• force@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Who makes that distinction?

    … literally anyone who thinks about it? The US Communist Party is one party, there are plenty of other parties that identify as communist. You don’t have to be called “The Communist Party” to be communist.

    Socialist Alternative

    Revolutionary Communist Party

    Workers World Party

    New Afrikan Black Panther Party

    Party for Socialism and Liberation

    Communist parties aren’t popular at all, but they’re far from banned. There are multiple such parties.

    • Cowbee [he/they]
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      9 months ago

      Laws are interpreted and wielded by those in power. The Democrats are already called Communists, what happens if a genuine Socialist party takes some amount of power?

      • force@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        That’s literally an argument against anything that exists at all. That’s kind of how laws work, linguistics is complicated so everyone’s interpretation is different, and many people in power intentionally misinterperet laws. But as it stands, communist parties are not banned. What you speak of is a big “what if”, and currently you saying communism as a whole is banned is simply wrong, even as an oversimplification.

        It is a big stretch to turn “Parties other than the two largest ones in the country have considerable cultural, legal, and logistical obstacles to being able to participate in high-level American politics, and an unenforced law from 70 years ago banned one specific communist party before most of the provisions being repealed by congress and the law being overturned in state courts as unconstitutional” into “Communism is banned in the United States”. There is no legal way to criminally prosecute someone on the basis of them being a communist, or belonging to any specific communist party at all, in the modern day.

        I’m not trying to be condescending or anything btw.

        • Cowbee [he/they]
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          9 months ago

          It’s an intentionally anti-Communist law, it’s pretty simple to see how Communism is legally unfavored.

          • force@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            That’s very far from “banned”. That’s the point. Plenty of things are very disfavored legally, but it’s far-fetched to call them banned. Communism is one of them. There’s a whole list of openly socialist&/communist mayors in the US on Wikipedia, even. I can openly be extremely communist and the government won’t do anything about it. I can even attend a communist protest and that’s as legal as any other protest.

            I could see “nearly banned” as a valid exaggeration though. And I definitely agree that the system is stacked against leftists in general, especially anyone identified as a “communist” or “socialist”, and hope for getting rid of the alt-right’s grasp on our country before most of us are destroyed by global warming is exponentially decreasing as time progresses. So I would totally say it’d make little difference in our fate if it were banned.