You’ve put into words what I’ve been considering for a while. Western consciousness is much better at sympathizing with Nazis than communists. Fascism can be understood as some dark internal impulse that simply exists everywhere. Like a flick of a light switch and it can happen. It’s perfectly understood by both liberals and conservatives that the US government could flip to being fascist with only the tools available to it now. There’s some sort of national soul balancing that needs to occur and that’s how fascism is defeated, some kind of common mutual belief in how precious America is or something.
Communism though is currently seen as impossible to integrate within America. It’s always an external, failing, clawing zombie like threat that was simply concocted out of thin air one day like a virus. The same people who believe American society is a precious seesaw of freedom that could instantly flip to fascism also believe communism is simply impossible. “It’ll never happen.” is the common refrain. It’ll never happen so let’s vilify this movement that’s impossible to get off the ground. Communists are only external too. The internal communists must be brainwashed high minded egg heads who just don’t realize what communism is. How can they? They’re Americans, they can’t be real communists. That stuff is from Russia or China or whatever and it’s from a long time ago. The people trying to revive it must be stupid kids or something.
It’s going to be interesting to see how leftist politics morph into an internal threat again in the western mind. I can’t even imagine it right now since communism isn’t treated seriously in any facet of American society. It’s either a failed, collapsed thing from the past or its just the scary word you use to describe your opponents.
You’ve put into words what I’ve been considering for a while. Western consciousness is much better at sympathizing with Nazis than communists. Fascism can be understood as some dark internal impulse that simply exists everywhere. Like a flick of a light switch and it can happen. It’s perfectly understood by both liberals and conservatives that the US government could flip to being fascist with only the tools available to it now. There’s some sort of national soul balancing that needs to occur and that’s how fascism is defeated, some kind of common mutual belief in how precious America is or something.
Communism though is currently seen as impossible to integrate within America. It’s always an external, failing, clawing zombie like threat that was simply concocted out of thin air one day like a virus. The same people who believe American society is a precious seesaw of freedom that could instantly flip to fascism also believe communism is simply impossible. “It’ll never happen.” is the common refrain. It’ll never happen so let’s vilify this movement that’s impossible to get off the ground. Communists are only external too. The internal communists must be brainwashed high minded egg heads who just don’t realize what communism is. How can they? They’re Americans, they can’t be real communists. That stuff is from Russia or China or whatever and it’s from a long time ago. The people trying to revive it must be stupid kids or something.
It’s going to be interesting to see how leftist politics morph into an internal threat again in the western mind. I can’t even imagine it right now since communism isn’t treated seriously in any facet of American society. It’s either a failed, collapsed thing from the past or its just the scary word you use to describe your opponents.