this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2025
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Today I Learned

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The Soviet system used psychiatry as a weapon by diagnosing political opponents as mentally ill in order to confine them as patients instead of trying them in court. Anyone who challenged the state such as dissidents, writers, would-be emigrants, religious believers, or human rights activists could be branded with fabricated disorders like sluggish schizophrenia. This turned normal political disagreement into supposed medical pathology and allowed the state to present dissent as insanity.

Once labeled in this way, people were placed in psychiatric hospitals where they could be held for long periods without legal protections. Harsh treatments were often used to break their resolve. The collaboration between state security organs and compliant psychiatrists created a system where political imprisonment was disguised as medical care, letting the Soviet regime suppress opposition while pretending it was addressing illness rather than silencing critics.

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[โ€“] lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

So

a government authority takes away your freedom & subjects you to abuse

you depress yourself about having to work & pay for shit or deal with your feelings

same thing! ๐Ÿ˜Š

I can't believe everyone who buys this equivalence bullshit of illegitimate abuse & coercion in one case and lack thereof in the other. It's like they have some submission kink to getting dominated.

[โ€“] lmagitem@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

You're either not trying to understand what I'm saying or willingly chosing to misrepresent it. I have no time to discuss with people acting in bad faith.

Edit: Excuse-me I thought you were another poster. I think I answer your points here: https://lemmy.zip/comment/23154125

[โ€“] lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

The rough gist I'm getting is some poorly substantiated claim of ignorance of general exploitation as worse than overt abuse of human rights, eg

Yes, comrade, I'm locking you up and abusing your fundamental rights, but think how bad you'd have it free, doing the same work with a better standard of living & lower economic inequality while whining about exploitation!

Perhaps workers could earn better without "exploitation" in liberal democracies, but historical record & economic data show the opposite:

  • the Soviet system stagnated & deteriorated behind liberal democratic counterparts at living standards & economic growth while still exploiting workers & abusing their fundamental rights
  • several liberal democracies continue to achieve lower economic inequality & better living standards than communist states.

The Soviet Union gave up & dismantled itself for this reason. There was no tradeoff of human rights abuses somehow yielding a better life for a less exploited, average worker. For all its rhetoric, the Soviet workers got the worst of everything.

Per the philosophy of social democracies, socialism doesn't require human rights abuses. Authorities abusing human rights are definitely worse than authorities not doing that & letting people fail on their own terms. In the case of those liberal democracies beating the performance of communist states, those "exploited" workers are freer & doing better than the "unexploited" ones. Given the results, it's hard to find your notion of "exploitation" credible: I think it's full of shit & mostly in your deluded theory that's failing to bear out.

[โ€“] lmagitem@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 month ago

How do you read what I'm writing and understand from it that I'm defending the USSR? Two things can be bad at once.

What I'm saying is that in our late stage capitalism societies, mental health is also instrumentalized to avoid changing how things work.