Communists - That time when 100 million people died wasn't REAL communism, comrade

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

 

[Autistic Illuminati]

The key to changing a society is destroy the family unit and destroy it's moral fabric. The Alt sexuals are being given privileges for now to achieve said goals. Once the new society is brought into being is when they will be removed.

you seem to have an interesting point of view on the subject, do you care developping ?

 

[Emperor Julian]

*unless the person is well read in theory and books on said ideology. blind followers are nothng but sheep

The thinkers are usually pretty interesting. I recall one of them made a fair observation about democracies failure in antiquity. Then again in the same thread one of attempted to argue I was mentally Ill using fraudian analysis because I thought his ideas where dumb. They were quite bemused when I stopped taking them seriously after that.

Fun thing about Stalinist/mao fanboys is that they have no where near the same level of built up bullshit (such as obscure logistical arguements about the holocaust) as say neo Nazis have to buffer them from reality so they're reasonably easy for a layperson to decimate in debate.

 

[El Garbage]

The commie system was pretty good for pre-CGI-era moviemaking. 1970's Waterloo had 15000 extras playing the armies, and they reconstructed the battlefield 1:1 in Ukraine with all the hills, trees, buildings and such. The Liberation film series had over a hundred of tanks available for large battle scenes, thousands of guns and extras, dozens of planes etc. Stuff like that was basically impossible for Hollywood at the time.

Of course the films are pretty awful otherwise.

 

[Honeybunny]

At least the Soviet Union gave us Andrej Tarkovskij, can't fault them for that

 

[Anaiah Carlson]

Communism has greater potential as a supreme system and also has a greater potential for much greater atrocity. In order for the system to flourish, it relies on good leaders. For capitalism, it can never flourish even with the best leaders. However, capitalism will also not lead to the kind of atrocities that can occur under communism.

 

[Emperor Julian]

Communism has greater potential as a supreme system and also has a greater potential for much greater atrocity. In order for the system to flourish, it relies on good leaders. For capitalism, it can never flourish even with the best leaders. However, capitalism will also not lead to the kind of atrocities that can occur under communism.

Isn't that more democracy vs autocracy? I know their's overlap but still.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

I hope all communist Chinese die a horrible death.

Edit, 2020: fuck.

 

[Anaiah Carlson]

Isn't that more democracy vs autocracy? I know their's overlap but still.

All i know is, communism and capitalism by their very nature require diametrically opposed political philosophies and systems to be implemented.

Id say so far all political ideologies have failed. But that communism has the best chance of succeeding and not failing if finally done right. But capitalism can never succeed because inherent to capitalism is the class system of rich vs poor. Communism allows for that class system but also allows for elimination of it. Capitalism can never eliminate the poor class.

Under capitalism, if everyone has 1 million dollars, 1 million dollars becomes worthless. Thus in order for some people to successful others have to fail. In communism everyone can be successful if their leaders allow them the opportunities. Because 1 million for everyone under communism would maintain the true value of 1 million, as the prices would be fixed by the government.

 

[Guardian G.I.]

Why is capitalism standing at the edge of abyss?
It looks at how socialism flounders at the bottom!

In Russia, as well as Ukraine and Belarus, student commies like the ones featured in the OP are very rare. Most of them are people who grew up in the Soviet Union:

Spoiler: Typical hardline Russian communists of 2000s

One would expect them to vanish very quickly after the fall of communist rule like in most ex-Warsaw Pact Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, because capitalist economy is best economy or something. But the fall of communism in Russia didn't magically lead to freedom and prosperity - instead it led to this, this, and this, and this, etc. The standards of living fell from Second World standards to Third World standards, tens of thousands were displaced by war and inter-ethnic strife, many people ended up out of work with no way to make both ends meet... The Soviet Union at its death throes started to look chummy compared to Free and Democratic Russia/[insert country name here]*.

As a result, many people who wouldn't even care about left-wing ideas before 1991 suddenly became die-hard communists. 1990s had a lot of left-wing mass demonstrations, featuring old people who for some reason refused to die out because they "didn't fit into the market**" As the pro-Western liberals discredited liberal democracy even further, the hardcore left went into full Stalin worship, because they thought only totalitarian rule could bring Russia out of the abyss (and because when Stalin was alive, they could still get their dick hard).

I've seen a bunch of those people on the internet, and they usually have the following traits:

• They ignore the shortcomings of Soviet economic system (of course!), because they are either too nostalgic about the good old times when ice cream costed 20 Soviet kopeks, or look at the economic growth of Stalin's era without noticing the bad things it caused (endless grain requisitions and the retardedness of local officials resulting in the famine of 1933, the confiscation of valuables from the Orthodox Church in order to sell it to the West and buy industrial machinery, etc.). They also downplay the queues in stores of late USSR, claiming it was all Western propaganda/fault of several wreckers in the Party that should have been shot/etc.
  
• Continuing with the point above, they fully believe official Soviet economic statistics which were often very, very , to put it mildly. Evidence to the contrary is Western propaganda, obviously.
  
