“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
-George Orwell, 1984
In a classic case of “life imitating dystopian sci-fi pulp fiction,” the German Fourth Reich has announced big plans for so-called “far-right extremist” (which now means “anyone not blindly obedient to government”) elements of the population it oversees.
This will evoke in many connoisseurs of pop culture remembrance of a little ditty from 2002 titled “Minority Report,” the plot of which is that the state has devised a convoluted method of detecting crime before it happens and therefore eliminated all murders in Washington, D.C. by 2054.
Via Associated Press:
“Germany’s top security official said Tuesday that she aims to make it easier to trace right-wing extremists’ financing and plans to set up an ‘early recognition unit’ to detect far-right and foreign disinformation campaigns as early as possible.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser’s proposals follow large protests against the far right in Germany in recent weeks. They reflect growing concern after a report said extremists met to discuss deporting millions of immigrants, including some with German citizenship, and that some members of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, whose support has doubled since the country’s 2021 election, were present.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency says the number of far-right extremists has been rising*. In 2022, it reached 38,800, with 14,000 of them considered potentially violent. The agency’s head, Thomas Haldenwang, said the numbers are believed to have risen again last year.”
*Note that the governing authorities never seem to bother to investigate why so-called “far-right extremism” (again, a misnomer designed to smear, not describe) might be attractive to a growing swathe of Western populations — as if, apropos of nothing, the previously well-heeled, domesticated, cosmopolitan, thoroughly liberalized German population suddenly decided to return to its Nazi roots because…
Something, something… probably Russia, definitionally “disinformation,” or maybe the sleazy “malinformation” reared its ugly head.
Related: ‘Malinformation’: The Newest Weapon in the Censorship Regime’s Arsenal
Naturally, it goes without saying that the trigger for “far-right extremism” is certainly not the glorious, culturally-enriching Diversity™ the EU has treated the serfs to for the past couple decades or so, or the coordinated destruction of the globalized economy on account of COVID, or the war waged against the food supply for Climate Change™, or any number of other abuses perpetrated by the multinational corporate state.
Related: Germany: Afghan Migrant Does a Diversity™, Rapes Drunk Teenager on Subway Platform 'For Hours', Migrants Responsible For 69% of Violent Crime in France
Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
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The only problem with "pre-crime" is... whose "pre-crime"? At any rate, last time I checked, conspiracy to commit murder is a crime, even before the murder is carried out. The same goes for any act which plots the overthrow of legitimate authority. So, law already exist to deal with known conspirators.
But I imagine the idea of "pre-crime" here is opposition to any government policy or action aimed at damaging business of the affairs of the innocent, in the name of perceived evils, not a "clear and present danger".
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