Comment by nephihaha

1 day ago

Remember the GDR called the Berlin Wall the "Antifascist Protection Barrier"

There were no fascists in the DDR.

There are fascists in the former DDR today.

So I guess it worked.

  • The fascists were everywhere in the DDR: just called members of the party or as part of the Stasi.

    And I take the definition of fascists as anyone who prioritizes their political system, State or political view to a point of depriving any other citizen of their basic freedom.

  • "There were no fascists in the DDR."

    Not officially although in reality the Stasi quite happily reused Gestapo files, and there were numerous National Socialists who ended up east of the border.

    The GDR had a series of fake political parties, besides the Communist, in order to pretend they were a democracy. I believe they did have one that pretended to appeal to such people.

    "There are fascists in the former DDR today."

    Much more so than the west which did not have years of Communist rule.

  • > There were no fascists in the DDR.

    That was certainly the party line of the DDR at the time. Do you honestly believe it?

    It’s no coincidence that Vladimir Putin, a former KGB man who served in East Germany, claims that his war in Ukraine is justified in the name of denazification. It’s an easy rhetorical trick. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation_in_the_Russian_...

    • I believe this about as much as the Chinese Communist official who claimed that there were no homosexuals in the PRC.

      In reality, a lot of careerists shifted their loyalties from the National Socialist government to the Communist one. There were several years in which the Communists, much like their western counterparts, tried to weed out all the Nazis, before realising many of them were experienced in administering things. (The Eastern Bloc had its own smaller version of Operation Paperclip, although the scientists tended to be less willing.)