Jack's Newswatch

A park near Toronto’s university district is named after the poet George Faludy. The author of My Happy Days In Hell passed away in 2006 at 96, having survived terrorists and tyrants in various parts of the world. When asked about the nature of totalitarian terror, Faludy used to tell the following anecdote.

In the late 1940s, after the communist takeover of Eastern Europe, bitter bickering erupted between the Soviet leader, JV. Stalin and the Yugoslav leader, J.B. Tito. The conflict gave Stalin another excuse for purging rivals and opponents, real or imagined. When a university student vanished in a Soviet satellite country, no one was surprised to see a faculty member charged with his murder.

The teacher was branded a “Titoist” agent, put through a show trial and executed. Few believed he was guilty, but people weren’t really jolted until, a few weeks later, the “murder victim” showed up to attend classes as before.

Novices to totalitarianism were flabbergasted. Why would the authorities let the “murdered” student go back to the same university? It would have been so easy to enroll him elsewhere, or enlist him in the army, lock him up, exile him, anything. Having framed a political opponent for a non-existent homicide, an authoritarian, semi-fascist regime would have done just that.

But this was totalitarianism, coercion without cosmetics. Blatancy was the whole point, as sophisticated people understood. The message of Stalinism was: “We can do anything.”

Of course, totalitarian terror like Stalin’s (or Mao’s or Hitler’s) wasn’t the same as “asymmetric” or national-liberation terror, the so-called “poor man’s nuclear bomb,” such as al-Qaeda and cousins, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. A friend asked Faludy once how terror worked.

“All too well,” he replied, “unfortunately.”

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