The Gulag Beckons

The knife descends in the dark—not the theatrical blade of some cinematic villain but the cold, ideological steel wielded by the new totalitarians: leftist zealots, Islamo-fascists, trans activists, and the corporate-state hydra that shields them. In England, writing (and then deleting) a furious tweet after little girls were murdered earns a woman a prison sentence. In Canada, a pastor is dragged from his pulpit for reading Leviticus aloud. In France, a conservative philosopher is de-platformed before he can utter a syllable; in Poland, a journalist is fired for citing demographic data. The pattern is global, relentless, and accelerating.

Let us speak plainly. Despite what we’re told by our betters, political violence is not the monopoly of the Right. In fact, the opposite is true. The assassination of Charlie Kirk in the United States, the Islamist murder of Conservative MP David Amess in Britain, the innumerable arsons against right-wing figures in Germany, the orchestrated harassment of Christian bakers, florists, and photographers—these are not anomalies. They are the enforcement arm of an ideology and creed that tolerates no dissent. When a trans activist in Scotland tweets that TERFs should be “punched in the face,” and the police investigate the victims (not the trans activists) for “hate speech,” we have crossed into a realm where the state itself has become the aggressor and our enemy. Albert Jay Nock, call your office.

Yet the violence is only the visible edge. Beneath it lies a subtler, more pervasive suppression. Universities, once citadels of open inquiry, now resemble re-education camps where ‘microaggressions’ are catalogued and problem students expelled. Publishers reject manuscripts not for lack of merit but for fear of the Twitter mob. And the young, brave souls who have written for publications like ours—sharp, principled, unafraid—find themselves shadow-banned by the very corporations that preach ‘diversity.’ A single byline in our pages becomes a scarlet letter, whispered about in the useless HR departments that decide whether a 23-year-old may feed his family.

This is not paranoia. This is one aspect of the lived reality of surveillance capitalism, as Shoshana Zuboff has warned. Every click, every search, every hesitant ‘like’ on a dissident post is harvested, weighted, and weaponized. The algorithms do not merely predict behavior; they shape it, nudging the non-conformist toward silence, conformity, or (eventually) despair. Big Brother does not need a telescreen when he has your smartphone.

The expert, managerial, metropolitan classes—the credentialed functionaries of “the Cathedral”—have become some of our greatest enemies (alongside the Islamists and the CCP, of course). Jacob Hale Russell and Dennis Patterson nailed it: the elites’ monopoly on ‘truth’ fuels the very populism they claim to abhor. 

Look at the cover of this, our Winter issue: a freethinker behind bars; his crime? Refusal to recite the catechism of the age. This is not hyperbole. In Finland, Päivi Räsänen faces prison for quoting Scripture. In Spain, a cardinal is fined for defending the family. In Australia, a rugby player is sacked for paraphrasing St. Paul. The late Dalmacio Negro Pavón, that Spanish philosopher [and signatory of the 2017 “Paris Declaration”] who embodied ordered liberty in every line he penned (and to whom we pay tribute in this issue), saw this all coming: the slow strangulation of the soul by bureaucratic tyranny. For him and his students, the gulag was not a distant memory; it was a blueprint being dusted off.

We have been told repeatedly to be reasonable, to compromise. But the new totalitarians do not seek dialogue with us; they seek submission. Every concession—every retracted tweet, every groveling apology, every updated syllabus—only emboldens them. What can we do? First, refuse to self-censor. Write under your own name, even when the algorithms punish you. Publish the unpublishable. And speak the unspeakable. Second, build parallel institutions. Journals like ours, samizdat networks, homeschooling co-ops, crypto-funded media—these are truly the catacombs of the 21st century. Third, support the martyrs. Hire the blacklisted writer. Boycott the cowardly corporation. Donate to struggling lost causes. Send a card to an imprisoned pastor. Fourth, laugh at them. Bullies hate to be laughed at—and the regime hates humor more than it hates argument. 

Remember: the fight is not between Left and Right but between civilization and barbarism. You know which side to choose—but don’t expect applause. Expect cuffs. Expect exile. Expect long, dark, cold nights. The gulag is not inevitable. But it is closer than we think. 

This editorial appears in the Winter 2025 issue of The European Conservative, Number 37:5.