Gosplan14_the_Third [none/use name]

Oh hey, my family did this back in early 2010s Italy. The local gold and silver dealership proudly displayed a copy of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics near the counter, that was fun.

But yeah.

Additional Context: The state government of Bavaria (and several others around that same period, with similar ideas) passed a controversial reform of police laws in 2017-2018 (It was polemically called “The strictest police law since 1945”).

It included changes such as:

• increased allowance of use of personal data by the police forces.

• allowing the police to openly film and photograph people participating in public gatherings.

• allowing the police to infringe on postal secrecy and to confiscate mail without a person’s knowledge. (if given permission by the courts)

• allowing the use of police spies. Including even entering people’s homes if given permission.

As well as making previous restrictions such as on “probable danger” way more lax.

The government has more interest in pursuing the global power ambitions of the Standort Deutschland rather than accomplishing environmental goals, even in spite of one of the parties being named Die Grünen (which is basically just good PR for them and nothing of substance) - and the goals that are being pursued anyway are all to the slogan of Cem Özdemir “Zwischen Wirtschaft und Umwelt gehört kein oder”. Environmentalism as long as it remains profitable, even at costs of +2, +2,5, +3 or more °C

The next elections are sure to be won by Merz, with or without the AfD, and very likely to have the FDP in influential ministries, so nothing will change - or perhaps even for the worse.

That’s what happens when the main goal of production is not the goal of creating socially necessary goods, but to insert money into the labor process and end up with more than you had at the beginning.

Also the Iranian Revolution (which wasn’t entirely Islamist in nature, but they were the ones who won the power struggle in its immediate aftermath - the liberals were out of the picture by 1980, while the communist opposition got finished off in mass executions in 1988) happened due to the unpopularity of absolute monarch Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was stubbornly supported by the US to his last days.

And this has roots in the western-supported coup against Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, who was a social democratic reformer.

It’s a story that unfortunately repeats many times around the region, and globally too.