• conditional_soup
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    10 months ago

    Yes, I would like one, uhhh, high speed rail network with a side of, uhhh, universal healthcare, hold the genocide and secret police, please.

      • conditional_soup
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        10 months ago

        Well that depends. A giant meteor will technically end capitalism. What’s the point if we’re not striving to improve everyone’s quality of life?

        • Grimble [he/him,they/them]@hexbear.net
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          10 months ago

          If you want the end of capitalism you’ll support whatever it realistically takes to dismantle it. And that won’t exactly be an “open” or “transparent” process while it happens. Simply put, the collective force that replaces capitalism will have to coerce certain people into accepting the change, if nothing else but for the safety of that new administration (IE avoiding rightwing takeovers, legit sabotage, hatecrimes etc).

          Just remember that about anticapitalism - whatever form it takes, it’s no dinner party. Even after a revolution, certain people try to resist things they have no material reason to oppose. Those people are reactionary - directionless, even dangerous unless they’re re-educated or have privileges restricted.

          • conditional_soup
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            10 months ago

            I appreciate that. It’s not lost on me that a lot of communist regimes got really fucked up by trade embargos, sanctions, counter-intelligence campaigns, etc. Power is rarely ceded willingly, of course. However, my primary concern lies with improving the quality of life for everyone, or at least maximizing the well being of the population. Part of that equation, for my point of view, includes the ability for people to think and speak freely without fear of reprisal by the government. Say what you will, but I’ve hosted eight different exchange students, including one from Russia; none were concerned about answering questions about their home country except for the kid from Hong Kong. I asked them whether they identified as a citizen of Hong Kong or of China first, because I was hoping to get an irl sample for how Hong Kongers actually felt, but let them out of the question when I confirmed with them that that was a sensitive question.

            If you’re living with a boot on your throat, does the distinction really matter if it’s a capitalist’s boot or a communist’s boot?

            • 🏳️‍⚧️ 新星 [they/she]@lemmygrad.ml
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              10 months ago

              If you’re living with a boot on your throat, does the distinction really matter if it’s a capitalist’s boot or a communist’s boot?

              Try looking at it from the point of view of the oppressed class who is benefiting from communist rule, and being harmed by capitalist rule, rather than from the point of view of the super rich people.

              • conditional_soup
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                10 months ago

                Unless I happen to be mistaken, poor people get the bullet, too. We just don’t hear about it because they’re not famous. I’m taking a wild guess here, but I suspect that the muslims in Xinjiang aren’t exactly what you would typically think of as the capital owning class. You can’t even (practically, I’m sure there’s some loophole or asterisk here) be critical of the bad ideas of your government, just shut up and kill more sparrows. As far as I can tell, it’s trading oppression for sparkling oppression.

                • KiG V2@lemmygrad.ml
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                  10 months ago

                  Nobody has been killed in Xinjiang. There is a reason its original liars had to specify it was a “cultural genocide,” which it isn’t, either. Like the full break down?

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                    10 months ago

                    Sure. I’d also appreciate some sources that would be considered reliable in the mainstream, but I won’t ignore you if you don’t have them.

            • KiG V2@lemmygrad.ml
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              10 months ago

              If your concern is quality of life, then you should be glad to know that all socialist countries, including of course the USSR and China, have radically improved the living standards for their massive citizenries in every metric that matters.

              What use is being supposedly free to criticize the U.S. gov’t when 1) every living standard is worse, 2) our education and media feed us so much lies we blame our woes on everybody BUT the gov’t, or for the wrong reasons, 3) you secretly can’t because if you effectively do so you will be blackbagged and disappeared or assassinated?

              Your singular Hong Kong kid is not a representative of an entire country or even Hong Kong. Why was it sensitive? Because he feared CPC would come and turn him into meatloaf…or because he feared his parents would? In MY personal, anecdotal experience, fascist parents/grandparents are the greatest source of anticommunist fear.

              • conditional_soup
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                10 months ago

                These are all pretty good points. I’m trying to do better about regulating my social media time, so I’ll use that opportunity to consider them. Thanks for the discussion.

            • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              10 months ago

              Part of that equation, for my point of view, includes the ability for people to think and speak freely without fear of reprisal by the government

              This is like the people who say “We’re freer than the Chinese because I can call Trump a peepee poopoo pants on Twitter without being arrested!” when that doesn’t actually do anything at all

              but if you try and protest and change conditions materially and meaningfully, you can absolutely bet your ass you will be disappeared like the horror stories you find on reddit about “totalitarian regimes”. The only reason why Americans don’t think it doesn’t happen in the West is either because it’s so completely internalized that it becomes memeified (“Haha, I hope the FBI agent watching me through my camera is having a nice day!”) or none of the media that they engage with reports on it.

