Sniffing out Non-Conformity
That was the teachers’ job in communist East Germany, a country with a totalitarian system many ill-informed Germans still praise:
Every German schoolchild learns to revile Hitler, but what about Erich Honecker, boss of communist East Germany? He was not a dictator, or so most teenagers from eastern Germany seem to think. And the dreaded Stasi, which jailed and tortured citizens who stepped out of line? Just an intelligence service, say young easterners. These findings, from a survey of 5,200 schoolchildren by Berlin’s Free University, dismayed those who think national identity and democratic values rest on shared judgments about the traumatic past.The ignorance is unevenly spread. Young western Germans know more of East Germany’s history. In Bavaria just 39% of schoolchildren had “little or very little” knowledge; in Brandenburg 72% were ill-informed. A third of eastern German students thought that Konrad Adenauer and Willy Brandt, two western giants, actually governed the east.
Stupidity fuels the growing communist movement in Europe.
Yes what is it about Communism that gets people so crazy? I mean, I'm a centrist, and I don't mind a little bit of social programs and some regressive taxation or such, but I am not about to go riot and throw bombs and get together with all my friends and come up with blatant propaganda, and hate all rich people, and want the government to control all our lives like a nannystate. What's with the extremism when it comes to communism? Where does all the anger and fanatacism come from, especially in the West where even the poor people are living fairly good lives.