Use of snitches seems instinctive to the Left.
Marxist-Leninist states are famous for turning citizen against citizen by making them inform on each other.
During China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-69), Chairman Mao urged young people to rat on their teachers and parents. Stay-at-home grandmothers formed a nationwide army of neighborhood watchers.
The former Communist Party regime of East Germany (German Democratic Republic or GDR) had its infamous and formidable Staci or Ministry for State Security. After the fall of the GDR, the Staci’s files were eventually made available to the public who discovered, to their horror, that Staci informants had included their neighbors, friends, and families.
The urge to tyrannize is barely contained among the Left in democratic polities, an impulse that French philosopher Jean-François Revel (1924-2006) called “the totalitarian temptation” in his 1976 book by the same name.
Surely, we have not forgotten the Obama White House’s infamous AttackWatch.com? — Obama’s short-lived effort in 2011 to have his supporters snitch on fellow Americans by reporting any and all “attacks” against him to the website AttackWatch.com. (See “Be a Patriot by being a Snitch!“)
In March 2013, it became known that the state of New York offered rewards bribes of $500 for people to rat out those possessing illegal firearms, via a toll-free tip line – 1-855-GUNSNYS (1-855- 486-7697).
In May 2013, Palm Beach County sheriff Ric Bradshaw asked Floridians to report to a 24-hour hotline their neighbors, friends or family members who “hate government,” and anyone who could harm themselves or others. When the hotline gets a phone tip, the person who was snitched on will get a knock on the door and taken for “mental health” evaluation.
The latest wannabe little Hitler is Austin police chief Art Acevedo.
Austin police chief Art Acevedo
B. Christopher Agee reports for Western Journalism, Dec. 4, 2014, that in response to a shooting incident last week in downtown Austin, Police Chief Acevedo held a press conference to emphasize the shooting could have been prevented had someone reported the gunman’s behavior to law enforcement before his rampage.
Saying that he stays awake at nights worrying about “these homegrown extremists that are lone wolves, that are mad at the world, that are angry,” Acevedo encouraged Austin residents to report to authorities anyone “who’s a gun enthusiast or is armed with these types of firearms and they’re showing any type of propensity for hatred.”
The police chief said: “It’s important for us as Americans to know our neighbors, to know our families. Tell somebody if you know somebody that is acting pecu—with a lot of hatred toward any particular group.”
Couching his instruction with the caveat that turning in a friend or family member for owning guns “doesn’t mean that we’re going to take them to jail,” Acevedo noted that “we might want to vet these people.”
Given the fact that according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Texas is home to more firearms dealers – 8,500 as of 2013 – than any other state in America, it stands to reason that a good number of Texas are “gun enthusiasts.”
Time’s a-wastin! Austin residents better get busy snitching on each other!
~Eowyn