WHEN I grew up, it was only countries like Nazi Germany, East Germany and the USSR that we understood to have developed the nasty habit of turning their citizens into informers to spy on their own family or work colleagues and report back to the political police.
We were taught that the culture of fear and the successful repression of even putative opposition that characterised these one party state ‘democracies’ was what set them apart from our free and liberal ones.
No longer. On July 11, the FBI posted a tweet that suggests Americans should monitor ‘family members and peers’ for signs of ‘mobilisation to violence’ and report ‘suspicious behaviours’ in an effort to prevent extremist activities.
This latest infringement of American liberty comes hard on the heels of Facebook’s decision to help its followers monitor and report their peers in the form of an ‘Extremism Warning’.
Here, in this excellent clip by Texas comedian J P Sears on his YouTube blog AwakenWithJP, the worrying Facebook diktat scathingly gets the treatment it deserves.
Maybe J P will turn his attention to the FBI next. I hope so.
