Okay, not really, but it just occured to me that in the recent "I'm Becoming a Communist" thread, we saw reactions ranging from bemused "Whatever, dude. :rolleyes: " to "Right on, brother! :haw: ".

What would the reactions be if someone were to announce "Hey everybody, I'm becoming a Facist!" - I think we all know.

How come its socially acceptable to parade around in Mao and Che shirts and spout party slogans for fun while drinking espresso and decrying "The Man", and yet you can't slap on a spiffy brown shirt and black boots without 99% of the population wanting to smash your face in with a brick? You don't see people carrying around copies of Mein Kampf, but Mao's Little Red Book is still a best seller. Nobody is filming fawning haigographies to Hitler, yet we have "The Motorcycle Diaries" and "Reds".

Buh?

Communisim killed more people, in more countries, and ruined more lives, than Facism, and its still doing so! At best, their restrictions on personal freedom are comparable. So what gives?

Communism has a longer history. Fascism rose, got beat down badly and never really got up again. Staying power counts.

And yes, Che t-shirts never cease to amaze me. Won't even mention the movies...

Here's an article for you to consider:

The Two Totalitarianisms

Meh. The author has no problem distinguishing Stalinism from general Communism, but doesn't do the same for Fascism and Nazism...

Yup. Facism =/= Nazisim. I seem to recall a quote or something from Mussolini saying that Hitler gave Facists a bad name...

Is it the sole fact of the concentration camps and Final Solution that makes Facism so abhorrent? That people conflate the two, but somehow never heard of the Gulag Archipeligo? After all, it seems to be the one point people always bring up.

Hrm ... dunno.  In high school my wife got into a fight with a teacher ... one she was still so stoked about that I heard about it years later:  The teacher put forth the idea that democracy was the opposite of communism, and communism the opposite of democracy, and never the twain could meet.  My wife pointed out that democracy is a system of governance, and communism a system of economics, and they have about as much similarity as a peach and a hubcap.  They can't be opposites ... they're not similar enough to be opposites.

Now in theory, as an economic philosophy, Communism's got a lot going for it.  You're talking "Be economically fair to the people doing the production" and "Distribute goods in a way that endeavours to avoid injustice and hardship" and shit like that.  It sounds great.

In theory.

In practice, people seem to have an awfully damn hard time making communism happen without creating a totalitarian state, either intentionally or by slow inches.  And totalitarianism really seems to pretty much suck, hands down.

Maybe that's why communism always looks so much more appealing in places where it is way the hell distant from ever gaining any substantial political power.  As long as the people proclaiming it can stick to talking about economics ... and not the things that would have to actually be done ... they can be pretty appealing.

Fascism, on the other hand, is totalitarianism and so much more.  Even in places where it is a distant minority without a chance in hell of ever siezing the reins of power, the people proclaiming it still have to talk about What Should Be Done ... and their ideas on the subject are pretty plainly ugly.

Anyway ... just a ramble, thinking about why they might come across so differently.  I certainly agree that the history of their practical application is littered with ugliness on all sides.  Not that ... ahem ... certain other political ideologies are without stain in that regard, either.

Quote from: WerekoalaHow come its socially acceptable to parade around in Mao and Che shirts and spout party slogans for fun while drinking espresso and decrying "The Man", and yet you can't slap on a spiffy brown shirt and black boots without 99% of the population wanting to smash your face in with a brick?

I have to assume that this is a joke.  A very, very bad joke, but a joke none the less.  You're smart enough to not ask this question seriously.

!i!

(P.S. With regard to the Mao and Che t-shirts not being targets of brick-in-face, you need to get out more.  I have more than a couple of Ukranian and Chinese friends and acquaintences who can get a little volatile on the issue.)

Its not a "joke" its a legitmate question. Read the rest of what I wrote and the responses from others. I'm dead serious. Mass murderers are cool, and so is their ideology, so long as they have red banners with a star or hammer and sickle, instead of an iron cross. And hey, so's their political ideology that seeks to make everyone exactly alike - poor and dependent on the State for anything and everything. That worked real well in the past, eh? Guess we just need to make sure the "right" people are in charge this time around.  

My point isn't "Gee, that's not fair to Facists" - my POINT is "Why the fuck are Commies so cool and accepted?" There's another Che movie in production for example, with Benecio Del Toro as Che.

What. The. Fuck?

Now, do you have any thoughts on the actual issue?

