cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/731575
It seems there are a lot of propaganda arising on certain lemmy instances parroting propaganda that lemmygrad and Communists support human rights violations, and equating Communists to the alt right.
This is an extremely ridiculous assertion, given the historical context of the left being the main force fighting Nazism and fascism. But I write this post as there are probably many people misled by all the dishonest propaganda out there, who may be accepting of reason before seeking to silence us.
Please link this post in other instances if they are parroting propaganda about Communists to justify demonizing us. Reasonable people will understand and oppose these motions.
What is NOT Communism? in short, communism is NOT:
- “when the government does stuff”
- “capitalism but everyone gets paid the same”
- an incursion on personal freedom, or forcing people to do what they don’t want (unless the thing they don’t want is not exploiting others and not wishing mass murder on ethnic groups, etc).
Then what is communism? in simple terms, it is the belief that the working class (i.e. the people, the masses) must own the means of production (factories, work places, etc) and control the direction of production in society, so that we produce for our own needs rather than to fulfill profits.
Why? we spend most of our lifetime working, so why should we cater it towards profits of a minority class of capitalists rather than our own and out community’s needs and wants? Why shouldn’t we be masters of our own destinies?
You may not agree with this, but this is not an excuse to silence us or lump us with genocidal ideologies
This thread is not meant to convince you with communism, but to demystify it and break the cold war era propaganda that some of you continue to parrot.
you support USSR? What about their human rights violations? (applies to Cuba, China, etc)
We do, but we do not support human rights violations as we believe there are tons of propaganda surrounding this. Equating this with Nazism is EXTREMELY DISINGENUOUS. The prevailing propaganda against the USSR is even acknowledged by NATO countries themselves. Nazism is an ideology founded on genocide, and this is easy to verify from Hitler’s writing himself.
Maybe in the end, we are wrong and despite the propaganda, there are human rights violations. But our support for the USSR comes from their achievements to better the human condition, and we hope to build on it. There are no human rights violation that inspires our ideology like it does for fascism or Nazism.
Disclaimer: I am just a random Communist. I have no authority over lemmygrad or connections to the admins, just to make sure I don’t upset the admins saying this.
The liberal aversion doesn’t only stem from ignorance of the definition, but also and imo most importantly from their liberal dogma on power structures that makes them view the “commendable but deceptive” virtues of communism as eternally doomed to devolve into corruption when put to practice. AKA “Absolute power corrupts absolutely”.
In order for liberals and leftcoms to understand our perspective we shouldn’t deny the legitimate ethical objections to the practices of socialist states but rather explain that these practices and power structures are a necessary evil resulting from the transient anti-communist global society we live in today and not intrinsic nor exclusive to states without liberal democracy.
I don’t know how, but we need propaganda that efficiently communicates that the ideological competition between capitalism and communism is not of the same nature as the competition between, say, the labor party and the liberal party. There is no mutual respect nor tolerance from either party to allow the other flourish.
This is a WAR. No, not figuratively speaking. An ACTUAL war. In fact the war of the greatest caliber and of the same nature as the 1939 war on European and Asian soil, the 2001 war on Afghan soil and the current war on Ukrainian soil. This is war on socialist soil and the socialists are heavily overpowered and outnumbered.
Therefore, yes, socialist countries are less ‘free’ than western countries but it’s not this lack of freedom that compells capitalist aggression but rather capitalist aggression that necessitates the EMERGENCY power structure that restricts freedom.
Fascism is capitalism in its emergency state such that fascism and Leninism/Stalinism are NOT two sides of the same coin, but opposite forces resorting to the same resources to achieve opposite goals. This is no different from the way both parties in the Ukraine war use weaponry and politically regulate their media and has nothing to do with ‘authoritarian’ flaws of their respective ideologies.
So if you want to compare communism with capitalism in good faith, the real question becomes “Is Leninism/Stalinism better than Fascism?”, or worded differently “Do communists operate better in warzones than capitalists?”. I think everyone but the most hardline conservatives will agree the answer is a resounding yes.
If someone can formulate this more efficiently than me, that would be great.
Great points.
Honestly, liberals just need to study their own revolutions more. Most or them just buy into the mythic narrative of liberalism’s origin story rather than the bloodbath, atrocities, and dogmas their movements were also birthed from.
To be fair, some of the liberal complaints are just dogshit demonizing of states as autocratic when they do have functioning democracies.
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