But, the end result is pretty much the same.

As to an attack on democratic rights in Germany - you have a point there, particularly in the ways their interior ministry (both federal and state branches) have tried to negate their much-stronger-than-the-US privacy protections and expand "Online Durchsuchungen", i.e., warrantless wiretapping.

I had lunch day before yesterday with a very good friend who's been sucked into $cientology.  Only two hours with her and I thought my brain was turning to Jello.  She's just totally gone.

I was on one of the first flights into Romania when Ceausescu fell. A few days later, since the gvt no longer denied them entrance, the first krishna's showed up and were, literally, mobbed.

In the US you'd see them, traditionally, at airports and stuff with, mostly, no one paying them any attention.

In Bucharest they stood on a wall in the square and banged their drums as 100's of Romanians stood mesmerized.

As the only westerner in the crowd I caught one krishna's eye and he grinned and turned quickly away.

On the flight back to London a week or so later, the Romanian girl sitting next to me spent the flight reading krishna pamphlets and told me she was going to London to join the church.

I tried to dissuade her, and told her to be careful not to give them any of her money, but the country had been so isolated and fed so much gvt approved/produced BS for so long that the citizens, generally, had no idea what they didn't know, no idea that much of what they "knew" was wrong, and were pretty sceptical of the sudden in-rush of information about the outside "real" world.