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Comment by shmerl | Hacker News Reader

Why is that interesting that dictatorship doesn't hesitate to openly attack dissent? That's actually expected from it.

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Stalin was by all accounts a dictator, but he operated differently. When the NKVD secret police would arrest someone who had made a political joke that somebody heard and reported, they weren't sent to freeze to death in a gulag in Siberia for the joke. No, they were forced to confess under torture to all sorts of laundry lists of ridiculous accusations of sabotaging production and acting as a spy for foreign governments and being the ringleaders of vast insurgent organizations, etc. Meanwhile, in the constitution of the Soviet Union there are all kinds of rights and legal protections and such. Kind of funny statistic, but the U.S has more people incarcerated as a percentage of the population than the Soviet Union ever did.

North Korea is a Stalinist state. They have elections and refer to themselves as a democratic people's republic. China does not have elections or refer to themselves as democratic.

Also, China is much more straightforward in prosecuting descent. They just say that someone belongs to an illegal non-harmonious organization like Falun-Gong or whatever and that's illegal. Send them to prison. No fancy trumped up charges or subterfuge needed.

> in the constitution of the Soviet Union there are all kinds of rights and legal protections and such > They just say that someone belongs to an illegal non-harmonious organization like Falun-Gong or whatever and that's illegal.

It seems like governments are somewhat uniform in the laws they pass, but fundamentally fickle about which laws they choose to enforce. In my state, for example, it's a felony to be a member of a subversive organization...

http://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9.81.030

...e.g., the Communist Party...

http://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9.81.083

...but it would be unthinkable for them to actually prosecute anyone for it.

That's something I never understood (and admittedly never researched either). Isn't there something in the constitution about freedom of association?

Yes. However judges cannot preemptively strike down laws, even if they are blatantly unconstitutional. Someone with "standing" must bring a case, which typically(?) means that the law has been applied to them. So unconstitutional laws often stay on the books without being enforced, until either someone overreaches and tries to enforce them, or the legislature formally repeals them. I believe anti-miscegenation statues were on the books for decades in some states after the Supreme Court struck them down.

I just read about something like that recently, a couple being thrown into jail in the US in the 1960s, for the 'crime' of being married and of being different races.

Edit: My mistake, it was 1958, but they took legal action in the 1960s (Loving vs Virginia, 1967), and despite the Supreme Court's ruling, some states kept such laws on the books as late as 2000 (Alabama), which is actually probably what you were referring to.

The comment by the judge in 1958 is (almost) unbelievable:

    Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow,
    malay and red, and he placed them on separate 
    continents. The fact that he separated the races shows 
    that he did not intend for the races to mix.

Presumably God wasn't as fussy about non-red races in the legal profession in North America.

Loving vs Virginia in 1967: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia

Yeah, I looked it up after I posted (probably should have done it the other way around), but thanks.

Y'know, in ancient Iceland there was a person called the "lawspeaker". His job was to memorize and recite the law -- all of it -- before the Althing twice a year. If he forgot any part of the law, it was no longer law.

I wish the federal government and every state had a lawspeaker -- for statute laws anyways.

That is a lot like the American system after you factor in wealth inequality, the cost of legal representation, and non-enforcement against the wealthy.

It's a US law (Washington State) that 13of40 cited.

If the Communist Party were actively trying to overthrow the United States government, you might see it enforced...

> Kind of funny statistic, but the U.S has more people incarcerated as a percentage of the population than the Soviet Union ever did.

Is that true? The number of Americans in prison is somewhat over two million. It's hard to find numbers for the USSR, but the conservative number I was able to find for the peak of the gulag system in 1950 is about 2.5 million, and that's out of a population a little over half the size of the current US population. Others claim the true numbers were much greater.

Note: not defending the US in any way here. Our prison population is absurd. The fact that the numbers are even this close is unacceptable. This is really just nitpicking.

Here's the source:

http://www.sott.net/article/300679-American-Gulag-US-has-mor...

That's quite different, talking about the total number of people who have ever been through the system, and not accounting for total population.

> acting as a spy for foreign governments and being the ringleaders of vast insurgent organizations

Bear in mind that for each of the prominent people made to confess all sorts of crazy things in the Moscow Trials, hundreds of thousands were more or less straightforwardly sent to the Gulag:

- Did you refer to Comrade Stalin as a fool in your letter to A?

- Yes I did but look...

- Art. 58, 25 years.

"Comrade Brezhnev, is it true that you collect political jokes?" – "Yes" – "And how many have you collected so far?" – "Three and a half labor camps."

ba-dum bum

Because it's very easy for them to control the narrative and spin their actions to their benefit, minimizing the negative associations with their actions. That they aren't probably means they want it seen this way, and I agree that's interesting.

You missed the point entirely.

The interesting part isn't how China behaves, it's that the US - supposedly on a higher level than China - behaves much the same way, it just tries really hard to cover it up.

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