LateStageCapitalism is not handling the IAmA from a genuine USSR purge survivor very well

207  2017-12-31 by GadolBoobies

204 comments

Have you posted bussy yet?

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There's more drama on SRD OP....SLS invaded, got upvoted to oblivion....the thread disgust me. Since when are SRD = tankie light, I thought that they had enough socialist and communist subscriber but most of them hated Stalinism, WTF happened?

Haha, oh man.

SRD is raging about everything from the 'deaths in Communist countries are lies' to 'the left wants smaller government!'

The Black Book of Communism is by no means a super reliable source, but:

a) major critiques on it in that thread are made by anarcho - communists, so there are no counter propoganda there......😒

b) in the case of my country the numbers are not so far off compared to ones from oficial documents of Stalin's government, which are public and anyone can literally go to national library and read them.

c) they used the magic sentence - "it's often used by the right" - boom the upvotes go.

d) country jailing or giving fines to nazism apologists = 👌 Same country doing that to Stalinism apologists ( not communism in general) = REEEE and downvotes.

How do you feel about all the Stalin apologia being attempted on the AMA and on the commie subs?

As I said: AmA person himself is a shaddy and the are better data about Stalininst regimes than Black Book of Communism - the book itself in my opinion is not a completely worthless as reddit tankies like to paint it, I have only read part and it's more like 50/50 deal so far.

However this shouls not be viewed as an excuse to post complete Stalinism apologia.

What I think about tankies of reddit? Fuck them

Communists of reddit? I would rather have a disscussion wirh a local one than an american one. Defends on his/hers views on USSR, totalitarism and would they want a violent takeover of other countries.

better data about Stalininst regimes than Black Book of Communism

The Mitrokhin Archive is a great source for what they were up to a for a large chunk of time, if not exactly great for exact numbers. Must read for anyone who pretends to know anything re Soviet history.

Thing is he is actually pretty idolized still in russia because in all fairness nazis wanted to genocide all the russians for that sweet land.

Did you just use the white power emoji at me? 😡

? The top comments on the srd thread are making fun of the "capitalist shill" guy

SRD = SJWs and SJWs = proto-tankies.

Could someone tell me how to archive that post if something happens, because I want to link it next time when they have a " Bash the tankies" day, just for shits, giggles and drama?

CAN

THE

FAM?

SRDine

link to the thread reeeeeeeeee

I'm not linking that trash here.

Like we're above it? fam.

Hi, I'm a bot for linking direct images of albums with only 1 image

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Source | Why? | Creator | ignoreme | deletthis

fuk u bot

/u/EZPEEZEE why do you think only Trumpfags oppose state communism? And why is an anarchist defending the USSR?

It seems Mussolini (peace be upon him) was right when he said that every anarchist is just a frustrated dictator.

Aghhhhh fuck these people. You don’t get to “disown”, ignore or make light of the experience of the survivors of shit like this just because it doesn’t match your first world view of the test of the world. Fuck everyone in that thread.

Once a niche sub starts openly embracing internet (((leftism))) it's only a matter of time.

reddit is stormfront lite these days

Imagine being this delusional

>it's either tankies or nazis

Please try again and remember where you are.

Anybody not commie is stormfront lite to commies.

Like all good cults, it become more extreme over time.

the thread itself disgusts me.

lol pussy

I remember when LSC was a fun subbreddit. I used to browse and post there, now it's dripping with faggotry. If this isn't rooted in soy abuse, then I have no idea what could possibly make so many people so shitty so quickly.

Is soy sauce okay?

Sure

They were always terrible, just not always so tankie. Bitching about capitalism from the comfort of your thousand dollar computer is the first worldiest of first world problems.

What if I bitch about capitalism from the 10-year-old computer in my public library?

Also:

insert Matt Bors comic here

You're still spending your time bitching about the system that created the space you are using, the system you are using and the cumulative wealth of generations of curated knowledge you are surrounded by.

Capitalism created the internet

Bro do u even DARPA?

Also, arguments like this are why that Bors comic just won't die. Why does "having some good things already" necessarily invalidate "maybe if we made some changes we could have more good things and less bad things"?

Because communism always results in a lot more bad things than capitalism. See: every single communist nation in the history of Earth.

