A teacher in school told me about the time they visited East Germany. Armed guards poked though his luggage. It's a slippery slope toward fascism.
What has changed recently is technology collapsing the world into a single blob of information, and that aspect gets worse every year.
The law works differently at the border, especially for non-citizens. Tourists don't have any legal right to get in. You may argue that the guards should be kinder and I would agree.
The historical examples you mention involve racism and slavery that were terrible but also the global standard at the time.
The Patriot Act is scary, but it doesn't seem much better elsewhere in the Anglosphere or in Europe. Say something impolitic loud enough and you'll get in trouble anywhere.
Here's hoping individual freedoms win in the end.
Depends on who "you" are.
There some some who are allowed to openly make tangible, if thinly veiled death threats to others without repercussions. Others can have their lives ruined over trivial things.
The "you"s who are not granted as much freedom of speech are aware of it and only express themselves among trusted people.
The type of speech being policed is different, but it's absolutely happening.
i drove to Surrey to a UPS Store, resealed and shipped the package and returned to the border. The US Immigration officer asked why I was only in Canada for 30 minutes, I explained, he laughed and sent me on my way.
Moral of the story is that every country can and will search your stuff and detain you and often turn you back for no meaningful reason.
Horribly authoritarian, with wanton disregard for human rights, yes, but not "fascist".
Fascism is a specific ideology invented in Italy in the early 20th century; it does not just mean any authoritarian dictatorship.
Indeed, but those people are wrong. It would be like calling Jerry Falwell an Islamist extremist. Maybe they are bad for vaguely similar reasons but it is still inaccurate.
If you start telling me about how Syria has a serious problem with fundamentalist Baptists I am just going to assume you have no idea what you're talking about.
Really, you're just pissing into the wind.
I agree that the term fascist is wildly over-used, to the point where actual fascist behaviours are getting normalised.
To add another example to your list -- the TSA also has their own police (e.g. Federal Air Marshal Service), but they don't work the line screening your baggage.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_in_the_Unite...
If you are doing something illegal, they call the police, and the police arrest you.
Or is it “huh europe is weird they give their TSA agents guns instead of having the transport security and also airport police?”
Not sure I would ever consider the GDR to have been "fascist".
Is it? Lack of rights at the border isn't "fascism", it's the norm. I don't think any country gives you 4th amendment (or similar) rights at the border, even liberal democracies.
TSA employees in 2000's USA scan your luggage and poke through it with technology. For any reason or no reason, they can open it up and poke through it by hand, or ask for assistance from nearby policemen with guns.
Is there any moral difference? If so, what is it?
(Also, nitpick: The East Germans were Communists, not fascists.)
We take into account motivation pretty often to evaluate morality not sure why you can't apply it here
TSA's purpose is prevent harm to other passengers (effectiveness is debatable but not the point), the east German border guards were there to keep control on what information the population could access and share
They are not the same thing even if the means look the same
There's no action (and by that I do mean action, not something abstract that involves multiple actions and choices) that won't be moral some times and immoral others. Intent is always to be accounted for. I'd be happy to have counterexamples if you have any in mind
Also pretty weird to see you infuse a sense of moral superiority to this website of all places
There was probably some nationalism too. Stalin buried internatonalism quickly. They would inevitably bow to the Russian overlords. No shame about it. We were bowing to the USA in the West and we still are.
Anyway, was communism only a facade by the 70s and the 80s? In that case it was a fully fascist country. All of the East.
I'd like to hear from somebody who lived in those countries at that time.