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Comment by forapurpose | Hacker News Reader

Let's recall that there are people living these experiences and worse, right this moment, in Gulags in North Korea (and possibly other places I'm not thinking of).

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One doesn't need to go to NK for that. Modern Russian state still tortures political dissidents in prisons even now. Not in large-scale labor-camps, just because it is not that necessary.

And they still send people to frozen shitholes to fuck them over. ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Sentsov

And the re-education camps in China. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/opinion/china-re-educatio...

Of course we wouldn't mention CIA black sites, the possibility of more Abu Ghraibs, or even those in the US allowed to be beaten, killed or tortured at the hands of other prisoners, guards, or even police.

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Yes that's absolutely true. We here in the US are nowhere near as bad as China or Russia, but we better keep an eye on it because we seem to be the exception--something special--in history.

The US is pretty bad, if you consider all of the wars from Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Iraq, Afghanistan, all,of the CIA activities in South and Central America, the impact of drug prohibition, Racist policing and slavery and de facto slavery via prison labor (and the largest prison population). I think you could strangle a gnat on the different in ruined and lost lives between Russia, China, and America.

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> ideological authoritarians

I wouldn't limit it to ideologues. Look at Mobutu, Suharto, and many other plain old right-wing authoritarians.

Good reminder - thanks.

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