The Guardian can’t quite bring itself to say it, can it?
When Joerg Winger did his military service in West Germany, he was given the job of snooping on Russian troops stationed in the GDR, or East Germany, the authoritarian regime on the other side of the iron curtain.
Authoritarian? Sure. But why not use the more common socialist?
Because most of those who read and write The Guardian still think socialism is a pretty good idea – despite the very evidence in the article. Actually, some of them, because of……
Like calling AntiFa riots mostly peaceful demonstrations. Like saying they are against discrimination yet are very anti-Semitic. Like being progressive but actually very repressive. The left do like to use words to give the wrong impression and hide them doing the very activity they say they are campaigning against.
You forget Tim, what the GDR had wasn’t “proper” socialism. The Guardianistas would, of course, organise it a lot better if they were in power, and we would have Utopia.
Words mean what Socialists want them to mean. IngSoc rules OK.
Well the D in GDR stood for democratic, which implies that the country had free and fair elections on a regular basis.
Walter Lacquer wrote an interesting essay on why the experts on Communism got it all so wrong and utterly failed to see the collapse of the Soviet Union coming. He said, sure, Russia was hard to study. But East Germany was small. Everyone spoke an easily studied European language spoken by three times as many people on the other side of the Wall. But none of the experts on East Germany doubted it was a popular regime either.
He cited one well known book on East Germany that spent hundreds of pages talking about the country – and did not mention the Stasi once.
The bets lies begin with convincing ourselves.
What was Merkel’s position the GDR? Soul mate or critic?
Is it possible to work out Merkel’s position on anything? She is the greyest politician of the grey. I suspect John Major had more convictions than Merkel
Calling the Wall, the “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart” should set alarms bells ringing with respect to todays ANTIFA
Wonder what Nazi is a euphemism for?