps without really meaning to, the pleasure he would derive from passing on any denunciations he receives in a kind of meta-denunciation, as it were.
This is authentically disgusting, but it has the merit of reminding us that totalitarianism did not land on earth like an asteroid but had its origins in the human heart, and that no society can be immune from the temptations of totalitarianism once and for all. Totalitarianism has its pleasures, chief of which is doing harm to others, albeit that today’s denouncer tends to become tomorrow’s denounced.