Capitalism created the internet

Bro do u even DARPA?

You need to do some studying.

So the American system isn't capitalist? Or is that only when it does bad things?

no bitching about the feudal system that created that parchment, swine.

Feudal? You're taking the piss, right?

Yes. capitalism is way better than feudalism. I am just saying that using tools created by a system to criticize it do not make said criticisms invalid.

Tankie?

Commies who think Stalin and Mao were top blokes.

A liberal is the cleverest man in the gulag. - Robert Frost

The US government is evil - every angsty white teenager in /r/lsc

The government should control every aspect of my life - also every angsty white teenager in /r/lsc.

It’s really as simple as that. How those kids don’t see the contradiction in their opinions is scary.

No, see, it's not a contradiction because they're going to replace the evil US government with a totalitarian one that totally won't be evil, because they say so.

I don't know how someone doesn't just post this there every day and make these idiots realize how messed up and contradictory their ideology is. Ya, our government sucks, but if we give them unlimited power, it will somehow work out despite all the historical evidence to the contrary? That makes sense.

idiot voters elect the most idiotic president in history

"Oh God, I wish they could also vote on how much wheat gets grown."

I took the road less traveled and that was a bit tougher because of all the brambles and mud n shit.

In Soviet Russia, road takes you!

Is this based on something?

It is a concatenation of this quote:

"A liberal is a man too open-minded to take his own side in a quarrel." - Robert Frost

And this motto:

"Liberals also get the bullet" - teenage communists

/r/badphilosophy is also sperging out

Americans still can't differentiate antifascism the ideology and the antifascist movement. Newbie stuff I guess.

I mean, all Americans are antifascism, so the antifascist movement in America is pretty retarded.

They're antifascist but just so happen to vote for policies that draw us closer to fascism. Really boils the noodle.

Oh dear, it's retarded.

Pro-corporate protectionist religious nationalism isn't pretty close to fascism

Consider keeping yourself safe for the sake of everyone.

You first. Show us how it's done

Anything to advance the mayocide

u/pterynxli til North Korea is a democracy. Let me ask are you retarded or just pretending

By that point, there's no difference

Click link

T-55 engine noise starts playing in background

Hmmmm.

Can you identify engine noises and do you do parties?

r/LSC, where saying someone is succesful is enough of an argument to discredit someone.

"wow that guy rich, how can he be right"

They literally think that all millionaires are evil.

Becoming a millionaire by the time you're old isn't even that hard these days, thanks to inflation.

That’s actually not the consensus on /r/latestagecapitalism it’s more along the lines of all major public corporations are evil

Show me a case where they talk about someone being a millionaire in a positive light.

how about instead u go fuck yourself?

They don't have a consensus on anything.

They all hate success.

I'm just glad reddit wasn't a thing when I went through my socialism might be okay phase in junior high

I think a lot of people go through that phase when they're younger but don't realize how terrible of an ideology it is until they're out in the real world. It's always the younger crowd touting this stuff which says all you need to know about it -- it's a nice thought exercise but not realistic due to human nature.

socialism is fine ya faggots

just look at norway

Norway? You mean a country with a homogeneous population and a tax on 45% of GDP as opposed to around 20% in the USA? It's almost like different countries have different factors you need to take into account.

who gives a shit about any of that

they’re fucking socialists and as you said, they’re doing fine

seriously though, what does that have to do with what i said besides the word “norway”?

Nobody's arguing that socialist policies can't work, it's usually about is "will it work here." Here is usually america.

they were though

for one, the ussr isn’t even a part of america anymore

My grandparents worked regular middle class jobs and raised 4 kids. No fancy McMansion, no insane sweet 16s or crazy spending. No idea of their finances but they are easily worth over $1million.

don't tell them Bernie Sanders's net worth

And then throw in his dog whistle of "Socialism won't work in America because we're diverse". Which just means "we have black people and they'd be lazy and take our money"

/u/TheDwarvenDragon

And where every single thing can be linked to racism somehow. These people seem miserable. They should try making some money.

/u/TheDwarvenDragon

By diverse he meant that we live in a pluralistic society with different values and people have different priorities

Hi there. I have yet to receive a legitimate answer to why socialism/socialist policies won't work in America yet works in diverse countries like the UK and Canada. I only get that it's because "were diverse" which isn't am argument.

