Trolls carrying big sticks

Religious and politically fundamentalist societies always have religious police to watch for deviance. They often walk or drive around in pairs, clutching big sticks, to beat up anyone they find, usually female, who has deviated in the slightest way from the arbitrary standards of clothing, behavior and speech decreed by the religious rulers. Sometimes the religious police may get so enraged that they may beat someone to death.

Such a system is of course a way of imposing absolute conformity on the population, and it has been used for a very long time. The tactics vary, and the weapons, and the individuals involved (sometimes, for example, children are used to inform on their parents, or neighbors to inform on each other) but the intent is always the same. And they should not be thought of as mere bureaucrats employed to do a job. The people involved are fundamentalist's fundamentalists. They would do it for nothing. They have been so brainwashed by whatever religious or social dogma is the basis of their government that they are white hot on deviation, seeing it as an insult to themselves (for they are true believers) as well as to whichever secular or religious god they are following at the time. Having ordinary people controlling each other is more effective than control from above.

George Orwell knew about them of course, and invented the all-encompassing term "Thought Police", basing them on the way that the Nazi and Communist parties had run Germany and Russia, but undoubtedly knowing of their long pedigree going back at least to the middle ages in religious societies of various kinds.

We thought, for a long time, that thought police were a thing of the past, couldn't happen in modern progressive western societies, although they had continued in countries like China, North Korea, Cambodia, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. But now I'm not so sure.

A worrying sign is the increasing intolerance of dissent in western societies, an increasing willingness to limit the places where dissent can occur, the form it may take, and to use overwhelming police force to crush it. At the same time the mainstream media help governments by deciding how, if at all, dissent will be reported. Quite often these days the purpose of a demonstration will be left unreported while the cameras focus on the only bit of violent activity (often deliberately provoked by police), or on bad language, or the use of flags, or on the presence of children. Not hard to completely lose the message of a demonstration while appearing to report it.

So taking to the streets, or trying to picket meetings, is no longer an effective strategy. But there is one venue now where dissent can still take place - the blogosphere. And this is harder, for the moment, to control.

So the Right have gone back to the tactic of employing Thought Police. Not on the streets now, don't need them there, but on the progressive blogs. We call them trolls on HuffPo, but they are as much like thought police as the Stasi of the former East Germany, and as much like Religious Police as the ones the Taliban employed. Their presence has long puzzled posters and bloggers alike. What on earth are they doing here? Why not stick to the right wing blogs where they would be welcomed with open arms? But this is to misunderstand their nature. Watch them on topics like global warming, religion, conservation, the rights of gays, minimum wages, gender equity, Hollywood, guns, socialism, abortion, the United Nations. Recognise the tone and the fury. Recognise the purity of belief, Recognise the absolute refusal to allow any deviation from their beliefs to be discussed. Feel the white hot rage that they express as their rigid beliefs are challenged. They are not here to learn, and they may not even be here to be paid. They don't have black uniforms and long sticks, but they do have the mad staring eyes of the fanatic, and they do have keyboards.

The trolls on HuffPo are our modern religious police, our thought police, here to stamp out heresy. They can't yet stop us discussing ideas, looking at things in new ways, thinking about alternative ways that society can work, supporting freedom of thoughts and feelings, so let us make the most of it. 1984 is being used as a manual by the controllers of the thought police, and the tactics work as well in real societies as in imaginary ones.