[Karellen]

> In communism, as in all authoritarian/totalitarian regimes,

WTF? Communism is an economic model, not a leadership selection model. Communism is diametrically opposed to capitalism, not to democracy.

(It always baffles me when a communist authoritarian dictatorship enriches wealthy plutocrats while the workers starve, it's always the communism part that gets blamed, never the authoritarian dictatorship. But when a capitalist authoritarian dictatorship enriches wealthy plutocrats while the workers starve, it's never the capitalism that gets blamed. No, then it's the authoritarian dictatorship that's the problem. How about, just maybe, it's dictators and wealthy plutocrats that are the biggest problem for the working class?)

[hdjjhhvvhga]

Believe me, I fully see your point. However, in the biggest examples we've seen so far, like the communist Russia and China, the ideals of equality were trampled almost as quickly as they were declared. And their biggest differentiator, as declared by them, was that they were communist.

You don't really get the same level of authoritarian in the so called capitalism or "modern democracy" because in order for this model to thrive, you need to have sound relations with other democratic/"capitalistic" countries and they won't trade with you if you don't obey certain standards.

A good example is what is happening in Hungary and Poland now: after the right took over they decided to make a more or less gradual switch to an authoritarian regime, taking over the courts, media etc. But their EU partners said, if you follow this road, you will not get money form the EU anymore. So apart the war in Ukraine, this is the biggest discussion in the EU now.

[bombolo]

> the ideals of equality were trampled almost as quickly as they were declared

And yet the standards of living post revolution and post war increased quite dramatically in the soviet union.

[Karellen]

> You don't really get the same level of authoritarian in the so called capitalism or "modern democracy"

Cambodia springs to mind. Pretty sure I could find a few countries in Africa that fit the bill too.

[the_third_wave]

Cambodia is a good example. Under the Communist regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge the country was turned into the killing fields. Their four-year rule (1975-1979) decimated Cambodia, created widespread human suffering and as many as 2.2 million deaths [1]. I guess this is not the part of Cambodian history you meant but it does show what a Communist regime is capable of given free reign.

[1] https://alphahistory.com/coldwar/cambodia-under-pol-pot/

[unity1001]

> However, in the biggest examples we've seen so far, like the communist Russia and China, the ideals of equality were trampled almost as quickly as they were declared. And their biggest differentiator, as declared by them, was that they were communist

Both of those countries have stayed in a state of imminent world war (and later nuclear war) since their founding until today. Ronald Reagan even triggered Ww3 a few times while trying to push the USSR back into a corner.

During that time, the dissidents in the US were persecuted harder than any dissidents in the Eastern Bloc - McCarthy commissions would practically end your life by accusing you of being a communist and the society would do the rest by casting you out, jobless to fend for yourself in the wild. Whereas in the USSR, as a dissident to the system, you could have been exiled to a central Asian city in the middle of nowhere, but would still have a job, a house and your children would go to school.

The funniest thing is that people have no idea that the very same laws to effect such persecution exists in every. single. 'democratic' country. They are called 'emergency laws' and they are triggered in the case of existential economic or actual war, major catastrophe, social collapse, alien invasion etc. These laws allow many things ranging from the state or even the local authority that represents the state shoving you into prison for no reason to an officer with a pistol executing you on the spot for treason or trying to avoid fighting for your country.

Just a year ago a New York court suspended habeas corpus, the fundamental right that ALL the rights in the common law system is founded upon. At that moment, all freedoms have ended in NY and the police was able to do whatever they wanted with anyone, until a higher court suspended the decision because the justification for the habeas corpus suspension was not strong enough. Which means that if there was a sufficiently acceptable reason at that moment, habeas corpus could have been kept suspended and any repression way beyond what you could have in Eastern Bloc could have been possible because habeas corpus basically is the lynchpin of every single right in the Angloamerican common law system. The Eastern Bloc countries you keep lambasting were founded on civil law, and in civil law everything has a standard - including what kind of emergency measure allows what kind of drastic action. Nobody can do 'whatever' with anyone outside what the law clearly and indisputably dictates - much unlike common law, which relies on 'interpretations' and 'precedents'.

> You don't really get the same level of authoritarian in the so called capitalism or "modern democracy" because in order for this model to thrive, you need to have sound relations with other democratic/"capitalistic" countries and they won't trade with you if you don't obey certain standards.

Thats only in the romantic theoretical picture. Otherwise you do business with Saudi Arabia, any fascist dictator (much better for labor costs) and no satellite of yours can refuse to trade with you because you (the US in this case) are the master. A master who can easily put up trade barriers through tariffs and quotas to its 'free trade' allies but expect those allies to pull down all barriers. Few people know that the US does that.