Also, I am miserable. It's mainly because I have to pay 70$ an hour to see a therapist about depression, pay 2500$ in tuition for 4 classes, and watch my friends drive unsafe cars because they can't get better jobs then fast food because they can't afford training/college. So miserable, but hey at least you can shitpost about it.

implying Canada has socialism

R u dum

Socialism doesnt work because it requires stealing from productive members of society to support leeches and offers no incentive for people to continue being productive. US, Canada and UK are also capitalist.

Nobody owes you a BMW. Quit doing drugs, go to a trade school, work hard, have a good life. You won't be rich, but there's tons of good jobs out there if you're willing to work.

Or you can blame society for your problems and be in the same place you are now in ten years. A depressed leech who's putting all their hope of a good life in fucking politicians.

Wow you just are completely ignorant.

Not an argument

This but unironically

Other buzzwords

You haven’t given a real rebuttal because you can’t, lol

Sorry his comment is so stupid, there isn't anything to comment on. Of course you 4chan nazis eat it up.

4chan nazi? Lol nice try

Then you are unable to give a counterpoint and have to do a straw man to avoid facing the reality of how illogical are your beliefs

yet works in diverse countries like the UK and Canada.

Both market economies btw.

I had the same issues as you along with severe chronic pain and $250,000 in tuition for college alone. I took out loans, started a business, and cleared my first million at age 25. You aren't facing an impossible task here at all. You can absolutely fix your own situation and I hope you do, but socialism certainly isn't the answer.

Yeah I'm going to believe a random comment. First, I don't think you actually know how hard getting a loan for a car is, let alone enough for a business that makes a million in a few years. Second, not everyone can make a business? It's literally impossible for everyone to have their own business. And good luck making a million before 25 working for someone else.

Go through my post history and confirm it. Unless I've been playing the long con here for 7 years...

As if no one has lied on the internet before.

You're right, I've been putting up an act for 7 years, helping others, learned all about the business I'm in, published my tax returns, and then made up a story and posted about it for years about my chronic pain issues just to win an argument all these years later with some random commie on the internet I'll never meet in real life.

Wanna explain to me then how smart it is to rack up 250k in debt for college, even more for a business, and then miraculous be a millionaire 1-2 years out of college?

Sure daddy didn't help you out? Or was it calling random redditors gay, commie, and soy boy? Maybe it was shitposting about the SJW boogeyman. Or how about modding the fatlogic sub and being a meatheaded fitness man who doesn't understand why people are actually overweight (you know, having no money/time to cook, habits from childhood, inability to exercise, stress eating, etc). Or maybe your success was the /r/incels shit you post about how you're swimming in women just because you're got money?

Nah, it's just your skill and talent that totally is there.

Also, your trading advice is terrible and contradictory. You say invest with Vangaurd in one post, saying you can't beat the market and you should just sit on the market. Then in others, you say shit like timing matters, implying that you shouldn't sit on it. In some posts you say you haven't traded "in years" yet others you have? So yeah, thanks for encouraging me to look through your posts.

Haha ofc your fat as well lmao

That's commitment right there. I wonder what you do to your enemies.

I've noticed you only see obstacles, never solutions. If you spend all your time telling yourself why it can't be done it never will get done.

A car costs $2000 for an old shitty one in decent mechanical shape. That’s about four months of minimum wage retail work that requires no credentials whatsoever. You do not need a loan to purchase a car, nor should you want one.

If you continue that shitty job and manage to save up some cash, you can go to trade school. This will take two years, and allow you to get a good job as a welder, machinist, plumber, inspector, or any number of other skilled careers that pay well and are not particularly physically strenuous or time-consuming.

From there, after a few years of work, you ought to have enough money to set off on your own as a freelance contractor, allowing you more work freedom and greater income. At this point you can move wherever you feel like, buy whatever car you want, and do pretty much anything you please as a productive member of the middle class.

You’re right about one thing, though: there’s no legal way to make a million before 25, but that’s an unreasonable goal, particularly since you intend to achieve it without doing meaningful work.

You will, however, do none of these things, and so you will stay trapped in lethargy and indolence until you finally summon the courage to kill yourself. As such, the only humane recommendation I can make is that you end your existential agonies sooner rather than later.

