You will obey.

Sometime in the early 15th century, a bronze-skinned boy was born in the city of Cuzco with the name Cusi Yupanki. He was a boy who would soon change the face of a continent like nobody before him in history, even though the forces of destiny were initially levied against him.

The son of the emperor Wiraqucha, Yupanki wasn’t slated to become ruler of the Inca after his father. That divine honour was to be given to his brother Urco, who was so loved by Viracocha that he was appointed as crown prince of the people.

As a young man, Yupanki won a stunning victory against the Chanka people, who had been sworn enemies of the Inca for decades. After offering the slain bodies of the Chanka to his father to walk upon as part of the rites of victory, the emperor Viracocha refused the honour his son meant for him, instead offering the spoils of war to the soon-to-be-emperor Urco. Yupanki rebelled against the emperor’s wishes, stating he had not won the victory for his brother, but for his father.

As a result of his son’s disobedience, Viracocha was thrown into a rage. The emperor Viracocha plotted to assassinate his son as a message to any who would oppose his word, or his law. However, news of the plot reached Yupanki and the attempt on his life failed, resulting in Viracocha fleeing out of fear of reprisal and being forced into exile. After his father’s exile, the favoured heir Urco was murdered soon after—reportedly at the order of his brother—which resulted in Viracocha allegedly dying of extreme grief.

With his claim to rule unchallenged, the boy Yupanki was hailed in the Inca capital Cuzco as a hero of the people, and was renamed Pachaquitik: the “Earth Shaker” and new emperor of the empire. With that, Pachacuti would almost solely focus his attention on expanding the empire at all costs.

Any tribes or groups of people who found themselves living outside the borders of the Inca kingdom soon became targets of assimilation. The first to fall were the Inca’s historic enemies the Chankas, who previously seized Inca territories under Viracocha’s rule. Other tribes that soon found themselves living under Pachacuti’s rule included the Soras and the Ayarmaca people, as well as parts of the Chincha tribes to the east. However, after sending his brother and general Capac Yupanqui to finish the job of assimilating the Chincha, Pachacuti had him executed for failing to carry out the campaign to his standards, ending the life of another of his siblings.

Pachacuti’s brutality and high standards weren’t solely reserved for his family members, however. Under his leadership, he implemented sweeping reforms to ensure the ongoing obedience of all people who were absorbed into his people. He called this system the mitma.

The purpose of the mitma was simple: to break up previously conquered ethnic groups in order to stifle potential rebellion, and foster the forced adoption of Inca beliefs, traditions, and practices. To achieve this, Pachacuti always started at the top.

Killing the leadership or king of a newly-conquered tribe often nurtured hatred and the kindling of revolt towards their new Inca masters. So instead, Pachacuti ordered the children of conquered tribal leaders to be sent to Cuzco where they would undergo years of indoctrination and education, including being taught the Inca language Quecha, and groomed to be future political leaders of the empire. This ensured that the next generation of any subjugated people’s leaders would be loyal to the Inca, as well as forcing any current leaders to remain subservient by means of keeping their children hostage in the capital.

Once the head of the snake was dealt with, Pachacuti focused on the body. The mitma decreed that entire groups of people were forcibly relocated from their ancestral homes to new areas of the empire, compelling them to integrate into cities or regions with strong allegiances to the Inca empire. This diluted the old loyalties a group of people once held, at the same time promoting religious, ideological, and cultural assimilation that would ensure the strength of the Inca empire.

The mitma ensured that within a generation or two, the ancestral foundations of cultures that had lasted for centuries had crumbled into nothing more than memory and dust; what remained was only Inca. Pachacuti had succeeded in wiping the slate clean of almost all previous cultures to ensure the homogeneity of the Inca, and the total obedience of its people.

In the rare cases of dissidence, or where a person refused to abide by the ideological beliefs that were a part of the state-promoted norm, it was seen as a serious threat to the empire. These crimes of thought were severely punished, generally by throwing offenders off a cliff to meet a grisly death on the rocks far below.

In simple terms, the mandate of Pachacuti was to obey. In deed, in speech, and even in thought.

It seems that many leaders in our modern world want us to do the same.

Head of the World Economic Forum and real-life Dr Evil impersonator Klaus Schwab recently spoke about the kind of world his organisation seems to be hell-bent on moving us into. And as you might expect, it’s a world that will build on personal privacy, freedom of thought, and the autonomy of citizens everywhere.

Oh wait… nope. It will be the total opposite.

Translated from French, Schwab said in a recent interview “In this new world, we must accept transparency, and I’ll even say total transparency. You have to get used to it, and you have to behave accordingly. It becomes… integrated into your personality.” This on its own is terrifying in a very Orwellian kind of way. But the worst part of his speech in my opinion is that which we hear echoed over and again from those who advocate for certain forms of totalitarian control, as he finished by saying “…but if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t be afraid.”

