Clearly, the qualities Poles admire in a secretary of state - foreign languages, diplomatic experience, even sense of humor - are emphatically not those desired in a head of state: So be it.
Anne ApplebaumRead
One of the obsessions that the Soviet Union and the Eastern European communist parties had was always controlling the message - all information that everybody gets has to be carefully controlled and monitored. Art was no exception.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the importance of controlling information and how it extends to art under authoritarian regimes.
Anne Applebaum emphasizes the obsession of the Soviet Union and Eastern European communist parties with controlling messages and information. This desire for control extended even to the realm of art, demonstrating how authoritarian regimes seek to manipulate narratives and restrict creative expression to maintain power and influence over society.
Themes
ArtControlInformationAuthorityExpression
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about censorship in art, you might use this quote to explain how totalitarian regimes suppress artistic freedom.
More from Anne Applebaum
All quotes →At times when people fear death, they go along with measures that they believe, rightly or wrongly, will save them - even if that means a loss of freedom. Such measures have been popular in the past.
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Birtherism surely increased Americans' distrust of politics, though in ways that are hard to pin down. By contrast, when anti-vaxxers persuade parents not to vaccinate children, the result can be sickness and even death.
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Quite a lot has been written, including by me, about the effect of social media on politics, and in particular the way in which the algorithms built into Facebook and YouTube are more likely to spread angry, extremist and deliberately provocative political language.
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As a journalist, I know what it is like to incur the self-righteous wrath of people who denounce you for things you didn't say or didn't mean.
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If we can't have a public debate because the information space is so polluted, or because people are afraid of the reactions of organized trolls, then we can't really have meaningful elections anymore, either.
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