[nickpp]

That irrational response was heavily fueled by fear mongering from environmental activists and financed by oil producing hostile countries.

In the 70s and 80s leftists couldn't much keep pushing socialism (like they are now) since the horrors of their ideology was quite visible to everybody in the example of USSR. So they embraced environmentalism - just another way for them to fight capitalism and consumerism.

Russia (through the KGB) was quite happy to finance their cause. It meant Western countries (and especially Western Europe) stayed dependent on them for their energy. The folly of our strategy became quite apparent during the last few years with the Ukraine invasion and revelations of EU politicians fully paid and owned by the Russians.

Together with infiltrating the Western Academia, this was probably one of the most successful undercover secret service operation ever.

[hef19898]

This view is extremely US centrict with regards to what socialism is. It also ignores decades of history when it comes European relations with the USSR and Russia later. Mixed with some red-scare level fears it turns into pure dilussion at the end...

[nickpp]

Funny enough I was born, grew up and I currently live in the Eastern Europe.

I could tell you so much about our history and relations with Russia. From my own experience before '90, from my parents' during communism horror years and from my grandparents' during the War and the soviet occupation after.

But all that info is freely available in books and online - for naught. You can't change the mind of the Western leftists who never had to live through an actual implementation of their pet ideology. They dream about Norway, Sweden and Denmark while never even visiting Cuba, North Korea or Venezuela.

[hef19898]

Communism isn't socialism. Cuba is as close to old school communism as you get nowadays, Venezuela is cleptocratic, deeply corrupt regime ehixh has not much to do with either socialism or communism. And North Korea, well, what can I say, is just North Korea.

[nickpp]

It's never "true communism", of course. That has never been tried. Yeah, right.

[hef19898]

Who talked about true communism? Communism was tried, didn't work. Your own words by the way.

There is a very important difference between communism and socialism, because the latter has been tried multiple times and worked comparatively well. You even named some of the poster child countries yourself. As I said, it is a truely US thing to equate socialism with communism, followed by touting Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea as negative examples of it.