The means of production are owned by the workers in Canada and the UK?

Quit being a poorfag, it isn’t hard.

1) take a bus or walk 2) dump the therapist and man up and drink like the rest of us 3) fuck college, find a skilled trade apprenticeship, plumbing is pretty lucrative

Same steps I did, except I taught myself how to code.

Ah yes. That shut up and man up idiot in the wild.

  1. Good luck walking 10 miles in 90 degrees. Guess I'm a pussy for not doing it.
  2. Nah I like my liver.
  3. Yeah because fuck everyone who gets a degree. Only rich people deserve to be doctors, engineers, or writers!

Also nice use of slurs, you all can't go 5 minutes without calling someone a fag or using ((())) can you? Once you're past middle school you'll learn that isn't going to get you very far.

1) Get a bike then, or ride a bus, I had a wife and daughter to feed and had to get shit done to take care of them.

2) do drugs, go to church, or jack off. All cheaper options. Alternatively if you insist on paying someone for therapy, exchange sex with strangers for money.

3) Go back to college after you get money and a life set up, you have a 100 year lifespan, college is a small part of that, you can always go back provided you manage your finances well, you could also serve in the military for 4 years and get a free ride at the same time, plus preferential hiring and job experience.

Doing better than you and most Americans, so prolly shouldn’t use me as an example to not say fag. Quit making up obstacles and learn to get shit done.

downvoting lolcows

Smh

works in diverse countries like the UK and Canada

It costs $10 for a pint in the UK.

Thank god they aren't a Capitalist country?

/u/TheDwarvenDragon built a strawman so big that you could trap Nicholas Cage in the head and set him on fire.

"America is a diverse melting pot of numerous ideas, outlooks, beliefs and ideologies." Somehow got turned into "Blacks will ruin everything."

"Well, socialism has shown to be more successful in insular countries with largely monoethnic and monocultural populations."

"Oh, so you're saying that because black people exist, socialism doesn't work?!?!"

"No, actually I just admitted that Socialism has been successful and continues to be in many countries, but they have far less problems regarding discrimination, privilege an-"

"He's saying the blacks are lazy and live on welfare! Racist! RAAAAAACIIIIIIIIST!!!!!"

I wonder if an African or South American man discussing the horrors of Western imperialism would get the same amount of attention on Reddit

/u/ShittyInternetAdvice

You mean those countries that are getting better year by year thanks to free market economics? You think they're comparable to the plethora of countries that went to shit under socialist central planning and only got better once they were removed from the shadow of communism?

Why is it that every defense of the horrors of communism by tankie bootlickers like yourself start with 'b-but capitalism tho'? Are you that much of a fucking worm that deflection is your only argument?

HAHAHA!!! Love it this is top comment!! u/ShittyInternetAdvice doesn’t dispute the horrors of communism. He just rather talk about the horrors of Western interventionism and this says nothing about capitalism.

Typical spolied millenial.

Any alternatives to LSC?

I want to circlejerk about the degeneration of society but also don't want to be a communist faggot

Hello my fellow teenage goyim, Stalin was đŸ…±ïžased upvote if you agree

Ok I just checked out that sub. It appears to be full of unironic autism. I saw several clear indications of neurodivergence. /r/drama users are smarter than the average cookies, so we're only ironically autistic. How sad.

r/aboringdystopia

Still communist tho hun

From the AMA:

What do you think about the rising far left groups (antifa) on college campuses?

_

I call them Liberal Stormtroopers because they act as the Stormtroopers acted in Germany.

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/7n2s34/iama_survivor_of_stalins_communist_dictatorship/drytfoo/?context=1

For some recent numbers, Anne Applebaum in her 2003 pulitzer prize-winning history of the Gulag, the data for which comes from the Russian archives, cites a 'low estimate' of 28.7 million 'forced laborers' between 1929 and 1953. She then 'reluctantly' cites a number of 2,749,163 dead in the Gulags and in exile during this period. She 'reluctantly' cites it because it excludes a large number of deaths that surely occurred in instances not recorded.

As for the total number of 'unnecessary' deaths in the Soviet Union from inception to collapse, she defers to authors citing between 10-20 million.

