The Stasi in Our Minds

""Yet this view of East Germany as another evil German dictatorship was by no means generally accepted in the West at that time. Even to suggest a Nazi?Stasi comparison was regarded in many parts of the Western left as outmoded, reactionary cold war hysteria, harmful to the spirit of d'tente. The Guardian journalist Jonathan Steele concluded in 1977 that the German Democratic Republic was 'a presentable model of the kind of authoritarian welfare states which Eastern European nations have now become.' Even self-styled 'realist' conservatives talked about communist East Germany in tones very different from those they adopt today. Back then, the word 'Stasi' barely crossed their lips." (NY Review of Books) Liberty is a habit; and so is the acceptance of tyranny apparently."