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Thursday, September 28, 2023

Links - 28th September 2023 (2 - Socialism)

Meme - "200 years ago 85% of the world lived in extreme poverty. Today that number is less than 9%."
Commie: "cApiTaLisM hAs fAiLed!"

Meme - Morgan Artyukhinaa @LavenderNRed: "Did it hurt? When you realized everything you'd been taught about the Soviet Union and communism was a lie and that their existence was an enormous objective good for mankind rather than its biggest failure?
What about when you realized that China is not just socialist, but the biggest force for good in the world today and represents the future of mankind?"
Morgan Artyukhina @LavenderNRed: "They/them I autistic trans socialist & activist I writer @SputnikInt | bylines in @monthly_review @mintpressnews @globaltimesnews | Opinions & tweets my own."
Conflict of interest is never an issue for the left, because they are Right

Meme - "Oh, my tools fell *Hammer and Sickle*"
"Our tools"

Meme - simi @simimoonlight: "I'm sorry but it makes no sense for us to not hibernate in the winter. Other mammals do. We'd likely be so much more efficient, and happy. But capitalism."
Eli @eliburketttt: "bruh, we don't hibernate because our physiology doesn't allow our metabolic processes to adapt within the timeframe of a single winter. Not because of capitalism"
William Gladstone was right @wildgunman: "Shows how much you know. Prior to the incorporation of the Dutch East India Company in 1602, all of Europe slept for 4 straight months a year in a cave. Look it up!"

Meme - "Tankies be like "it's only year 147 of late stage capitalism but it'll get there eventually:^)"
"SIGNS OF THE SECOND COMING"
"Fuck off I don't believe in that made up nonsense"
"RICHARD WOLFF Is Coronavirus the end of Capitalism?"
"So true!!!"

Meme - "If capitalism is greed then communism is envy"

Meme - "Former Soviet citizen: Most of my mother's family starved to death, Stalin is a murderer.
Collectivist millennials: UM, ACTUALLY THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN SWEETIE"
Or they say his mother's family deserved it because they were counter-revolutionaries

Meme - "LAZY, ENTITLED, ANTI-WORK COMMIES: Tell me the truth... I'm... I'm ready to hear it
ANYONE WITH A BRAIN: THE HAMMER AND SICKLE REPRESENT LABOR/WORK"

4 in 10 Canadians prefer socialism but not higher taxes to pay for it - "42 per cent of Canadians believe socialism is the ideal economic system. That’s slightly lower than in the United Kingdom (43 per cent) but higher than in both the United States (31 per cent) and Australia (40 per cent). Just one problem: few Canadians want to pay higher taxes to fund it. Younger Canadians’ support for “socialism” presumably is due in part to their lack of real-world experience with genuine socialism and the misery it imposed. The polling data bear that out. Support for socialism drops from 50 per cent among Canadians 18-24 years old to 38 per cent among Canadians over 55.  There’s also the question of what its 21st-century supporters actually mean by “socialism.” Unlike other polls on this subject, this one, which was conducted by Leger in the fall of 2022, included definitions of socialism. Only 25 per cent of Canadians polled define socialism as the government taking control of companies and industries, which is the classic definition (i.e., “owning the means of production”)... According to the poll, which offered all respondents four tax options to help finance socialism, the two most popular options by far were a new wealth tax on the top one per cent, which got 72 per cent support, and an increase in personal income taxes for the top 10 per cent, which got 59 per cent support. The logic seems straightforward: most respondents assume these two taxes would not affect them. The other two tax options were far less popular. An across-the-board increase in personal income taxes garnered only 31 per cent support, while only 16 per cent of respondents supported a GST increase. In its eight years in power, the Trudeau government has already increased the top personal income tax rate from 29 to 33 per cent and has mused repeatedly about introducing a new wealth tax and raising capital gains taxes. As things stand, the top 20 per cent of families already pay a disproportionate share of the total tax burden, earning 44.6 per cent of all income but paying 53.0 per cent of all taxes (federal, provincial and local). The problem for Ottawa and the advocates of socialism is that because these targeted tax hikes don’t raise enough revenue to cover the costs of new spending the money has to be borrowed, which raises government debt and slows economic growth. Since the current federal government came to power Canada’s total national debt has increased from $1.1 trillion to an estimated $1.9 trillion this year. Canada is on an unsustainable fiscal path as governments, particularly the federal government, expand existing programs while adding new ones without being honest with Canadians about the ultimate need for broad-based tax increases to pay for them. The Trudeau solution from day one has been to borrow, which simply defers the tax bill to the future.  And the bill is already starting to come due. Ottawa expects to spend $43.3 billion next year solely on interest on the national debt. That’s more than it spends on employment insurance, the Canada Child Benefit or the Canada Social Transfer, and almost as much as total health transfers to the provinces ($49.3 billion).   The financial pressures from new spending, coupled with increasing debt and interest costs, will eventually force a decision on governments and Canadians more broadly. If we want larger government, we’ll have to pay the price in the form of higher taxes. As Nobel laureate Milton Friedman often reminded us, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, not even for advocates of socialism."
Online, I saw people dismiss the poll due to loaded questions (with no proof, of course).