              IMO, this entire point is just a liberal ideological bludgeon, a condition that can be applied at-will to any government they want to criticize because no government will be good enough all of the time. it’s one thing if you’re an anarchist and oppose every government equally for not fulfilling that condition, that I can understand and respect, it’s quite another when you’re like “Oh, no, I hate authoritarianism! That’s why we need to constantly criticize a country on the literal other side of the planet 99.7% of the time, and then only criticize our own country when somebody calls us out on it by saying ‘Oh, yeah, America also does bad things too!’” Especially when America’s role in the world for the last century at least, and more accurately really since its conception, has been a source of capitalist reaction across its whole hemisphere and later the whole planet, with hundreds upon hundreds of military bases and tens of millions directly and indirectly killed in wars. Criticizing, say, Cuba or DPRK for these sorts of things is effectively zooming in on a single corpse in righteous indignation while ignoring the seas of blood spilled by America behind you.

              • conditional_soup
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                10 months ago

                I mean, yeah, I am anti-authoritarian before anything else. That’s basically where my problem with China, among many others, begins and ends. The US has a lot of big problems that need fixing immediately on that front, and that’s without getting into the bodies under the front porch. We could go into that, if you like, I just didn’t think it was particularly relevant at the moment.

            • Giyuu@lemmygrad.ml
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              10 months ago

              In this post: what you get when your brain attempts to synthesize the concept of socialism on top of its liberalism instead of trying to discard everything you know first (liberalism) and learning again from zero to grasp Marxism.

            • brain_in_a_box [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              10 months ago

              If you’re living with a boot on your throat, does the distinction really matter if it’s a capitalist’s boot or a communist’s boot?

              “Does it really matter if I can expect to live to 75 instead of 30, if I can’t call the president a doodoo head on social media?”

              Yes, it matters a lot.

    • ☭CommieWolf☆@lemmygrad.ml
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      10 months ago

      Killing landlords and fascists is not Genocide, and putting “secret” in front of “police” to make them scarier to you is childish. Of course I imagine you probably aren’t afraid of the regular police wherever you are, I wonder why.

    • KiG V2@lemmygrad.ml
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      10 months ago

      What genocide?

      Do you know the actual truth of the Holodomor or Xinjiang? Are you willing to know?

      Comrades who are jumping straight to retorting are unwittingly making it seem like, “well yes, there was a genocide, but it was worth it.” Please do not allow any gap in our response that allows this interpretation. There has never been a genocide committed by a socialist country and we should make it clear we will not cede that atrociously false accusation.

        • Parenti Bot@lemmygrad.mlB
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          10 months ago
          The quote

          In the United States, for over a hundred years, the ruling interests tirelessly propagated anticommunism among the populace, until it became more like a religious orthodoxy than a political analysis. During the Cold War, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.

          – Michael Parenti, Blackshirts And Reds

          I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the admins of this instance if you have any questions or concerns.

      • paholg
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        10 months ago

        Your contention is that Stalin committed no genocide? What do you call it, sparkling ethnic cleansing?

        • 🏳️‍⚧️ 新星 [they/she]@lemmygrad.ml
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          10 months ago

          Do you call the Dust Bowl and Great Depression a genocide? Words have meaning.

          You love to present overdramatic accusations when a famine occurs in a socialist country, and there’s usually only one big one.

          Edit: If you’re talking about something else, please elaborate as to your specific allegation. I asked you for a source earlier and you didn’t respond.

          Edit 2: I stand corrected; I conflated you with a different user, but I’d still appreciate your source. Unfortunately, due to the lateness of this edit, the instance admins have already banned you, so I probably won’t find this out.

          • paholg
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            10 months ago

            You didn’t ask me for shit earlier. This is my first comment here.

            The Dust Bowl and Great Depression is a thing that happened. What occurred in Stalin’s reign is a pattern, that included famines. Were the famines specifically engineered to kill off specific groups? I don’t know. But when you take a holistic view, and look at executions, gulag assignments, forced resettlement, deportations, and, yes, famines, there was very clearly a genocide under Stalin.

            Millions of people died as a direct result of Stalin’s policies and actions. I don’t know if they were all with intent, but many definitely were.

            I don’t understand how anyone can defend Stalin. I guess people deny the Holocaust too, so there’s that.

            • CannotSleep420@lemmygrad.ml
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              10 months ago

              I guess people deny the Holocaust too, so there’s that.

              By trying to paint the Soviet Union as genocidal, you are denying the Holocaust. Simple as.

