It's nice to see how they portray commies in such a favorable light, with them being nice and fun and friendly. I think we live in an open minded age of acceptance that ought to merit making the same kind of nice loving portrayal of some good old fashy Nazis, just minding their own biz.
shareAre you saying that communist are equivalent to nazis?
shareI don't think he's saying that because obviously they are very different from eachother. But they have in common that they are both ideas that have deprived millions of people of their lives and rights, and because of that I think OP's question is valid.
shareExcept communism doesn't deprive people of their lives and never has. "Communist" leaders (who are actually greedy totalitarians) kill tons of people yeah, but so do capitalist leaders. Belief in communism isn't a belief that some people should die, only that some people should have the fruits of their labor stolen from them and given to others.
It's infantile, idealistic garbage-thinking, sure, but in America we're supposed to have the right to believe in garbage without persecution. So the Blacklist was completely wrong and these people were victims.
Or do you believe that the people who, say, voted for taxes on soda should be Blacklisted and persecuted and jailed? They're stupid morons who believe it's their right and the government's to screw with other people's freedoms after all, which is the same issue.
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Except that no, the soda-tax people are actually succeeding. They're way more dangerous than not-really-communist Hollywood communists. We should really just line them up and shoot them.
(By "we" I mean the people, not the government. They should never have the right to kill their own people because they can't be trusted to do it for the right reason. WE, though, should totally turn on anyone thinking a frakking soda tax is a good thing.)
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Whether they find life there or not, I think Jupiter should be considered an enemy planet.
I disagree with your first paragraph (the parts about capitalist murderers and stolen labor is absurd) but you have one interesting point. A distinction has to be made between what the idea behind communism is and what it unavoidably results in.
If we skip the political mass-executions performed by communist leaders, what still stands out is the deaths caused by poverty and starvation. While that hopefully wasn't something the communists intended, it is the economics of communism and the system is in fact exactly what is to blame for it. In the end I would say that the intentions of nazis were worse than the communists' and the effects of communism were worse than the effects of nazism.
As for your points about the blacklist and soda taxes, I agree. The blacklist was wrong and people voting for soda taxes are morons, but I vote for letting them live and to try to convince them that they're wrong and I believe that's what you're saying too.
"... the parts about capitalist murderers and stolen labor is absurd..."
This is a confusing thing to disagree with. You seem to be saying that capitalists don't murder people, and communism isn't about the redistribution of wealth.
So... but... they do, and it is. ~.^
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Whether they find life there or not, I think Jupiter should be considered an enemy planet.
To respond to the capitalist murderer part you would have to define what you mean by capitalism. If you would define capitalism as a system where governments are working for corporations then sure, I can get behind that at least in theory. If you mean capitalism as in a free market society, I can't.
As for the stolen labor part... In a free market society labor is never stolen since labor is always a result of a voluntary and mutual agreement. If some sort of coercion was involved that would most likely be a punishable crime.
And by the way, to be able to redistribute wealth you would have to steal the wealth first.
Okay um. I said COMMUNISM is about stolen labor and redistribution of wealth, and you seem to have misread that to think I said capitalism. I get now why you think the first paragraph was "absurd" at least, even though the second time I reiterated should have stopped this argument from progressing. "Belief in communism isn't a belief that some people should die, only that some people should have the fruits of their labor stolen from them and given to others." I said first. Then, when you disagreed with that, "You seem to be saying that capitalists don't murder people, and communism isn't about the redistribution of wealth." Second part communism. Obviously.
Arguing about capitalist murder and saying you'd have to "define what you mean by capitalism" is... weird and irrelevant. I don't think any definition of capitalism would account for widespread murder, what. Capitalism and communism are about the economy and possessions, not murder or lack of, and my original and only point was that capitalist leaders murder just like communists do. The ideology itself doesn't call for murder, so it was stupid of the OP to think that commies are such scum they can't be made sympathetic. All they want is for everyone to have the same amount of everything, which makes them stupid, yes, but not Nazis.
Besides which, all those communist leaders murdering people and giving communism a bad name weren't communists anyway, so for him to simplify that communists-are-bad is pretty simpleminded and lame. They were greedy, dictatorial fascists who never lived themselves in the communist way. Just like our leaders today aren't capitalist, because bank-and-corporate-bailouts and everything else they do to screw up our supposedly-capitalist society is all just outright socialist, so the OP may as well look at what we have now and go "Capitalism doesn't work!"
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Which is, actually, what some really really trendy idiots are doing nowadays. Sigh.
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Whether they find life there or not, I think Jupiter should be considered an enemy planet.
Alright, obviously I misread the part about stolen labor, my bad. I think we ultimately agree about a lot of things.
However, you still started your argument by saying that only the leaders of these two ideologies commit murder. I already stated why I disagree with that when it comes to communism. The economic fact of communism is that the system itself will kill people because eventually you're not going to produce enough goods for people to be able to stay alive. That in my opinion means that the system itself is responsible for those deaths, even if it wasn't what Marx had in mind.
