Little Red Book Draws Government Attention

narcolepticjim writes "An unnamed Dartmouth student was visited by Homeland Security for requesting a copy of Mao Zedong's Little Red Book for a class project." From the article: "The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said."

Comments

This is unfortunately predictable

[nebaz]

Well, it's not as though this kind of thing is unexpected. Once the
government is given power, it is human nature to abuse it. What I
don't understand is why people fall hook, line, and sinker, for the
same techniques throughout history over and over again.

1) Instill fear in the population somehow, by either orchestating or latching on to
a catastrophic event,
2) Tell the population that you will take care of it, blame enemies of the state,
3) Go to war, claim critics of the war are unpatriotic, out of touch, part of an "elite".

This is all classic power grab politics, and yet it happens again and again in
history.

Why do people not learn from history? It is clear that those in power have a
vested interest in having a sheeple populace. A critical thinking, well informed
electorate, is the biggest enemy to would be dictators in a democratic society.

Start with the children. I guess fear really is the mind killer. And, at the risk of
pulling a Godwin, two quotes from Hermann Goering, leader of Hitler's Luttewaffe.

"Education is dangerous - Every educated person is a future enemy"

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

Finally, just a minor nit. The submitter claims the student was a "Dartmouth" student, whereas the article states that the student was from "U Mass-Dartmouth".

Re:This is unfortunately predictable

[Bogtha]

Why do people not learn from history?

Because they think of themselves as the "good guys", and the history they are taught (by school, Hollywood, the media, etc) portrays bad things being done by "bad guys". In reality, there is no good and bad, just a mixture of greys.

How often is it that a movie about Nazi Germany includes the democracy that Germany had beforehand? How often do you hear about how Osama bin Laden called for jihad against Iraq for invading Kuwait? How often do you hear about how Saddam Hussein reformed Iraq into a secular state instead of a theocracy, or how he increased equality and women's rights?

As long as people are taught that some countries are good and some countries are evil, so long as their enemies are demonised, the majority of people will continue to think of themselves as the "good guys", and therefore immune to committing atrocities and war crimes.

Remember Kids...

[Ruff_ilb]

War Is Peace
Freedom Is Slavery
Ignorance Is Strength

(http://www.studentsfororwell.org/)

Re:WTF?

[orthogonal]

I cant accept things have gotten to that point, yet.

Most German Jews showed themselves incapable of understanding their new situation. They believed it to be a transitory matter, a mere misunderstanding....

-- Leon Poliakov, Harvest of Hate, quoted in Kornberg, "Kristallnacht and the Politics of Anti-semitism Nazi Germany"

On November 9, 1938, I was still a German patriot. I was born into an old established family, the son of one of the most honoured German jurists and defender of rights. I myself was recognized for my twenty years of professional [legal] work, ...and, as an officer in the World War, had been awarded the Iron Cross first degree. I had borne every kind of injustice since 1933 in the hope that, at least for my children who were half-Aryan, there would be a dignified life in my homeland, when, in a few years time, this reign of terror would have spent itself. Education, experience and emotion had made a truly patriotic German out of me,.... In the face of the mounting distress outside, we maintained, within our four walls, an ever more profound and confident spiritual serenity which we inculcated in our children. We believed that we possessed the spiritual and physical strength to survive the Third Reich within Germany. Unprecedented events would have to occur to cause us to abandon this foundation upon which we had built our lives. Such events did occur in the following days.

-- Albert Fuchs, My Experiences From November 9th to 16th, 1938 (Written on November 19, 1938 on the way from Strasbourg to Paris)

Now I'm not saying the situation in contemporary America is anywhere as bad as the situation in Nazi Germany. What I am trying to point out is that beliefs like yours, that, it "can't be that bad", have consistently been disproven.

Will things become as bad here as they got in Nazi Germany? Like you, I doubt it. But it can happen here. Just ask any Japanese American who sat out WWII in an American internment camp. Hell, ask any black person over age 40 who grew up in the American South, or anyone caught up in the anti-Communist hysteria of the 1950s.

Was Soviet Communism a real threat in the 1950s? Definitely, just as terrorism is a real threat now. But just as in the 1950s, it's also an excuse for government excess and the curtailment of personal liberties in the name of "security".

