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- cross-posted to:
- memes@lemmy.ml
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A guy I know, real nice guy but super liberal, was telling me how his Cuban grandfather suffered under Castro. Sure enough, when he got into more details, it turns out his grandfather was a wealthy landlord whose farmland got collectivized and he only had to go to jail after he got very vocal about trying to get people to oppose the revolution (in which he was very much the minority BTW, his own friend turned him in)
Reminds me of when a Finn told me about how the Soviets killed his grandad...and I was like...yeah? 😏 how come? 🥺🥺🥺
Admittedly I don't remember much! But only that I remember coming to the conclusion that he was talking about the Winter War, especially as he kept referring to his grandfather as a proud defender of homeland and the Soviets as barbarian invaders. I clocked out halfway through.
Grandfather’s friend: Dude this is cringe, you need go serve time to think about what you just posted
Im curious if there's even an attempt to reconcile that in your friend's brain or did he just kinda wave it away?
We didn't have much chance to discuss it in depth. He was hosting a local event where selected speakers take about 5 minutes to speak on a subject they are passionate about and he invited me to speak. I told him I wanted to talk about ending the embargo on cuba (which I did) and he said, oh that's ironic because I will be opening the event by celebrating our right to free speech and saying how my grandfather didn't have that right in Cuba. We both laughed and agreed we onviously don't agree on some things, then just focused on boring procedural stuff about the event. At the actual event he elaborated the details I included in op but not with the exact same words I chose
To be clear I don't think he supports embargoes or sanctions and certainly doesn't support war or invasions, but he just doesn't like communism at all and believes a lot of misinformation about communist led governments
Even the school textbooks in Western European diaspora that often publish false information to slander successful Communists admited that the Cuban working class support Fidel Castro against the Pig of Bay invasion. The Pig of Bay invasion by the Cuban emigrants was staged by the US government who falsely assumed that the Cubans oppose Castro's rule and the failure of the invasion was from the false belief that the Cuban commoners that stayed in Cuba are unhappy with the new Communist government. The Western European diaspora school textbook attributed the mass support of Castro by the Cuban lower class to deception, but this assumes that the Cubans cannot compare the new communist rule with the previous Liberal puppet regime or that democracy cannot work unless the European emigrants have authoritarian rule over the people of color.
I have a relative that lived in the USSR and they didn’t complain about being imprisoned or questioned, they complained that Nazis destroyed their old village, they complained that there was not as much food (note: as much, not none)during the war, issues that people face during war, not during times of poor leadership.
Same thing about the (I'm pretty confident it's fake) stories about people who would escape gulags by using another escapee as food - if you're willing to kill and eat another person, you probably should be in a gulag!
Gulag stories just all sound like a teenager trying really hard to write an edgy CreepyPasta
I said basically this to my friend group politics chat and then had 3 different friends all try and quibble with me about it.
tbf there are a few reasons why someone who didnt deserve it would suffer in a socialist country but those reasons are typically external, like embargoes
Yeah my familly left the USSR in the 20s less because of oppression and more because of their incorrect beliefs that America was a golden palace. My grandpa used to laugh about how his dad would complain that food costs money and that the company town was basically feudalism in America. Yet here I am, working in the coal mine just like my ancestors. Part of me yearns for the mines, and enjoys it more than my days off. My depression keeps me from feeling anything but hard work is still satisfying.
Can I have a serious question? Are you guys real? Or am I just not on the joke?
I do not like US, but being someone from country controled by USSR. There were ton of people arested just for publicaly saying "Goverment bad".
Please don't discredit me, compared to US, I would be considered socialist and by US right wing maybe communist, but claiming that USSR or current Russia are your friends seems insane.
Yes, Lemmygrad is explicitly communist.
Countries weren't controlled by the USSR, they were a member state of the USSR and had input on democratic central planning and decisions. Please feel free to provide documentation if you feel that my worldview is incorrect.
Modern Russia and the USSR are two entirely different issues.
I'll push back on this maybe they were controlled by the ussr. However like, is thst not better than the alternatives. The local bourgeoisie were so good? Or the nazis? Or thr Americans? Sovereignty is a myth and mostly harmful to the citizens of places that have it. Like, what freedom does it bring people that their government can decide how to opress them?
Oh bunch of rus trolls, and us teenagers who think living under cccp was good.
Xddddd
Assalamualaikum brother mustafa, it seems that Allah SWT didn't bless you with intelligence. Please read more books, inshallah you will be a better person
I'm sorry but you need to consider that you simply have been lied to about your own history.
Fairly criticizing the government in the USSR--just like in China, just like in North Korea, and so on--is not illegal.
What these countries do crack down on is when fascists, capitalist opportunists, and foreign intelligence agents work actively to try and destroy, divide, and sabotage them.
The vast majority of people the USSR killed or imprisoned (a number far smaller than what we are told), were actively trying to destroy the USSR, and all the lives of millions of common people who were benefitting from this new system. Why when capitalists kill whoever they see fit, they can call them "traitors", "treasonous", or "terrorists", but when socialists do something far more restrained and humane they are seen as devils?
