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A comment on North Korea's computer operating system mirrors its political one. Parent comment

Re:North Korea's computer operating system mirrors its polit... by EGreg on Sunday December 27, 2015 @08:00PM (#10799320)
It doesn't jump straight to that. The intermediate steps usually involve one or more of:

1) A political ideology (Nazism, Communism, Islamism)

2) A real external threat (Communism, Capitalism, Islamism)

3) Sanctions or economic depression (Weimar Germany, Russia today)

The real external threat is essentially a sociopolitical system that propagates itself inside the turf of another sociopolitical system. This leads to far-right war hawks, and then center-right, issuing xenophobic statements. The step before "supporting supreme leaders" is usually "suppressing enemy ideologies". Like McCarthyism in USA or anti Muslim sentiment today. Or Iran's hatred of the USA and the Shah prior to their revolution. Or Soviet hatred of capitalist bourgeouis. Or Ukraine's hatred of communists. And so forth and so on.

Once "the enemy" is identified, the crackdown begins, which leads to more clamps on civil liberties. Then you might want to read the poem attributed to Martin Niemoller:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...

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Re:North Korea's computer operating system mirrors its polit... by mikeash on Sunday December 27, 2015 @08:18PM (#10799363)
I think this all agrees with what I'm saying. It's not the NSA that's the tyrannical worry, it's the crazy politicians saying that we should only accept Christian refugees.

Regarding your poem, it's the "coming for" people that's the big problem, not merely the ability. If you don't want the government to "come for" people, you need to make sure the people in charge won't do that. It's not very useful to try to make it so they can't

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Re:North Korea's computer operating system mirrors its polit... by markism on Sunday December 27, 2015 @09:20PM (#10799523)
You need to make sure the people in charge won't do that indefinitely. Even one particularly bad politician can cause some serious harm. If you limit their ability to monitor everyone, it limits their ability to round up dissenters. Given that surveillance doesn't seem to have much other use, it's reasonable to oppose it.
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Re:North Korea's computer operating system mirrors its polit... by mikeash on Sunday December 27, 2015 @09:25PM (#10799542)
How can you limit their ability to monitor everyone, but not be able to limit their ability to round up dissenters?
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Re:North Korea's computer operating system mirrors its polit... by markism on Monday December 28, 2015 @03:09AM (#10800361)
If you discuss and regulate the privacy issues in times of peace it limits, or at least hinders, their ability to cause harm when they can take advantage of fear or rage.
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Re:North Korea's computer operating system mirrors its polit... by mikeash on Monday December 28, 2015 @09:35AM (#10801216)
I agree, but only when somewhat reasonable leaders get caught up in fear and rage. The issue of being or becoming a fascist state is rather different. I think there are excellent reasons to curb the surveillance state, I just don't see one of them being the avoidance of a totalitarian government.
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Re:North Korea's computer operating system mirrors its polit... by aaronem on Monday December 28, 2015 @05:00AM (#10800547)
Really? Weimar's human rights laws were second to none in the world for their time, and are considered exemplary even now. If what you say is true, how did the Nazi abuses occur?
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