Do you yearn for the good old days when hating NAZIS was a bipartisan affair?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

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[Binkie The Clown]

1. What about the good old days when hating Communists was a bipartisan affair? n/t

[DemocratSinceBirth]

2. NAZIS are infinitely more loathsome.

[LisaM]

5. More loathsome than Putin?

I kind of lump them all into the same category of awfulness.

[Gravitycollapse]

7. I don't follow you. Putin isn't a communist.

[LisaM]

21. He's ex-KGB.

I don't care what he calls himself now, he's pure Soviet.

[Gravitycollapse]

27. Agreed. He's still not a communist.

[JonLP24]

30. He's a capitalist

He privatizes quite a bit.

[uponit7771]

35. That's not communist, he's big grifting asshole like Benedict Donald

[DemocratSinceBirth]

8. Putin is an authoritarian. He certainly isn't a Marxist.

[Eliot Rosewater]

52. Y'all making this way too complicated, like trump, putin is simply a criminal.

Their lives are dedicated to robbing and if necessary, killing.

[Caliman73]

19. Putin is not a communist.

He is reportedly the richest man on earth with a suspected net worth of over 200 billion dollars. That would fly against the purpose of communism which is to eliminate the excesses of wealth inequality and flatten society.

Putin is an authoritarian He belongs to the United Russia party which has not coherent political ideology. Kinda like Trump. The communist party in Russia has about 20% support nowadays.

[Caliman73]

4. The problem isn't Communism it is totalitarianism.

Perhaps Communism devolves into totalitarianism over time, that I don't know. We have never seen a truly democratic communist system. Communism is an economic system where the state (which could be a democratic state or a totalitarian state) manages the means of production and distribution of goods and services. It is based on the desire to remove class structure, which may or may not be realistically possible.

This is only my under informed opinion, but I don't think any one system of economic organization can be sustained once populations grow past a certain level. Not capitalism, not mercantilism, not communism, or socialism. There is usually a combination that is needed.

So back to the question of hating communists. Yes, they were painted as subversive and evil because they threatened the capitalists and when the USSR started their fiasco and extreme authoritarian and totalitarian regime, along with Mao, it gave a really bad face to communism as a system. Whereas Nazism is in and of itself a morally and ethically repugnant system.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

10. Compare the end goal of Marx to the end goal of Hitler.

[Caliman73]

14. Again. I am limited and may be wrong about communism...

But I believe that the end goal of Marx was a fading a way of the state eventually and to have resources produced and distributed in a flat society without owners and laborers exploited by having to sell only their labor.

We know what Hitlers end goal was, an Aryan society and the extermination of undesirables.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

17. For all its flaws Marxism envisioned a humanistic future.

Nazism, not so much.

[Gravitycollapse]

9. You're either saying Nazis aren't that bad or Communists are as bad as Nazis.

Both claims are equally ridiculous.

[Expecting Rain]

11. Stalin likely killed more people than Hitler.

Mao killed at least 45 million during the Cultural Revolution. He was the greatest mass murder in history.

Pol Pot exterminated a third of Cambodia.

But you don't believe Communism is evil?

Egads.

[Gravitycollapse]

16. No, communism is not evil.

The ways those have claimed to have used communism are evil. The same can be said about democracy. How many wars have we started in the name of spreading democracy? Does that make democracy evil? Absolutely not.

[Expecting Rain]

20. Mendacity.

Communism is an evil ideology. You are defending the indefensible with absurdist arguments.

Are you a Democrat?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

24. Is Marxism an evil ideology?

Totalitarianism is an evil ideology. I'll give you that.

IMHO, liberal democracy or social democracy is the best and most humane form of government but we aren't contrasting totalitarianism with liberal democracy. We're contrasting communism and Nazism.

[Expecting Rain]

36. And the Communists killed and enslaved more people in the 20th Century than the Nazis did.

Both are evil ideologies.

I can't believe we are seeing this sort of nonsense on a Democratic Party forum.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

41. Hitler was a genocidal leader who all but eliminated European Jewry

Karl Marx was a political philosopher who wrote of a classless society where people share the fruits of their labor.

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.

Acts 4:32

[Expecting Rain]

44. And then those inspired by Marx, like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Kims...

went on to kill far more people than the genocidal asshole Adolf Hitler did.

