So there’s this international student from China in my class and she constantly spreads misinformation about the PRC and its history. She basically bootlicks Western propaganda 24/7. She’s also politically active in numerous student organizations and travels back to China frequently, which leads me to believe she and/or her family and friends are up to no good over there as well. Should I report her to the 12339 website of the MSS?
I agree. You can protect it by educating each new generation of people, among other things. Both the Soviet Union and DDR had snitches reporting people to the state, and in both the communist party failed to protect the revolution. Do you want to argue they failed because people didn’t snitch enough? That’d be interesting to see.
Now you get into some very difficult historical territory. The collapse of socialism in the USSR and Europe is a complicated phenomena, and probably no one fully understands it yet.
But yes, I agree it’s generally better to educate people in tandem with raising their living standards. All I want is to point out that there’s nuance, and sometimes ugly things have to be done. The situation that Swinging6917 described is not one of those times.