> A good example is what is happening in Hungary and Poland now: after the right took over they decided to make a more or less gradual switch to an authoritarian regime

They are authoritarian and those other countries arent authoritarian only because you are shown what happens in any country by the media selectively and you happen to be in the privileged ~10% demographic that doesnt have many problems and is part of the system unlike the poor at the bottom. Otherwise the US has repressed the Occupy protesters by hooking them up with tens of thousands of dollars of fines for 'trespassing' on !public! property back in 2011, effectively bankrupting most of those people and ending their livelihoods for good. Meanwhile Germany is currently busy with jailing people who object to the Ukraine war as of this very moment.

[jryle70]

> During that time, the dissidents in the US were persecuted harder than any dissidents in the Eastern Bloc

Bullshit. As bad as McCarthyism was, nothing in the US could compare to the Great Purge [0], or Culture Revolution [1], or Cambodia Genocide [2]. Millions of people died. Families separated. People were forced to choose ideology over family ties. Religion persecuted.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide

Did you live under the communists? I did. My family suffered. For 30 years. Don't even dismiss events that you had no experience first hand.

[unity1001]

> As bad as McCarthyism was, nothing in the US could compare to the Great Purge [0], or Culture Revolution [1], or Cambodia Genocide

Tell that to those whose lives were destroyed by McCarthyism - and this is without touching the subject of extrajudicial FBI actions. Leaving aside operation gladio, cointelpro and all that - a democratic storefront is easy if you just extrajudicially blow up any regime opponent with a car bomb in the morning when they turn on their car key. All across Europe in between 10,000 to 50,000 is estimated to have been murdered that way, or just taken out and 'disappeared'. In South America, its far worse - extrajudicial killings were in the open there.

What you call "Great Purge" was a filtering of the anti-system personas in the Soviet Union, which is something that the US already have done way before with the laws that were made in ~1917 to persecute the anti-war opposition. Andin the great purge, most of those were reinstated to their former positions in a few years anyway. Cultural Revolution was directed against the anti-system elite in China as well, and just like the Great Purge, a lot of those were reinstated - the current president of China had his family 'purged' during the cultural revolution. Cambodian Genocide is a genocide as much as Vietnam War, 2003 Iraq war, all the CIA-organized paramilitary murders that killed an uncountable amount of people in South America are. And even in that, it was something that happened over existing racial hatreds, not anything related to the system.

Funnily how whatever happens in non-imperialist countries are 'genocides' and 'purges' whereas nothing that happens in a US backed country etc is. Like how Indonesia killed 300,000 left wingers, communists, or the first US backed dictator of South Korea killed 3 million people. Indonesian government just recently recognized those murders and apologized for it, but they still pushed out a law to !surprise! persecute communists and communism. Or pick any US-backed coup. In my country, the US-backed coup that brought 'democracy' immediately hanged 10,000+ people from the opposition and jailed 30,000 for 2 decades afterwards. So save that 'freedom and democracy' tirade. That only exists if you arent in the targeted anti-system opposition demographic.

> Did you live under the communists? I did. My family suffered. For 30 years.

You do look like to have suffered so much with your family and very probably you getting a top tier education to the point of being able to speak fluent English and be on this site where white-collar tech professionals frequent. So that horrible repressive communist country provided your parents and very probably you with all the financial resources and also the higher education that catapulted your family to this position. Which is something you would never get if you were born into a disadvantaged minority in the US during the cold war. And which is something difficult even for those from the 'right background' today thanks to education costs for college pushing upwards of $100,000.

...

One thing that people like you who lived in such Eastern Bloc or communist countries make is to think that you would have been able to have housing, education and all that if you lived in a 'democratic' (read: capitalist) country. This is because your segment was those who were able to receive such perks and benefits at the right time before they were abolished by the free market and who were able to get into the top 10% segment of the society. Those who werent able to do that think totally different now, as they have to work as underpaid labor in other European countries.

https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/homesick-for-a-...

I belong to a segment like you - whose family was lifted thanks to socialized education and amenities that a country that imitated the Eastern Bloc provided. But unlike many of those from my socioeconomic white collar segment who think that they would have 'just' happened to be in the same educated white collar jobs with 'the free market', I know what was lost after the transition to a randian economy.

However, beyond that - really, just try declaring yourself to be an opponent of the system and see what happens in your 'democratic' country. You are 'free' only because you are a collaborator of the system with only minor criticisms and you dont constitute any threat whatsoever.

[the_third_wave]

I suggest you open your eyes to the reality of history instead of trying to defend an ideology which has cost more lives than the archetypical epitome of evil, Nazism. Read a few books, speak to survivors.

It is not only shameful to see how communists can strut their stuff where they would have been shunned had they been neo-nazis, it is dangerous as well. It can lead to more countries falling to starry-eyed revolutionaries leading to more suffering, deprivation and death. Yet even more, as if those which fell in the past were not proof enough of the failings of this ideology.