You can't belive governemtn agents are tracking people who check out books? This has all happened before, rght here in America.

Why in the hell are we paying (taxes) for ...

[dlasley]

... the DHS to harass a college student working on a paper, especially when we have missing truckfulls of radioactive materials, unchecked illegal immigration linked to terrorism, and gross negligence in disaster preparedness? (cause, you know, let's not forget that FEMA is in the DHS now)

<sarcasm>I'm so comforted that a noticable portion of my paycheck gets usurped for such important security concerns.</sarcasm>

If you are a taxpaying U.S. citizen, I advise you to see how your contributions to the government are apportioned and spent.

Is anyone planning on being remotely skeptical?

[general_re]

I realize that I'm apparently swimming upstream here, but I suspect that a lot of the people thundering about this are simply accepting it uncritically because they want to believe it, insofar as it confirms their particular worldview.

So, to remind everyone, we have exactly one source for this, the professor, who is at best relaying the story secondhand to all of us - we do not have an eyewitness report, in that the student to whom this supposedly happened hasn't given his version to anyone else, including the paper in which this was reported. Hell, it doesn't look like the paper even bothered to contact DHS for any sort of comment.

I dunno, I really think I'd like a little more info. More than just the say-so of some professor dude, who may or may not have a vested interest in telling tales.

Re:And if you are lonely this holiday season...

[StillNeedMoreCoffee]

"I know it is fun to bash Bush and the current administration. People always do it when thier party isn't in control. "

Actually it is the most painful thing to have to speak out about presidential malfeasance ( Misconduct or wrongdoing, especially by a public official. )

There are some constitutional issues here about illegal search and seizure that the Federal courts will undoubtedly have to deal with.

This administration plainly want the freedom to torture anyone that can provide them information about their enemies (not necessarily my enemies or your enemies but the enemies that the administration percieves as enemies to the State or themselves or their interests). This is clearly shown by there research and stance (a stretch) that they can legally torture some people. These people are "enemy combatants" and who determains who are enemy combatants? The White House. There seems to be a trail of the practices of torture at Gitmo were transfered to IRAQ with the visit of one of the Gitmo people in charge of that sort of thing. Now we find that the CIA probably has had secret prisons that detained and possible tortured individuals.

There is a deep morality issue here. Not whether something is legal but the very idea that our elected leader would treat anyone in the world with the reckless disregard that seems to be the case. The Geneva convention sets up some standards for the treatement of prisoners of war (people remember like you and me, with a mother and father, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, with maybe different ideas (which our Constitution protects here), or a different religion (which our Constitution protects here). But maybe just an asshole set of demagogic leaders which have issues with our ... leaders. They are still people. The Geneva convention was set in place as much a protection for our own citizens that are captured in a conflict as it is just a moral guidline for human treatment of people (that happen to be cannon fodder in a conflict).

Back to my point. It is my opinion that that attitude and the carrying out of that attitude by action to spy on our citizens, torture individuals (certainly setting it up so our military and intellegence arm felt that it was alright to do) constitures wrong doing and missconduct of a public official. That kind of conduct should be held up to legal and constitutional standard and possibly even the international court (funny how this administration did not want to have anything to do with the international court).

We are having to deal not only with the fundemetalism abroad but here at home.

So it is not fun to bash Bush. It is painful and sad not only that these things seem to have been done. But the destroying in 5 short years what it took 200+ years to establish in the world as a moral authority.

Don't get hung up on the legal issue too much or what others have done. Bush has to live with and answer for His actions and his actions alone. If he does not want the critisim, don't torture people and don't spy on us, and certainly don't send agents out to interview the parents of a boy that ordered a copy of one of the worlds most infuential political books!

Re:I don't know about "innapropriate".

[TallMatthew]

He even refuses to give his name now because he "fears repercussions".

That was the whole point. You don't send agents to knock on the front door of potential terrorists. If someone is dangerous or is believed to be dangerous, they are put under surveillance to see what's going on.

You send agents to intimidate. Apparently people interested in world views contradictory to our own.

Yeah, it's almost time to go.