Benjamin J. Davis, born on this day in 1903, was American lawyer and communist who was elected in 1943 to the New York City Council, representing Harlem. Davis was persecuted by the state via the anti-communist Smith and McCarran Acts.

Davis became radicalized through his role as defense attorney in the 1933 trial of Angelo Herndon, a 19-year-old black communist who had been charged "attempting to incite insurrection" because he tried to organize a farm workers' union.

In 1949, Davis was among a number of communist leaders prosecuted for violating the Smith Act. He was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. In 1962 Davis was charged with violating the Internal Security Act (also known as the McCarran Act), but died before the case could come to trial.

"Whether one agrees with the Communist Party or not, one must at least know the truth about it. One must not permit his ideas to be shaped by the hysteria which now passes as a 'crusade against Communism'... For example, the canard that every Communist has his pockets lined with 'Moscow gold.' If that were true, one could be sure that there would scarcely be any room in our party for workers. The capitalists, to whom gold is god of the universe, would crowd them out."

  • Benjamin J. Davis

Ben Davis: The Communist Councilman from Harlem cpusa

Megathreads and spaces to hang out:

reminders:

  • 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
  • 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
  • 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
  • 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can reserve a spot here nerd
  • 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog

Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):

Aid:

Theory:

now all fediverse discussion will be considered a current struggle session discussion and all comment about it are subject to be removed and even banning from the comm.

have all of you a good day/night meow-coffee

    • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      I feel like their histories are a bit too much of a black hole to come up with interesting gameplay mechanics. East Asia or South Asia paradox games would rock tho.

      • Catradora_Stalinism [she/her, comrade/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Idk, some anti-colonial mechanics would be sick, like we see with ethiopia. The european empires just have the whole area "annexed" when they could just have some sort of colonial administrative organization as an integrated puppet or smth. In the RT56 mod, they have this with the Belgian Congo, Islands, the Dutch East Indies, and the puppeted Empire of Egypt (even vanilla has the British Raj). Its insulting to have that whole continent sweeped under the rug.

        SA kicks some ass too, and could start some whole new scenarios as well. I like the rt56 mod for giving honduras an absurdly large focus tree where it can liberate all of central america, forming a large Union of federated socialist republics in CA. Then goes on to liberate mexico, the carribean, and south america. Then invading the USA. Shit like that.

        And you are also correct, give me some ho chi minh focuses to liberate indochina and intervene in the Sino-Japanese war. Let the Dutch East indies free itself or fight austrailia or smth. Also the Chinese Soviet Republic under mao needs to be fixed, the presence of communists in china was far larger than the Yanan base area. The focus tree is also absurdly small for a movement that unites all of china. Its very sad and dumb. India also has barely any content.

        Its all an absurd amount of Orientalism.

        • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          Starting from race for africa and ending with the cold war could be neat. Like you could try grtting soviet support in a decolonization effort or something. I had my head in emulating the marriage and other familial mechanics because that's what I associate most with paradox.