• Ram_The_Manparts [he/him]
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    edit-2
    1 year ago

    One of the wildest anti-communist lies I've ever seen was a comment on RevLeftRadio's episode on Che Guevara. Some clown made the claim that after the revolution ended, Che would travel around Cuba on his motorcycle and just murder random people for fun like some deranged serial killer.

    Shit like this clearly demonstrates how utterly pointless it is for current day self-described "leftists" to denounce past communist movements. It doesn't matter how much you insist that "we're not like those ebil red fash aUtHoRiTaRiAns", the people who oppose you are going to just make shit up from thin air to discredit you no matter what.

    • MalarchoBidenism [he/him]
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      1 year ago

      My favourite anti-communist trope is the made up quote attributed to a famous communist.

      Lenin's "useful idiots", Stalin's "one million is a statistic" and "what matters is who counts the votes". There's also a supposed Che quote about how killing people made him feel good. Just the most moustache-twirling maniacal-cackling cartoon villain stuff.

      • Ram_The_Manparts [he/him]
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        1 year ago

        Meanwhile, actual real-life liberals are publishing articles on the inferior asiatic hivemind, how colonialism was actually good, the non-humanity of the poor, and why we should consider that nuclear annihilation might actually be a positive outcome.

        marx-joker

      • WeedReference420 [he/him, they/them]
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        1 year ago

        Stalin personally executing people for interupting him and torturing animals half to death and then feeding them to make a point about control is a big one. I also heard someone say that Karl Marx would walk around killing people for wearing shoes in the 1870s, assumed it was a joke but they were deadly serious, the brainworms are genuinely beyond parody.

        • OrcaAntiyachtVanguard [they/them]
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          1 year ago

          The chicken plucking version of the Stalin animal torture story is hilarious to me ever since someone pointed out to me that plucking a chicken is a very long process and the chicken, quite naturally, is gonna be fighting back

          So just imagining Stalin wrestling with a squirming chicken, getting the shit scratched out of him for twenty minutes while his officers watch and wait for him to make a point is just fucking hilarious

          • WeedReference420 [he/him, they/them]
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            1 year ago

            True, also nothing works up an appetite for scones and tea on the Isle of Wight like summary executions of those damned bougie shoe-wearers

      • rubpoll [she/her]
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        1 year ago

        "I am evil and look forward to doing evil things, I think I'll eat all the food in Ukraine with a giant spoon today." - V.I. Stalin

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]
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        1 year ago

        I didn't know those Stalin quotes were made up. Perhaps I didn't investigate it because it's easy to read a correct meaning into them, unlike the Nazi quotes people give Lenin.

        It's like Stalin's "No person, no problem" quote which is completely correct from a Marxist standpoint but removed from context and refracted through anticommunist mythology, goes from sociological first principal to endorsement for wanton murder. Mao also has one about the inevitability of death that experiences the same effect.

    • rubpoll [she/her]
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      1 year ago

      There was a recent TV show that depicted the main character's Cuban grandmother scolding her white landlord for wearing a Che shirt, describing Che as "The Hitler of Cuba."

      The landlord learns his lesson, apologizes, and promises to never wear it again.

      brainworms

        • SoyViking [he/him]
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          1 year ago

          Communism is the most evil thing ever.

          Only the most evil man ever would do the most evil thing ever.

          Hitler was the most evil man ever.

          All communists are literally Hitler.

          Thank you for attending my Prager U lecture.

        • lmaozedong
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          edit-2
          1 year ago

          deleted by creator

      • autismdragon [he/him, they/them]
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        edit-2
        1 year ago

        "Mr Iglesias" had a moment like this but it was actually really weird and I'm not sure what the writers intentions were?

        So this show is about Gabriel Iglesias being a teacher to a bunch of kids in remedial history. The school adopts a clear packpacks policy and the kids start protesting it. The super smart SJW girl who you're usually supposed to agree/sympathize with has a Che Guevera sign at the protest. The shitty asshole vice principal character who everyone hates and mocks except for occasional everyone loves each other moments says "I'm a Cuban-American and your protest is just as misguided as Che was". And the sjw girl is like taken aback and doesn't say anything. And then Gabriel says something about how the VIce Principal is just jealous of Che for his hat or something? So like, this whole thing seems to be pro-Che right? Especially since the show clearly sides with the students on the clear backpacks issue.

