Talk:Dissident

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bold texthhhjjj==On democratic countries==

It is ridiculous to pose the affluent, successful Noam Chomsky as somehow being a political dissident in the US, as if he were somehow persecuted or prevented from airing his grievances. Simply disagreeing with official policy and writing numerous tracts to voice this does not qualify one as a dissident anymore than thousands of other unhappy commentators.

If we are going to compare "so-called" democracies to blatantly authoritarian regimes, then specific examples of actual persecution (as opposed to boycotts or investigation of legitimate wrongdoing) need to be briefly expounded. Armed groups, as the article leans toward saying, more properly fit in the mold of guerrillas, resistance groups, terrorists, etc.

The unsigned user above apparently uses a different definition than everyone else [1], that a dissident must be persecuted, poor, and objecting to a totalitarian regime. I've re-added Chomsky not only because I think the cap fits, but because he is widely considered a dissident: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=dissident+noam+chomsky (194,000 google hits). Jens Nielsen 10:04, 12 February 2006 (UTC). I just checked two other famous dissidents using the same method. Vaclav Havel got 120.000 hits, and Aung San Suu Kyi 80,000. Considering this, I see no reason to remove Chomsky. Jens Nielsen 10:08, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Still Chomsky is not on the list. May be the article needs to be split on say Soviet dissidents, Chinese and US. I agree that Chomsky is widely percieved as a dissident. Now there are 250 000 results in google when you type "dissident noam chomsky". He is widely reffered as a dissiden. --212.72.201.199 16:54, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] What this article needs

This article might be fleshed out to describe the various historic roles of dissident in society, including the anthropological data on dissidents in chimpanzee societies. Accordingly, the article might flow as follows.

[edit] From Votes for deletion

  • Dissident - dictionary definition (and not even a very good one). --Delirium 18:11, Aug 2, 2003 (UTC)
    • fixed it up somewhat, still needs more content, however - SimonP 19:19, Aug 2, 2003 (UTC)
    • This will be a super article. Do not delete. See Talk:Dissident. Rednblu 09:39, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Religious dissidents

There are also religious dissidents, which are those who actively oppose a dominant religion of a country.

I'm not sure that is necessarily applicable in the terms you describe. For example, say, a Sikh immigrant to the US could be described as a religious dissident because they opposed Christianity. Yet this does not at all imply that they are either oppressed for their beliefs or that their attitudes necessarily have any chance of gaining ground. If it were tailored to include merely those who oppose harsh, official implementations of religions in their native country then this could be better understood, though it obviously implies political dissidence in the first place.
In general, though, this article is not fleshed out very thoroughly. --TJive 19:48, 28 May 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Democtratic countries

In democratic societies political and social dissidents are supposed to be free from government pressure

How much can one get in prison when calling to abolishing the US constitution?--Nixer 15:42, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

In the USA? Nothing: calling for the abolition of the US constitution is protected free speech and carries no penalty. Gwernol 19:42, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
I said not exactly. How much can one get in prison when calling to abolishing the US constitution with non-contitutional means?--Nixer 20:06, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Again, you can't AFAIK be imprisoned in the US for simply for calling for the abolition of the constitution by non-constitutional means - that's free speech. However, if for example you lead an armed insurrection and killed five people you certainly would be jailed for murder. But the sentence you received would be for murder, not for saying you wanted to overthrow the government. Gwernol 20:27, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
So public calls for overthow the government in the US are not punished?--Nixer 20:35, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Correct, and this happens all the time, see for example [2] or [3]. There are lots of similar examples on the Net and you'll find similar nut jobs throughout the states. Most people just ignore them, but they have the protected right to say what they say. Gwernol 20:44, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dissidents

I think the term is mostly used according the USSR. In other countries (western, Asian, Nazi Germany etc) leaders of opposition or rebels are not called dissidents. So this is USSR-specific term.--Nixer 20:13, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. It may be that the term originated in discussions of Soviet disenters (does anyone know for sure?) but it is now much more widely applied. For example the term is often used to describe political prisoners and objectors from China, Cuba, Myanmar and other repressive countries. Gwernol 20:34, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Ok, maybe now it is more widely spread but only by analogy with the USSR and mostly used in contrext with communist countries. It is very rare to hear the term in context with non-communist country (the most widely used terms in this context are resistance, rebels, terrorists, extremists, revolutionairs, non-constructive opposition etc).--Nixer 20:45, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the English term in its political meaning was used in Wilson's To the Finland Station in 1940, and by Koestler in relation to Irgun in 1949. Only the two last examples (from 1970 and 1981) are related to dissidents in the USSR, though this usage probably prevailed throughout 1970s and 1980s, and strongly influenced the subsequent use of the word.
As for the history of the term in Russian, it seems that the article confuses Russian word 'otshepentsy' ('отщепенцы', 'those who split') which was often used pejoratively to describe any true or imaginary oppositionists to the Soviet regime, and the term 'dissidents', which never had pejorative meaning. Most likely, the latter term was first used in relation to the USSR by Western journalists, then, either immediately, like words 'refusenik' or 'peacenik', or through the Russian broadcasts of Western radio passed into unofficial Russian usage, and only after that began to be used in Soviet newspapers, mainly in the form 'so called dissidents' to emphasize the distance between the author and the subject.
BTW, all occurrences of the word form 'dissident' in the National Corpus of Russian Language before 1990 are from the dissident sources like Erofeev or Nekrasov.
--Pseudodemetrius 16:19, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pharmacological dissent

Why does pharmacological dissent take up the maojority of space in this article? Maybe extending the first, general description of dissent would be better?


[edit] Pharmacological dissent

As far as the sources state, the United States is the country which keeps more proportion of its population under the torture of confinement. And the main cause for imprisonment in US seems to be racially and classy selective drug "offenses" prosecution. So, pharamacological dissent seems to deserve space, for it would be the leading cause of physical repression of dissidents in US, a country self-described by its authorities as "democratic" (remeber countries such as the Democratic Republics of East Europe).

Yes, but one of the most famous dissident in Spain is Antonio Escohotado who you can find in http://www.escohotado.org Any person can include english version of http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escohotado

[edit] Militant dissidents ?

The definition of this seciton corresponds to the word insurgents. This section should be moved there. dima 23:21, 25 April 2007 (UTC)