Attempted murder is a crime yes. Stalin was fine with the many pogroms immediately after the communists took over. They briefly used the Jews to help them with thier agenda then immediately turned on them. Starting during the war and continuing on.
He was gearing up to put them all in gulags but he died first. You say that’s worth ignoring but let me ask you this: if I built a jail in my house, buy an abduction van and began writing down all your movements, and tell people I’m planning to imprison you for no reason. Is that alarming? Is that showing where my morals lay? Is it a crime? would you want me arrested?
Stalin was fine with the many pogroms immediately after the communists took over
And yet, the communists actively worked to end the pogroms. Almost as though Stalin’s personal opinions didn’t actually matter and the party was in charge.
They briefly used the Jews to help them with thier agenda then immediately turned on them. Starting during the war and continuing on.
Yeah, so it’s time for you to go get sources that document how the Bolsheviks and the Communist Party actively planned and executed porgroms against the Jews, because that didn’t actually happen and your claim is going to require some evidence.
He was gearing up to put them all in gulags but he died first.
That’s cool. So your claim is that the Communist Party itself was actively racist except for the fact that the Communist Party didn’t follow through with supposed plans against Jews. So… you’re saying that the party itself was not racist in this way, but rather that perhaps Stalin personally was, but never got to steer the party to act on his racism.
You realize that’s what you’re saying right? You’re undermining your first point by trying to appeal to Stalin’s personal character and stating that it didn’t happen.
Is that showing where my morals lay?
Yeah, this is the problem. You’re trying to say that the Communist Party was itself deeply racist, but instead you’re trying to transfer stories about a specific person who was elected by the Communist Party to establish a moral judgment that then is supposed to transfer back to the party, despite you being completely unable to point to actual events that support your claim. It’s not even guilt by association, it’s guilt by association with a thought-crime.
Thank you. Education can save lives, especially in this world where we are relentlessly bombarded with disinformation. To many people, “communism” is a label that means something different from what was intended. “Some communists did some racist things,” sure. “Communism is racist,” no.
Capitalism is not inherently racist either, but it is easier to exploit. The people with power use their power to help themselves get even more power. In our timeline, it’s mostly white dudes.
A response I often hear is “look how many people died under communism.” I’m looking. Now let’s count deaths under capitalism. Now let’s look at the specific causes, etc. Remove the labels and trace the underlying wires. Debug humanity so we can make a better future for all. Or perhaps more aptly as climate change accelerates, defuse the bomb before we all fucking die.
I would disagree with you here. Capitalism is not an abstract ideal. Neither is racism. They are both specific historical processes. Historians generally seat the origins of capitalism in the invention of common stock in 1602 by the Dutch East India Company. Historians also seat the origins of the racism to the mid-1400s in Portugal when Prince Henry sponsored mass slave catching in Africa and commissioned the author Gomes Eanes de Zurara to write a positive account of his exploits. This writing, “The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea”, established a moral basis for violent human trafficking, subjugation, and mass theft.
By the time the Dutch East India Company invented common stock, what investors were investing in for the initial IPO was the massive expansion of a private militarized merchant company that had racialized human trafficking and slavery as a core pillar of the company’s operations and profit.
There was literally never a time in human history that capitalism existed separately from racism. Capitalism was built on the foundations of racism and integrated all aspects of racism into its mechanics.
In an academic setting of pure abstract theory you could potentially invent a theoretical form of capitalism that isn’t racist, which could be useful for thought experiments or maybe some creative fiction. But Capitalism as you and I know it has always been fundamentally enmeshed with racism as we know it.
Right, which is why I said “in our timeline.” The concept of capitalism is not inherently racist, but historically racism has always been part of it. Kind of like how the fact that communist countries have failed historically does not mean that communism itself is always doomed to fail.
Only one communist country “failed” and that was the USSR. Every other communist revolution is still in existence. And even when we say the USSR “failed” we mean that it succeeded in so many ways, including successfully overthrowing an empire, poverty alleviation, famine alleviation, military victory over the Third Reich, educational advancement, medical advancement, space exploration advancement, and on and on.
Right, which is why I said “in our timeline.” The concept of capitalism is not inherently racist, but historically racism has always been part of it.
What you said was “In our timeline, it’s mostly white dudes.” What I said was that the foundation of capitalism rested on violent human trafficking, violent slavery, and violent extraction. While we could potentially develop a concept of capitalism that isn’t racist, I don’t know that we’ve proven that. It’s obviously possible to talk about capitalism and ignore racism, just like it’s possible to talk about the US and ignore indigenous genocide, but I don’t think we can develop a concept of the US that doesn’t inherently have indigenous genocide in it.
