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.
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.
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?
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
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.)
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
Capitalist tool.
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
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:
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.)
Yes, we're real communists.
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
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?
Your final sentence is pure projection.