This Friday, I only have one exercise for you to do, over and over again, when the opportunity presents itself: vote, vote for your life. A warning tale of when authoritarian regimes get a hold of its citizens and intrumentalize them to do their dirty work comes from the 1981 film Your Neighbor’s Son: The Making of a Torturer by the Danish directors Jørgen Flindt Pedersen and Erik Stephensen. Between 1967 and1974 Greece was ruled by a military junta who brutally tortured political prisoners. Those who acted as the torturers were conscripts who had been given a special training for two months, but after that had certain privileges, especially when they made the prisoner break down. Through interviews with Michaelis Petrou, former conscript, and Anastasios Minis, former war hero and general, the film gives us a chilling understanding of the biopolitical mechanisms of a totalitarian regimes. So, while we have it, exercise your right to vote on Tuesday and keep oppression at bay.
