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Kraichgauer
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26 Nov 2022, 4:48 am

DeathFlowerKing wrote:
cyberdad wrote:
"Commies" are just boogymen that republican parents tell their children about as bedtime stories :lol:



Back in the 1950's when McCarthy was a threat to the US much like Trump is today he wasn't entirely wrong about the dangers that communism posed to the US. The problem was McCarthy himself exaggerated the very real dangers of communism by accusing anybody he saw as a threat to his political power as being a commie.

But the real communists still wanted our country destroyed. Don't act like they wouldnt have nuked the hell out of us if they felt they could.


I seriously believe American communists wanted what they thought was best for America, without realizing how terribly flawed the system they supported was.


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26 Nov 2022, 6:13 am

ToughDiamond wrote:
cyberdad wrote:

If you are talking numbers of dead then communism certainly is up there.

But when you dig a little deeper then I tend find whether it be Ceaucescu, Castro, The Kims of North Korea, China or Russia, the motivation is always authoritarianism, control and self-interest at the expense of the populace who don't provide obedience. Deaths had little to do with communism.

I think that's about right. There's an anarchist saying, "in authority there is always hate." I don't agree with it 100%, but I see a lot of truth in it.

It seems unlikely that communism as such has ever been tried on a national scale. Communism is a broad church, but I've not seen anything in its ideology that embraces mass murder as a way of life. A more accurate title for the book might be "the black book of certain nations that some people saw as communist." But that wouldn't be very crisp and zingy, and if the book's purpose was to brainwash or persuade people to hate the ideology of communism, it would rather defeat that.


Communism created a climate where mass murder occurred.



cyberdad
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26 Nov 2022, 6:14 am

Kraichgauer wrote:
I seriously believe American communists wanted what they thought was best for America, without realizing how terribly flawed the system they supported was.


Almost all the authors of communist manifestos were upper middle class intellectuals who never had to lift their finger in hard work a day in their life. The principles for the cause of class conflict might have been correct but none of the originators of socialism such as Marx actually offered practical ways of creating a sustainable model where resources could be evenly distributed.

Hence young idealists in the west assumed that applying the principles like a recipe book would transform society. In reality the Soviet and Chinese models were based on authoritarianism and military control of the civilian population.



cyberdad
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26 Nov 2022, 6:17 am

Pepe wrote:
ToughDiamond wrote:
cyberdad wrote:

If you are talking numbers of dead then communism certainly is up there.

But when you dig a little deeper then I tend find whether it be Ceaucescu, Castro, The Kims of North Korea, China or Russia, the motivation is always authoritarianism, control and self-interest at the expense of the populace who don't provide obedience. Deaths had little to do with communism.

I think that's about right. There's an anarchist saying, "in authority there is always hate." I don't agree with it 100%, but I see a lot of truth in it.

It seems unlikely that communism as such has ever been tried on a national scale. Communism is a broad church, but I've not seen anything in its ideology that embraces mass murder as a way of life. A more accurate title for the book might be "the black book of certain nations that some people saw as communist." But that wouldn't be very crisp and zingy, and if the book's purpose was to brainwash or persuade people to hate the ideology of communism, it would rather defeat that.


Communism created a climate where mass murder occurred.


I recommend you read Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm. Both communism and nationalist governments rely heavily on authoritarian rule. You carefully sidestep the fact that governments in the 20th century labelled either communist or fascist were actually both authoritarian. Except of course the Nazis were also heavily indoctrinated in racial heirarchy. That's why the Germans were much better at mass murder...but you know that don't you



Pepe
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26 Nov 2022, 6:31 am

Minder wrote:

Yeah, I would say that one of the key differences is that in fascism, the cruelty is the point. Communist regimes tend to be very cruel (and given how nationalistic/militaristic many of them became, could be difficult to distinguish from fascism), but that's more of a side-effect. Granted, if you were brutalized to death, I doubt you'd particularly care if it was as a side-effect or the point.


One word: "Holodomor".

Quote:
The famine of 1932–33 (Holodomor)

The result of Stalin’s policies was the Great Famine (Holodomor) of 1932–33—a man-made demographic catastrophe unprecedented in peacetime. Of the estimated five million people who died in the Soviet Union, almost four million were Ukrainians. The famine was a direct assault on the Ukrainian peasantry, which had stubbornly continued to resist collectivization; indirectly, it was an attack on the Ukrainian village, which traditionally had been a key element of Ukrainian national culture. Its deliberate nature is underscored by the fact that no physical basis for famine existed in Ukraine.


https://www.britannica.com/place/Ukrain ... -Holodomor



Pepe
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26 Nov 2022, 7:05 am

cyberdad wrote:
Pepe wrote:
ToughDiamond wrote:
cyberdad wrote:

If you are talking numbers of dead then communism certainly is up there.