One of Schwab’s most loyal ideological boot-lickers is Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau. Although Trudeau once held pride of place amongst the cesspool of decrepit global leaders for projecting an image of the handsome golden boy of political progress, many Canadians changed their tune when he began freezing the bank accounts of people who supported the mostly peaceful trucker protests in early 2022.

More recently, just last month Canada’s Radio-telephone and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced its plans to impose regulations on independent forms of media like podcasts that are distributed within the country. Distributors of podcasts like Spotify will be required to register with the government, as well as be required to contribute to the creation, production, and distribution of Canadian and indigenous content. In other words, if you want to operate in Canada, a certain percentage of the content you produce here must be Canadian.

But what is “Canadian”, anyway? Isn’t Canadian what the people of Canada decide it is, and what it evolves into over time based on the free exchange and distribution of ideas of the nation’s citizens? Or is Canadian what the bureaucracy decrees it is, by enforcing that the people must imbibe ideas the government deems are in line with the views of the nation?

Despite the fact that Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms specifically states that Canadians are guaranteed freedom of thought, belief, religion, and expression, it obviously doesn’t extend to those expressions which Daddy Trudeau and his government don’t like.

Back across the pond in the UK, the nation that once maintained its place as the lords-of-almost-all on our planet also has a human rights act that deems all in the nation have a right to the “freedom of expression”. However, mere weeks ago in September, the British government passed sweeping new laws that will regulate online content. The 300-page Online Safety Bill is one of the most distressing examples of a Western democracy stifling the free expression and thought of its people, by incentivising social media platforms to take down content the government disagrees with; even if that content may not be illegal.

Already, we can see evidence of the UK’s tampering with public opinion in the recent matter of the censorship of Russell Brand.

You probably already know that Brand has recently been embroiled in turmoil relating to accusations of indecency and assault against multiple women. If I were a betting man, I would probably put money on Brand not being completely innocent in at least some of the things he’s being accused of, especially taking into account his own admittance of previous bad conduct towards women. But in reality, my opinion shouldn’t mean a damn thing: as far as I’m aware, we still live in a society where someone is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

To the British government, Brand’s public peril has been the perfect opportunity to silence his constant criticism of the regime. Several members of the UK’s parliament have sent letters to organisations like Rumble and TikTok requesting that Brand’s content be demonetised on their platforms in an obvious effort to silence him. Something YouTube actually seemingly complied with, as they banned the British commentator from monetising his content on September 19.

What we are seeing is a government clearly meddling to silence someone they see as a dissident. All the while, Brand has not been charged with any crime (at least yet, anyway). Regardless of your views of the man himself, I think we can all agree this is a serious and dangerous overreach by one of the most powerful governments on the planet.

In my final example taking place in my birth country of Australia, a place that spawned the happy-go-lucky charm of the Wiggles, multiple arrests have taken place over the last few years for people simply having opinions that contradicted the government’s public health orders. One of the most striking examples was when a pregnant woman was arrested in her Melbourne home for simply sharing a Facebook post promoting an anti-lockdown event. To be clear, she wasn’t the promoter, creator, or organiser of the event; she merely shared it on her own timeline.

The Victorian assistant police commissioner admitted to the arrest made for “terrible optics”, but then defended the police’s heavy-handed approach, saying what they did was “reasonable.” In other words, it’s reasonable to arrest someone for simply disagreeing with their government overlords.

The above are all very varied examples of the censorship of free thought in our modern world, being perpetrated by those who are in power. But despite individual nuances, the message which ties them together is clear: your ideas, beliefs, and expressions are only valid if they mesh with the state-sponsored ideology that your government wants you to obey.

I believe the golden age of freedom of thought and speech on the internet is coming to an end. Our ability to say almost anything we want, and share the kinds of content we have previously shared with abandon, is already being restricted and stifled.

But this will only happen if we allow it to.

Although the people who spanned the Inca empire once boasted a range of varied opinions, ideas, expressions, customs, and even gods, Pachacuti ended that within just a few generations. All he left the people with were the ideas, beliefs, and expressions he mandated were acceptable.

I fear if we allow the laws I’ve outlined here to propagate and be further accepted into society, we’ll be faced with the same thing in only a generation or two. We’ll be living in a world of state-sanctioned ideas. A world that our children, or grandchildren will believe is normal, because that will be the world they were born into, and the world that has shaped their ideas and beliefs. The only world they have ever known.

Do you want that world to come to pass? I don’t.

Will you obey? Only time will tell.

We all have a voice. I think it’s time we use it.

Leon Hill.
Co-founder, Abundantia.

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