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.
Very well put.
I have a discussion with my wife every so often about what our own little utopian island would be like, like how the government would be, how roads would be managed, what homes would be like, etc. I brought up the other day this exact point about how if there’s a position of wealth and power at the top controlling too much, then sociopths would gravitate towards that for the same of having power and wealth, which ruins the government system. It would have to be a heavily distributed system of government, but too distributed where it would make it difficult to implement standardizations, get stuff done, etc.
Idk how that would work exactly, because then you’d also have to make sure no greedy, power hungry Trump-likes get into a position with too much power. There has to be a way, though.