You can't make that argument about capitalism and I don't think either of us did. But you claimed that capitalist leaders commit murder and that's why I wanted your definition of the capitalism. Because some people would in fact define what we have today in the western world as capitalism, even though I would not. To be honest I'm still not sure what you mean by capitalist leaders murdering people too, if it's a theoretical thing or if you mean someone specific, but it doesn't matter.
The bottom line is that I completely agree that you can be a communist with good intentions, and that's a difference from nazism, but it doesn't change the fact that those ideas deprived a lot of people of their lives. And yes, it was the ideas themselves and not just the leaders that killed some of those people.
The OP is trying to say Communism is the same as Fascism? They are completely opposite things, you moron. "Bad things are the same as good things! DERP!"
shareThey are opposites in some senses and the exact same in some. You're not understanding either if you want to simplify politics into a one dimensional left to right spectrum.
shareI hate these dumb horseshoe theorists who think the far-right and far-left are both bad because they're both extremists. It's like someone saying a kiss on the forehead from your mother is one extreme, and getting curb-stomped by a white nationalist is another extreme, and the "correct" viewpoint is in the middle - no human contact whatsoever! That's wrong. The middle position is also extreme. Humans need human contact.
If you don't follow that, I'll put it in simple terms. Communism is extremely good. Fascism/Nazism is extremely bad. Being a moderate/liberal in the middle who enables fascism is also extremely bad.
If anyone needs to read more on this topic, I highly recommend Blackshirts & Reds by Michael Parenti.
I didn't say anything about good or bad, I just said they are similar in some aspects. Good or bad are purely subjective values, but you happen to be right that I think both communism and fascism are despicable ideologies that should be kept off this earth.
Use whatever spectrums and analogies you like. The fact of the matter is that communism and fascism are similar in the sense that they are both authoritarianist ideologies. None of them can exist without empowering the government at expense of people. That is an inarguable fact, then of course they differ a great deal when it comes to what they want the government to do with that power.
Communism is a stateless, classless society. Fascism is a despicable totalitarian ideology. They are complete opposites. Liberalism/conservatism are closer to fascism on the spectrum than Communism is, and far worse because they enable fascism to cultivate.
shareYou should move to the wonderful stateless, classless society of North Korea.
share"It's like someone saying a kiss on the forehead from your mother is one extreme"
Logic fail on your part. Communism would be more comparable to getting raped by your own mother.
There's nothing wrong with being a centrist and we need more of it these days. Never forget Germany 1933 when the center fell out and everything that developed from that.
Your analogy does not apply at all. What a ridiculous strawman you made so that you could trivially knock it down.
😂
shareWriters and actors like Trumbo who were blacklisted in the 1950's were not in positions of power like the Communists in the Soviet Union or Nazis in Germany. So it's a false comparison.
They weren't blacklisted for putting people in the Gulag or Auschwitz.
They were black listed for the expression of their beliefs.
Yes, Dalton Trumbo was a Marxist. So? But others who were called before Joseph McCarthy's House Committee on UnAmerican activities were mainly actors and others with progressive ideas, not communists.
People like Orson Welles were blacklisted by the studios. Even actresses like Lucille Ball were called before the Committee.
I'd recommend seeing this, which is a joint BBC & German production of an eight-part miniseries, and one of my favorite pieces of cinema in history:
https://moviechat.org/tt3543084/14-Tagebucher-des-Ersten-Weltkriegs
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3543084/
The English title is "14 Diaries of the Great War"
If you can no longer find it streaming, the BBC released under the lame alternate title, 14 War Stories.
Now, I know this isn't exactly Nazis, since that was 1932 onwards toward WWII. The point is that it shows regular individuals in various roles on all sides of a worldwide conflict, and they are all just humans who we can feel for without hatred & malice. None of the characters are particularly famous, but that's good! That often blinds us to humanity at large. Unfortunately those who were most notable to us in the 21st Century are often known cuz they were later in prominent positions of the Axis Powers & Third Reich, etc. Future Nazi leadership were in the thick of things during this conflict, including Hitler who served in trenches of the Western Front, & Goering, who was in the early German Air Force. So, although, it doesn't show them directly, you feel sense of desperation that had contributed to the mindset of their follower in the later conflicts.
We now have the luxury of being more informed than people in those times who were taught to hate the "other" under nationalistic practices w/o the benefit of these cinematic memoirs. That's why I have no patience for the ignorant of today, regardless of side, who choose to blind themselves & become the worst representatives of humanity. Whether we are talking about America First isolationist pricks screaming about "open borders", BLM who are often just black nationalists/anarchists criminal types, or lets not forget the most militant of the LGBTQLMNOP. Those who segregate themselves into categories are the bane of our future.