I'm genuinely pretty sure the DDR Museum in Berlin is run by socialists who want you to notice this, I swear to god that entire fucking place makes 0 sense otherwise. All the stations are like this, they're describing something good that nominally west germany did or still does but then describe it as bad because the communists did it, it ends with you looking at ginormous flat which it tells you cost the equivalent of 50€ per month or something and that nobody but the the richest 5% of the country could afford in Berlin today, before letting you out via the gift store full of DDR nostalgia to buy. Even all the most unpolitical, co-worker-belief-system people I've went there with caught on to it.
Yes, i think there is a panel where it tells you that some worker for a 3 room apartment pays 10% of their salary.
Then they show you a standard 3 room apartment and while going through it I was so surprised because I would never be able to afford anything even close to it.
But all the museum is about how people where oppressed and poor !?
IIRC their big bad scary point, and admittedly that works on most germans, is that you have a Tram station right outside since nobody could afford or get cars
I think the most egregious one to me was the stasi listening post that said they listened in to every 3rd person or something along those lines. this was post snowden, so by objective metrics that seemed a lot better than the allied NSA listening in to 100% of everything lol
Yeah they went into details about how horrible the prisons were in the 50's (so... jail cells full of nazis, boo hoo) and how they only got slightly better from the mid 60's onwards. What you saw from then on was miles better than any contemporary western jail cell.
before letting you out via the gift store full of DDR nostalgia to buy
Holy shit you're not kidding
I went to check their online shop and it is entirely the kind of merch you'd expect to see in a pro socialist shop: plenty of Hero of Labour merch, Marx and Lenin stuff, a faux DDR passport notebook, that kinda stuff. There's a few things that border on either being actual anticommunism or possibly parody (like a sign saying "No Goods Today" in German), but none of it looks like it's meant to be ironic
Adding on as I look at more things: they sell a magnet celebrating the formation of the DDR (Republic Day, October 7th). I'm with you, there's no way this place isn't run by socialists
Example of the one thing the west is good at being used against it: Propaganda.
You don't say "we're perfect." You say "oh well sure we've got our flaws, but it's nuanced and really the other guys aren't even trying!"
Now it's just being deployed by socialists. They say "oh well the DDR wasn't perfect, you couldn't choose your own apartment (which cost 50 euro a month) and people had so much free time they fucked a lot, which isn't very productive. Compare it to our modern system where we can't fix our own things and we work so hard we're too tired to fuck! We make so much stuff! Anyway if you wanna ironically buy a Lenin poster or this book going into more details, feel free to do so!"
I'm genuinely pretty sure the DDR Museum in Berlin is run by socialists who want you to notice this, I swear to god that entire fucking place makes 0 sense otherwise. All the stations are like this, they're describing something good that nominally west germany did or still does but then describe it as bad because the communists did it, it ends with you looking at ginormous flat which it tells you cost the equivalent of 50€ per month or something and that nobody but the the richest 5% of the country could afford in Berlin today, before letting you out via the gift store full of DDR nostalgia to buy. Even all the most unpolitical, co-worker-belief-system people I've went there with caught on to it.
Yes, i think there is a panel where it tells you that some worker for a 3 room apartment pays 10% of their salary. Then they show you a standard 3 room apartment and while going through it I was so surprised because I would never be able to afford anything even close to it.
But all the museum is about how people where oppressed and poor !?
"This is because the evil communist government hated the free market and smol bean landlords
"
IIRC their big bad scary point, and admittedly that works on most germans, is that you have a Tram station right outside since nobody could afford or get cars
I already can't afford a car
yeah but that's your fault now
Driving is horrible and I want to die everytime I do it. I'd take the tram station over driving anyday.
I wish I had a tram station. I love trams.
I think the most egregious one to me was the stasi listening post that said they listened in to every 3rd person or something along those lines. this was post snowden, so by objective metrics that seemed a lot better than the allied NSA listening in to 100% of everything lol
Stasi emplyed less people per capita than western German secret service lol, seems like somebody had read way too much Oh'well
Mistake
Yeah they went into details about how horrible the prisons were in the 50's (so... jail cells full of nazis, boo hoo) and how they only got slightly better from the mid 60's onwards. What you saw from then on was miles better than any contemporary western jail cell.
Holy shit you're not kidding
I went to check their online shop and it is entirely the kind of merch you'd expect to see in a pro socialist shop: plenty of Hero of Labour merch, Marx and Lenin stuff, a faux DDR passport notebook, that kinda stuff. There's a few things that border on either being actual anticommunism or possibly parody (like a sign saying "No Goods Today" in German), but none of it looks like it's meant to be ironic
Adding on as I look at more things: they sell a magnet celebrating the formation of the DDR (Republic Day, October 7th). I'm with you, there's no way this place isn't run by socialists
another reason to celebrate
Example of the one thing the west is good at being used against it: Propaganda.
You don't say "we're perfect." You say "oh well sure we've got our flaws, but it's nuanced and really the other guys aren't even trying!"
Now it's just being deployed by socialists. They say "oh well the DDR wasn't perfect, you couldn't choose your own apartment (which cost 50 euro a month) and people had so much free time they fucked a lot, which isn't very productive. Compare it to our modern system where we can't fix our own things and we work so hard we're too tired to fuck! We make so much stuff! Anyway if you wanna ironically buy a Lenin poster or this book going into more details, feel free to do so!"