this post was submitted on 12 May 2025
590 points (98.2% liked)
Political Memes
8057 readers
2618 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm sorry, every time I read a comparison between secret police and plain clothes officers, I feel obligated to post this rant:
If you believe that "plainclothes officers" are the same as secret police, you know jack shit about the Gestapo, the Stasi and MSS or even ICE, all of which are undoubtedly secret police forces.
Officers in plain clothes are just that, they are a part of the normal law-enforcement operation, operate under the law and report to normal chiefs, normal prosecutors and normal courts, inside constitutional limits. Even if the justice system is rigged, racist, out of whack, and heavily skewed, they still operate inside of it, they're just sneaky about it.
Secret police on the other hand are often embedded as special units in organizations that otherwise operate as intelligence services and are therefore not easily recognizable to outsiders. A secret police force is an entirely different animal than just a couple of sneaky police officers. They are a quintessential feature of authoritarian regimes. Either de facto or even de jure unbound by constitutional limits, they are a tool of political repression and preemptive, unlawful violence. They are the ones who disappear people, they often run their own secret prisons and interrogation centers.
The fact that ICE is more and more morphing into a secret police service is FAR more alarming than the existence of plain clothes officers in the US.
That by definition makes it lawful and by definition is operating "inside of it".
That is some impressive mental gymnastics.
What does "de jure" mean?
'De facto' means roughly 'in actual practice' or 'effectively', whereas 'de jure' means 'explicitly spelled out in the letter of the law, the orders of a judge, etc.'
If there is a law that says 'cryptocurrencies are all banned', but there are no penalties for using or holding them, no enforcement agency in charge of finding and prosecuting cryptocurrency users...
Then crypto is 'de jure' illegal, but it is 'de facto' legal.
Like, we have lots and lots of tax laws, but the IRS basically never enforces all the relevant ones against very wealthy people.
Thus, for very wealthy people, much tax evasion and many forms of fraud are 'de facto' legal, despite being 'de jure' illegal.