POVERTY EXISTS FOR MILLIONS OF SOVIETS, USSR ADMITS – Chicago Tribune - "Soviet authorities, who once denied that poverty existed in their country and pronounced it an evil of capitalism, now say that tens of millions of Soviet citizens-at least 20 percent of the population-live in poverty, compared with about 14 percent in the United States. Their condition has drawn a remarkable amount of attention in the Soviet press in the last year, with frequent letters from poor people bemoaning their misfortune and articles by economists and sociologists blaming the government for neglecting the problem... There is no state plan, however, for dealing with poverty, according to interviews with several Soviet officials. There is no government agency to which people in need can turn, and the word ''poverty'' is not even used in state documents... While some officials still insist poverty is the result of laziness, most say the country`s economic instability is a major contributor... the average Soviet person works 10 times longer than the average American worker to earn a pound of meat, 4.5 times longer to earn a quart of milk, and three times longer for a pound of potatoes"
From 1989. Poor tankies

Under the Frog: Why Tibor Fischer’s 1992 Booker-Nominated Novel May Have Found its Moment - "Tibor Fischer: Most people on the Left (apart from Arthur Scargill) had realized that the countries of the Warsaw Pact weren’t workers’ paradises by the 1970s, but there was a curious reluctance to fully face up to the truth. I worked on a documentary series about Eastern Europe for Channel 4 that was broadcast in 1988. We were attacked by the Independent for being too harsh on Ceaușescu. A year later his own compatriots put him up against a wall and shot him.  I spent half my life having to explain that Communist Hungary wasn’t some noble experiment. One of my teachers, who, of course, like most staff room sages, knew fuck-all, argued that “at least they don’t have the rat race,” unaware that if there’s less cheese, the rats have to race even harder. And it seems I’ll have to spend the second half of my life constantly denying that Hungary is some fascist backwater. János Kádár, a dictator who was installed by Soviet tanks and whose regime executed hundreds of Hungarians got a better press in the West than the current, democratically elected prime minister, Viktor Orbán. You can’t make it up.   The far-Left have largely given up on the Five-Year Plans and Central Control of the economy, but they have retreated into the universities and schools where you will still find boastful Marxists. It’s what Gramsci called the “war of position.” You mislead the youth. There is, in fact despite the prattle about diversity, very little diversity in British universities, intellectually. Žižek, an avowed Communist has a position at Birkbeck University. Why not? But I’d love to see Birkbeck offer a position to someone who advocates a challenging form of neo-fascism.   I suppose every generation has the sensation of living in strange times. The sifting process in job applications and university applications in the UK, with the emphasis on ethnicity and social background is an intriguing mixture of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. There is an alarming polarization of politics almost everywhere... Please show me a successful Communist country. There has never been one. Anywhere. And any progress or achievement has always come at high human cost. They could have electrified the Soviet Union without murdering millions of people. It is possible to do that. No one has got Communism right, because it’s not possible.
RA: Much is made of the fact in the book that Gyuri is Class X—from a formerly well-heeled family—and so is last in the queue for things like good jobs and university places. He’s told, “You’ll have to work twice as hard as everyone else to make amends for your background.” Are we moving towards this at all, do you think?
TF: I hope not, but there does seem to be a mania for social engineering again. In my lifetime, everything has been done to make education more “accessible,” which has happened. But it’s been done by lowering the standards. Really, really lowering the standards. I only know about the humanities but I can tell you, categorically, from what I’ve experienced, that there are students getting MAs now who wouldn’t have passed an English A-level in the 1970s.
RA: In your recent journalism you’ve written a lot about declining standards in education. You’ve said that “the educational absurdity of Dickens’s Dotheboys Hall in Nicholas Nickleby is being recreated in our arts faculties” and that “essays in history, literature and social sciences are [now] often little more than rants.” What do you mean?
TF: The standards in humanities are very low. Obviously things vary from institution to institution, but the bar has been lowered. Everyone I know who teaches at that level is in despair. Students aren’t encouraged to study or think independently in the way they were in my time at university. They read less—indeed, literature students seem to resent reading the most, and they’re spoon-fed, as at school. What I read in one week would now count as a term’s work. And you can get away with a lot as long as you maintain history/literature is a sexist/colonialist conspiracy."