But when you dig a little deeper then I tend find whether it be Ceaucescu, Castro, The Kims of North Korea, China or Russia, the motivation is always authoritarianism, control and self-interest at the expense of the populace who don't provide obedience. Deaths had little to do with communism.

I think that's about right. There's an anarchist saying, "in authority there is always hate." I don't agree with it 100%, but I see a lot of truth in it.

It seems unlikely that communism as such has ever been tried on a national scale. Communism is a broad church, but I've not seen anything in its ideology that embraces mass murder as a way of life. A more accurate title for the book might be "the black book of certain nations that some people saw as communist." But that wouldn't be very crisp and zingy, and if the book's purpose was to brainwash or persuade people to hate the ideology of communism, it would rather defeat that.


Communism created a climate where mass murder occurred.


I recommend you read Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm. Both communism and nationalist governments rely heavily on authoritarian rule. You carefully sidestep the fact that governments in the 20th century labelled either communist or fascist were actually both authoritarian. Except of course the Nazis were also heavily indoctrinated in racial heirarchy. That's why the Germans were much better at mass murder...but you know that don't you


Perhaps you should re-read "Animal Farm".

If you are implying "Animal Farm" is a satire about authoritarian governments in general, the following quotes will address your misunderstanding.

Quote:
Animal Farm, has often fallen victim to overzealous school boards and the high bar of strict religious or politically oppressive governments. The book has been banned around the world for a variety of reasons, ranging from its anti-communist attitudes (banned in the USSR) and its depiction of taking pigs (banned in the UAE). To this day the book is still banned in Cuba and North Korea for its satiric depiction of communism.
1984 has repetitively been banned for two major reasons– obscenity and supposedly pro-communist passages. For anyone who knows anything about the author or has even read the novel, these two reasons are should be striking absurd. Orwell was a self-proclaimed democratic socialist. He spoke out articulately in his novels, non-fiction books, and essays about the failings of Soviet Communism. It is only due to the fact that some segments of the public have been in the past unable to separate communism from socialism that the book has, in some instances, been banned.

https://bookanalysis.com/george-orwell/censorship/

Although Animal Farm by George Orwell is based on the Manor Farm according to the animal’s point of view, this book symbolizes Communism in countries such as Russia. This novel put Communism in a perspective that allowed many people to see the contradictions of this governing system; many ideas were twisted and only made sense to those that it benefited. Animal Farm explores the concepts of Communism in a unique and intriguing manner using personification of regular farm animals to represent communists and their inconsistent rules and beliefs.

Communism creates an idea of classless society, but instead, like the novel says, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” The pigs claim to fight for equality yet they live better lives than the other farm animals.

https://www.studymode.com/essays/Commun ... 44365.html

The two most celebrated leftist literary figures of the 1930s–40s, George Orwell (1903–1950) and Arthur Koestler (1905–1983), lived through the 20th century’s revolutionary times as documentarists. They were on the front lines as journalists in the Spanish civil war, came close to death there and in WWII, and then wrote their explosive novels dissecting the communist experience from the inside.

https://www.eurasiareview.com/02082019- ... nism-oped/



ToughDiamond
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26 Nov 2022, 2:36 pm

Pepe wrote:
ToughDiamond wrote:
cyberdad wrote:

If you are talking numbers of dead then communism certainly is up there.

But when you dig a little deeper then I tend find whether it be Ceaucescu, Castro, The Kims of North Korea, China or Russia, the motivation is always authoritarianism, control and self-interest at the expense of the populace who don't provide obedience. Deaths had little to do with communism.

I think that's about right. There's an anarchist saying, "in authority there is always hate." I don't agree with it 100%, but I see a lot of truth in it.

It seems unlikely that communism as such has ever been tried on a national scale. Communism is a broad church, but I've not seen anything in its ideology that embraces mass murder as a way of life. A more accurate title for the book might be "the black book of certain nations that some people saw as communist." But that wouldn't be very crisp and zingy, and if the book's purpose was to brainwash or persuade people to hate the ideology of communism, it would rather defeat that.


Communism created a climate where mass murder occurred.