            • brain_in_a_box [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              10 months ago

              Millions of people died as a direct result of Stalin’s policies and actions.

              And the dust bowl was the direct result of the US governments policies and actions, so why is only one of them “a thing that happened,” you raging hypocrite?

              • paholg
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                10 months ago

                Are you capable of reading and processing information? Nevermind that the Great Depression was a worldwide catastrophe. Nevermind that it’s thousands vs millions of people. Did you notice where I talked about the larger pattern in the USSR? There wasn’t just one famine, but a shitload of things causing the deaths of millions of people, many of which were fucking executions.

                • brain_in_a_box [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  10 months ago

                  Are you capable of reading and processing information?

                  Are you?

                  Nevermind that the Great Depression was a worldwide catastrophe.

                  Point to where I mentioned the Great Depression.

                  Nevermind that it’s thousands vs millions of people.

                  What methodology did you use to determine your numbers? And why would it matter anyway? Is it not a genocide if it’s bellow a certain amount?

                  There wasn’t just one famine

                  Yes there was, unless you’re counting the one caused by the Nazis flattening half of it, in which case I’m just going to write you off as a Nazi apologist.

                  but a shitload of things causing the deaths of millions of people, many of which were fucking executions.

                  Yes, that is indeed true of the USA, so why is the Dust Bowl “Just a thing that happened”, but the famine that happened in the same time period in the USSR not?

                  • paholg
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                    10 months ago

                    I’m all ears, buddy. Paint me the picture of this dust bowl genocide. My mind is open. Convince me.

            • 🏳️‍⚧️ 新星 [they/she]@lemmygrad.ml
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              10 months ago

              Prisoners in the United States jumped from 120,284 in 1923 to 210,418 in 1933. (Source (p. 210))

              Executions increased to 197, the highest number in US history, in 1935. (Source)

              The U.S. forcibly deported one million of its own citizens to Mexico in the 1930s. Source

              Since you’re probably using an intentionally ridiculous US estimate, I’ll use an intentionally ridiculous Russian estimate and say that seven million people died from the Great Depression. This Russian estimate uses the same intentionally ridiculous methodology of the U.S. one.

              Put together, why isn’t this enough to declare that a genocide happened in the U.S.?

              • paholg
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                10 months ago

                Nice whataboutism. But fuck it, I’ll bite. A genocide has absolutely happened in the US, funny that you didn’t hit on it.

                Let’s play a game. I’m going to call it, “can we agree on some basic facts?”

                Stalin, through his policies and leadership, killed millions of Soviet citizens. True or false?

                • 🏳️‍⚧️ 新星 [they/she]@lemmygrad.ml
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                  10 months ago

                  funny that you didn’t hit on it.

                  Apologies for the confusing wording above. That’s because I was comparing two similar events to see if you would call it a genocide when the U.S. did it. If you did, I’d question your definition of genocide, but at least accept you’re applying it consistently.

                  I absolutely agree with you on that basic fact — the US has engaged in countless successful genocides against indigenous peoples.

                  Stalin, through his policies and leadership, killed millions of Soviet citizens.

                  False.

                  First of all, to attribute deaths solely to one individual (even to Hitler) denies anyone else responsible of their free will in doing so.

                  @ksynwa@lemmygrad.ml, would you mind holding this lib up to scrutiny since the one on Hexbear didn’t respond?

                  • paholg
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                    10 months ago

                    First of all, to attribute deaths solely to one individual (even to Hitler) denies anyone else responsible of their free will in doing so.

                    Fair, but this is just kind of a thing we do with language.

                    If we can’t agree that millions of people in the USSR were killed, sent to gulags, and died of famine during Stalin’s leadership, then I’m not sure there’s anything worth discussing.

                    Similarly, the article you linked about 7 million US deaths in the great depression doesn’t even take itself seriously. It’s just trying to discredit counts for deaths in the Holodomor. I suspect you don’t think that many people died as a result of the great depression, and, if you’re not going to argue in good faith, then again I believe we are at an impasse.

                    Finally, there is no need for name-calling. While I do not consider “lib” nearly as much an insult as you likely intend it, I would still not categorize myself as such.

        • figaro@lemdro.id
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          10 months ago

          It’s crazy - we all actually tend to agree on most things. We all sort of agree that the US government has committed atrocities, that wealth redistribution is what we should be striving for, that billionaires suck, that universal healthcare is good, all that good shit.

          But they are stuck on the idea that their favorite governments can do no wrong.

        • KiG V2@lemmygrad.ml
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          10 months ago

          There has been no genocide committed by a socialist country, no need to point out any of the dozens committed by the U.S. alone.