An interesting history could be written of the murder or imprisonment during the twentieth century of people who wore glasses, merely because they wore glasses. Communists in particular were inclined to believe that people who wore glasses were their enemies, because – despite their own materialist conception of history, according to which the driving force of history is economic relations rather than ideas – shortsightedness is particularly prevalent among intellectuals, and intellectuals, at least outside the humanities of departments of western universities, have ideas that might cast doubt on the ultimate truth of communist ideology: a backhanded tribute to the fact that ideas ultimately rule the world. An interesting exception among eyeglass-phobic dictators was Macias Nguema, the first, democratically elected, president of Equatorial Guinea, subsequently overthrown by his nephew, the current president, who killed or drove into exile a third of the population, and who had a special animus against those who wore eyeglasses. His animus probably arose more from his uncertain personal claims to intellectual distinction than from the mixture of paranoia and gimcrack ideas about neo-colonialism that he picked up third-hand, which was the nearest he came to ideology.
Lean completo The Realities of Evil by Theodore Dalrymple
Los servicios de inteligencia nunca son inteligentes, viven del temor y la ideología, el prejuicio. La ideología ha matado a más personas que cualquier peste... Y todo terror, todo terror, precisa colaboradores entusiastas y entusiastas convencidos. Así, por desgracia.
Max Aub, judío austriaco
Luis Villoro, comunista
Porfila Reyna, agente de Castro
¿Qué lleva a alguien a delatar a otro por mor de sus prejuicios?
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