Surveillance States were long used to repress citizens by State Actors. An examination of the Stasi will illustrate for us the parallels we are now seeing in the words and deeds of our government, Big tech and other corporations in America. But first…a historic overview of the Stasi.
Stasi was the colloquial name for the East German Secret Police. More formally, the, “Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, “(MfS) Ministry for State Security. Additionally, Stasi was referred to as, “Staatssicherheitsdienst,” (SSD) or, State Security Service. The Stasi was the internal Security arm of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). This was the East German Secret Police that operated from 1951 until 1989 until the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The MfS motto effectively conveyed their mission: “Shield and sword of the Party.” (Schild und Schwert der Partei)Party, referring to the “Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, (SED) or, the, “East German Communist Party,” formed in April of 1946 with the merger of the Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party of Germany.
The SED was the single dominant party for the German Democratic Republic. A Marxist-Leninist political party that remained in power from its formation post World War II and remaining in power until its dissolution in 1989.
