Cultural Wrath - July 23, 2023

We may not be the GDR yet, but it looks like we already have a lot of Stasi.

The GDR had the Berlin Wall, the purpose of which was to prevent East Germans from escaping the socialist paradise under construction. Our GDR has a more flexible approach: as a native you can leave freely - especially if you are inclined to defy the regime - and it is even preferable that you never return, but if you are a reluctant foreigner, you may not enter, or you may enter in such a way that you will regret ever entering.

Emma Ruth Randle, 39, "an American singer-songwriter, guitarist and visual artist" probably knew nothing about it. Nor did she suspect that in the middle of the European continent, deep in the XNUMXst century, there was a "Checkpoint Charlie". She was just supposed to give a concert in the synagogue in Novi Sad.

Well, now she met him – I mean, "Charlie" – and his charming staff. As she and the organizer of the unsuspecting concert CK 13 testified, the border officers "harassed, intimidated, insulted and took her belongings." And in the end, "due to the shock and fear she suffered, she decided to give up her second attempt to enter Serbia." The third, I tend to believe, will not be.

What's the deal with Emma Ruth, the woman armed with a guitar (admittedly, Woody Guthrie's guitar said "this machine kills fascists")? We have no idea, and the state is wisely silent. But that's why we know what the problem is with this country, its checkpoints, its Stasi, its Marcus Wolff, and by God, its Honecker.