Well, because, capitalist propaganda has strangled the world discourse, especially the last 30 years. The United States and its allies have spent the last century not only trying to destroy every socialist state but to muddy the waters, lie, and character assassinate its enemies. Everything from gulags, the Holodomor, WW2 war doctrine, the Great Purge, and everything before and after has been radically distorted by capitalist and fascist liars.
I believe you that in your heart you are a socialist. So please listen to me when I say: do not trust the lies about your socialist brothers and sisters that were invented by capitalist and fascist snakes who want to destroy everything you would build.
claiming that USSR or current Russia are your friends seems insane
The USSR is gone. It's not around to be anyone's friend. This means that communists who talk highly of the USSR are analysing the USSR and concluding that it was the greatest experiment in raising living standards in history. (Maybe that's now China, but it's going to be a difficult and possibility incoherent comparison.)
Compare the standard of living before and after the Soviets gained power. Success is the only word for it, even if they're are valid criticisms. (Do not do that silly thing where you compare life for the average person at any time in the Soviet Union with the life of the most decadent and rich person in the US. That's not logical.)
I doubt there are many communists who see Russia as a friend. What you see instead are communists acknowledging that Russia is fighting US imperialism. Considering how much death, tragedy, and destruction the US brings and has brought to the world, any work against the US is a net positive for humanity.
(To preclude misunderstanding, no I am not saying that people dying in the Ukraine war is a good thing. Except die hard Nazis. They can get fucked. It's up to the reader to decide where they think the Nazis are.)
I want to emphasise and follow up something that KiG V2 said:
What these countries do crack down on is when fascists, capitalist opportunists, and foreign intelligence agents work actively to try and destroy, divide, and sabotage them.
Liberals tend to read things like this and say that it is a 'conspiracy'. But think about it like this: if we know one thing for a fact, it is that "capitalist opportunists, and foreign intelligence agents work[ed] actively to … destroy, divide, and sabotage" the USSR until they won. The capitalists won. They got what they wanted. They got what the communists were saying that the reactionaries wanted all along—the end of the USSR.
Now we have 30 years of evidence of how capitalists would run the regions of the USSR differently. If you can compare what life in the USSR looked like before and after the Soviets gained power, you can also compare what life was like before and after the Soviets lost power.
So what happened after the Berlin wall fell? Can you honestly look at the statistics, the records, the economy, the stories, and say that life got better?
If you can, I'd ask you to look again at all segments of society, not just the lucky few in the middle and upper classes. If you think life got worse after the USSR (it did—living standards plummeted), ask: what changed? You, too, will answer that for all it's flaws, the change was from socialism to capitalism and that socialism was by far a superior system for the mass of people.
(PS using 'insane' as a way of criticising something is ableism.)
If it were me I would simply not say the government was bad and avoid jail time. This really doesn't seem so hard to me.
So if the alt right came to power and neo nacis were your government, and the'd be happy and you were told "just simply don't complain" would that be not so hard for you?
I understand that this is a Strawman argument, but I think, it's the only think that can be of an equivalent examle here.
This is holocaust trivialization. Fascism and communism aren't the same or equally bad or something.
Not speaking out when commies seize the means of production is distinct from not speaking out when they're rounding up minorities.
I haven't mentioned holocaust, it was about Now and current neonacis compared to what happened to us. And yes they didn't attack minorities explicitely, but they were not excluded. Comunist didn't just took money and means of production, they also attacked and forcibly asimilated Roma and trird their best to dismantle religous organizations. And even though I'm atheist white male. Which was the easiest thing under that regime, it still is not something that anyone should consider okay.
Its fine to criticize the USSR for those things, we do that here. We don't equate them to fascists though, because they aren't and it disrespects victims of the holocaust.
And that is not what I'm trying to do, my family was in Auschwitz. But please we cannot go to the other extreme.
If you don't want to take the example of forced Roma assimilation to communist society by forcing them to live on one place, but otherwise isolating them, so they them self can't have efect on it.
You can look at Uyghurs in current china.
I'm not claiming here that communism in theory does not make sense, but people are not good. I also don't claim that I like capitalism. Healthcare should be free (and mostly is in my country a I would be dead in cryppling debt, or hand-less if I lived under US healthcare). Education is on same level.
But under both strict capitalism or strict communism those important things suffer.
Also lets look at simple point from the different side: "No goverment should be totalitarian" this is statement that I sand by. Totalitarians will never work, because even if the first generation are smart and kind people who.just want the best for you. Bad poeple are way better in clymbing any social ladder and will get to the top and then you're fucked.
Hope noone is offended by profanity, but I dont know how to translate my thougst i to english better. And I detest self censoring that people do by usinng F-ed or ******, because we all know what you meen, so what did it helped?
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
But under both strict capitalism or strict communism those important things suffer.
You can't have a blend. Capitalism or communism is about whether society is ruled by capital or the workers.
If I knew it ment getting in trouble I would simply not do it.
Like, my ability to whine is not worth going to jail for. Like, how do you picture it going. Just everyday at work I sigh, look at the clock, and have to bite my tongue to keep from going on rants about how much the government sucks? I already don't talk about how much the government sucks to my coworkers. That is just to keep the peace. If I knew jail was an option I would want to talk to them about it even less
If you like your government, you don't want anyone to organize against it. And if many people think like you, a truly democratic government would act according to your desires and jail the agitators.