Well, something that called itself communist or socialist did. Me, I prefer to think of communism as a broad church that contains libertarian as well as authoritarian approaches to the pursuit of common ownership. As for the murder thing, even that depends on what's seen as murder. It's hard to quantify the number of people whose deaths have been assisted by capitalism and feudalism.

There's even the "Impossibilist" wing of Marxism which says (something like) all that can be done is to wait for capitalism to shake itself to pieces and for the masses to spontaneously do the revolution. Not that I'm holding my breath for that.

I don't see the sense in trying to equate common ownership with murder, except that it makes sense for those with a vested interest in the status quo to try to make it look that way by the use of propaganda tools that hope to get people jumping to conclusions. In the book's case, the title is more loaded than it looks at first glance.



cyberdad
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26 Nov 2022, 6:59 pm

I don't know where you get this information but Orwell hated both extremes of politics
https://www.afr.com/world/europe/george ... 111-p56tab

You seem to be doing Olympic level gymnastics bending over backwards to avoid criticising the right (as usual)



Pepe
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27 Nov 2022, 6:14 pm

cyberdad wrote:
I don't know where you get this information but Orwell hated both extremes of politics
https://www.afr.com/world/europe/george ... 111-p56tab

You seem to be doing Olympic level gymnastics bending over backwards to avoid criticising the right (as usual)


My not criticising the "right"?
What decent person doesn't hate Hitler's fascism?
That is a given.

You are simply making things up.
You need to be more careful in not misrepresenting ppl's positions.

"Animal Farm" was a dedicated satirical piece about the Soviet Union.
This is the point I was making.



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27 Nov 2022, 6:27 pm

Dox47 wrote:
I see the commie simps are up to their usual tricks, making excuses and complaining about which ox is being gored.


:mrgreen:

To be klear to all and sundry, something that I have *always* maintained: I am against all extremists.
I despise the atrocities of the Nazis...
And I despise the atrocities of the Communists...
How could one not?
"Baffling." :scratch:

To say or suggest I am a Nazi apologist is simply misrepresentation.
Ppl need only look at my posting history.
I shrug that nonsense off these days.
"Water off a duck's back."
But I have a right of rebuttal. 8)



Pepe
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27 Nov 2022, 6:31 pm

ToughDiamond wrote:
Dox47 wrote:
I see the commie simps are up to their usual tricks, making excuses and complaining about which ox is being gored.

Once again, Dox, if you disagree with what's been posted, present your reasoned arguments, don't hide behind put-downs.


I have been misrepresented as a Nazi sympathiser.
"Water off a duck's back" to me these days. 8)



blitzkrieg
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28 Nov 2022, 8:16 pm

I have a feeling that Cornflake is going to do a Neo from the Matrix and swing through this thread creating waves.



ToughDiamond
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28 Nov 2022, 9:42 pm

blitzkrieg wrote:
I have a feeling that Cornflake is going to do a Neo from the Matrix and swing through this thread creating waves.

I was kind of hoping he would. I've seen him deal quite well with content much like the stuff I was objecting to here. He deleted the offending posts and remarked: "It would be better if denigrating, personal opinions about other members' intelligence remain unspoken. It's rude, counter-productive, and looks a little too much like arrogant crowing."



magz
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29 Nov 2022, 4:59 am

Ok, sorry for not being Cornflake but:

 ! magz wrote:
Several posts have been removed.

It would be better if denigrating, personal opinions about other members' intelligence remain unspoken. It's rude, counter-productive, and looks a little too much like arrogant crowing. :D

Discuss the topic, not other members. And if you genuinely can't discuss politics without commenting your disputants, find a place that is not WP.


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29 Nov 2022, 5:05 am

Just a reminder, this all sprung from an undirected shot I took at apologists for communist atrocities that someone else decided to make personal, I can't really help it when other people jump in front of my comments.


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magz
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29 Nov 2022, 5:28 am

Dox47 wrote:
Just a reminder, this all sprung from an undirected shot I took at apologists for communist atrocities that someone else decided to make personal, I can't really help it when other people jump in front of my comments.
Undirected, unsubstantial and unnecessary, as vague accusations always are.

Now, can we go back on topic?

An interesting question was asked and not answered: Who was considered "communist"?

I believe the answer is: every state that self-identified as such. They all happen to have been either very short-lived or soon ended up as more or less brutal totalitarisms...

Which suggests an observation that communism (unlike socialism, by the way) is fundamentally unstable as a state system. I'd love to continue but I'd ask Pepe on how much off-topic in this direction he welcomes.


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