How does one reconcile the idea that the Stasi disappeared political opponents regularly but also engaged in weird stuff like moving people's socks around.
> The final stages entailed psychological and physical harassment: moving things around at home (one morning the alarm clock goes off at 5am instead of 7am, and the socks are in the wrong drawer, there’s no coffee left …); damage to bikes and vehicles (eg slashing tyres); the spreading of rumours as mentioned above; ordering goods and making appointments in target’s name etc.
I get that sometimes a "broken" opponent is more useful than a dead one as they can sabotage the whole cause, like this article implies. But if you hold as much power as they did then it seems very unlikely to me that using resources to troll someone like this provides an effort/reward ratio that would be interesting to someone with that much existing power