Eugene Lyons’s chronicle of the 1930s Left remains startlingly relevant today. - "It may be that the best book that will ever be written about today’s progressive mind-set was published in 1941. That in The Red Decade author Eugene Lyons was, in fact, describing the Communist-dominated American Left of the Depression-wracked 1930s and 1940s makes his observations even more meaningful, for it is sobering to be confronted with how little has been gained by hard experience. The celebration of feelings over reason? The certainty of moral virtue? The disdain for tradition and the revising of history for ideological ends? The embrace of the latest definition of correct thought? Lyons was one of the most gifted reporters of his time, and among the bravest, and his story of the spell cast by Stalinist-tinged social-justice activism over that day’s purported best and brightest—literary titans, Hollywood celebrities, leading academics, religious leaders, media heavies—would be jaw-dropping if it weren’t so eerily familiar.   Indeed, looking backward from a time when, according to surveys, more millennials would rather live under socialism than capitalism, it’s apparent that Lyons was documenting not just a historical moment but also a species of historical illiteracy as unchanging as it is poisonous, its utopianism able to flourish only at the expense of independent thought. On a range of issues, alternative views were defined as not merely mistaken but morally reprehensible; and among the elites who dominated the cultural sphere, deviants from approved opinion were subject to special abuse. Of course, having lived and worked in Soviet Russia, Lyons made distinctions about relative abuses of power. Under Stalinism, dissidents were liquidated, or vanished into the gulag; the American Left could only liquidate careers and disappear reputations... As screenwriter Richard Collins would later recall of his time in the party, Communism was, for its devotees, “a cause, a faith, and a viewpoint on all phenomena. A one-shot solution to all the world’s ills and inequities.”...   That it was all a colossal fraud was obvious all along, or should have been. For anyone willing to see, Stalin’s Russian paradise was a totalitarian horror show, equaled only by Hitler’s Third Reich. For all the regime’s numerous apologists in the press, led by the New York Times’s Walter Duranty (who won the Pulitzer Prize for his efforts), word of the true state of affairs in Russia was not hard to come by because by the mid-1930s, reports on the Great Famine (the planned execution by starvation of millions of recalcitrant Ukrainian peasants) were too persistent to ignore without sustained effort. So, too, were those of systematic state thuggery, culminating in the confessions-by-torture of veteran Bolsheviks in the purge trials of 1937–38 and, in Spain, in the guise of fighting fascism, the systematic elimination of rival leftist parties by Soviet secret police. By the time he published The Red Decade, Lyons, a rare journalist given to damn-the-consequences honesty, had come to know his twin subjects exceedingly well—that is, Stalinism and the American liberals so ready to overlook its savage immorality. Having arrived from Russia as a small child and grown up in the poverty of the Jewish Lower East Side, he came of age a committed leftist, and, as he’d later acknowledge, when he returned to the land of his birth, in 1928 as a 30-year-old correspondent for the United Press, his aim was to use that privileged perch to promote the Revolution. It was on this basis that, in 1930, he scored a stunning journalistic coup that brought him worldwide recognition: the first-ever interview by a Western correspondent with the reclusive Stalin. And, to his subsequent shame, he joined other leading reporters in mostly running cover for the regime, including on the famine.  Within a few years, though, he began harboring doubts, and before long he was running afoul of Soviet censors by finding ways to alert readers to the regime’s hypocrisy and cronyism, the failure of its various economic plans, and, especially, its ruthlessness and brutality... at least as troubling to Lyons as the reality of the Soviet paradise was the refusal to face it that he encountered in America on his return. To the contrary, he ran up against an almost perverse eagerness to embrace every fabrication in its defense and to cast doubters as hostile to all that was good and true. Stalinist methods, if even acknowledged, often met with tacit approval...   That during those Depression years, the legions of starry- and steely-eyed included a disproportionate number of what we’d now call millennials was unsurprising; for the idealistic, emotion-driven young, hard questions always have easy solutions, and even in good times, there’s no competing with the romance of the Left. But what Lyons found far more unsettling was the credulity of those in the vanguard of progressive thought: leading figures in academia, entertainment, publishing, media, and the highest councils of government, from New York to Hollywood and everywhere between. These were the powerful and influential, the men and women who shaped public attitudes and opinion... In one sense, the book could hardly have appeared at a more propitious moment. As Lyons wrote in his introduction, it was originally to go to press on June 22, 1941—the very day that Hitler stabbed his ally Stalin in the back by invading the Soviet Union, thereby necessitating a wholesale revision of the CPUSA’s line on the European war. Already that line had drastically changed once, only two years earlier, instantly moving from die-hard anti-Nazism to adamantly antiwar, when Stalin shocked the world by signing his infamous nonaggression pact with Hitler; as a result, thousands of anguished party members had quit, and multitudes of fellow travelers quietly slipped away. But the hard core had rationalized, casting Stalin as a master statesman who had done what he had to in defense of the world’s lone socialist republic, and now they rationalized again... Lyons showed a special disdain for the wealthy who embraced radicalism to salve their guilty consciences... Much as he faults young people for their susceptibility to socialism’s appeal, Lyons faults even more the grown-ups, observing that views of the young are always “crudely colored by undefined emotional urges,” which leaves them “perfect raw stuff for demagogic molding. . . . [T]he glorification of youth is a modern development, it puts a premium on lack of experience, mental fuzziness and intuition as against intelligence and maturity.”  Hardly least, there were those in the left-of-center media who habitually assumed the worst about their own country"
We are still told that liberals don't hate their countries

