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by pjc50
2171 days ago
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It's traditional to label any left-wing movement in the US as "Marxist", regardless of the actual content of its views, simply because that's an effective thought-terminating cliche for the rightwing audience. Nobody cares about the historical analysis. The intent is always the same; in this case, to make it clear that if the police aren't allowed to murder people in the street without repercussions, America will immediately become a communist dictatorship. (Some people in the movement do self-identify as Marxist, yes; so what? That's a convenient way of avoiding looking at their actual politics.) |
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(I went wait what at first, but I guess the communists were already a thing in the 1830's, so it makes sense educated people would've been familiar with them)
https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/hundley/hundley.html#hund7
> "Now, as every well-informed person knows, the fact is indisputable, and has often been boasted of by the infidel press, that anti-slavery sentiments were first propagated by the ultra socialists and communists--those miserable sans culottes, who, during the memorable French Revolution, raised the cry of Liberté, Fraternité et Egalité, and in the madness of their drunken folly enthroned a nude harlot in the Temple of Justice as the goddess Reason, the object of their admiration and worship. At that time England and Massachusetts were virtuously engaged in supplying the slave-marts of the world with cargoes fresh from Guinea and Loango, and our Northern divines had not the least suspicion that the Bible condemned slavery. But, sansculotteism being quelled in France, soon found a foothold in Exeter Hall, and thence spread to the United States. For a long time the clergy resisted the storm of radical ideas, but being only men like the rest of us, and having an eye to benefices, calls, surprise-parties, and the like, as well as "itching ears" to catch the sweet voices of the rabble, they have at last almost surrendered in a body in the Free States, and now seek to lead in the new crusade ..."
> " Already, we repeat, this terrible question is being mooted in secret conclave; and should the time ever come when it shall be mooted openly--when loudmouthed and earnest men, fresh from the people, shall bestride Faneuil Hall, bawling for an equal and exact distribution to every mechanic of whatever craft, to every operative of whatever mills, to every laborer of whatever grade--bawling, we say, for an equal and exact distribution to the workmen of the net proceeds of their combined labor; and denouncing in the same breath pampered capitalists, as so many lordlings growing rich on the earnings of the moiling and toiling poor, reaping where they have not sown, and gathering where they have not scattered; upon what plausible pretext will you, Sir, then seek to gainsay them? You will have none. Dumb and quaking with fear you would be constrained to acquiesce in their logic; for they would only use in their own behalf the identical arguments you have assiduously tried to impress upon their minds for ten years and more, in order to persuade them to interfere in the affairs of their neighbors."
^F "socialist" for more of the sort. Hundley would've hated 140 characters.
These days the french have moved on; they're even going for Liberté, Sororité et Egalité. What horror! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls_nVMZK3rM