red hats

Mostly the tankies on .ml

From someone who has gone to more than a few political protests and rallies in Boston:

Every fucking time Socialist Alternative shows up, it’s fine until some edgelord dipshit unfurls the fucking huge Soviet flag with Stalin and Mao silk screened on it. It’s like they’re trying to alienate reasonable people as well as historically-informed people. I consider myself a staunch socialist. I also outright detest Stalin and Mao because they were fucking authoritarian despots who wrapped their regimes in “communism” banners.

Sure, some of the systems at lower levels were socialistic, but at the end of the day, it was all in service to the cult of personality in charge of the whole gig. And yes, that’s what the US has devolved into (and arguably had done so quite a while ago, just not so overtly), but that doesn’t excuse Stalin or Mao, nor does it justify being an apologist for them.

Stalin took the Russian state from an agricultural backwater to a Space Age superpower in a matter of twenty years.

If he'd started out a Virginia plantation owner instead of a Georgian bank robber, capitalists would have loved him. He'd be bigger than Churchill.

American liberals love (the whitewashed version of) FDR because they see the quasi-socialism of the mid-20th century as the morally correct path. Eastern Europeans - who came through two world wars and repeated genocides on every front - have a lot more of an appetite for Iron Fisted Dictator[Communist] after enduring generations of Iron Fisted Dictator[Monarchist]

Modern Satanists are actually extremely progressive. The Satanic Temple makes a point of using legislation intended to promote Christianity to promote their own religious organization.

It pisses off the reactionary religious zealots and shows them to be hypocrites, and there's nothing legislators can do about it without blatantly giving preferential treatment to the "correct" religion.

sanatists

Ah yes. Sanat, Satan's lesser known brother.

Shame they're not santanists

Great guitarist

Oh don't worry, he's still trying to get feds to quit, and they're drooling at adding sycophantic bullshit to the hiring process. All while eroding union protections, benefits, and pay.

All while the Democrats vote down attempts to combat Trump, but have all the time in the world to sabotage the primary resultant nominee in NYC. Why have a primary if you're not going to go with the results? That's not a primary - that's just bullshit.

This country is a fucking joke.

Not exactly. While I understand the satisfaction of seeing these asshats getting their faces eaten by the leopard, the ones being purged are the ones that are most likely to keep him somewhat in check, leaving only scared little yes men behind.

If you feel antagonised when someone criticise Stalin then that's a you problem though.

Staline's Image Cult isn't "imperialist propaganda"

So when Stalin collaborated with Nazis to kill and chase away my relatives from what is now Ukraine that was imperialist propaganda? Why did so many of my ancestors flee Russia at that time?

Let's hope he keeps doing it. Unless commies are out there fighting ICE with fire they can go get fucked.

It won't help. It's purely cathartic. It's meaningless political tribalism. It will keep the commons quibbling and scratching while fascism only strengthens from the misguided and unprincipled rage.

Politics is ALL marketing/ advertising, and the most important thing a product can do is establish a strong, powerful brand. These aren't "kindergarten word games," this is a marketing strategy intended to damage their brand.

At their core, MAGAs are cowardly and angry, and easy to manipulate. Needle, harass, hassle, tease, humiliate, embarrass, etc. them at EVERY opportunity, and they will grow angrier, and more frightened when they see their intimidation tactics aren't working. It shows shallow voters that the MAGAs are pathetic, they aren't strong, and they aren't to be feared. It shows that they are blustering losers, not to be respected or obeyed. Combine that with a solid brand building strategy for a popular Democratic agenda, and voters will abandon the pathetic MAGAs, and flock to the Democrats.

Handled correctly, words are powerful tools, and the Pen is mightier than the Sword.

They can be identified with a symbol as well, maybe like a cross with bent ends.

Nah, the Obama Era Republicans put up a fight. The Democrats now aren't even fighting for the most part.

I agree that the party orthodoxy is stupid and contradictory. But he's also profoundly stupid which is why he's such a perfect fit as its mascot.

Stalin is famous for the Iron Railroads Out of the USSR?

Probably should have gone with forced displacement for this dig I think

This is a level of paranoia suggesting actual brain damage, seek medical attention.

I think you underestimate the class consciousness of the ruling class. Bernie has been faithfully playing his assigned role to keep increasingly radicalized sections of the working class and youth within the orbit of the Democratic Party. I do not think it is a stretch to assign consciously anti-revolutionary motives to his statements, especially this stupidly anti-communist statement.

Despite my therapist not agreeing with me on politics, she thinks I am mentally fine.

