AI Says...
Contemporary dictatorships no longer content themselves with locking opponents in cells. They build a total prison, a sprawling system in which every individual — opponent, journalist, exile, but also loyal supporter of the regime — is imprisoned in another kind of cage: fear, guilt, uncertainty, pain, compromise. It is a machine that crushes everything, like an industrial fishing net that selects nothing: it catches the targeted fish, destroys innocent species, scrapes the seabed until it sterilizes the entire political ecosystem.
1. The invisible cage: exiles, families, silent pain
The cruelest aspect of authoritarian regimes is not the prison of prisoners. It is the prison of those who are not locked up, but live in waiting, dread, helplessness.
Families: the involuntary co-detainees
For every political prisoner, there is:
a mother aging in fear;
a child asking questions with no answers;
a wife or husband waiting for an impossible call;
a brother or sister exhausting themselves in endless procedures.
They live in a psychological prison:
the prison of the weekly visit with its humiliations;
the prison of media silence;
the prison of risk of reprisals;
the prison of guilt (“if I speak, they’ll go after them even more”).
We never speak enough about these families who live a life sentence without conviction.
Relatives of exiles: the invisible hostages
Those who fled also live in a cell without walls.They constantly fear:
reprisals against family members who stayed behind;
losing their roots;
never seeing their home again;
becoming suspects simply for having left the country.
Exile is a sentence without horizon, a prison without a verdict.
2. The visible cage: repress, surveil, punish
Modern dictatorships have perfected the art of locking up disruptive voices.And each regime has its own repressive signature — recognizable, repeated, almost methodical.
Putin: the verticality of fear
In Russia, Vladimir Putin’s power has been built on emblematic episodes:
the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who exposed abuses in Chechnya;
the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, attributed by London to the GRU;
the imprisonment of Alexei Navalny, then his death in detention under conditions condemned worldwide;
dozens of independent media outlets shut down, intimidated, or forced into exile.
The physical prison is there, massive. But the psychological prison is even greater: a climate where telling the truth becomes a suicidal act.
Maduro: the slow agony of a society
In Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro, several international reports document:
torture in SEBIN prisons;
the imprisonment of emblematic opponents like Leopoldo López;
famine organized by economic mismanagement;
the exodus of more than 7 million Venezuelans since 2014 — a country emptied of itself.
There, prison is not just a building. It is hunger, lack of medicine, collapse — trapping millions inside their own homes.
Abdel Fattah al-Sisi: the machinery of repression
In Egypt, human rights organizations speak of 60,000 political prisoners.The Sisi regime uses:
counterterrorism as universal justification;
exceptional courts;
enforced disappearances;
systematic torture;
the transformation of Egypt into a vast Middle East surveillance zone.
Every opponent becomes a potential terrorist. Prison no longer punishes acts but supposed intentions.
Xi Jinping: the algorithmic perfection of authoritarianism
In China under Xi Jinping, the total prison takes its most sophisticated form:
omnipresent biometric surveillance;
political re-education;
algorithmic censorship;
social credit system;
mass internments in Xinjiang, condemned by many NGOs and international bodies.
Even silence is monitored.
Kaïs Saïed: the slow slide into absolutism
In Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, critics accuse Kaïs Saïed of repeating a classic scenario:
dissolution of Parliament;
arrest of various opponents (MPs, civil society figures, journalists);
progressive concentration of powers.
Tunisians are discovering that democracy can die in broad daylight, without a coup — simply through decrees.
Abdelmadjid Tebboune: the suffocation of the Hirak
In Algeria, after the hope of the Hirak, repression intensified:
numerous activists imprisoned;
the “Radio M” news site targeted;
and above all, the imprisonment of journalist El Kadi Ihsane, a figure of the free press, charged under conditions denounced by RSF and many NGOs.
The message is clear: anyone who portrays the country differently from the state will be silenced.
Netanyahu: the erosion of checks and balances
In Israel, critics — including internal ones — accuse Benjamin Netanyahu of seeking to:
weaken the independence of the Supreme Court;
neutralize judicial institutions while himself being indicted;
instrumentalize the state of emergency and national polarization to strengthen his power.
Here, the prison is not yet total, but institutional foundations are being weakened.
Trump: the temptation of the lone strongman
In the United States, Donald Trump is not a dictator.But he embodies, for his critics, the authoritarian temptation within a fragile democracy:
delegitimization of independent media (“enemy of the people”);
pressure on the Department of Justice;
attempt to overturn the 2020 electoral result;
indirect encouragement of a mob that stormed the Capitol.
This is not a dictatorship, but it is the handbook of the strongman: delegitimize, divide, polarize.
3. The moral cage: the downfall of courtiers
The “total prison” also traps the regime’s loyalists, its servants, its beneficiaries.
They are imprisoned:
in their privileges, which they fear losing;
in their actions, which they cannot confess;
in the fear of becoming the next sacrifice;
in the guilt that consumes them as the regime sinks.
No matter the country: every autocracy manufactures unwilling executioners.
4. The total prison: a destructive net
This global repressive system works like an industrial fishing net:
it captures opponents (the “targeted fish”);
it traps ordinary citizens (the “accidental catch”);
it destroys families (the fragile ecosystem surrounding them);
it corrupts loyalties (the moral seabed);
it smothers light, life, hope (political biodiversity).
In the end, only an empty ocean remains — a country drained of freedom, meaning, and sometimes even population.
Conclusion
The total prison needs no walls, no judges, no bars. It needs fear, division, lies, and a power that justifies itself.
To fight it, we must first name it, expose it, make it visible.For the most dangerous prison is always the one we do not see.
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