I read “Stasi State or Socialist Paradise” a book describing general life in the GDR and how it functioned and having this insightful yet critical view of the GDR really opened me up. From communal engagement, work-place democracy and education there are many things we can look up to not necessarily the GDR only but also other former and current socialist countries…and also learn from the failures and errors of these countries. That being said, if i had to run a socialist country, i would draw great inspiration from the GDR and the USSR in particular though it is important to remember that everys country material conditions are different and therefore we cannot copy socialist models of other countries, all we can do is merely take them as a base to develope, adapt and improve to our countries.
GDR, first communist country to NOT think of LGBT as booj - one major critique I have with AES.
Thankfully it is changing, comrade, and the idea of LGBT being a “bourgeois phenomenon” or whatever is still relegated to relatively minor (but relatively successful) communist parties like the KPRF in Russia, CPGB-ML in the UK and KKE in Greece.
rant about LGBT rights and imperialist bullshit
The idea gained traction in the West in no small part via cultural associations between gay men, pedophilia and sexual libertinism - an ideal promulgated mainly by ethically depraved French aristocrats and other fascistic/“individualist” thinkers.
Much of the “Eastern” world did not have a comparable [to the West] cultural relationship with homo/bisexuality, particularly dprKorea, the PRC, Laos and Vietnam (most of the existing AES states). They have unique histories regarding gender non-conformity and sexual minorities that look quite a bit different than the West’s. Most of the [LGBT]phobia in the region is imported rather than endemic.
Of course, now the West and their “LGBT rights” NGOs are attempting to have their cake and eat it, too, by using the rights of sexual minorities as a cudgel against the global south and periphery. This leads to shit like Putin railing against the woke globalist agenda imposing transgender ideology on the youth and other such garbage and the KPRF supporting his stance.
This reaction to the rights of sexual minorities becoming entangled with the reaction against [cultural] imperialism is nothing but sick game-playing by the Western world wherein they’re attempting to hasten the beat of the wardrums by inviting otherwise well-meaning liberals and ‘leftists’ to an ideological practice called homonationalism.
Homonationalism preaches that a state nominally protecting the rights of sexual minorities is evidence of its democratic virtue, and those states that do not explicitly protect the rights of sexual minorities require “civilizing”, “democratizing”, or “being reduced to rubble” – the choice is usually dependent on how brown and Muslim the people of the nation are. Usually.
This leaves AES nations between a rock and a hard place. What should the CPC do whenever they witness Western “LGBT rights” NGOs popping up all over the global south that promote not change within the confines of pre-existing sovereign systems, but the imposition of liberal, bourgeois democracy, usually by force.
For an example, Belarus has shut down NGO ‘protests’ like this wherein “LGBT rights activists” would be calling for Lukashenko’s violent overthrow. Similar has happened elsewhere. This cements a narrative that only serves to further entrench homonationalism in the minds of western liberals, while also signaling to the global south that “LGBT ideology” is inherently an imperialist imposition. It’s a cycle of cultural disease.
I agree, regardless. The socialist world’s current relationship with folk like us could be far better. It’s getting there, though. It will be a litmus test for those states claiming to practice scientific socialism. [LGBT]phobia is unscientific garbage and it will be relegated to the dustbin of history if those states practice what they preach.
Promoting LGBT rights in AES states doesn’t count as anticommunism last I checked.
It does when imperialist states frame the narrative that the two are antithetical. It’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, the west transmits the social disease of [LGBT]phobia to the global south and periphery and then lambasts them for being [LGBT]phobic.
This must also be seen through the lens of the “LGBT movement” as it were, expressed in parades and riots and protests, being almost entirely uniquely Western, whereas for example trans women and gay men in Iran have considerably different struggles.
I support the creation and promulgation of national sexual and gender minority liberation movements worldwide. As a comrade here put it once, "we do not need western ‘LGBT rights’ in China, we need “LGBT rights with Chinese characteristics” – a reclamation of the GSM history of China rather than an imposition by neoliberal “LGBT rights” NGOs.
I have a really good article on this that I will track down and cite after work for anyone interested!
edit: link. I do not agree with all of fleawar’s writing, nor do I necessarily agree with everything written here, but the sources presented speak for themselves. Empire is weaponizing our existence, using us to ferment regime change and racial hatred.
https://fleawar.substack.com/p/lgbtq-rights-as-unconventional-warfare
Definitely East Germany. Imagine that but with the whole territory of the Weimar Republic had the KPD come to power instead of Nazi scum. There’d be no World War 2 and Marxism-Leninism would have likely spread much, much further than it did in our timeline. Germany, the USSR and later China being allies (ideally no Sino-Soviet split) and the Western scum nations would actually have been buried like Krushchev promised at the UN. Too bad he was not a good leader so maybe in this timeline someone else would have been in power.
Yes, it’s tragic that the GDR remained dedicated to Marxism-Leninism until it’s last days while the USSR itself faltered under Gorbechev and left the GDR out to dry.
The GDR was too close to the revisionist USSR for its own good. When Gorby implemented Perestrojka, Honecker wanted to do the exact same.
The USSR saved all of humanity twice and they were despised for it
libs can criticize the USSR as much as they want but the truth is that if it werent for the soviet union, they would be in concentration camps cleaning the shower-heads
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Yugoslavia as it united multiple southern slav countries economically and culturally and was the testing grounds for market socialism.
Albania
GDR and great Youth festivals and so on.