Capitalism required substantial accumulation of extreme wealth, which seems like it may have only been possible through extreme exploitation and it’s unclear whether such extreme exploitation is possible without something like racism to divide the world’s people into those that can be exploited without limit and those that reap the benefits.
I don’t think we can develop a concept of the US that doesn’t inherently have indigenous genocide in it.
The US is a physical place. Capitalism is not a physical thing.
it’s unclear whether such extreme exploitation is possible without something like racism to divide the world’s people into those that can be exploited without limit and those that reap the benefits.
I see so you’re saying Stalin was more of a figurehead and not some sort of person “in charge” of the operation of the party and thus his leadership is irrelevant to what the party was doing? A man who kept his personal beliefs from influencing the government as a whole?
Look I don’t even hate communism no more than I hate capitalism. “Real (insert your view) had never been tried! These problems aren’t a problem with the system, the leaders aren’t really trying to be pure (blank)”
I get it. Don’t get fooled into thinking communism around the world is some great utopian dream. Racism, exploitation, corruption… it’s the same everywhere. You’re eating cereal and believing the blue bits aren’t the same flavor as the red bits. It’s an illusion.
I see so you’re saying Stalin was more of a figurehead and not some sort of person “in charge” of the operation of the party and thus his leadership is irrelevant to what the party was doing?
No, I’m saying that just because you can point to Stalin’s personal racism doesn’t mean that the party itself integrated racism into the party platform. You claimed that the Communist Party was racist, and then used pogroms as an example, but none of the pogroms in the region were executed by the Community Party and the ONE retreat you have presented is that Stalin wanted to harm the Jews but ultimately the party did not. That’s not evidence for your position. It’s evidence against your position.
Don’t get fooled into thinking communism around the world is some great utopian dream
You don’t have to protect me. I promise. I’m a big kid now. I wear big kid pants and I almost never wet my bed anymore.
Racism, … it’s the same everywhere
No. It’s not. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of racism, and you really need to educate yourself. Racism as you and I know it is European racism. It is a distinct historical process. It has a starting point, it has a historical development driven by historical material conditions, and it spread around the world via the European empire. It is not some kind of platonic ideal, it is a specific construction.
exploitation, corruption … it’s the same everywhere
Absolutely. These are words we use to describe the behavior of systems. The systems exhibit these behaviors to a greater or lesser extent and they have different reactions to these behaviors.
For example, when business leaders in China cut corners and sold tainted baby formula to make more money, and it resulted in sick and dead babies, the state executed them. Meanwhile, Nestle kills babies all over the world and the US calls it “shareholder supremacy”.
So yes, exploitation and corruption ARE the same everywhere, but different systems stand in different relation to these phenomena.
The doctors plot happened. Many Jewish people were rounded up tortured and executed by the regime! People died for being Jewish. Stalin died before rounding up all the Jews but the communist party rounded up and killed Jews for being Jews. That happened.
“And this wasn’t an isolated incident. It came after several years of increasingly antisemitic repression under Stalin, including the campaign against supposed “cosmopolitans” and the destruction of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee”
Oh I see all the racism in Russia is actually everyone else’s fault not Russia. Got it.
The Han Chinese were already racist before communism so it doesn’t count either.
Wow I’m so glad communists regimes can’t be racist because nothing counts.
You say I have “one” example. The truth is I just don’t have all day to list the many many examples. Especially since after each example I give you’ll only stomp your feet and say “that doesn’t count!” Every time. What’s the point.
Yes, several hundred people were arrested and interrogated for a suspected plot against the country’s leadership. I wouldn’t exactly call that a pogrom. Fewer people died than the US police kill in a month.
That happened.
Yes, it did. I don’t deny it. I just don’t think your characterization of it matches the reality.
the destruction of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
The JAC was created by the Communist Party at the order of Joseph Stalin. It wasn’t something separate that the Communist Party then attacked. Stalin convinced the leadership to disband the formation because he believed that their international connections with England and the US vis-a-vis Israel was actually problematic. What do you think? Was he perhaps right about this? Did he see in the structural formation of the international Zionist movement something that maybe wasn’t the best thing to be part of a communist party? I think perhaps he was correct in this regard, given everything we’ve seen coming out of Israel.
It came after several years of increasingly antisemitic repression under Stalin
Yes, Stalin did in fact do this. He ordered it, he organized it, he oversaw it. For 5 years. Out of 70. So your claim that the communist party was a racist organization because of 7.2% of their existence under a single 5-year term of a single leader is really grasping. I don’t disagree with you about Stalin’s particular 5-year anti-semitism spree.