And you are making excuses for this evil ideology.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

46. Marxism is not an inherently evil ideology. Nazism is.

That's not hard to understand, monsters like Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot notwithstanding.

[Expecting Rain]

48. It doesn't get more true when you repeat the Big Lie.

Nazism is inherently evil. Same with Communism.

And Communists have killed way more people.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

50. Did we or did we not ally ourselves with the Soviet Union to fight Hitler ?

If Nazism was worse why didn't we declare war on the USSR ?

[Expecting Rain]

53. We made a deal with the devil (after the two devils, Hitler and Stalin, had a deal fell come apart).

And after the victory over the Nazis we fought a Cold War with Communists that persists to this day with Lil Kim.

Stalin was not our friend. He was a mass murder.

Why are you defending evil?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

56. Totalitarianism is evil. Marxism isn't.

[Gravitycollapse]

25. It's entirely defendable. I am a Democrat and a Marxist.

While not presently a viable form of society, communism as a ideological lens is an admirable thing.

[syringis]

32. Hello

Yes, as ideology, communism is great. But the problem is the human fact (not sure if it the right word, I speak french)

It is, I my opinion, why as form of society, it is not viable. It will take a long time before it happens.

[Gravitycollapse]

33. I agree it would take a long time. I still thing it's an essential goal.

[JonLP24]

31. The problem with Communism is it relies on the same humans that are exploiting & trafficking labor

The same problem with capitalism. Whatever system relies on humans and sociopaths tend to climb the power ladder so doesn't matter.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

18. Mao, Pol Pot, and Stalin were butchers.

But they perverted Marxism. Nazism was inherently evil.

[Binkie The Clown]

12. Instead of finding yet another thing to quibble at among ourselves,...

how about we just say remember when hating the bad guys was a bipartisan affair?

Jeesh! No matter what anyone says these days, even here in DU, somebody has to jump on them to tell them just how wrong they are. It's no damn wonder the Democrats can't unite long enough to win a damned election! We can't even agree about who's worse, Nazi or Communists. It's angels dancing on the head of a pin. Who gives shit who was worse! They're both very bad political philosophies. Let's leave it at that. (I assume somebody will respond to tell me just how wrong I am to say that. )

[Gravitycollapse]

15. My point is your claim that communists are the bad guys is false.

Communists have never been the problem. Our standoff during the Cold War was against the Russian government and it's iterations of Leninism/Stalinism/Communism. That is not the same as saying that the communist are our enemies.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

22. Khrushchev and Gorbachev tried to liberalize and reform the Soviet Union.

And it's hard to hate a party functionary like Brezhnev.

[Expecting Rain]

23. Communism has never been a problem...

unless you are one of the 100 million they were exterminated by Communists or one of those far-larger numbers that lived under their oppression.

Communists are enemies of liberalism, just like Nazi scum.

[Gravitycollapse]

29. What tenet of communism demands extermination camps?

[Expecting Rain]

37. Ask Stalin and the millions he butchered.

Perhaps you should read the Gulag Archipelago before you defend evil.

[Gravitycollapse]

38. I've read the Gulag Archipelago multiple times.

[Expecting Rain]

39. And yet seem to have learned nothing.

Claims of being a Communist and a Democrat are preposterous.

Why are you gaslighting the forum?

[Gravitycollapse]

40. Have you stopped to consider that I know what I'm talking about?

I own the unabridged multi-volume collection of Gulag Archipelago. I know the history of authoritarianism and I'm educated in political theory and state apparatuses across many different forms of government. You seem to have confused me with a layperson.

As I have said, I am a Democrat and a Marxist. I would not call myself a communist even though I sympathize with communist principles.

[Expecting Rain]

42. You don't give the impression that you know what you are talking about...

....when you argue Communism isn't evil, or that being a Democrat and a Marxist are compatible ideologies.

You should know about the nearly 100 million killed in the name of this disgraceful evil. And it is "totalitarianism" not authoritarianism.

[Gravitycollapse]

43. You realize there are thousands of democratic socialists in the Democratic party, right?

We came extremely close to having one as the Democratic candidate for the Presidency.

[Expecting Rain]

45. Are you now suggesting that democratic socialists are crypto-communists and Marxists?

If you are, I'm listening.