How does it give a pass to capitalism? Sanders himself would agree that capitalism contributed to Trumpism.

Stalinism was a degeneration of the workers state in the Soviet Union. Fascism is an extreme counterrevolutionary form of capitalism. Assigning one (Stalinism) to the other (Trump/MAGA) is a category error. Ahisotorical and unscientific (and likelh a conscious distortion given Sanders political history and experience).

People who unironically support Stalinism in the modern day are red fascists.

The Stalinist perspective is counterrevolutionary, but it is not fascist. Ironically, most actual Stalinists will have disavowed Stalin by now following his death and Krushev's secret speech. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism, international Stalinists are largely reduced to trade union organizing and activist pressure groups. In the third world they routinely enter into coalitions with bourgeois nationalist governments. Edgy teenagers on the internet are not serious Stalinists.

He is specifically operating within the context of modern American politics. Something average academic/armchair/larpy leftists are often completely fucking incapable of. His main use of analogizing Stalinism with Trumpism is the Cult of Personality not that they are literally the exact same thing.

In the contact of American politics, the role of anticommunism cannot be overstated. Sanders plays into this tradition because he supports it. He could have criticized Trump's cult of personality by referencing the fascist Mussolini (or just made it a direct statement about Trump). He chose to use the word "Stalinism" despite it being clearly inappropriate because it serves his political function.

People who unironically support Stalinism in the modern day are red fascists.

No, they are not. And the only reason you say they are is because liberals understanding of politics is entirely through the Marvel comic lense of there are "Good guys" and "Bad Guys" and the bad guys are foreign coded

I reject this analysis as unscientific and ahistoric. The similarities are entirely superficial. Its not a matter of different ideology, but different historic content of the regimes themselves.

Different ideologies but same cheeks from the same arse as one might put it.

They might, if they were a teenager who got all of their political understanding from Marvel movies

The survival of the Soviet Union as a socialist state depended on the expansion of the revolution internationally. Stalin's policy of building socialism in one country led to all manner of bureaucratic overreach with authoritarian methods and betrayal of the international working class. The correct policy would have been to spread the revolution throughout the world on the basis of Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution, as advanced by the Left Opposition.

The failures of the revolutions in Germany through 1923 were terrible tragedies, prepared largely by the betrayals of the Second International and the inexperiance of the new communist KPD of the Third International. This is not something you can really blame Stalin for, but it created the conditions for what followed.

The betrayal of the Chinese revolution of 1925–27 was the first great International betrayal of Stalinism. Stalin ordered an alliance with the bourgeouis Kuomantang that ended with the massacre of thousands of Chinese comminists at the hands of the nationalista. After that, he ordered a series of putsches that predictably ended in further defeats. Trotsky was expelled from the Communist party for his criticism of the line that led to this disaster.

The ultraleft line of the Comintern in its third period led to disaster and betrayal in Germany in the 1930s. Stalin divided the forces working class by refusing to allow a united front of the communists with German Social Democracy. The SPD still had significant influence in the working class, with over a million working class members who were trained in the revolutionary theories of Marxism. The KPD under the influence of Stalin denounced these workers as "social fascist" essentially no different than the Nazis, thus paving the way for Hitler to come to power (only to turn around later to make his infamous pact with Hitler). These events led Trotsky to conclude the Third International was dead for purposes of revolution, and to call for the founding on the Fourth International.

Fourth International called for political revolution in the USSR to restore democracy and defend the gains of the October Revolution and to expand the proletarian revolution internationally. Trotsky and large numbers of the cadre of the FI were murdered by Stalinist agents, who opposed this perspective. In the postwar period the role of the Stalinists was to use their influence to prop up bourgeois governments throughout the third world, and to effect its foreign policy objectives with respect to the imperialist countries. Stalin fell out of favor after Krushevs secret speech following his death, but the basic political methods remained the same.

I use my own brain for writing, thank you very much. There are clear mistakes in my OP, despite my best efforts, that all but prove the human origin or my writing.

if you say “libs” it instantly puts people in the headspace of “own the libs”, “everything i don’t like is woke”… it’s a dog whistle, and thus sets people up to think the rest of what’s being said is tainted

the ideologies in the group are not a cohesive block

Is it unfathomable that someone could see something they think is wrong but doesn't think starting a long-winded Internet argument wherein neither party will in any scenario whatsoever convince the other of anything is worth their time?

I take drive by downvotes as a compliment, the meaning I get from them is, "I don't like this because it challenged my beliefs in a way I can't answer." Great! That's what I was going for.

Both require no thinking yet believing you're correct no matter the evidence to the contrary.

You're right, I don't