Quote from: TonyLBIn practice, people seem to have an awfully damn hard time making communism happen without creating a totalitarian state, either intentionally or by slow inches. And totalitarianism really seems to pretty much suck, hands down.

People always seem to ignore the point that the so-called communist revolutions of the 20th century occurred in technologically-backward, authoritarian places. Look at Russia before the revolution and now. There are, currently, people starving to death in the streets and women selling themselves to foreigners, while former apparatchiks become millionaires.

Furthermore, people ignore or elide the role that the Western powers played. Do you know what Kruschev meant when he said that Soviet troops had never been on American soil, but American troops had been on Russian soil? Do you understand the history of Cuba?

Quote from: SosthenesMeh. The author has no problem distinguishing Stalinism from general Communism, but doesn't do the same for Fascism and Nazism...

That's a bold assertion, but the article doesn't bear it out.

Quote from: WerekoalaNow, do you have any thoughts on the actual issue?

Yes, I have some thoughts on the actual issue.  They pertain to the fact that I had assumed that you were either making an ironic joke or being purposefully dense to provoke a response, not that you were actually being so ass-stupid as to wonder why sporting a communist-icon-turned-irrelevant-pop-icon somehow gets a pass when dressing like a Brownshirt gets a smack in the mouth.

When was the last time you heard of clashes with militant communists on US soil?  Now, when was the last time you heard of clashes with militant fascists on US soil?  Now, pair that up with the fact that the militant communists of the late 60s and early 70s tended to draw up lines along class divides while the militant fascists of the 80s and 90s almost invariably drew up lines along racial divides, and maybe you can see why I figured you were making a wry joke.

Images of Mao and Che, or old Maoist or Soviet uniforms, being worn by yuppies is a bourgeois commentary on the perceived defeat of 20th century communism.  It's revolutionary politics reduced to kitsch.  Yokels dressing up like fascists is perceived as a call to arms.

There.  See?  You knew that.  That's why I assumed you were making a bad joke and that you weren't so socially and politically dense as to need that explained to you.

!i!

I know several Russians who have emigrated to the US and don't mind you calling them Russian at all, but you can expect a fist in the face if you call them communists. Communism has a very bad history in parts of the world.

Ian. I know Facists today are associated with racism. I'm not stupid.

But why does anyone tolerate the "kitsch" of Che T-Shirts and Shining Path totebags (Way to go Cameron Diaz!). And why are people excited to join with an ideology that gave us Cambodia and the Cultural Revolution and gulags and all the attendant evils? Like I said, is it just that they think "This time, we'll do it right?" There IS no "right" way to have a communist government. And glorifying it and those who force it on their own people is accepted - why? Hell, there are plenty of people in this country who think Castro is just hunky-dory. Look at that free medical care! That's an example we should be following! :rolleyes:

You're still missing the main point of my question and the discussion, I think. Communism belongs on the ash-heap of history along with Facism, and glorifying it should be no more acceptable than glorifying Facism.

I think the authour of the article droog linked us to got it right when he commented that while there were always people speaking of "communism with a human face", no-one has ever spoken of "Nazism with a human face."

Communism represents, at least in theory, the old French revolutionary slogan, a hope for equality and fraternity, and ultimately in the course of history for liberty. Fascism presented no utopian vision, no hope - the world was as it was, bleak and empty, with the strong ruling the weak. In practice the two come to resemble each-other.

With this historical view, communism is good in theory and vile in practice, while fascism is vile in both theory and practice.

The communist vision of the future is of a utopia of brotherhood and decency; the fascist vision of the future is of wold destruction. When putting images on t-shirts and waving flags, conscious people (not the unconscious middle classes) are demonstrating their support for this vision. So the person mouthing Maoist sayings is presenting a vision of an egalitarian utopia; the person mouthing Nazi sayings is presenting a fantasy of world destruction.

Again, how they turn out in practice is not relevant here. We're asking why people can display one set of symbols with pride, but not another - it's because symbols are of dreams, not of reality. And the communist dream has quite simply more appeal than the fascist one.

The other point is that elements of communism have been accepted and welcomed in democratic states around the world. Progressive income tax, universal healthcare, a welfare system and so on - these are at their heart communist, striving towards "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." By contrast, fascism has contributed little or nothing to modern democracy, except in the sense of giving us something to reject, for example we support a separation of powers, rather than having the executive imprison people at will. We are less offended by an ideology that we've partly incorporated into our lives than one we've not.

They're both BAD - and many of us will be happier when the iconagraphy of both of those things is no longer treated as a fashion statement by some.


- Ed C.