Gaslighting in Democracy

Gaslighting is “the practice of psychologically manipulating someone into questioning their own sanity, memory, or powers of reasoning.” There are many daily examples of gaslighting coming from the media and corrupt politicians daily. The question remains, are those manipulated able to tell that they are manipulated and are they making corrections to the warped reality they have been convinced to believe and trust?

At the end of WWII, Germany was split into two parts. One part was controlled by the Allies minus the Russians, Bundesrepublik Deutschland (BRD), German Federal Republic or West Germany; the other part was controlled by the Russians, Deutsche Demokratische Republik, (DDR), German Democratic Republic or East Germany. That side of Germany, five states in total, was neither Democratic, nor a Republic, it was a dictatorship controlled by the Soviet-style Communist Party.

The Soviets made sure that a long border, a physical Iron Curtain, was built between the two German countries with a wide no-man’s land guarded by prison-like watchtowers with machine guns, guards, mines, trenches, and barbed wire. Sometimes this frontier ran through farms and pastures, splitting farmers’ lands. This border remained in place from 1949 until 1990 and it stretched 1,381 kilometers (858 miles) from the Baltic Sea to Czechoslovakia. It was established on July 1, 1945 as a boundary between the Western and the Soviet occupation zones of Germany.

To forcibly keep the East German population trapped inside the socialist country, the border was built as “the world’s most heavily fortified, defined by a continuous line of high metal fences and walls, barbed wire, alarms, anti-vehicle ditches, watchtowers, automatic booby traps and minefields. It was patrolled by 50,000 armed East German border guards.”

This border reflected Winston Churchill’s ideological metaphor of the Iron Curtain that split the Soviet and the Western bloc countries during Cold War as an ideological boundary between capitalism and socialism/communism.

The city of Berlin itself was split into two parts, the Western side, and the Eastern side. West Berlin was democratic and free while East Berlin was communist and captive. The 27-mile long and tall Berlin Wall was built to divide the two city parts, separating families overnight, building the wall sometimes through the middle of a street. The first victim of the Berlin Wall was a lady named Ida whose apartment building was on the side of East Germany while the street was now in West Germany. She jumped and died on the way to the hospital. At the Berlin Wall, Thousands Tried Creative—and Dangerous—Ways to Get Across (history.com)

People communicated from their apartment windows across the street, over the wall. Many lost their lives in the process of trying to escape from East Germany to freedom in West Germany.  Many succeeded making it to the west by any means necessary, some creative, others daring, and others quite dangerous. Nobody is on record trying to flee to East Germany.

“Wolfgang Engels, a 19-year old East German soldier who helped build the barbed-wire fences that initially separated both Berlins, stole a tank and drove it through the wall itself.” He got caught in the barbed wire and was shot twice but managed to escape. . At the Berlin Wall, Thousands Tried Creative—and Dangerous—Ways to Get Across (history.com)

DDR or East Germany was held under the Communist Party control, with the help of the infamous STASI, the security police. It was a police state, and everyone lived in fear. Nobody could leave if they wanted to.

DDR was NOT a democratic republic, it was a socialist tyranny controlled by the police state under the rule of the Communist Party.

After the Berlin Wall came down and the two Germanys unified in 1989, Angela Merkel became their Chancellor from 2005-2021, the longest ruling chancellor in history. She attended the Karl Marx University where she received a degree in physics and worked in East Berlin; she earned a doctorate in quantum chemistry.

“Some of her former colleagues from the Central Institute of Physical Chemistry claimed that she was active as a secretary for agitation and propaganda at the Institute, though Merkel maintained that she was responsible for cultural affairs.”

Why the citizens of the former 16 states of the Federal Republic of Germany chose to elect her Chancellor, is hard to understand. The entire West Germany had to support the disastrous centralized economy of the East Germans and their poverty resulting from the Communist Party mismanaging and stealing resources for their own wealth.

When oblivious Americans advocate for democratic socialism, they are advocating for a dictatorship. But they think they are advocating for free stuff and government welfare provided by the free market like in the Scandinavian countries. But these Scandinavian countries are not socialist, they support socialized health care and other generous welfare; they have a robust economy derived from free markets and companies that operate without direct government control and pay confiscatory taxes.

Unfortunately for Americans advocating democratic socialism, they will get socialism with the Communist Party controlling the means of production or they will get fascism, where the omnipotent government will control corporations’ means of production and will tell them what to say and do, what to produce and distribute, all in line with the government’s fascist agenda. Unlike what you read online, nazis (fascists) were not far right groups, they were members of the National Socialist Party (Nationalsozialistische Partei).