• They fap to the might of Soviet military, even though its maintenance severely hampered the civilian sector of the economy. Also they forget such things as dedovshchina, colossal mismanagement in every single part of the Soviet Armed Forces except the most battle-ready ones and other ugly features of the mighty Soviet Army.
• They fap to the idea of authoritarian rule in general, and Stalin is their idol. As a result, they very often fully approve of Stalin's repressions... except Katyn, which was Nazi propaganda and didn't happen (also, secret protocol of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact don't real). Those who were wrongfully shot were either actual traitors or their execution was ordered by traitors in the NKVD and the Party.
• They approve of Stalin's mass deportations of Crimean Tatars, Chechens and the like, because every single one of them was a Nazi collaborator, info 100% true. The deportations were a very dumb move that only inflamed inter-ethnic tensions in the region and caused a lot of trouble in the long run***, but try telling these people that.
• In general, they like to attribute many mistakes done by the Soviet Union to traitors infiltrating the upper echelons of power. They also fap to the all-mighty Soviet state-security and intelligence services. Orwell would have had a field day with their kind of logic.
• They fap to North Korea, because from the outside it looks like Stalinist heaven. Tales of North Korean mass repressions are... guess what?
  
• Those who are exceptionally exceptional believe China's economic success is a result of socialism, and not Deng Xiaoping ditching state planning of the economy in favour of state capitalism. They ignore the drawbacks of such economic policies - massive corruption, the ever-growing gap between the rich and the poor, etc.
• They cannot even comprehend the idea of political pluralism. To them, all political forces not in line with their ideology are traitor scum on US State Department's payroll.
• Outward hostility towards all businessmen and entrepreneurs, because they obviously got their money through dishonest means****. They also can't fathom how the non-manufacturing sectors of the economy like services actually work, so they are very hostile towards office workers, those who work in the IT sector, etc.
• International diplomacy is too hard for them to understand, and so is international trade. All deals with the West are bad by definition, because they are Russia's enemies by default and are pretty much about to invade Russia tomorrow 1941-style, except Putin doesn't know that. The universal solution to all international crises is "Strike them first before they strike us first". Their favourite mantra is "If we don't fight the Americans in [insert location here], soon we'll have to fight them in Moscow". In 2014, during the Donbass War, when Putin didn't invade Ukraine South Ossetia-style, the amount of REEEEEEEEEEEEing by that crowd went off the charts. The Minsk treaties and Putin's word combination "Our Western partners" also trigger them a lot.
  
• They also think that when Russian politicians like Putin say something or sign some kind of a treaty, they are 100% truthful and stick to the letter all the time, while the backstabbing West doesn't follow on their obligations all the time.
• Too many to count!

In recent years, the ideological differences between these people and other Russian authoritarians have significantly faded away. Imagine someone who is a die-hard fanboy of both Soviet Union and Imperial Russia. These people are united by support of all totalitarian rule, regardless of ideology, severe anti-Western xenophobia, imperialism, jingoism and love for mass executions of all "enemies of Russia". The signs of them drifting towards each other first appeared during the political strife of 1993, when Yeltsin and pro-Western liberals faced an unholy alliance of communists, various other left-wingers, nationalists, monarchists and neo-Nazis, all united by their opposition to economic shock therapy. You'd typically see them together back then.

Spoiler: Actual insignia of some Russian irredentists from DNR/LNR, 2014

They are nicknamed "vatniks" on the Internet, largely by pro-Western student kids and anti-Russian Ukrainians.

-----
*All ex-socialist countries had significant problems in the 1990s, like East Germany, Poland and the Baltic states, among others. But in the 1990s they looked like success stories compared to Russia, and I'm not even talking about war-torn shitholes.
**Attributed to Russian liberal politician Anatoly Chubais, who said that in the 1990s when he was called out on the death toll of neoliberal economic policies.
***For example, Chechens didn't like Russian rule one bit and often helped the Nazis when they reached the Caucasus during WW2. Instead of hanging the collaborators high like all countries would do, Stalin brilliantly decided to deport all Chechens into the deserts of Uzbekistan and replace them with Russians. There was only one problem: it only made them more anti-Russian, so they started to cause problems in Uzbekistan, and when Khruschev decided to allow them back into their homeland, widespread inter-ethnic strife between Chechens and Russians began. When the Soviet Union broke up, the region exploded.
****To be honest, judging by how many Russian oligarchs got their riches, they aren't 100% wrong. They just think all people who start their own business are like that.

 

[Zarkov]

Stalled with the lack of stalin. tried to make a pun of stalled with an altered spelling of Stalin.

Don't explain the joke.

 

[Diesel Boogaloo]

Continuing with the point above, they fully believe official Soviet economic statistics which were often very, very , to put it mildly. Evidence to the contrary is Western propaganda, obviously.

Not even Gosplan (the State Planning Committee) believed the official statistics. At some point, they even used CIA statistics, because they were more accurate, but everything suggests even the CIA statistics were too optimistic.

 

[salt]

There's an entire Twitter account of stupid communist hot-takes. Enjoy.

 

[Magic Sun Daddy]

I don't know if I'm the first person to bring this gentleman up, but there's a channel on YouTube where a former soviet citizen goes out to interview antifa protesters. The dude is unflinchingly curtious and it's interesting to here these millinials try to explain their worldview.

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

The only thing Communism gave us were the survivors.

 

[John Furrman]

For capitalism, it can never flourish even with the best leaders.

Let's play a game, it's called "Find the capital of the former soviet bloc nation".

Spoiler

Seriously though, by what metric are you measuring the highly scientific term of "flourish" in?

 

[Robot Gentleman]

There's an entire Twitter account of stupid communist hot-takes. Enjoy.

That account is fucking gold.

 

[Hui]

It is CURRENT YEAR and the same stupid ass college kids still think Communism works.

 

[2al]

At least the Soviet Union gave us Andrej Tarkovskij, can't fault them for that

Wait, I was blond enough to think that was the guy who invented Chatroulette for a second.

 

[Picnic_Boy]

So, did everyone just forget that Alexander Solzhenitsyn existed?