There’s something wonderful about finding like-minded souls
with whom to share our beliefs and concerns.
Totalitarian regimes grasp this, so they
make it difficult for their citizens to exchange ideas, however trivial those
ideas may appear to be. Censorship in Nazi Germany was extreme and strictly enforced. Stalin sent fellow Russians to the gulags
for up to 25 years simply for telling jokes about Communist Party officials. None of this was
original to Hitler or Stalin: the second century Romans had their own secret police equivalent called the Frumentarii that not only covertly gathered military intelligence throughout the empire but
even spied on the members of the emperor’s household.
If people can’t freely and comfortably exchange
ideas, they can’t form effective political opposition, or so goes the thinking.