But I'm sure the tankies will hand-wave her away as a reactionary, just as they do Solzhenitsyn, Conquest, and everyone other historian that doesn't ride Stalin's dick.

Anne Applebaum

I wouldn't trust her on anything. She is married to a Polish politician, a former foreign affairs minister, and is shamelessly shilling for his political allies. According to Anne, Poland is currently virtually run by far-right neo-fascists. The same political party, that is in power now, was apparently just a regular Christian conservative party when her husband was their member. Then he had started feuding with the party leadership, became a member of the biggest opposition party, and then his former political allies became literal Hitlers in Anne's eyes. I would argue that the ruling party is significantly less edgy now than when Anne's husband was their member. They had to form a coalition with an actual far-right party (LPR) back then.

Virtually everything she writes about contemporary Poland is extremely biased. It feels like reading articles about Trump on salon.com. I haven't read "Gulag", but I guess it's reliable if it's simply her reporting on what she had found in Russian archives. If it's editorialized, I wouldn't trust her to report on anything objectively and without some kind of spin.

I'm somewhat familiar with her political stances, but having read her Gulag I can assure you that it is pretty dry and objective, and heavily sourced and annotated. If she misrepresented anything, she'd be caught easily.

It basically reads like a condensed Gulag Archipeligo (and is laid out in a strikingly similar fashion) but with far, far more resources than Solzhenitsyn ever had.

She mentions Poland fairly frequently and uses memoirs from several Polish people who were imprisoned in Gulag, but she doesn't harp on it.

For example, she notes that the Polish army that Stalin allowed to run independent during the War was one of the first early sources of the Gulags, as they were allowed to operate outside the USSR and publish memoirs about it that weren't caught by Soviet censors.

In any case, she spends 99% of the book on the Soviet concentration camps and doesn't delve much into satellite states.

Solzhenitsyn

He's not a historian. Gulag Archipelago is Nobel-winning piece of literature, but it's not not an academic work of history.

I know he's not a formal historian in the modern sense of the word, but he employs a great deal of historical method given the constraints he was under. I'm comfortable saying that the Gulag Archipeligo a work of history, as much as any early-mid 20th century work of history was. Which is to say, unrefined by modern standards.

If you deny that Solzhenitsyn was a historian, then you have to deny that Herodotos and Thucydides were historians. Solzhenitsyn did the best he could with what he had available. He used archival sources when he could, sought out first-hand accounts, and did his best to present the history of the Gulag as he understood it to be.

Naturally, I don't take everything he says at face value, any more than I do Shalamov or any other memoirist, but he was a cut above the rest.

Anne Frank wasn't a historian either.

Neither was Elie Weisel

No one wants to say Stalin did nothing wrong.

The point is that the difference between those numbers, even with the caveat they are probably underestimates, and the estimates in a book like "the Black Book of Communism", is absolutely enormous.

The 20 million number actually comes from the black book of communism (according to Applebaum... I've never read it).

I don't really have an interest in the numbers, having come to terms with the fact that it will never be quantifiable.

My issues with Soviet apologists comes from the fact that I've read Solzhenitsyn, Shalamov, and Applebaum. Solzhenitsyn presents first hand experiences and second hand accounts of suffering. Shalamov presents first hand accounts (modified for literary purposes). Applebaum presents a ton of memoirs from the Russian archives of suffering over decades.

The brutality these authors present leaves an impact on me as strong as that of holocaust memoirs. It's sickening to see western Soviet apologists after ingesting such reading. Especially when they engage in censorship and revisionism that echos the post Krushchev era. And Gulag jokes and such. It's just completely unpalatable.

I mean, Stalin / Gulag apologists are pretty horrific. I don't think many people will argue with that.

The thing that ruffles a lot of people (including me) is equating Stalin / Gulags with just Communism in general. Even Soviet, really, is a bit unfair. Communism was around before Stalin, and continued after Stalin (and alongside him in different forms).

There have always been sectarian conflicts in Communism, and to lump them all into Stalinism is just absurd. If you go to somewhere like /r/ChapoTrapHouse, or /r/LateStageCapitalism, most people would probably not defend Stalin (or Stalinism) generally, and would point instead to, maybe Lenin, Marx, Engels, Kropotkin, etc. etc.

And Gulag jokes and such. It's just completely unpalatable.

