Tag Archives | East Germany

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Mayor Mamdani’s collectivist warmth is a lot like chilly Commie Bucharest

New York Post, January 10, 2026 Mayor Mamdani’s collectivist warmth is a lot like chilly Commie Bucharest by James Bovard Mayor Mamdani promised New Yorkers Jan. 1 he would “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” Luckily, psychiatrists have not yet classified “rugged individualism” as a mental illness. But Mamdani’s vision […]

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No Vaccination against Unlimited Political Power

No Vaccination against Unlimited Political Power by James Bovard, May 18, 2025 Late in the last century, theater goers were jolted when a character in the X-Files movie declared that the Federal Emergency Management Agency can allow “the White House to suspend constitutional government upon declaration of a national emergency.” If the same line was […]

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Political Slavery in Our Times

Political Slavery in Our Times by James Bovard In 1977, East Germany ransomed hundreds of its leading intellectuals and artists to West Germany, partly because it did not wish to endure public criticism by its own citizens during an International Rights Conference. In spite of the human sale, there was no general revulsion against the […]

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How Hogan’s Heroes Saved Me from the East German Stasi

(Video starts after 7 or 8 seconds)  Hearty thanks to Matt Kibbe and Free the People for inviting me on this podcast.  Plenty more comic relief where this came from at this link – Here’s a story I wrote for Mises Institute in 2018 on that adventure at that communist border. Here’s the article composed […]

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Karl Marx & the Great Socialist Revival

Karl Marx and the Great Socialist Revival by James Bovard January 9, 2019 Socialism’s popularity is reviving in America. Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez captured a seat in the new Congress and is calling for confiscatory tax rates at the same time Democratic Socialist candidates are thriving in many areas of the nation. The Washington Post reported […]

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The Great Socialism Sex Charade

Vox is whooping up the wacky notion that “sex was better under socialism.” Tell that to Romanian women forced to undergo monthly gyno exams to outlaw abortions because the government proclaimed in 1985 that “the fetus is the socialist property of the whole society… Those who refuse to have children are deserters.” Women’s reproductive lives […]

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Podcast: My East German Interrogation Comedy Show

OK, so I screwed up in one of my illegal jaunts behind the Iron Curtain.    But at least there’s a funny story about how I was able to eventually bluster my way out of a long interrogation at the Czechoslovakian – East German border in the Erzgebirge mountains.  This broadcast includes my novel pronunciation of […]

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