I haven’t assessed the quality of the comments yet, but this is incredibly interesting to see.
Edit: aaannd its gone. I should have copied the post when it was up.
I am an Orthodox Christian - I certainly have a problem with the way Yugoslavia (and especially Soviet Union) treated religious believers. I certainly have a problem with the gulags and the Goli Otok. I certainly believe Stalin and Tito were dictators. I certainly condemn the unbelievably large oppression of every single political opponent, of everything that was mildly different from what the Communist Party (in this and that country) would want…
(That is…if all those things were as bad as the West would have everyone believe or it was all so much propaganda through so many years that people are unable to separate it from reality. My own mother and father (an Orthodox priest) obviously have an incredibly low opinion of communism, and blame it for the wars in Yugoslavia, instead of nationalism (though this is related to what I will speak of later). So much that, when I said my brother did something bad and illegal to someone else for nationalistic reasons and I insisted he should face consequences, my mother responded with: “He’s your brother, you’re supposed to defend him! That’s the commie ‘justice and equality’, is it? Ah, I knew it.” Her words are also much stronger in Serbian, if you take the slur “komunjare” as well.)
So, I have a lot of problems. With Yugoslavia, with USSR, with China. You tell me if it is all a result of 80-year long propaganda but, if it is, this is something I basically cannot find true answers to - American sources would say the worst things, Soviet sources would say the best things, so what’s the reality? There is Romania, where people got so sick of communism they killed Nicolae - the only legal and violent overthrow of a communist government in history, and the only one that is dubbed a “revolution”.
So, I do not know. I truly do not.
But there has been one thing you have been warning us about. One thing you have been telling the whole Western world the whole time, which is why you called yourselves anti-fascists among all other things - the capitalistic world of the West is predisposed towards fascism…and, as it seems, even Nazism. After all, the richest man in the world is probably the best symbol of capitalism. And he made the Nazi salute in front of the whole planet.
That’s what you’ve been warning us the whole time. That capitalism is predisposed to nationalism, poverty and insecurity, that eventually leads into suffering and blaming of that suffering onto a small group of people (in this context, the immigrants, the LGBTQ+ and Muslims).
You were right. If Stalin and Tito appeared in front of me, I would have a thousand reasons to spit at them, but I would hold that back in, because of what is happening in USA, which is leagues worse than what we were thinking it would be: “You were right about fascism.”
I myself am…terrified and do not know what will happen. I am writing this and wondering if this could have been avoided if USSR was the one that “won” the Cold War instead of USA. Maybe it wouldn’t. But instead of that I will have to open four eyes, four ears, activate all my nervous systems in completion, pay extreme attention to everything that is happening, prepare and, beneath all that, continue to be afraid…
Once again, I admit: about this at least, you were right.
Here is the text of the post. It’s not an American admitting they were wrong. It’s someone who lives in Croatia.
Since the website loads data from the reddit API, I had to disable “Enhanced Tracking Protection” in my browser to make it load.
Like I know people live inside of their own experiences and people will learn stuff through what they’re exposed to. But it took Elon Musk making a Nazi salute for this person to realize part of what we’ve been saying?
Nevermind the American decimation of Korea, of Vietnam. Nevermind all the death squads sent into central and south America to install friendly dictators. What does this person make of the western backed genocide against Palestinians? Or the genocide against the Yemeni?
There’s so much you’d have to ignore or apologize for if you’re not convinced western capitalism is a death machine.
"…my brother did something bad and illegal to someone else for nationalistic reasons and I insisted he should face consequences, my mother responded with: “He’s your brother, you’re supposed to defend him! That’s the commie ‘justice and equality’, is it? Ah, I knew it.” Her words are also much stronger in Serbian, if you take the slur “komunjare” as well.)
OP was raised by nationalists (i read it that way anyhow). I dunno how old OP is or the politics of their region but I give em’ credit for coming this far. If they’re admitting ‘socialists were right’ and outing their parent’s morals as “wrong” who knows what else they’ll come to learn?
Hey, don’t worry about it reddit. We hate it when we’re right too!
This is now the second highest voted post on r/Marxism
This post has been removed by the moderators of r/Marxism
I recall getting banned from one of those subs because I made some comment about not giving a shit whether I’m called a communist or a socialist as long as the meaning is understood
I haven’t assessed the quality of the comments yet
Alot of poorly read “marxists” in the comments, more interested in absolving the so-called crimes of socialism than helping the op attain a more grounded understanding of reality
Yeah saw a lot of “look, a lot of Marxists also think Stalin was an evil dictator”
Was he not? Described to be a generally paranoid man and also all the purges that occured
Enlighten me
Being wary about capitalist (including Nazi) spies as the leader of the world’s first socialist country, one that had been under attack since it was born, is prudent, not “paranoid.”
Some of the purges (to be clear, purges means “party members being kicked out of the party” and not “mass executions”) might have been in excess, but as I said above, they really worry under constant attack both overt and covert and their concern that capitalist sympathizers might have infiltrated the party was obviously warranted given that a capitalist sympathizer infiltrating the party ultimately became a pro-Western dictator and illegally overthrew the Soviet Union.
I’m not saying he was perfect, he was a human and had as many flaws as anyone, but he was a devoted communist, led the Soviet Union competently and these people are trying to throw him under the bus (and to avoid beating around the bush, they’re trying to throw the whole Soviet project, as well as all other Communist projects under the bus) to gain clout with liberals who will never respect them.
