The term parallel society is relatively new to me. I only began hearing this term in the past year or so. I understand the concept but I did not realize that it was a term coined decades ago and used successfully to usher in the fall of Communism. This 12 minute video provided by The Academy of Ideas is excellent at summarizing the birth of the term Parallel Society and the history of how it had been used during the 20th century in Communist Eastern Europe.
“The real question is whether the brighter future is always so distant. What if it has been here for a long time already and only our own blindness and weakness have prevented us from seeing it around us and within us and kept us from developing it.” Vaclav Havel
I recently read a book called, Live Not By Lies by pastor Rod Dreher. It is a manual for Christian dissidents to understand how soft totalitarianism is creeping up in America. It is our duty to resist and discourage soft totalitarianism, which can only be accomplished by understanding what it is and how brave men and women from our past have overcome it.
In this book I learned of Havel, a Czech statesmen and former Christian dissident who served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until its dissolution in 1992. He went on to become the first president of the Czech Republic in 1993 and served until 2003. Havel worked through underground networks and channels to bring the Gospel to the people of Czechoslovakia and was an active part of the Parallel Society that brought the fall of Communism to Eastern Europe.
Here in America, we are told that if we do not like how our country is being run, then we need to get out and vote…even better, get involved in politics to be part of the change you want to see. But this fails to be an option when we overlook the corrupt nature of State Power. It also turns a blind eye to the massive bureaucratic class that operates many angles of our government institutions that CANNOT be replaced by elections (think Anthony Fauci et al).
The authors of this video suggest that a more practical solution to what ails the modern world may be to allow the dead weight of the state to collapse in on itself, as it inevitably will and to soften the blow through the creation of a Parallel Society. This term was originally coined in the late 1970s by Czech mathematician Vaclav Benda when he became intrigued by the position of another Czech citizen, Ivan Jirous. Jirous was a poet and artistic director who was arrested in 1976 along with his band members for not toeing the Communist Party line.
Jirous was frustrated by the oppression and suppression of music and the arts in his Communist country. He set out to form an independent society to allow the arts to flourish. Jirous hypothesized that if enough infrastructure were created, an independent society would spontaneously form and function as a pocket of creativity in his highly oppressed society.
“…the independent society does not compete for power. Its aim is not to replace the powers that be with power of another kind but rather under this power-or beside it-to create structures that respect other laws and in which the voice of the ruling power is heard only as an insignificant echo from a world that is organized in an entirely different way.” Ivan Jirous
Benda appreciated this theory but felt the concept should be broader than the arts, hence the creation of what they would work to create, a Parallel Society. One that would encourage…
“…parallel forms of education and science and scholarship… parallel political structures… and a parallel information network and free parallel markets that form a Parallel Economy.” Vaclav Benda
During this same time frame, Teodor Zamfir was responsible for smuggling VHS cassettes of American action and religious films into Romania. The communist dictator at the time, Nicholae Ceausecscu had outlawed the distribution of Western films, he could not have his people understanding what it was like to live in a ‘free world’. Zamfir would smuggle these films into his country and then translate and dub them into Romanian. This grew into a huge underground network and the citizens of Romania became aware of their oppression as they witnessed Western culture.
“During the 1989 revolution everybody was in the streets because they all knew there was a better life out there. How? From films.” Teodor Zamfir
So there is a little history of the term Parallel Society and how it has worked in the past. Perhaps I learned sometime during my educational experience but it never really ‘meant’ much to me since I could not imagine that this would ever become necessary in the United States. Fast forward 30 years and now based on definitions outlined by our current administration, I could be considered a domestic terrorist for my views. So many in the circles that I read and listen to are talking about forming a Parallel Society. But something like this cannot happen overnight. It is going to take time and lots of work but it is starting to happen and you can see the evidence around us. Recently Substack took to being part of this:
The last couple of decades of the internet have eroded the media business and stripped writers – and other culture makers – of their financial dignity. Craigslist delivered the first blow, depriving the press of revenue from classifieds, and then Google and Facebook came along and sucked up the vast majority of online ad spend. As media businesses became more and more anemic, writers were relegated to content-production roles and playing attention games on social media, where “engagement” is prized above all else, including quality and truth.
It is clear to us that these problems can’t be solved with a tweak to an algorithm or a just-so regulation. Instead, the entire system needs to change. With Substack, we have set out to build an alternative media ecosystem based on different laws of physics, where writers are rewarded with direct payments from readers, and where readers have total control over what they read. In this world, writers are rewarded for serving readers well, and Substack gets rewarded for serving writers well. The power is tipped in favor of the people, not the platform.
The video closes by offering some suggestions on how to be part of the formation of a Parallel Society.
Consume independent media instead of legacy news
Use alternative mediums of exchange instead of fiat currencies controlled by governments
Use social media platforms that honor free speech (think GETTR, TruthSocial)
Support local businesses instead of global corporations that further the establishment agenda
Unlike Communist Europe, we know what it is like to live freely. Now we just need to stand up and fight with every bone in our body to protect this for our children! We will need to accept the idea of making sacrifices of convenience for the blessing of freedom and individual liberty.