Or, put otherwise, if you use the democratic mechanisms in place, it's all good. If you protest or demonstrate because you feel you aren't heard by the government, that'll usually have an effect. But if, deep inside, you want to overthrow the government, everyone will hate you and you'll be jailed or worse.
Do you have any proof or detail for your claim? Your claim sound like the many disproven slanders against the Communists that is accepted as fact in the school textbooks and "educational" documentaries in Western European diaspora countries. I know that Venezuela under the former Socialist president, Hugo Chavez, tolerate slanders and baseless conspiracy theories against the Socialist government and that "Putin's police guards" allow people to freely sing Ukrainian anthem in Moscow without restrainment. The NATO did stage the 1989 False Flag massacre and write a false narrative that contradicts the original photo evidence by their Western European diaspora journalists (https://web.archive.org/web/19970329011405/http://www.cnd.org:8022/June4th/massacre.html) in China alongside the plothole of why the Chinese citizens somehow did not know about the repression before the 1989 false flag terrorism.
They are just scared idiots who are worried about the future of the world and instead of admitting that their is gray to the world they have taken an easy answer of saying the "other option" (because black and white is all people can think in) was perfect and that they could be 100% happy and never complain about anything ever cause surely communism would be perfect.
They are happy to ignore the rough edges because they aren't actually living it. Not to say it couldn't be a better system but that it would be one that needs work and effort to be best to its citizens.
Both capitalism and communism arrested its citizens for dissenting against the system they were in but this seems fucking ignorant of reality from people who put in half a thought on this at best.
If there is 'gray to the world' does that mean you accept that there must be a positive as well as a negative side to the USSR?
When Poland was occupied by communists after the second world war, it was pretty bad. There was very little food, if any at all in stores. I remember specifically that the only thing being in stock in stores was vinegar because the shelves were empty. Everything of value Poland produced, like food, went to the USSR. The only import Poland got were things like matchsticks.
What a nonsense.
occupied by communists after the second world war
Polish communists occupied their own country?
There was very little food, if any at all in stores.
You might have heard about, you know, the war and the real occupation, nazi one. Requisition, destruction, mass murders, death camps. I wonder why that stopped. Who ended it.
I remember specifically
Unless you are 95 years old i doubt it was "you specifically". And also:
I remember specifically that the only thing being in stock in stores was vinegar because the shelves were empty
At least get your propaganda sorted out, dumbass, those were two different separate pieces, the vinegar one was about the 80's (and equally false as the other one).
Everything of value Poland produced, like food, went to the USSR. The only import Poland got were things like matchsticks.
As evidenced by the rapidly rebuilding and repopulating country being made entirely of matchsticks. Yawn. Seriously at least get something less boring, go read some IPN book or something for more plausibly spun propaganda instead of taking your historical knowledge from Jebzdzidy.
I wonder if they are so used to liberals just going "OMG! That's so horrible! Evil commies! Thank you for sharing your story brave hero!" that they forget when they are talking to people who can use their brains and actually bother to try and understand history.
Yes, this is exactly the case, in Poland you can say the wildest shit about communism, on the Yeonmi Park level, and all you see are the wise gray hair heads solemnly nodding.
What were conditions like everywhere else in the world after the biggest war the world had ever seen?
Everything of value Poland produced, like food, went to the USSR.
Let's see some sources to support this bold claim. I'll wait.
Stalin was extra hungry after the war, so he personally ate all of Poland's food. Everyone in Poland starved to death 5 times each! I know it is true because I was Poland from 1945-51.
"I remember specifically"... Damn, I'm sorry you had to survive on only vinegar and matches, grandpa 🤣
Then why didn't 3 million people died out straight way like what British did to bengali people (I am from bengal btw).
Sounds like the stories I've heard from people of that generation in west Germany. Things didn't get better until the Währungsreform of 1948, and didn't get markedly better until the US dumped in money (with strings attached mind) via the Marshall Plan. Europe was decimated by the war, regardless of which class was in charge.
Ahh yes, so we should have just let the naxais have the place. That would obviously have been preferred
Słuchaj, pierdolisz. PolandIsAStateOfMind napisał wszystko co trzeba, jedynie piszę abyś był świadom że paru polskich komuchów tu jest którzy są chętni do zwalczania typowych głupot jakie ludzie jak ty lubią rozprzestrzeniać.
A Poland immigrant in Canada had testified about Communist rule in Poland, so I can expand on your story. There was free food under Communism, but people need to wait in a long line because the Soviet Union used the financial institutions from the Western European countries for the recovery after World War 2. Since the Western Europeans want to sabotage Communism, their institutions attempted to overchange the Eastern European countries with huge debt for the financial assistance and this debt-trapping is the current practice of the Bretton Woods institutions like World Bank and International Monetary Fund to create third world problems in former European colonies. Also when there are evidence that a person is subverting Communist rule, the Communist government will conduct search within a more reasonable ethical boundary than the police search in the US.
