• ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      7 months ago

      Man the Stasi might be my biggest “There’s actually zero difference between good and bad things. You imbecile. You fucking moron.” thing. Like actually “secret police” whose job is to root out fascism and the remnants of Naziism are fundamentally different from “secret police” whose job is to protect Capital.

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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        7 months ago

        Not to mention West German intelligence was literally build by the CIA out of remnants of nazi agencies, and had some real hits in their career like protecting Stepan Bandera when he and his thugs murdered over 100 people in there.

        History is a flat circle.

      • Greenleaf [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        7 months ago

        On top of that, they really were used as a way to gauge the sentiment of the people. They did actual, normal “information gathering”. And even then, the Stasi had nowhere near the information on you that Google and Facebook do now.

        But yeah, unless you were a fascist, a capitalist reader, or a suspected western intelligence asset, you basically had nothing to worry about.