And this is really just a sort of culture clash thing. The people making Gulag jokes, don't really believe that. They are just mad at the thread and being edgy. Something like this comment on CTH really show this attitude:

Me normally: Tankies and the USSR was an authoritarian mistake.

Me in that thread: DEATH TO AMERICA! KULAKS DESERVED IT.

I think I fall into this trap a bit. But it's because although this thread (the IaMa) seems fairly uncontroversial, if you really read what he is saying, he says a lot of weird / bad stuff.

  • He himself implies that anyone supporting communism / socialism supports the Gulags etc. that he and his family lived through. This is just absurd - all you need to do is look at all the Communists (many of whom we influential in the early days of revolution in Russia) that were themselves executed under Stalin to see that Stalinism does not encompass all of communism.
  • He implies that certain social democratic ideas that work in Scandinavian countries wouldn't work in the US because "the culture isn't monolithic" (many, and me included, interpret this as a thinly veiled racist sentiment - the US isn't white enough).
  • He recommend the Black Book of Communism as his favourite book on the subject. This is a pretty controversial book (two of the contributors distanced themselves from the book saying the editor was "obsessed with reaching 100 million deaths").
  • He calls antifa and BLM "liberal stormtroopers" which Jesus Christ seriously.

A lot of the thread is just people ragging on communism and people interested in socialism in general ("LEL developed country teenagers supporting Gulags" - no, this isn't really what's happening) in a thread nominally about Stalin.

Another important point is the idea that all this number comparison is ultimately not that useful as a way to compare Nazism to Communism. The issue is that, regardless of how many people Stalin killed (and this is because of authoritarian Stalinism, besides just "Communism"), there is a qualitative difference between the IDEA of Communism and the IDEA of Nazism.

Communism is a rich tradition based on much scholarly work. No matter how much you hate communism or think it "doesn't work", I really don't see how any sane person can read the Communist Manifesto or the Conquest of Bread (not strictly "communist" but whatever) and think that it is evil in the same way Mein Kampf is. Nazism in comparison is barely an ideology. It's literally just based on the racist tirades of one bloke.

most people would probably not defend Stalin (or Stalinism) generally, and would point instead to, maybe Lenin

Lenin was a genocidal tyrant too.

Yes, the legacy of Lenin is by no means untarnished, and he's not uncontroversial.

But people are more likely to make SOME sort of case for him, even if it is (as it sometimes is) "his writings are good and important but (some of) his actions are not".

zoz

zle

zozzle

Indeed he was.

Marx was fittingly a life-long couch-surfer who leeched off of his rich friend.

/u/ShittyInternetAdvice

I wonder if an African or South American man discussing the horrors of Western imperialism would get the same amount of attention on Reddit

What, you don't even contemplate the idea that a woman could speak up about it? You misogynist.

Always odious how assholes like u/ShittyInternetAdvice are such tourists. Millions live the real shit while this shithead comfortably moves across ideologies like a game.

Hey asshole: shut the fuck up!

Or en Español: Cabron cayate tu puta voca!!

Also, post anything in there and you get some bots trying to talk and a negative score in moments for asking a good question. So open and free with these bots in here.

"Everyone who disagrees with my radical fringe views is a bot or a paid shill"

Botting is real, go ahead and look up the Russia bot farms or Google about buying Reddit votes.

And him not responding shows he has no real argument. He refused to answer any question critical of him or capitalism.

Every AMA guest ignores follow-up questions. It's thousands to one in there; attention is a limited resource.

He didn't ignore follow up questions that were easy or were about his book.

Hey, what if he only replied to follow up questions a for a brief amount of time, or when there were no other questions to answer?

And just because botting is real doesn't mean there were bots on that thread. Is it really hard to believe that a lot of people on a 50k upvote thread disagree with your radical fringe ideology?

To be fair, that particular AMA guy is horribly biased. DAE commies are bad because Stalin and gulags, who killed 89 billion people because of commienism? Probably there is no alternative but moar capitalism, am I rite? Pls upvote

That's like saying an autobiography of a serial killer is biased against murder.

It's not biased, yall are just that bad.

That would be true if the ONLY type of socialism was the Stalin/Soviet kind. But it isn't. That's what's dishonest about this "commies bad/capitalism good" industry.