[Gravitycollapse]

47. Secret? I'm sure the vast majority of democratic socialists are self-avowed Marxists.

The underlying tenets of democratic socialism are Marxist.

[Expecting Rain]

49. Thanks for making that plain.

Chilling.

[Gravitycollapse]

51. You can dispense with the melodrama. We don't eat babies.

[Expecting Rain]

55. I beg to differ.

100 million dead due to your ideology.

No thanks.

[Gravitycollapse]

57. Name for me the crucial tenets of Marxism.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

54. I'm far from a Marxist but to conflate Marxism with Nazism is idiocy.

[Binkie The Clown]

34. As predicted, somebody told me I was wrong. Which sort of means I was right, doesn't it. n/t

[Caliman73]

28. The problem is in defining who the true "bad guys" are.

Nazis? BIG YES. No doubt about it, unequivocally bad.

Communists? Rival economic theory to capitalism, so one had to destroy the other. There were as DemocratSinceBerth said, people who certainly perverted Communism and did horrible things. Stalin? Bad; Mao? Bad; Pol Pot? Bad. Ho Chi Minh? Jury is out. He just wanted foreign armies out of Vietnam it seems. Remember that Vietnam intervened to stop Pol Pot when the west would not touch the issue.

[LSFL]

58. Bingfuckinggo Binkie.

No opinion no matter how informed goes unshouted down around here. I worked cheek and jowl with law enforcement in a jail for 20 years and I know race plays a big part in how you are treated and how long your sentence is, as well as how likely you are to do time in segregation (solitary confinement) I know how alot of cops refer to poc. Not all of course. But a significant fraction.
But when I suggest that many white supremacists have found a home in police departments across the the country, I am called divisive. Reporting what I have experienced is called inaccurate and divisive. What can I say to that? I didnt see poc being treated more harshly or tazed, maced, taken down and restrained and put in the hole at a disproportionate rate?
Screw the Nazis and Communists and racists. I belive that all men are created equal. I dont care what looks good in theory. They are all evil world views that rob people of their lives and potential. I am a goddam American and anyone who wants to come here for a better life in good faith is welcome regardless of race,nationality or religion.

[Gravitycollapse]

59. What precisely is your issue with communism?

[democratisphere]

3. Give me back the cold war era of Nazis And Russia.

[B2G]

6. Nazi groups have been around forever.

They are not a recent development. They have held rallies before, many times.

Are they becoming more vocal or are we paying more attention now? And honestly, I don't believe the distain for them by the vast majority of the country has changed.

[Caliman73]

13. Republicans painted themselves into a corner on that.

I think at the end of the day, Republicans know that their ideology is doomed because the natural state of people is to progress. Values and traditions change constantly in society. Conservatism may hold on to some values (and that is not necessarily a bad thing), but modern Republicans (after the 1920's) staked their political fortunes to the idea of supporting unfettered capitalism. When that failed miserably in the 1930's and FDR popularized the idea of Keynesian economics and a more centralized role for the federal government, Republicans found themselves in a losing battle. People (as disenchanted as they may be with government at times) saw government as a way to keep the playing field as even as possible, reigning in the excesses of capitalism.

Republicans, knowing that we are a nation of immigrants and that demographics change, were left to go after groups that naturally direct themselves to authoritarian and conservative politics (fundamentalists and White Supremacists). When the Democrats realized that restricting rights was not the future, and began fighting for integration in the 40's and 50's after the War (at least Northern Democrats), the Republicans saw the writing on the wall which is why They started courting the religious right and racists in the South.

Why is that relevant to Nazis? Because Nazism and White Supremacy go hand in hand, and that is at this point a major part of the Republican coalition. They can always break of small pieces of the Democratic coalition. People who are disaffected by the inefficiencies of government, but never to the extent where they can dominate in the area of ideas and win straight up in an election. We simply have more numbers, hence they cheat by suppressing the vote and other dirty tactics. They married White Supremacy and Religious fanaticism hoping that they could use the groups to maintain a level of power, but now those groups want their due, so Republicans have to put up or shut up. Republicans in leadership cannot forcefully condemn Nazis because they courted those people to help them get elected.

[leftstreet]

26. +1

What a thoughtful and informed post