        BUT, the Vice Principal's actor (the guy who played Oscar on the Office) delivers the line with such out of character sincerity and earnestness that I'm not sure if the writers were actually intending us to agree with him despite of how it makes no sense to do so within the context of the episode or like... the way the characters are usually portrayed? Or maybe Oscar from the Office delivered the line with sincerity and earnestness because HE agrees with it and it had nothing to do with the writers or directors? Or maybe i'm just assuming a Netflix show would be anti-communist and looking for reasons why an actually based moment isnt based?

        But I can't get over the actor's delivery...

        ETA: Its also a very sloppy and bad show that I only watched because my roommate rewatches it once a month because its one of his safety pieces of media that he rewatches once a month, so its like, totally reasonable to believe that they were just THAT sloppy about sending an anticommunist message that they had the character everyone hates deliver it to the character you're supposed to like.

    • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
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      1 year ago

      Shit like this clearly demonstrates how utterly pointless it is for current day self-described "leftists" to denounce past communist movements.

      Pol Pot supporters have entered the chat. All two of them.

      • RuthlessCriticism [comrade/them]
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        1 year ago

        At most Pol Pot was some sort of anarcho-primitivist (degrowther). No reasonable communist is anti-industrialization or education.

        • Gosplan14_the_Third [none/use name]
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          1 year ago

          Supposedly, he actually had a plan emulating the Great Leap Forward by first generating large amounts of income by exports of agricultural produce, to then rapidly industrialize the country. Far from a primitivist view. It was more about speedrunning development of productive forces in fact.

          In 1976, the CPK adopted a four-year plan for the country’s development, which in almost comical nationalist one-upsmanship over China was called the “Super Great Leap Forward”. The main target was to double rice production in the years 1977–1980 so that Cambodia could export $1.4 billion worth of agricultural goods. Ninety percent of that was to be rice sold to its traditional buyers (Hong Kong, Singapore and African countries), with Thailand a vital market for other products. The profit would be used to buy the machinery and raw materials needed to achieve modern (mechanised) agriculture within 10–15 years and modern industry within 15–20 years.

          source

          • JuneFall [none/use name]
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            1 year ago

            Sorry, but that Pol Pot defense falls flat. Wishing one can do stuff is not materialist. It is at best idealist. Pol Pot didn't take material considerations in account. Especially at the market situations at that point agricultural exports for cash crops would not have enabled enough money income to "speedrun industrialization". However as you correctly write rice was the major thing was focused on, which is not a cash crop. This means that the surplus generated per person would be low compared to alternative settings. So even going from that starting point it isn't "a plan", but a wish. Wishing to double four times the production of one crop within four years is absurd, especially when you are talking about labour intense crops (which rice is). The geography of Kamodia is also not well suited for large scale cash crop production (in the 1970s).

            Pol Pot was inspired in part in some degrowth theories and satirical understanding of dependency theory, which states that peripheral countries are actively "underdeveloped" by the imperial core. That was one of the big reasons for trying to go as self-sufficient as some Red Khmer plans tried to be.

            Kambodia, a US ally, was also getting support from China at some point in time. Mainly cause China wanted to prevent a Soviet-Vietnamese encircling of their border and used the Vietnamese-Kambodian conflict to get more independence from the Soviet political sphere. China's (more correct the ZK of the CPC) aim with that was not only slightly more independence, but also better relations to the US and UK, which means capital import, technology import and knowledge import in addition to a few other bilateral contracts (i.e. military support which only ended after Tian'anmen in 1989, when the public opinion in the West turned on China and it became a realistically opponent compared to the Soviet Union which shortly after was broken up).

            Pol Pot was not communist, he wasn't even left communist (looking at his practice, the structure of decision making and the plans within the country). While plenty of things including anarchism, communalism (Bookchin/Öcalan) are compatible with communism idealism an non materialism is not.

            • Gosplan14_the_Third [none/use name]
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              1 year ago

              The source is far from a defense (in fact, it's very critical of the Khmer Rouge), nor was that my intention. Nor was I implying that was a good plan that Pol Pot had undertaken or had any chance of succeeding.

              I was just challenging the common belief that he was a primitivist or whatever.

        • GarbageShoot [he/him]
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          1 year ago

          Primitivism and degrowth aren't the same thing and technically I don't think Pol Pot was either, though he bore some resemblance to a primitivist.