Hacker News Reader

Comment by actionfromafar | Hacker News Reader

There have been quips for many years about the dragnets of intelligence services and that "Stasi couldn't even dream about having such vast data" and similar.

But now we aren't talking about intelligence services anymore. ICE truly is Stasi for America, employing tactics such as "isolating them, depriving them of sleep and using psychological tricks such as threatening to arrest relatives." (From Wikipedia about Stasi.)

This year ICE will also become the "armed wing of the Party" thanks to fresh funding.

View on HN

The Stasi needed a significant segment of the DDR's population to be snitches. ICE just needs Palentir.

Oh, the snitches are there too, just check some of the comments in this thread. They only need a few percent.

I fear we are at the point where descendants of ICE employees will be embarrassed to acknowledge the relation.

Keep in mind that some Americans still proudly fly the Confederate flag.

The first and second Reconstruction eras didn't go far enough.

The irony about that is that a lot of the Confederate flag-flyers (ironically enough, overlapping with the Don't Tread on Me crowd) seriously hate the government.

The administration's kept them on side with culture wars red meat so far...

But the further ICE / police militarization goes, the more awkward the situation with right-wing militia types is going to get.

They hate the "government" which is an abstract evil entity. They love Trump, the police, and ICE.

MAGA was chanting "president of peace" only a few months ago, and did anyone complain about Venezuela? Not a peep. They thrive on logical contradictions.

It really is bizarre to behold when you share some of their supposed values.

They don't have values, that's just you projecting part of yourself on them. They have a tribe, and anything they say is in support of that tribe.

We're well past the point that they should be, I would be more concerned their descendants won't be, based on, let's say the last 250 years of this national experiment.

there are plenty of people who are children of cops or military who have no shame, so I doubt it

Or be proud once the history has been rewritten

“It says here in this history book that luckily, the good guys have won every single time. What are the odds?”

-- Norm MacDonald

Or we make it impossible to inflict such North Korean, Soviet, or Chinese style harassment such that the sins of one have no ability to propagate.

Nah, they'll still be able to kick down your door.

It might not be the right door, but that doesn't matter to them.

Grandchild: "Grandpa, what was it like back then, when ICE was snatching innocent people off the streets and the President was putting some them in dictator prisons without trial? Before the super bad stuff started?"

Grandpa: "It was a very controversial time, yes. Lots of people doing what they believed was best."

Grandchild: "Did ICE ever go after you?"

Grandpa: "I worked for the--it was only office--I mean, I was unemployed then. Yes, that's right! Tricky economy, don't you know. Only odd-jobs. I lived in a place where those things weren't happening. In fact, most of us didn't really know about it until it was all over. You remember that, right dear?"

Mother: <frustrated death-glare> "...Come along, let's wash your hands before dinner."

That's if they ever face a "truth and reconciliation" commision like after Apartheid South Africa.

If not, and if you have 3 hours, there's a documentary you can watch. The director said "It was like I went to Germany 40 years after WW2 and found out the Nazis had won".

There was an "anti-communist" massacre in Indonesia in 1965. The killers were sanctioned by the government who remained in power/are still very powerful nowadays. (When a reformist president said "maybe we can look at this part of the country's past", the rumour was, the army was going to let protesters (who are still gung-ho communist-hating) protest near the presidential palace, and not intervene if/when they invade it.

This documentary follows one old killer and his "journey" from being able to talk about it casually until he ends up meeting his conscience.

Here he is in the beginning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZqEzIEWzPk

And the full documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TDeEObjR9Q

Spain ended up the same way. The Franco regime just petered out and the ghouls got to keep their swanky digs in Madrid.

Same in former east Germany. Poland did did much better though, they kicked most of the bastards out but it was a dime on its side for a while, a lot of Polish pensioners were yearning back to the good old days and even today there is still a remnant of this.

So did Romania. Afaik Ceausescu was killed by his own employees in a rush bid to take over power while pretending to give people what they wanted.

e.g. post-WW1 Turkey following the Armenian genocide.

Arnold Schwarzenegger had a very heartfelt story about his childhood. It went more or less as you describe, except it was his dad, not his granddad and there was a lot of alcohol and abuse involved as well.

Hopefully that play ends as tragically or more as The Death of a Salesman.

>ICE will also become the "armed wing of the Party"

interesting that the ICE is performing that hallmark of 20th century - mass removal of "undesirable" people from society and placement them into the camps without criminal charge and judicial oversight, etc. thus totally undermining the main contract between government and society - due process.

I don't think Stasi is the most apt comparison, rather the Gestapo, where the "Geheime" did not refer to their existence being secret, rather their standards of operation, chain of command, and general accountability being beyond oversight from the electorate.

Apples and oranges, though, and it's all fruit.

The difference for me is that the Stasi seemingly had more competent people and more people that actually believed in what they were doing and thought it effective. With none of that, these are the actions of an organization that is failing and full of incompetence. It is even more alarming how effective they could be if anyone actually believed in them, including their own leadership or if the cause actually attracted worthwhile participants.

Such competent participants flock to these terror organisations only after it has proven itself a viable career path. Compare the chaos and mayhem of the brownshirts in Germany before the war, vs the Gestapo later. Very chaotic evil vs lawful evil.

At this point in time, it's not apparent if the current regime will prevail. Thus, it's time for brownshirt tactics. When Presidential/King/Dictatorial power is fully consolidated, States' Rights are just a memory, and all nonloyal judges are fired, it's time for the disciplined Career Bureaucrats to join ICE.

You're not wrong that that's the intent, I'm just not even seeing stupid bigots that are happy with it and they also don't seem to care about that either. So, once they lose even the hateful for not being hateful enough they're just as likely to be embarrassed by all of this or fracture amongst themselves with various no true bigot fallacy infighting. This has been the more recent mini patterns at least.

We're still in 1932. Night of the long knives was in 1934 after the Nazis had consolidated power. In 1932 they were still a party of block-headed street thugs with the SA terrorizing people. One of the reasons why they had all their rallies at night (the torchlight marches) is so people couldn't see that the SA were a bunch of meatheads who did not look good in Hugo Boss.

I don't know if you're right or not, but a lot of people who would otherwise be fans of meatheaded thugs are laughing at these people. I do worry the spectre of some unstoppable idiocy is myth. People at the time weren't used to mass media at all, and there were many other dynamics that may not sum up to a succinct conclusion. Perhaps people saying they were like the new Hun or whatever made people less likely to laugh at them, but, I know these people today are also pretty hilariously inept. Like for instance they all think facial recognition doesn't work with your lower face covered, and they don't realize that they actually don't have good discipline on their mask usage, and the tools they use on their phones to try to id people aren't nearly as good as the tools regular people use to track them.

One can always hope it continues like that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com