> it's different when I murder people

You're right, there are multiple ways to have famines.

Bengal famine of 1943

The Bengal famine of 1943-44 (Bengali: Pañcāƛēra manwantara) was a major famine in the Bengal province in British India during World War II. An estimated 2.1 million people died from starvation and diseases aggravated by malnutrition, population displacement, unsanitary conditions, and lack of health care. Millions were impoverished as the crisis overwhelmed large segments of the economy and social fabric.

Bengal's economy was predominantly agrarian. For at least a decade before the crisis, between half and three quarters of those dependent on agriculture were already at near subsistence level.


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No, Japan wasn't capitalist.

No true Scotsman capitalist!

I don't know how a blockade during a war that starves their enemies says anything about economics. But communists did it over and over again, to themselves.

Were there no famines in Russia prior to 1917?

There were a hell of lot more after.

Most nations outside of the USSR (which was getting everyone's stuff) in the Warsaw pact went as right wing as possible after Soviet abuse the same way that some places go super left wing after capitalist abuse.

To them the entire well is poisoned due to personal experience and to them saying "there other types" is insulting and belittling by implying that their oppression was just some type of operators mistake

To them the entire well is poisoned due to personal experience

Only true in some cases, in my experience. I've personally spoken to Romanians, Russians, Hungarians, who told me that there were good things about the regimes in those countries, as well as all the bad things.

I didn't ask the guy doing the AMA this, because it was already full, but what does he make of the fact that different kinds of socialists opposed the regime of Lenin and Stalin, especially the anarchists, but later the Trotskyists? That the most effective opposition came from the left? What about the Ukraine anarchists, Makhno etc? The Spanish anarchists? The Hungarian Revolution in 1956, Orwell, the Situationists, the New Left, 1968, etc? What about the fact that the anarchist Bakunin predicted the rise of Soviet tyranny as early as 1870? What about the fact that anarchists and Trots were the enemies of the USSR when Roosevelt and Churchill were being photographed with their pal, Stalin?

You can see how simplistic the "commienism bad/capilism good" message is.

All of which is outside of his experience

He grew up believing "communism killed my family oppressed my country", it has his experience

If communism was a restaurant, he got extreme food poisoning and even if it has a different chief he still has grounds to avoid it and encourage people to do the same

The subtitles and experimentation, in his mind, are just excuses why the deaths of his family "don't matter"

even if it has a different chief he still has grounds to avoid it and encourage people to do the same

Which would all be fine, if he wasn't shilling for a rival restaurant which also does not have a good track record when it comes to food hygiene.

Then it turns into "what about blank" or "they do bad stuff to so our bad stuff dosn't count", what things the US has done has nothing to do with this

He got forced into a fire and got burned, he had no choice in the matter. In the US he did have a choice and if didn't like the way things were done he could leave

When he was a kid he as forced in a certain way life that he hated and got his family killed and he thinks its stupid that people would voluntarily put themselves in the same situation.

You are trying to tell a man to have nuance in his suffering in something you have never experienced. If I was him, frankly, I would find it insulting

Well by the same token he hasn't experienced what I have experienced, so why is my experience less valid than his? He is biased, as I am, but I am not going on Reddit doing an AMA to try and sell a book and advance a political cause. Put your thinking hat on for a bit.

My family were refugees from Stalinist Ukraine. My great grandfather died in the gulag. AMA guy is a dipshit, and so are you. My God. "Can't expect him to think rationally after that! Confronting him with critical thought is denying his lived experience!" I wish I could say I'm surprised to see this kind of pathetic, twee, safe space bullshit on r/drama.

you have unironically on Chicotraphouse

Congratulations, you can read a post history. Curious.

Pls upvote

Also buy my book that I am totally not using this AMA to shamelessly promote!

That’s what most all AMAs are used for.

There literally is no alternative to capitalism tho

Failure, which is something /u/michaelnoir is used to, so it's no wonder he's a commie

Maybe I should do an AMA. "I am a dissident of the horrible regime of Donald Trumpington in evil capitalist America. I am here to discuss how free market capitalism invented by Reagan and Thatcher is definitely the most evilest thing ever, and led to World Wars and trillions of preventable deaths from famine and AIDs, AMA, also buy my book about how commienism is good"

Tfw someone tries to pass off their actual beliefs as sarcasm

How do you know what my actual beliefs are? Are you able to read minds? Everything on this sub is sarcastic.

