East Germany

I know someone who escaped from East Germany in the 1960s. - This is someone that I know personally, not some vague anecdotal reference. - She and her family were granted permission from the government to visit relatives in West Germany for a weekend. They were not permitted to take anything of value with them, no money, jewelry, family heirlooms, not even photographs. If they had tried to carry valuables out of East Germany, they authorities would have suspected that they were planning to defect. They were only permitted to carry out clothing and essentials for a weekend stay.

Further, they could not say goodbye to friends, neighbors, or associates. They had to pretend that they would be returning in a few days. If they had given any hint that they might not return, their neighbors would have picked up on it and informed the authorities, in which case their permission to travel would have been revoked.

This is what life was like behind the Iron Curtain. People were encouraged to spy on one another. If you suspected that one of your neighbors was going to sneak off to the freedom of the West, it was your duty to inform the police. If you knew and took no action, you, too, would get into trouble.

Keep this context in mind as read the following paragraph. Think about the horror of living in a place where neighbors are encouraged to spy on one another, where any hint of noncompliance with draconian government policies would put you into legal jeopardy.

This past week, a popular host of a Fox opinion program encouraged his viewers to confront anyone they saw wearing a mask. He suggested that they walk up to the person with the mask and demand that they remove it. The host suggested that this was necessary in order to “reclaiming the life we once knew.”

The host wasn’t finished. He made an even more dangerous suggestion about children. He claimed that having children wear a mask was “child abuse” - his exact words - and suggested that if you see children wearing masks in public, it was your duty to “call the police or child services” in order to report the parents, “and keep calling until someone shows up.”

Authoritarian communist control of East Germany ended three decades ago, but I’m sure that some of the administrators of that regime are still alive. Imagine their delight at watching a prominent political opinion personality in the United States suggest that Americans spy on one another, Iron Curtain style, and “call the authorities” on their neighbors. Because that’s what authoritarians do. It’s not what people do in a free and democratic society.