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Comment by droopyEyelids | Hacker News Reader

Man. I remember growing up reading books about Nazi Germany and Russia where they had two classes of prisoner in their jails, political prisoners and 'common' prisoners (thieves, etc)

It sure feels fucking crazy to think the US has political prisoners in its own jails now.

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For as long as the US has had prisons, it has had prisoners who claimed to be held for political reasons, and supporters who acknowledged and amplified those claims. Sometimes those claims are almost certainly true, as anyone who's spent any time volunteering with Amnesty surely knows. Other times, they are not. Barrett Brown would certainly prefer you to look at his conviction as politically motivated. But there's a lot of things Brown would like you to believe that are probably false.

Indeed, read up on Assata Shakur (I'm not even remotely qualified to discuss whether or not AS _was_ a political prisoner, but certainly such a controversy existed, and she's still living in Cuba)

Equally, from the bugging of Martin Luther King to the Committee on Unamerican Activities, it is inarguable that the government does sometimes take direct action against those whose views it regards as dangerous.

I was lucky to see a scene from "The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail"[1] when I was in junior high.

But really, if you consider that "politics" is the art of directing policy, and policy is just another word for legislation, technically all prisoners are "political" prisoners.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_Thoreau_Spent_in_Jai...

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