Xi Van Fleet on Twitter: "In a Communist kingdom, useful idiots will end up in gulags. But how about those in power?  Pre. Liu Shaoqi, Mao’s right-hand man was purged, exiled, died alone in misery.  Lin Biao, Mao’s hand-picked successor, died in plane crash on route to Russia after his plot against Mao was discovered.  Zhou Enlai was denied medical treatment by Mao & died of cancer, a reward he got for being Mao’s most submissive & loyal “servant”.  No one is safe in a Communist power structure. Not even the dictators themselves who lived in constant fear, which is well justified as proven by Ceaușescu!"

Meme - Zhang Yong @zhang_yong1: "america leftist claim "peace , tolerate , diverse" ,. endorse homo marriage .. yet hate fear chinese , russian, very racist . they say "zhang go back china !" when i speak wisdom . seem very racist , hypocrisy"
Junxiong Ma @JunxiongMa: "Translated from Chinese by Google
When the People's Liberation Army landed in the United States and then massacred the American leftists, they would know that the real revolution is not the same as the gay fantasy revolution they imagined."

Meme - "Where am I?"
"Karl Marx! We resurrected you to lead the revolution!" *Furry, Antifa, Trans woman*
"... of lumpenproles?"

Understanding the Return of Socialism - "How are we to understand the apparently paradoxical attitudes of Generation Z (the cohort born between 1997 and 2012) towards socialism? In its fifth annual report, the Victims of Communism Memorial (VOC) found that 49 percent of Gen Z view the term “socialism” favorably, compared to 40 percent in 2019. On the other hand, the report found that an abysmal six percent of Gen Z trusts the government to take care of their interests. A Pew Research Center report also found that young people are much less trusting of elected officials than older age groups. So, although most of Gen Z has little faith in the government to effectively act on their behalf, many of them support an economic system which gives more power to the state... Whereas 31 percent of Gen Z respondents to the VOC report said they support the gradual elimination of the capitalist system in favor of a more socialist one, only 12 percent said they believe society would be better off with the abolition of private property.  The discrepancies in Gen Z’s idea of socialism suggest that a Soviet-style October Revolution orchestrated by the TikTok generation is unlikely. A HarrisX poll reached similar conclusions, reporting that nearly half of young adults think that socialism simply means providing necessities and ending poverty, with no mention of abolishing the market economy...   It should surprise no one that this form of governance resonates with young people. Wages in the United States have remained stagnant for decades, and they are faced with an unforgiving housing market and national student loan debt totaling over $1.7 trillion... The uphill economic battle many young people are fighting today is only exacerbated by a system of government that seldom represents their interests. A study which analyzed nearly 1,800 public policy decisions over 20 years found that the desires of average American voters appeared “to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” Economic elites, on the other hand, were more successful than any other group in having their interests reflected in legislation...   Nor is the popularity of left-leaning policies in America limited to Gen Z. Pew Research Center found that a majority of Americans, 63 percent in both surveys, are in favor of tuition-free college and believe that the federal government should be at least partially responsible for ensuring all Americans have healthcare coverage."

