Preparation for Tyranny II: Conquering False Hope
Our only hope is to renounce everything and to refuse to comply, to compromise, to confess, to denounce, to inform, to hope falsely, or to sin in any way at all.
Our only hope is to renounce everything and to refuse to comply, to compromise, to confess, to denounce, to inform, to hope falsely, or to sin in any way at all.
Preparation for Tyranny
Part I: Becoming Strong by Rejecting False Hope
Part II: Conquering False Hope
Part III: What about our Families?
What to do under persecution
In the last part, we discussed how to prepare ourselves to survive mentally and spiritually in the clutches of global tyranny.
We must ask ourselves: What will we do, when faced with the choice between, say, suffering in a prison camp, and compromising with evil?
At the start of The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn poses a question that may face us all in the time ahead:
How can you stand your ground when you are weak and sensitive to pain, when people you love are still alive, when you are unprepared?
“What do you need to make you stronger than the interrogator and the whole trap?”1
The answer, he says, is to give up all little hopes – without turning to despair – and to fix one’s whole will on fulfilling the duties of conscience and truth. He writes:
From the moment you go to prison you must put your cozy past firmly behind you. At the threshold, you must say to yourself: ‘My life is over, a little early to be sure, but there’s nothing to be done about it. I shall never return to freedom. I am condemned to die – now or a little later. But later on, in truth, it will be even harder, and so the sooner the better. I no longer have any property whatsoever. For me, those I love have died; and for them, I have died. From today on, my body is useless and alien to me. Only my spirit and conscience remain precious and important to me.’
Confronted by such a prisoner, the interrogator will tremble.
Only the man who has renounced everything can win that victory.
Let’s consider the various false hopes we might have once in a Gulag machine. They include:
Hope to live
Hope to avoid bodily suffering
Hope to protect loved ones outside.
These are truly good things, but they are all false hopes used by tyrants to further their evil agendas.
The rest of this article is for WM+ subscribers.
The WM Review is free for readers. This is because we believe these ideas must reach as many people as possible.
However, we also provide WM+ articles – additional material for those who choose to support this work financially.
This helps us continue producing serious Catholic research, while ensuring that the main body of material remains accessible for all.
If you want to ensure that this continues, join WM+ today.
(Clergy and seminarians can contact us for free membership.)