Who Wrote the Manual on Modern Harassment

Cover image of a white figure representing a target of surveillance and a black figure representing a surveillance.Image generate with Gemini AI.

Today, many people know and some experienced coordinated online or offline harassment campaigns. What most don’t realize is the end goal of these attacks and who benefits from them. Before social media gave us coordinated pile-ons, doxxing, and algorithmic shadowbanning, state security services had already perfected similar principles and documented them well.

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One of the most infamous examples comes from East Germany, where the state used an array of such tactics to undermine, isolate, or destroy dissidents — both personally and professionally. It’s called “Zersetzung” (disruption, decomposition, corrosion).

Short remark: After World War II, Germany was divided into two distinct political and economic systems that coexisted for four decades: the Soviet-aligned German Democratic Republic (GDR), called East Germany and the market-oriented Federal Republic of Germany (FRG)— West Germany.

To defend the Soviet regime and neutralize opposition, East Germany set up the Ministry for State Security (MfS) — a.k.a. the Stasi, that employed covert campaigns against dissidents.

Their methods included surveillance, harassment, intimidation, and manipulation. The tactics were tailored to each target’s traits, exploiting personal…