Isn't it kind of pathetic to pretend your beliefs are just sarcastic?

Write a book about it, get it published, and then make an AMA about it.

Can't. Wicked bourgeois publishers won't publish it. "We can't make a profit on that" they say.

self publish it

Wow, the guy whose family was repeatedly robbed and his father killed by communist authoritarians is biased against communism? I think you've really stumbled upon something here, you massive fucking retard.

Why don't you keep making emotional arguments and getting triggered. I don't like Soviet communism any more than he does. But the problem is he's shilling for the other side and promoting something as bad or worse, which is fucking up the world right now, not 100 years ago. Think about it.

something as bad or worse

lol

Only thing sadder than a self proclaimed commie is a commie in denial

It's easily as bad or worse, in that it's operating now, not fifty or a hundred years ago, and because of possible environmental or nuclear destruction. And we're supposed to be distracted from these impending problems by horror stories about the reds.

It's easily as bad or worse

Lol

hurr the cold is worse than smallpox because the cold is still around hurrr

Shut the fuck up, please

Are we still allowed to suggest throwing people out of helicopters, or do we have to make it clear that we're giving them a soviet-surplus parachute? Mods, help me here.

Yr beloved capitalizm is more like a plague of zombies. And the sad thing is no matter how hard you get raped by said plague of zombies, you still won't say anything other than "but commies are bad because gulags".

Some people weren't dropped on their heads as a child and are able to distinguish the level of danger between two things. Don't blame me that you are completely inept and unable to think of things in a historical context.

Let's see. Commienism: Killed lots of people in gulags and famines. Ended 25 years ago.

Capitalism: Literally might alter the whole entire climate of the planet and maybe throw in a nuclear war, as of right now.

Yeah you're right, we better watch out for those Stalin zombies. /s

communism would never have environmental damage or nukes

Open a fucking book and read about the plethora of nuclear scientists who were left behind after the fall of the USSR and were forced to sell nuke technology to the highest bidder in order to stay alive. In fact, start with opening a sesame street book because you're just that much of a fucking moron.

Here's a basic logic problem for you: two economic systems are pitted against one another. One is relatively stable and has the capability to elevate the lower classes and develop cleaner technology over time. The other is incredibly unstable which leads to famine and dirty, patchwork technology that us similarly unstable. Which one is better?

This isn't the place for a capitalism v communism debate, as you well know. We were discussing relative risks.

One system ended 25 years ago, the other system is current. Ergo, the second one is more of a source of risk.

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emotional arguments

Says the guy who is so perturbed that this literal victim of communism dare speak about his experiences, to the point where you make a post about it and essentially say 'he shouldn't say these things because they make me feel uncomfortable'? What the actual fuck is your major malfunction, numbnuts?

I can tell that you're triggered and mad and probably crying because of all the gratuitous "fucks". I didn't make a post about it, idiot. It's called a comment. I merely point out that he is biased, that's all.

Lel communism didn't really exist but also Stalin was pretty woke lel

No, I just don't think the US is any more diverse than European countries

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level#

Links to something literally showing the opposite for nearly all European countries.

Not that it matters much, but how do you link to something without even reading it to make sure it confirms your bias?

/u/KRPTSC are communists drawn to communism because they're subhumanly stupid, or do they become subhumanly stupid because they're drawn to communism.

Dude claims to be for an open discussion, yet won't answer any questions critical of capitalism.

No fucking shit you stupid retard, because he's there to answer questions about how shitty your piece of shit political system is. "Waaa he won't renounce capitalism waaaa".

why does a subreddit about late stage capitalism get so worked up about early stage communism?

Lmao, three guy is just the to shill his books.

u/red_witch

def not a shill

Yeah, there's no way he could have any interest in telling people that communism is bad when his father got executed for communicating with his family members. It must be the EVIL CIA that did this, nobody could possibly disagree with me of their own volition.

This AMA brought out the commie cringe for real.

I quote someone from ChapoTrapHouse

I am almost certain his father deserved the bullet or w/e. He's just another Ayn Rand style "lover of the West".