[ausudhz]

somewhat similar to the demonization of communism that the west pushed for decades?

Apparently there are many people that are more incline to just smile and nod rather than arguing. Probably the geographical location of these is not really important. They're equally distributed across the globe

[rsynnott]

If you’re talking about McCarthyism, then yes, similar dynamic. If you’re talking about today, then don’t be silly.

[ausudhz]

Yes I'm taking about that, you're the only one that understands it apparently.

The thing is that my comment couldn't be anyhow related to today's situation (I've used the past tense) since communist doesn't exist anymore (not the way it used to) and most of the country that implemented it widely abandoned it (probably the only exception is perhaps North Korea)

[joenot443]

This is a wildly off-base comparison to make, I'd be impressed if your comment stays up for long.

[ausudhz]

I don't understand why people get so emotional when you mention the word communism

It was a simple comparison point on the previous comment that, by my standard was also wildly off base (given that he said dumb to a whole country basically)

the fact is that the west seems to be so attached (weirdly) to communism despite even those who implemented it already abandoned.

Are you scared of ghosts or what?

[joenot443]

What an idiotic question. In my case, the sensitivities are familiar. My ancestors in Ukraine were starved to death by communists during the Holodomor. Is that something you're familiar with?

The West is "weirdly" attached to communism for many reasons, the foremost being that the past 50 years has been spent trying to clean up the mess left by communist regimes.

Do you ever stop and wonder what Russia could have been like had the Bolsheviks not terrorized it? Does it scare you to face just how badly your ideology has globally failed, and will be forever remembered as a point of shame in the grand story of human development?

[ausudhz]

It's not my ideology! It was an example just chill down instead of implying things that I never said

[misja111]

> somewhat similar to the demonization of communism that the west pushed for decades?

I'm not sure what you mean with 'the west', but in Western Europe communist political parties were allowed just like any others. When I went to high school in the 80's it was even kind of fashionable to have communist sympathies. This was before the fall of the iron curtain though, once it went down it became clear how terrible communism had really been.

[ausudhz]

that doesn't make it less demonized. Unless you forgot the media campaigns on it and the plenty of wars that started in the attempt to stop the spread of communism.

[yesco]

No, because the government doesn't need to demonize communism to make it sound dumb. Hell if anything, the contrarian nature of Americans caused many to entertain the idea after witnessing the demonization, which makes it basically the opposite of China's situation.

[ausudhz]

> No, because the government doesn't need to demonize communism to make it sound dumb

true, because the citizens of these countries are already uninformed enough about communism that they are indeed the one that make it sound dumb

[drno123]

I have lived in a country under communist rule until it fell apart in 1990.

If you haven’t experienced communism first hand, you have no idea how bad it is, even the watered-down communism of 80s.

[ausudhz]

it doesn't matter if I've experienced it or not. My comment it's not a praise to communism, perhaps just read it again (and read the context from which it started too)

[saiya-jin]

As somebody who intimately saw on my closest ones and everybody else various horrible things that communism does to society and every single individual in it, and how the legacy of it can't be shed easily even after decades and multiple generations, you don't need to demonize communism a slightest bit .

Just point out well known facts, in balanced manner, and that's more than enough.

[Kye]

After a lifetime of being on the boot end of capitalism, I don't think communist systems are special in being full of horrors. I don't think the particular system humans use to justify those horrors is the issue.

[saiya-jin]

You don't think... well experiencing both systems would give you much better opinions to compare rather than just thinking about it. Unfortunately I had, and my opinions are clear.

You can see it yourself if you look closely enough, go to let's say Vienna, and then go to Bratislava or further east. Even after 34 years. I don't mean financial aspect of difference, I mean everything else that makes healthy society thriving.

In capitalism, you always have freedom of thinking, traveling, freedom to not have a job for example. You can bash it as much as you prefer, and its leaders. Your parents won't be put in gulag or uranium mines for 10 years because of that. My friend, you frankly have no idea what you write about...

[HL33tibCe7]

This kind of whataboutery is an ignorant and insulting to people who’ve actually had to live through the horrors of communism, which are on a different order of magnitude to the horrors of capitalism, bad as they might be.

[Kye]

I have yet to see a single example of a horror done under any modern human system that wasn't done under every system before and next to it. If I'm ignorant, it's a failure to persuade on the part of people who have a special hatred of communism.

[misja111]

Sure, tell that to the relatives of the 4 million Ukrainians who died during Stalin's farming reforms, to the 2 million Chinese who died during the Cultural Revolution, or to the 2 million Cambodian victims under Pol Pot.

[etc-hosts]

Pol Pot gained complete control because Kissinger and Nixon bombed Cambodia.

[worrycue]

> 2 million Chinese who died during the Cultural Revolution

Heavens know how many died during the Great Leap Forward. Estimates are between 30 million to 55 million.

[Kye]

I could rattle off a list with similar numbers for capitalism (or proportional numbers for older systems), too. This does not persuade anyone who isn't already in the choir that your pet gripe is special.

Humans do horrible stuff to each other in the name of ideology. Systems are just one of the ways they rationalize it.

[selectodude]

No, you really couldn't.

[AbrahamParangi]

The "demonization" of communism is wholly deserved. Every communist country, ever has been am impoverished, totalitarian, shithole. The most successful "communist" countries are those that have given up on economic communism (China, Vietnam), though they'd be even more successful if they gave up on political communism too.

The track record of communism is so insanely bad that it is literally the second worst ideology of the 20th century, beat only by facism which caused the instant self-immolation of every country to ever try it (while inflicting terrible harm on their neighbors).