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.
‘Human rights’ are variable phenomena that depend on who declares them. Many antisocialists, for example, consider the abolition of private property to be a ‘human rights violation’, indeed, possibly the greatest human rights violation of them all. So to merely say that communists are for or against human rights violations is not a particularly meaningful statement.
What is meaningful is showing how the U.S.S.R. and other people’s republics advanced the workers’ freedoms and living standards. Human Rights in the Soviet Union is very useful for this. Don’t waste your time trying to convince antisocialists to read it, though; almost all of them have already made up their minds and have decided that everything that contradicts their politics is wrong.
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.
Well said, OP. Honestly, I get pretty lost in a lot of the discussions surrounding human rights violations. From my view, every government on Earth is infringing on the rights of one group or another. My respect for the USSR begins and ends with “cool nation changed the world within a single generation, got us into space, and uplifted the livelihoods of its entire population.”
Yeah, I do think some communists spend a little too much time defending the USSR’s controversies, but I think our time is much better spent focusing on the positives and asserting that this is what inspires us. Whether those human violations existed or not, we are not inspired by them and are irrelevant to what we believe.
Our support for the USSR comes from a place of wanting to learn from past experiences rather than glorify them. Unfortunately the USSR is gone, and we must do better today.
The problem is to me, that if you don’t fight against misconceptions libs will just ignore everything and call you a genocide denier, they won’t hear anything good about the ussr or china or any other AES state as long as they’re so hung up on the “ebil human rights violations”
Majority of current sorry state of the left in Poland (that is, nearly nonexistent) stems from not defending PRL. Even genuine socialists were completely programmed to be liberals eventually by that.
We NEED to defend the USSR, else we will end up ceding the history to liberals and let them have the unassailable higher ground.
Exactly!!! It’s a nice idea to try and sidestep it all, but it leads to the worst brainworms and liberals dismissing you even worse than normal
I agree it’d be nice to not have to. Unfortunately, capitalist historical revisionism needs to be struggled against and we’re unfortunately put in that position when liberals and left anticommunists continue to barrage us with whataboutism.
I’ve had more success getting people to adopt a new perspective on AES by reframing their controversies in the proper context. A lot of the American left has the inability to view other countries through those own country’s perspectives. Most of the people I’ve radicalized, people who considered themselves progressive and politically in the know beforehand, had never attempted to view the USSR as a new state experiment coming out of feudalism with fascists itching to invade them. They just read Animal Farm or some shit.
Of course they gotta actually be accessible to having a conversation in the first place, and for that they gotta stop calling you a tankie for espousing even the mildest of communist opinions.
Sorry if this is dumb, but what do you mean by AES?
From context I’m assuming it’s Actually Existing Socialism
Yeah, I figured that out. Thanks for commenting though!
I’m currently engaging someone who is skeptical but willing to learn a bit about North Korea. What would be a good beginner friendly video/read to pass on?
I suggest this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BO83Ig-E8E
Ha, that was actually one that I ended up sending, it was one of the first videos I watched as well. I was hoping to find something else that comes off less tongue in cheek and it’s wild trying to sift through all of the potential misinformation
you could send that article from the guardian about fabricated north korean defector stories. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/13/why-do-north-korean-defector-testimonies-so-often-fall-apart
Thank you for that! I think that would be a good one to add. I’m curious if you know of any sources that accurately try to depict what actual human rights abuses the DPRK engages in? A lot of sources defending North Korea seem to side step that stuff, but I think it’s important to get the full picture. I appreciate you helping with this!
Communism is when human rights violations and capitalism is when no human rights violation. /s
Really well written and simply put!
Question from someone that knows very little about history, so don’t hate me lol
Is there an example of a communist leader that didn’t commit major human rights violations?
Off the top of my head: Salvador Allende in Chile, and Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, were democratically elected socialist leaders who afaik did nothing the average person would consider a major human rights violation. Both of them were couped by the west and replaced with right-wing dictators.
