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East German Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung (2021)

maxhertzberg.co.uk

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Re: East German Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung (2021)

#71

Post by School-Cotton »

vincnetas wrote: post #47
anovikov wrote: post #6

Time and again we see how half-assed dictatorships don't work. Soviet Union and the Eastern Block failed because they tried to be nice. By doing so, they achieved the worst result possible: cynical, profoundly disillusioned society and an economic failure on top of that. They should've either folded when they realised that "classless and stateless" Communism was never going to work - which is, by the late 1970s at th…

Socialism is not Communism.

What is your definition of socialism and communism? “Socialism” is used with a very wide set of definitions. Both the French socialist party (which is at most center-left) and the East German SED would have described themselves as “socialist”, and surely the latter at least would have thought socialism was incompatible with capitalism and that communism was its end goal.

Re: East German Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung (2021)

#73

Post by dmos62 »

szszrk wrote: post #48
quantumgarbage wrote: post #9

On this topic, I can't recommend enough the movie "The life of Others" (2006). Depicts surveillance in Eastern Germany and the state of sheer fear and paranoia its citizens had to live in.

Have you seen it available somewhere in Europe recently? I've been looking for it for a while, with no success. I'd be happy with anything from DVD to archive.org/youtube upload or whatever.

You can find it on bittorrent: https://bt4g.org. That's a DHT search engine. Put in your query and sort by seeder count, then use the magnet link to load it onto a bittorrent client (e.g. qbittorrent).

Re: East German Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung (2021)

#74

Post by School-Cotton »

anovikov wrote: post #33
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you using Socialism and Communism interchangeably? Communism goes further than Socialism (or Socialism doesn't go as far as Communism), Communism is more extreme, cold and hard and not at all blurry-edged, according to my understanding anyway. All instances of -isms eventually fall to the unrelenting winds of human nature. Not necessarily due to the ideals within the -ism itself.

Well, Communism was seen by countries we call "Communist" (GDR, Soviet Union, Red China in Mao era, and the like), as something potentially possible in some distant future, it was their endgame (some claim, only notionally so, with no actual plan of getting there, but it doesn't matter really). What they had in reality, they called "Socialism". Socialism is the "form of industrialised society where private ownership…

Socialism has practically infinite different meanings depending on whom you ask (and in what country). There’s nothing that ideologically unifies Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Bernie Sanders, and Joseph Stalin other than being somewhere left of center, but all of them would have described themselves as socialists.

Re: East German Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung (2021)

#75

Post by dmos62 »

Helmut10001 wrote: post #12
begueradj wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some European countries, if you apply to rent an apartment, the landlord can see you failed to pay 1 month rent several years ago. That's just a tiny example. Is this control and surveillance or ... democracy and freedom ?

I have a tenant who has been living in my garden house for two years without paying rent. It is almost impossible to solve this situation. I am not even allowed to turn off the water or electricity. There are always two sides to every coin.

That sucks. What law protects your renter?

Re: East German Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung (2021)

#76

Post by chgs »

okeuro49 wrote: post #25

In the UK there is "social media intelligence", where AI systems scan the firehose of messages as they appear. [1] So people have been arrested for posting something online, even if nobody appears to have seen it, and they delete it shortly after. The policing is selective, depending on political view. For example, there were recently people with placards in London calling for the death of JK Rowling, which is de fac…

If you think an enhanced dbs check can affect your job wait to see what posting on social media will do.

Re: East German Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung (2021)

#77

Post by pbhjpbhj »

lifestyleguru wrote: post #46
walterbell wrote: post #7

Article mirror: https://archive.is/d1rzC Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung 2014, https://www.ted.com/talks/hubertus_knabe_the_dark_secrets_of... > Hubertus Knabe studies the Stasi — and was spied on by them. He shares stunning details from the fall of a surveillance state, and shows how easy it was for neighbor to turn on neighbor.

During COVID face masks were enough. Fine speculators earner low hundreds trading them, politicians made frauds worth millions, anyone could pick on any stranger not wearing or wearing them incorrectly, law enforcement could impose the most ridiculous fines. It's so trivial to make people yap at each other.

Except masks were a societal necessity to prevent further spread of an airborne pathogen - people not wearing masks were choosing to put their neighbours at risk of death.

I'm not sure what a "fine speculator" is?

In the UK the Tory ruling party used mask supply, and it seems other contract-based fraud (Covid website, at least), to steal £Billions from the Exchequer.

Re: East German Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung (2021)

#78

Post by dmos62 »

sien wrote: post #36
lb1lf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As for your last point, Solzhenitzyn said something memorable about that - 'We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the p…

It makes you wonder if 'disinformation' actually works if the mass propaganda of totalitarian regimes fails so dramatically. There is an interesting book called 'Not Born Yesterday' that points out that people are pretty skeptical . https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45358676-not-born-yester...

Russian disinformation campaigns the past 20 years have been outrageously effective.

Re: East German Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung (2021)

#79

Post by thinkingemote »

sixhobbits wrote: post #54

How does one reconcile the idea that the Stasi disappeared political opponents regularly but also engaged in weird stuff like moving people's socks around. > The final stages entailed psychological and physical harassment: moving things around at home (one morning the alarm clock goes off at 5am instead of 7am, and the socks are in the wrong drawer, there’s no coffee left …); damage to bikes and vehicles (eg slashing…

Perhaps for the same reason Russia's intelligence forces does it? They kill people in an obvious manner to send a message and the message is to demoralise, destabilise and psychologically harass other people. "I could be next"

I'm not sure if the Stasi disappeared people in an obvious or hidden manner though. Maybe they did it more frequently than modern states assassinations? In both cases it shows that the life of any person is not important to them - what's important is the effects an action causes.

Re: East German Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung (2021)

#80

Post by DavidVoid »

szszrk wrote: post #48
quantumgarbage wrote: post #9

On this topic, I can't recommend enough the movie "The life of Others" (2006). Depicts surveillance in Eastern Germany and the state of sheer fear and paranoia its citizens had to live in.

Have you seen it available somewhere in Europe recently? I've been looking for it for a while, with no success. I'd be happy with anything from DVD to archive.org/youtube upload or whatever.

You can check: https://www.justwatch.com/de/Film/Das-Leben-der-Anderen

Seems to be available in Germany and some other countries, but not here in Sweden at the moment (I think it used to be on Netflix here).

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