There is very much an experience of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” even in something as mild as trying to make a communist-sympathizing point on the internet. To some, there is nothing you can say that is considered valid. They decided you weren’t worth listening to from the moment you said something that set off their McCarthy Communism Detector 5000 ™. But they sure will pretend like they are interested in entertaining “debate” in spite of this, taking you down a path of wild generalizations and hypotheticals, while running away from anything factual you bring up about history that counters the narrative they’ve been told.
And that’s not even getting into the people who are actively scheming against communism, as you are talking about. Some of it’s plain people being tricked into thinking only in binary terms of good/evil, freedom/authority, and superimpose hypotheticals over reality.
I think of that saying that goes, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” But varied for the situation, “No liberalism survives contact with the enemy.” Those who live by hypotheticals can only have control over hypotheticals. The imperialists of the world seem content to let them muck about with that, as it poses no material threat to their power on its own and can be misdirected into schools of thought that confuse and distract from what is happening.
This post really highlights my frustration with being a Marxist— I had a friend call me a conspiracy theorist when I explained to him what Banana Republics were and the coup in Nicaragua as an example of socialism “not working” because of outside forces. He constantly trolls me for being a communist and I demonstrate his lack of knowledge of history and philosophy, when he asks me for where I get my information he refuses to engage with the resources I send him. He refuses to understand that the dichotomy of American politics is a lie and thinks any third party left of the Democrats is useless and will be the same as the Democrats (well, we know why he is kind of right), and he keeps voting Democrat. He even told me I don’t know what liberal means, when I use it in the philosophical sense, and when I asked him if he knows what philosophical liberalism is (after claiming he took a political science class in college) he just choked up and didn’t answer the question.
Ever since I fully lost my liberal brain, it makes me want to punch walls when people bring up absolute nonsense or regurgitated propaganda about communism/Marxism and socialism. Even that, the vast majority of talking points can be used against capitalist countries tenfold. People will shit all over communism from 85 years ago when their country (USA in my case) was actually an apartheid state 85 years ago. I like to bring up that people like me (mixed race black and white) were illegal until 1968 and if you tried to make a law like that in the USSR they would have rightfully shot you at the time in the 1920s-30s (I use this with black friends who give me the common arguments against communism). Also, limiting of freedom of speech is a nonsense argument because liberal democracies constantly suppress narratives they don’t like. There’s just contradictions in everything that comes out of a liberal’s mouth.
I have begun to liken the development of communism with the development of the scientific method, as theory vs praxis with dialectic change, and how you can’t make arguments like above when the country you live in is static in nature and was worse socially.
There is very much an experience of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” even in something as mild as trying to make a communist-sympathizing point on the internet. To some, there is nothing you can say that is considered valid. They decided you weren’t worth listening to from the moment you said something that set off their McCarthy Communism Detector 5000 ™. But they sure will pretend like they are interested in entertaining “debate” in spite of this, taking you down a path of wild generalizations and hypotheticals, while running away from anything factual you bring up about history that counters the narrative they’ve been told.
And that’s not even getting into the people who are actively scheming against communism, as you are talking about. Some of it’s plain people being tricked into thinking only in binary terms of good/evil, freedom/authority, and superimpose hypotheticals over reality.
I think of that saying that goes, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” But varied for the situation, “No liberalism survives contact with the enemy.” Those who live by hypotheticals can only have control over hypotheticals. The imperialists of the world seem content to let them muck about with that, as it poses no material threat to their power on its own and can be misdirected into schools of thought that confuse and distract from what is happening.
This post really highlights my frustration with being a Marxist— I had a friend call me a conspiracy theorist when I explained to him what Banana Republics were and the coup in Nicaragua as an example of socialism “not working” because of outside forces. He constantly trolls me for being a communist and I demonstrate his lack of knowledge of history and philosophy, when he asks me for where I get my information he refuses to engage with the resources I send him. He refuses to understand that the dichotomy of American politics is a lie and thinks any third party left of the Democrats is useless and will be the same as the Democrats (well, we know why he is kind of right), and he keeps voting Democrat. He even told me I don’t know what liberal means, when I use it in the philosophical sense, and when I asked him if he knows what philosophical liberalism is (after claiming he took a political science class in college) he just choked up and didn’t answer the question.
Ever since I fully lost my liberal brain, it makes me want to punch walls when people bring up absolute nonsense or regurgitated propaganda about communism/Marxism and socialism. Even that, the vast majority of talking points can be used against capitalist countries tenfold. People will shit all over communism from 85 years ago when their country (USA in my case) was actually an apartheid state 85 years ago. I like to bring up that people like me (mixed race black and white) were illegal until 1968 and if you tried to make a law like that in the USSR they would have rightfully shot you at the time in the 1920s-30s (I use this with black friends who give me the common arguments against communism). Also, limiting of freedom of speech is a nonsense argument because liberal democracies constantly suppress narratives they don’t like. There’s just contradictions in everything that comes out of a liberal’s mouth.
I have begun to liken the development of communism with the development of the scientific method, as theory vs praxis with dialectic change, and how you can’t make arguments like above when the country you live in is static in nature and was worse socially.