So... following that same logic, they are all socialists, then? A lib or chud's (tomato tomahto) worldview is such a spaghettified mess of contradictions that trying to understand their thought process is a legit cognitohazard.
Socialism is bad and inhumane because it shoots the homeless. I, Chud McLibson, would like homeless people to be shot. Therefore, socialism serves my interest so it's good. But it's socialism, so it's bad. But good? Enough thinking, head hurts, time to post.
Socialism is bad because they shoot homeless people and drink their blood.
Socialism is also bad because socialists builds commie blocks for everyone to live in which is giving people free stuff which is theft from those who actually work and teaches people to be lazy.
And those commie blocks? They're bad because they're not McMansions which proves that socialism is bad because they want everyone to be poor. Also, those commie block are built so poorly that they start to fall apart after 30 years of deferred maintenance following the restoration of capitalism.
Also, in 1978 some guy in Petropavlovsk stubbed his toe and that's why communism has failed and will never work.
"Unleash the cops to clear the streets of bums and vagrants. Where will they go? Who cares?"
-noted socialist Murray Rothbard
One of the wildest anti-communist lies I've ever seen was a comment on RevLeftRadio's episode on Che Guevara. Some clown made the claim that after the revolution ended, Che would travel around Cuba on his motorcycle and just murder random people for fun like some deranged serial killer.
Shit like this clearly demonstrates how utterly pointless it is for current day self-described "leftists" to denounce past communist movements. It doesn't matter how much you insist that "we're not like those ebil red fash aUtHoRiTaRiAns", the people who oppose you are going to just make shit up from thin air to discredit you no matter what.
My favourite anti-communist trope is the made up quote attributed to a famous communist.
Lenin's "useful idiots", Stalin's "one million is a statistic" and "what matters is who counts the votes". There's also a supposed Che quote about how killing people made him feel good. Just the most moustache-twirling maniacal-cackling cartoon villain stuff.
I didn't know those Stalin quotes were made up. Perhaps I didn't investigate it because it's easy to read a correct meaning into them, unlike the Nazi quotes people give Lenin.
It's like Stalin's "No person, no problem" quote which is completely correct from a Marxist standpoint but removed from context and refracted through anticommunist mythology, goes from sociological first principal to endorsement for wanton murder. Mao also has one about the inevitability of death that experiences the same effect.
Stalin personally executing people for interupting him and torturing animals half to death and then feeding them to make a point about control is a big one. I also heard someone say that Karl Marx would walk around killing people for wearing shoes in the 1870s, assumed it was a joke but they were deadly serious, the brainworms are genuinely beyond parody.
True, also nothing works up an appetite for scones and tea on the Isle of Wight like summary executions of those damned bougie shoe-wearers
Shit like this clearly demonstrates how utterly pointless it is for current day self-described "leftists" to denounce past communist movements.
Pol Pot supporters have entered the chat. All two of them.
At most Pol Pot was some sort of anarcho-primitivist (degrowther). No reasonable communist is anti-industrialization or education.
Supposedly, he actually had a plan emulating the Great Leap Forward by first generating large amounts of income by exports of agricultural produce, to then rapidly industrialize the country. Far from a primitivist view. It was more about speedrunning development of productive forces in fact.
In 1976, the CPK adopted a four-year plan for the country’s development, which in almost comical nationalist one-upsmanship over China was called the “Super Great Leap Forward”. The main target was to double rice production in the years 1977–1980 so that Cambodia could export $1.4 billion worth of agricultural goods. Ninety percent of that was to be rice sold to its traditional buyers (Hong Kong, Singapore and African countries), with Thailand a vital market for other products. The profit would be used to buy the machinery and raw materials needed to achieve modern (mechanised) agriculture within 10–15 years and modern industry within 15–20 years.
