[4ggr0]

I know that I am part of a minority when saying this, and to give some context, I live in a Social Democracy and do like it as it is.

Now, why I don't like this foundation. First off, every bad thing happening in communist countries seems to be attributed to the concept of communism itself, and not to the fact that these countries are ruled by dictators. They also state "we tell the truth about communism because our vision is for a world free from the false hope of communism"

If shit happens in our capitalist countries, this rarely gets blamed on capitalism as a whole, and even if, it's not taken seriously by many. I've never seen someone blame capitalism for what happened at Guantanamo Bay, as an example.

"a world free from [...] communism". It seems like this foundation is part of a majority who doesn't actually educate themselves about communism. As someone who has read what Marx, Engels any many others came up with, I can just shake my head if I read what is written on this foundations website. The big issue with communism is that dictators use this system to enrich themselves, BUT, communism should be a system where the proletariat rules, not a single person.

If anyone would create a "Victims of Capitalism Memorial Foundation", the west would instantly laugh it off and deny such criticism. But as we have seemed to conclude that commies are the bad guys, everyone is fine with people blaming absolutely everything on Communism.

And now to end, no, I am not communist. I live in one of the richest, capitalist countries, in a social democracy. I just don't like it when Communism is being blamed in such weird ways and it especially pisses me off if such things come from the US - a country where news talking heads frequently trash Socialism/Communism as a boogeyman, even if it makes zero sense. Add to that the atrocities that the US has caused in our world (Y'all also do tons of cool stuff, I'm not Anti-US, just objectively critical), atrocities which rarely get blamed on the whole country and instead on groups or even specific people, and I can't take such generalized criticism against whole systems seriously.

China does evil shit all the time as well. Surveillance, the stuff in Xinjang and more, just to also make clear that I am not a chinese puppet. But keep the criticism real.

This comment also gives more concrete criticism: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31489695

[smcl]

Comments which mention socialism or communism in a way that doesn't explicitly condemn it are often downvoted to oblivion on HN. I got it once because I mentioned that I thought Tito was an interesting guy. FWIW I'll vouch the comment if it gets made [dead]

[4ggr0]

Yes, but I notice this in real life as well. As soon as I dare to suppose that merely the theory of communism is not 100% evil, I get treated like a full-on communist defending that "Stalin killed 100 million people".

Can't even blame people that much, used to think the same. Then I read a couple of books, educated myself about different political ideologies and now I'm better able to talk about this topic rationally. I still think a communist state which truly works is very hard to achieve and not that necessary, even just when talking about having to convince people that we or they should try. But I took some 'marxist' principles to heart and base my political thinking around concepts like class conflict and economic/social equality, without feeling or describing myself as communist. I still vote for SocDems, I'm probably just a bit more "extreme" than their average voter.

[Jon_Lowtek]

I see that a lot with all kind of topics and call it "0/1 partisanship" for lack of a better word. I think it's related strongly to in-group/out-group thinking, friend or foe. You are either with us, or against us, but in a radical way: either you agree with everything, or you are the enemy. There is no middle ground, no grey area, no 23% or 42% or 69% only 0 and 1. People lack the ability to differentiate, to have a discussion about the finer detail. Maybe it's the education system not training discourse culture, but i think it is mostly because they don't actually care about the topic, only about the social aspect of being on the same side of a topic.

[MockObject]

While it may be true that the criticisms of the Bolsheviks leveled by Kautsky may point to a disapproval of Leninism by Marx and Engels, nevertheless, no non-Leninist socialist revolution has ever occurred, and so the charge of brutal dictatorship is valid and legitimate in historical practice.