"I am critical of the surveillance heavy capitalist system I live in so I'll just go ahead and shift my argument to anti-communism."
As is tradition.
points at capitalist institution doing capitalist things in a capitalist country
"Communism"
but you don't understand! This time its only happening because of the uppity poors! If it were communism repression might be happening to the people representing my interests!
The refreshing one is when you ask a capitalist why they hate communism and they do just describe communism. Which when you describe it is unequivocally a good thing to anyone who isn't a billionaire.
ask a communist and a capitalist to criticize each others’ ideas, and they’ll both describe capitalism.
Americans doing American things Americanly
"What are we, a bunch of slavs?"
fuck this NSA shithead
Tbf they could be talking about east Berlin in 2024 if you say anything pro-Palestine
Haha that is true.
Funnily someone in the comments asked the guy if he ever visited East Berlin and he claims he did twice, in the 80s. So it's definitely OG cold war brainworms, but we all knew that.
It really is amazing. What's the Parenti line? Non-falsifiable orthodoxy and something about a shifting rhetorical framework?
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
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Yep, this is an absolute classic. ''Oh, it's just like the Stasi, Stalinism and the gulags, amirite, fellas? ''And all the fellas nod along:''Yeah, bro, we're not like that'', while something they live through is like the cartoon they invented of those filthy commies.
It's quite telling how pretty much no one ever says "feels like nazi germany".
Of course we have no propaganda in the west.
In Hungary people are propagandized to think that Hungarian Stalinism is on par or even worse than the local nazis before them.
Only counting the Hungarian Jewish people murdered in the Holocaust was cca. 600 000. If we add civilian fatalities on the Eastern front where the Hungarian army was committing its war crimes it becomes significantly more.According to Black Book of Communism type of statistics the "brutal Hungarian communist dictatorship" executed 1200 people. The list is public. I swear I chose someone randomly from the first page.
Péter Rotyis, born in Mezőhegyes in 1890, who worked as a machinist in Budapest. During WWII, he was involved in the persecution and mistreatment of forced laborers [Jewish people] in Hungary. Arrested in early 1945, he was convicted for his role in serious crimes, including complicity in murder, and was executed on February 4, 1945.
Győző Csikvári, originally named Győző Csicsits, born in 1899 in Budapest. After working as a shoemaker, he became a non-commissioned officer involved with labor service units during WWII. Known for his cruel treatment of forced laborers, he was arrested in 1945, convicted of war crimes, and executed on April 28, 1945, in Budapest.
Yeah, some victims.
alright: read some more... and... the literal nazi Hungarian prime minister overseeing the Hungarian Holocaust is also included in the 1200 victims of communism, absolute joke
Universities have become the neoliberal utopia, a hedge fund that sometime trains their ideologues with a heavily policing apparatus
Ivy league are hedge funds with universities attached.
SEC schools (except Vandy until recently) are NFL teams with universities attached
Being in one right bow and being 100% over the Books of (Neo)Liberalism I have to read day in and day out, I agree!
Just today I've again discovered a new way of shitting on marxism in the book I am now forced to read, this time essentially blaming marxists for all the racism in Brasil. The circle-
is never-ending.
Me: I wonder why East Berlin had aggressive policing.
Whoever this dude is: Have you considered Soviet Union bad?
Free universitat berlin did do policing of gaza activists akin to what they imply happened in east berlin, which is ironic
Correct me if I’m mistaken but I’m pretty sure East Berlin just opened up into the surrounding East Germany. And wasn’t West Berlin is the one that could only be entered and exited through military checkpoints?
The evils of modern capitalism really reminds me of the only system that offered an alternative to the evils of modern capitalism.