Sorry, but that Pol Pot defense falls flat. Wishing one can do stuff is not materialist. It is at best idealist. Pol Pot didn't take material considerations in account. Especially at the market situations at that point agricultural exports for cash crops would not have enabled enough money income to "speedrun industrialization". However as you correctly write rice was the major thing was focused on, which is not a cash crop. This means that the surplus generated per person would be low compared to alternative settings. So even going from that starting point it isn't "a plan", but a wish. Wishing to double four times the production of one crop within four years is absurd, especially when you are talking about labour intense crops (which rice is). The geography of Kamodia is also not well suited for large scale cash crop production (in the 1970s).
Pol Pot was inspired in part in some degrowth theories and satirical understanding of dependency theory, which states that peripheral countries are actively "underdeveloped" by the imperial core. That was one of the big reasons for trying to go as self-sufficient as some Red Khmer plans tried to be.
Kambodia, a US ally, was also getting support from China at some point in time. Mainly cause China wanted to prevent a Soviet-Vietnamese encircling of their border and used the Vietnamese-Kambodian conflict to get more independence from the Soviet political sphere. China's (more correct the ZK of the CPC) aim with that was not only slightly more independence, but also better relations to the US and UK, which means capital import, technology import and knowledge import in addition to a few other bilateral contracts (i.e. military support which only ended after Tian'anmen in 1989, when the public opinion in the West turned on China and it became a realistically opponent compared to the Soviet Union which shortly after was broken up).
Pol Pot was not communist, he wasn't even left communist (looking at his practice, the structure of decision making and the plans within the country). While plenty of things including anarchism, communalism (Bookchin/Öcalan) are compatible with communism idealism an non materialism is not.
Stuff like this is, I think, a good demonstration of the thesis that Roderic Day advances: Westerners aren't anti-Communists because of the dastardly propaganda, it's the other way around: they believe this plainly absurd shit because they want to.
They are good little Roman citizens, always ready to believe that Rome is killing bad guys because that conquest is how they got their material abundance in the first place.
I definitely believed Red Scare stuff because there was no readily available evidence to the contrary.
Jan Kaszanka
Ah yes, Polish brainworms. Some guy born in 1998 who has never lived under socialism, but feels free to yap about it because the education system and society at large encourages bashing everything that was associated with it, no matter how brazen the lie is. From what I have heard from older people, homelessness took off around 1990, around the same time as unemployment offices started opening.
There was an article in the socdem-but-surprisingly-pro-AES magazine Przegląd talking about the anticommunism, but unfortunately half of it is paywalled.
Gone for 34 years, yet the right still fights against it (excerpt - translated by me)
from: Przegląd, 29/2023
Why is the Polish People's Republic (PRL) still talked about when it's been gone for 34 years? Because it's talked about. And not only because 1960s design styles or the music of Maryla Rodowicz [country-folk musician] is returning to fashion. People's Poland is talked about as an object of political discussion. Law and Justice [PiS, reactionaries] constantly brings it up and fights with it, as if it stood just around the corner. The Civic Platform [PO, liberals] also fights with it, because for it the PRL has the face of Kaczyński [PiS leader]. So both sides stand in front of each other in parliament, pointing fingers and scream: "Down with communism! Down with communism!"
Why is this happening? The answer isn't simple. People's Poland is too deeply embedded within us to avoid it, not speak about it, to consider it a black hole. On the other hand, it's too weak to defend itself from the attacks and thus collects condemnations, both deserved and undeserved. Everyone can spit on it nowadays and get praised for it. Karol Modzelewski [left wing dissident from the 80s, think Zizek] spoke of it, when the right wanted to demote General Jaruzelski [military ruler of Poland 1981-1989] to the rank of Private: "It's a special kind of bravery, similar to throwing dead bodies out of their graves. It's the bravery of a cemetery hyena. When someone wasn't as brave as a lion, they now want to be as brave as a cemetery hyena. Too late, they're screwed."
Well, there's no lack of fighters against a People's Poland which isn't here anymore and can't fight back. Back then, they sat around quietly like mice and now they're roaring loudly. Am I exaggerating? I don't think so...
