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Comment by mirimir | Hacker News Reader

In postwar East Germany, about 1% of the population were reportedly informants for Stasi.[0]

I wonder what percentage of parents get caught up in this. I bet that it's more than 1%.

0) https://www.dw.com/en/east-german-stasi-had-189000-informers...

Snitch culture is a very dangerous and contemptible thing. It's what kept Cuba, NK, and the former soviet empire running. You just need to demoralize a small minority to watch over their neighbours, reward them with something petty, make a few big examples of individuals, and you can create a climate of fear to rule with.

Where I grew up, teachers used to punish tellers along side the alleged offender because it was bad for society.

> Where I grew up, teachers used to punish tellers along side the alleged offender because it was bad for society.

Absolute legend.

Where was this?

Not OP but wouldn’t be surprised if it was around the Med... in Italy there is a kids’ saying that goes “a spy is not a child of Mary” (“chi fa la spia non è figlio di Maria”), i.e. grasses are going to hell.

The south of Italy is entirely corrupted by organized crime, so I'm not sure it's a very good example.

Hadn't thought of it, but given Catholic schools and area, so probably similar. Early christians met in the catacombs of Rome, so the tradition of keeping it between you and your priest (sub rosa) might relate to the culture. Their whole mythology is about the consequences of betrayal to political authorities.

I wonder if there is a link between these snitch cultures and secularism/atheism. Rather puts a spin on "keeping it G," as well.

I had a teacher who was a WWII Holocaust survivor.

One day a kid tattled about something and the teacher roared "Don't snitch!"

It’s somewhat hard to know how many informants the stasi had because of the destruction of records. Wikipedia suggests that this could have been as high as 500,000 (something like 1 in 30 people) or up to 2 million (something like 1 in 7) if one includes occasional informants

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