In the German Democratic Republic — East Germany — the system was particularly brutal; the 2006 film “The Lives of Others” dramatized the agony of average citizens who knew they were being monitored at all times, which led to tremendous mistrust among neighbors and colleagues. Fortunately, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dismantling of the Stasi apparatus brought this shameful period to an end.
As it turns out, however, these policies aren’t completely gone — they’ve just migrated west, operating on hundreds of American college campuses under the modern-day guise of a “bias response team.”