> I don’t believe those living “normal lives” in East Germany or the Soviet era considered the police to be evil and invasive the way we do today.
"normal life" under the Stasi was constant political terror and suppression.
The death counts are low because they thought death too little of a penalty for opposing them - they used psychological warfare (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung) and torture instead.
The International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims states that there were between 300,000 and 500,000 victims of the Stasi's use of psychological warfare, direct physical torture and gross human rights violations: https://web.archive.org/web/20210909114942/https://irct.org/....
Nobody that I know of in the USA felt compelled to build a giant balloon to fly their family to Canada yet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Germany_balloon_escape
If we don’t try to delete the data off our phones then the anti-freedom brigade has already won.
We're just not at that stage yet, but we're getting there.
It's already a crime (in the books) to drive out of several red states for women's health care reasons, and they'll follow you on flock if they can.
Mark Bray had his and his family's airline tickets to Spain out of Newark "mysteriously cancelled" while in line after checking in their baggage.
Definitely it can always be worse and I think we need to break ridiculous laws. I know nothing about Mark Bray but that is a ridiculous thing that should adjudicated.
Yeah, I wrote about this on HN before. Americans tend to imagine that WW2 ends and then East Germany immediately puts up a wall and now nobody can leave but it was way more gradual than that. The year the European war ended you could just walk across the border, you'd need to show some ID but you have ID because it was the war and Germans issued everybody with ID in the war. The Allies are manning the borders, they want to arrest Nazis, so ID saying you're a Nazi is a bad idea, but if you're just some farmer from outside Leipzig (so East Germany) you can easily cross. More than a Million people flee West. Are they foolish? You already know the answer.
By the end of the 1940s, things are tightening up, there are now armed "police" who in effect work for the Soviets "protecting" East Germany at the border, barbed wire and deep trenches now block unofficial crossings, but it is still definitely possible to leave, in the worst case maybe you bribe a guard. Hundreds of thousands are able to flee by "just" walking (or driving) West.
In 1952 the "Special Regime" begins to "keep out spies". Most of the border is sealed, you can't bribe your way when there is no official crossing, the remaining guards are told to shoot people who try to cross, after all none of them are legitimate. However since Berlin still has a crossing, and the West still seems hell bent on holding their half despite the fact it's cut off from the world, you could travel to East Berlin and sneak across to West Berlin. Over the next decade or so millions do, East Germany tried very hard to stop this, but because it was physically possible it seemed like there wasn't much they could do...
In 1961 they built the wall. It was no longer physically possible to escape.
I sometimes wonder what the tipping point is for people, or whether there actually is one for many.
It's as if they are looking for an exacting duplicate of previous regimes before they become concerned—the agency name must be "Stasi" and uniforms must be of the same color.
I think we have to wait for our moment of protest to arrive. We should keep our eyes open for opportunities for civil disobedience.
Imagine the stories the currently ICE-detained could tell. Hunted in the streets like animals and stuck in cages, with no right to due process.
Sure, not as bad. Woohoo.
Be that as it may, observe that the directions are opposite.
Planning, attempting to, or helping people escape (not stay) was the #1 reason for Stasi arrests.
Specifically, the most frequent Stasi arrest charges were Republikflucht ("fleeing the republic") and Fluchthelfer ("helping others flee")
Also, the Stasi ran on roughly 1 informant per 60–180 residents. Your network of friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors would have several. They officially criminalized private speech, correspondence and travel. The US surveillance system is bad, but the Stasi informant network and set of official consequences was at such a level as to cause constant fear and dread for everyone.
Indeed. The rising flood of people feeling East for West Berlin was the very reason for the construction of the Berlin Wall.
As others point out, in the DDR one could not LEAVE. The main reason we have to have large sweeps for people coming here illegally is because administrations other than Obama and Trump turned a blind eye and did little enforcement. The Biden admin went to far as being negligent in their enforcement, so now there is a lot of backlog.
There are very few if any country that does not enforce immigration rules. Let any American try to live illegally in Canada. Sure, they can live under the radar like you can in Mexico too, but if they catch up to you, goodbye. Mexico doesn’t even treat its own returning citizens well. If you have not been a taxpayer you have to assume many things tax paying Mexicans get for free like education and healthcare. People act like we’re an aberration for enforcing immigration laws. We’re not. Go check out South Africa and see how they treat illegals.
It doesn't bode well for the US to compare itself to others in this regard.
The one place where any hard working person was welcome.
What is the protectionism even for? The US doesn't have a great social system that can be exploited.
Those"illegals"? They were making sandwiches and cleaning toilets, and this is their reward.
It's less about what they did after arriving and more about border violation itself.
Immigration has an official legal process to follow.
Why is that so bad? If the law needs to change - fine, change it. But allowing people to break the law is to enable collapse of the rule of law.
Ah, the law. Did the Stasi break the law?
Forgive my comparison, but it illustrates the problem.
The law cannot be allowed to become lawless itself, depriving the people of their rights to fast track the pre-determined punishment.
Try just walking into Mexico and staying there indefinitely. You'll have it far worse ... they don't play around.
What country does not have immigration laws? We’re not unique in having them nor in enforcing them. Check out Taiwan, China, Singapore, Japan, Egypt, South Africa, Chile, Peru, Canada, etc.
None of those have poorly trained, masked, armed kidnappers snatching people off the streets and shooting their citizens.
None of those are needed for enforcing immigration law. This is a choice, supported by a lot of people who should have known better.
Well, if previous presidencies hadn’t been derelict in their duties (e-verify, timely removals, ineligibility to benefits etc) we would not have been in this pickle. But, especially the Biden admin they _removed_ existing barriers, worked with NGOs to up the numbers of migrants arriving, many ending up illegal, means that there is a large backlog that normally would not need those measures had previous admins not been derelict. In the last 30 years only Obama and Trump enforced immigration laws.
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I prefer the Japanese way and the Swiss way. Their citizens come first, foreigners come second. The needs of citizens come before the need for cheap labor. Every job is a decent job. No job is so bad that they can only get illegals to do them.
Yes we can have legal immigrants that fill skills gaps. Thats not an issue for 95% of Americans so long as it’s done justly (and not simply a way to pay workers less).