cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/731575
It seems there are a lot of propaganda arising on certain lemmy instances parroting propaganda that lemmygrad and Communists support human rights violations, and equating Communists to the alt right.
This is an extremely ridiculous assertion, given the historical context of the left being the main force fighting Nazism and fascism. But I write this post as there are probably many people misled by all the dishonest propaganda out there, who may be accepting of reason before seeking to silence us.
Please link this post in other instances if they are parroting propaganda about Communists to justify demonizing us. Reasonable people will understand and oppose these motions.
What is NOT Communism? in short, communism is NOT:
- “when the government does stuff”
- “capitalism but everyone gets paid the same”
- an incursion on personal freedom, or forcing people to do what they don’t want (unless the thing they don’t want is not exploiting others and not wishing mass murder on ethnic groups, etc).
Then what is communism? in simple terms, it is the belief that the working class (i.e. the people, the masses) must own the means of production (factories, work places, etc) and control the direction of production in society, so that we produce for our own needs rather than to fulfill profits.
Why? we spend most of our lifetime working, so why should we cater it towards profits of a minority class of capitalists rather than our own and out community’s needs and wants? Why shouldn’t we be masters of our own destinies?
You may not agree with this, but this is not an excuse to silence us or lump us with genocidal ideologies
This thread is not meant to convince you with communism, but to demystify it and break the cold war era propaganda that some of you continue to parrot.
you support USSR? What about their human rights violations? (applies to Cuba, China, etc)
We do, but we do not support human rights violations as we believe there are tons of propaganda surrounding this. Equating this with Nazism is EXTREMELY DISINGENUOUS. The prevailing propaganda against the USSR is even acknowledged by NATO countries themselves. Nazism is an ideology founded on genocide, and this is easy to verify from Hitler’s writing himself.
Maybe in the end, we are wrong and despite the propaganda, there are human rights violations. But our support for the USSR comes from their achievements to better the human condition, and we hope to build on it. There are no human rights violation that inspires our ideology like it does for fascism or Nazism.
Disclaimer: I am just a random Communist. I have no authority over lemmygrad or connections to the admins, just to make sure I don’t upset the admins saying this.
Ok that’s fine for the social/economic aspects, but what about the political aspect? How are issues like the military handled? Who pays for national defense and how?
The USSR could still issue currency, pay for public goods, weapons, etc. None of those are unique to capitalism.
Taxes? The USSR was still a country with a centralized proletariat state.
Security and self defense are also a concern of the working class, and that would also be managed by them.
Weirdly naive question when you have actual, existing socialism around the world to look at and learn from. Just saying.
Most socialist states use taxes, but the DPRK doesn’t because industry is run by the state anyway, so “taxes” are essentially accounted for before the salary is even set. We aren’t arguing for some far off hypothetical communism but for socialist states that currently and used to exist in a capitalist global order
i dont know why this question is voted down so much… it leads to real answers and that’s a good thing
Most likely the ultra invasion from reddit and their antitankie hysteria making people anxious.
I am speculating here, but I’d imagine people here are so used to right-leaning comments making insincere questions, poisoned questions, or “just asking” type questions, that they thought the same was happening here. I thought the same at first, and really, can you blame? But, in this case, it could just easily be an honest question by someone trying to learn, and maybe there is something to be said about the response it got. We need to welcome people trying to learn, and who ask genuine questions. That’s the only way to grow (both the community and the ideology).
Edit: Honestly, what the other commenter said.
but even if it was snarky it still brought answers that maybe others who thought it felt the same now have a rebuttal to ponder… but i get it if it’s the same question being asked over and over again