The fight against people's Poland continues
The newest example of it is a law signed in June by President Andrzej Duda on the review of administrative officials. Everyone who is over 51 years of age and works for a public office has to be submitted to it. 40k people are to be subjected to it and everyone who is found to have collaborated with security services, no matter on what case, is to be immediately fired. Without a trial. So they're supposed to be punished for what they did 34 years ago or earlier. If they killed someone, they would have nothing to fear - polish law has a statute of limitations of 30 years for murder. The conclusion is, that they did something worse.
PiS fights against People's Poland on all fronts. It calls it "the commune", because it sounds more menacing than "Socialist" or "People's". It falsifies memory of it - mixing the Stalin era with later years. For this war, they use millions of złoty [polish currency] - creating various institutes and organizations and financing the Institute for National Remembrance [IPN; Nationalist Anti-Communist Think Tank] which leads the "politics of remembrance" and "historical policy". This "Historical Policy" is not only supposed to shape our knowledge of years past, but also the spaces in which we live. Street names, monuments, all is subject to the IPN. Including the judgement of who was a collaborator of SB [security services of the PRL] and who wasn't. IPN is thus both prosecutor and judge at the same time. And sometimes, like in the case of former Ambassador to Germany Andrzej Przyłębski, the defense.
The language of PiS is filled with negative emotions regarding People's Poland. If we listen to their supporters, we hear that those were the times of "Soviet Occupation", so everyone who had party or government offices were in truth minions of the USSR. This tale has a continuation - regarding the Round Table [negotiations of 1989]. There, according to the PiS-Tale, there came a conspiracy of the PZPR and parts of Solidarność. It was betrayal. Thus they lead a fight from the year 1989 and earlier - back then against the PZPR and now with its allies and successors, which grouped themselves in the PO.
And the other side? There is no doubt here either, the worldview of Polish liberals begins with references to People's Poland. And this Poland is embodied by PiS. It's enough to read the titles from opposition media, listen to PO politicians... "Fools' economy. This is how models from the Polish People's Republic thrive in the PiS state" in "Gazeta Wyborcza". "How many similarities are there in PiS rule to the times of the Polish People's Republic?" wonders "Polityka". "Coal has arrived in PiS-Poland. Just like citruses in the PRL [reference to tropical fruit shortages during AES]" - this is" Gazeta Wyborcza "again. And one more thought from their pages: "The Polish People's Republic is a reference point for Kaczyński, a model of an ideal state-as long as PZPR could be replaced by PiS."
These are simple patterns. When the topic is public television, it's called the "TV of Maciej Szczepański [TVP Chairman 1972-1980]" and "Gierek's [PZPR chairman 1970-1980] propaganda". Danuta Holecka is called "PiS' Irena Falska" [both TVP news speakers, one modern, the other from the early 80s]. When the topic is the economy - the accusation is of Gierek's wastefulness [he was an enjoyer of IMF Loan IMF Loan IMF Loan]. And Kaczyński is said to be the new Gomułka [PZPR Chairman, 1956-1970].
PO politicians' thoughts go through a similar path. "PiS is a reconstruction group of the PRL", says Marcin Kierwiński. Of course with horror. And the comedy is seasoned by the fact that his father was an officer of the Polish People's Army, promoted in the times of the Polish People's Republic and as late as 1999, to the rank of brigade general.
If we are already pointing the finger to who was who in the times of the Polish People's Republic... The opposition with satisfaction lists PiS dignitaries who were members of the PZPR. So we have Stanisław Piotrowicz, a current judge of the Constitutional Tribunal, Wojciech Jasiński, the first PiS president of Orlen [State petrochemical company], Marcin Wolski and Jan Pietrzak, i.e. two PiS bards and satiricians, Krzysztof Czabański from the Council of National Media, Stanisław Kostrzewski, i.e. the former treasurer of PC, and Karol Karski - An activist of the Socialist Association of Polish Students ... and there is still a large group of children of PZPR activists in the United Right, which is also reminded of.
Therefore, Polish politics cannot go in its semantic concepts outside People's Poland, everything is compared to it, everything refers to it. What is this all about?
[Paywall]