Working Class History on Twitter - "#OtD 15 Jul 1971 the ironically named United Red Army was formed in Japan. A Maoist group, it had 29 members and it killed 14 of them in less than a year in internal purges, considering them not revolutionary enough. Here is a critical history of Maoism:"

Meme - Carl Benjamin: "Control of information is control of reality.
Mass killings under communist regimes
This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia's deletion policy. The verifiability of the claims made in this article is disputed. The neutrality of this article is disputed. This article or section possibly contains synthesis of material which does not verifiably mention or relate to the main topic."

FAMILIES : China : Communism Broke Grip of Tradition : Half a century of change has reduced role of family. But overseas relatives are imposing old values. - Los Angeles Times - "The late Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung, although himself a member of a strong Hunanese family clan, realized that political reform was was not possible unless people placed the interests of the state above those of the family, which up to that point had been by far the most powerful institution in China.  Even today in rural Chinese wedding ceremonies, peasant couples bow to a portrait of Chairman Mao rather than bow to their ancestors as was the tradition for more than 2,000 years.  Communist leaders were instructed to “draw a clear line” between themselves and their families. During the Cultural Revolution, youths were encouraged to love Chairman Mao more than their parents and were sent to the countryside to learn from the peasants. Parents were attacked by their own children in struggle sessions. Collective day-care centers became the norm."
From 1995. So much for the myth of the left being anti-family. This can still be seen today, e.g. narcissists urging people to cut off "toxic" family

Meme - "Another round of "7 year old or 40 year old tankie""
"My idea of what money might look like after the revolution"

Meme - Mystery Grove Publishing Co. @MYSTERYGROVE: "Reminder: Communism is when ugly deformed freaks make it illegal to be normal then rob kill all successful people out of petty resentment and cruelty. The ideology is all just window dressing."

Meme - Communist: "SOCIALISM IS BETTER THAN CAPITALISM"
Normie: "WHEN THE BERLIN WALL FELL WHO RAN TO WHICH SIDE?"

Meme - "Landlords need to understand that no matter how you put it, no matter how horrible you try to paint the tenant, no matter what you say. you do not deserve income more than a person deserves a place to live. period. no matter how u slice it. i do not care."
"That's similar to saying the farmer doesn't deserve the income for the produce or frozen meats more than the grocery consumer deserves the food." "Eventually, allowing users to steal from providers means grocers, farmers and landlords will have little incentive to do business and they will stop providing groceries or produce/grains/meats or residences. Watch the scarcity and prices for remaining groceries, food or rentals skyrocket in price after that."
Of course, it'll be fault of counter-revolutionary traitors when things go to shit
Maybe commies hate landlords because they know they're such failures they'll never buy their own place no matter what

Meme - Karl Marx: "Work for the money to pay rent and share of utilities *No*"
Karl Marx: "Living off of someone else's inheritance while splurging on a bourgeoisie lifestyle simultaneously complaining about the landlord's greed *Yes*"

Meme - Chairman Yang's Red Army: "Sex workers need a union"
"Lenin orders the massacre of sex workers"
"Wow! He's JUST like me!"

Meme - "The Romanov children were....literally children. They begged for their lives and when they were dead their corpse were sexually assaulted. Grow up."
Kerfus: "The Tankies being pro-necrophilia is not surprising"
Johnny Betawi @JohnBatavia: "The fuck do you care? They were dead already and it's a small retribution for what they had stolen from the people"

Meme - Communist: "Nooo, you don't understand! Cuba's crisis is due to the US embargo, not the Communist dictatorship! How do you expect their Communist nation to succeed without access to Capitalist nations like the US?!?!"

Meme - *Bible*
>be old book full of failed predictions and vague flowery language
>have dozens of possible interpretations
>centuries later, rival factions claim to have the one true interpretation and JPG regularly fight one another
>millions have died in attempts to implement these interpretations
>writings treated as infallible truth by privileged, self- righteous white people
>be communist manifesto
>pic unrelated"

Meme - Marxist Soccer @MarxistSoccer: "Also, I will not and cannot train anything other than lower body, because the upper body muscles are mostly for aesthetic and show which are Bourgeois traits. Strong glutes and thighs are the base of any Proletarian movement."

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