Oh I see all the racism in Russia is actually everyone else’s fault not Russia. Got it.
Yeah, obviously you don’t got it. You have a specific rhetorical goal and everything that supports it is grand narrative and everything against it is specious. Sorry. I don’t respect your way of processing history.
The Han Chinese were already racist before communism so it doesn’t count either.
Yeah, that’s not what I said. I said that the specific ways in which the Han were Han supremacist prior to the communist party emerging were not only distinct from the communist party itself, which as all theory and practice shows incorporates the material conditions of its founding but that the CPC specifically has taken explicit action against Han supremacy because it recognizes it and acknowledges it as something that needs to be addressed. Something that is fundamentally different from liberal power structures around the world.
Wow I’m so glad communists regimes can’t be racist because nothing counts.
You really need to read more.
You say I have “one” example. The truth is I just don’t have all day to list the many many examples
You literally cited “pogroms” that never happened and then you cited The Doctor’s Plot, which was not a pogrom, and I think I’ve thoroughly addressed it here. You can pretend you have so many examples that you’re too busy to share, but I don’t believe you, and I don’t think anyone else does either.
Especially since after each example I give you’ll only stomp your feet and say “that doesn’t count!” Every time. What’s the point.
I mean, you can pretend that me providing historical context is stomping my feet, but what is in fact happening is you are stamping you’re feet saying THE PARTY IS EVIL because a specific 5-year period of a party led by a single person acted against Jews and killed a relatively small number of them (although it did really do a lot of damage to Jewish institutions throughout the USSR, and it is a real black mark against Stalin and the Communist Party).
You’re not convincing. You make overly broad claims, and then challenged you narrow your evidence but you don’t narrow your claims. It’s quite problematic for your position.
But I promise, I won’t stamp my feet at you. I will only bring evidence and analysis.
Attempted murder is a crime yes. Stalin was fine with the many pogroms immediately after the communists took over. They briefly used the Jews to help them with thier agenda then immediately turned on them. Starting during the war and continuing on.
He was gearing up to put them all in gulags but he died first. You say that’s worth ignoring but let me ask you this: if I built a jail in my house, buy an abduction van and began writing down all your movements, and tell people I’m planning to imprison you for no reason. Is that alarming? Is that showing where my morals lay? Is it a crime? would you want me arrested?
And yet, the communists actively worked to end the pogroms. Almost as though Stalin’s personal opinions didn’t actually matter and the party was in charge.
Yeah, so it’s time for you to go get sources that document how the Bolsheviks and the Communist Party actively planned and executed porgroms against the Jews, because that didn’t actually happen and your claim is going to require some evidence.
That’s cool. So your claim is that the Communist Party itself was actively racist except for the fact that the Communist Party didn’t follow through with supposed plans against Jews. So… you’re saying that the party itself was not racist in this way, but rather that perhaps Stalin personally was, but never got to steer the party to act on his racism.
You realize that’s what you’re saying right? You’re undermining your first point by trying to appeal to Stalin’s personal character and stating that it didn’t happen.
Yeah, this is the problem. You’re trying to say that the Communist Party was itself deeply racist, but instead you’re trying to transfer stories about a specific person who was elected by the Communist Party to establish a moral judgment that then is supposed to transfer back to the party, despite you being completely unable to point to actual events that support your claim. It’s not even guilt by association, it’s guilt by association with a thought-crime.
You’re grasping at straws.
Thank you. Education can save lives, especially in this world where we are relentlessly bombarded with disinformation. To many people, “communism” is a label that means something different from what was intended. “Some communists did some racist things,” sure. “Communism is racist,” no.
Capitalism is not inherently racist either, but it is easier to exploit. The people with power use their power to help themselves get even more power. In our timeline, it’s mostly white dudes.
A response I often hear is “look how many people died under communism.” I’m looking. Now let’s count deaths under capitalism. Now let’s look at the specific causes, etc. Remove the labels and trace the underlying wires. Debug humanity so we can make a better future for all. Or perhaps more aptly as climate change accelerates, defuse the bomb before we all fucking die.
I would disagree with you here. Capitalism is not an abstract ideal. Neither is racism. They are both specific historical processes. Historians generally seat the origins of capitalism in the invention of common stock in 1602 by the Dutch East India Company. Historians also seat the origins of the racism to the mid-1400s in Portugal when Prince Henry sponsored mass slave catching in Africa and commissioned the author Gomes Eanes de Zurara to write a positive account of his exploits. This writing, “The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea”, established a moral basis for violent human trafficking, subjugation, and mass theft.
By the time the Dutch East India Company invented common stock, what investors were investing in for the initial IPO was the massive expansion of a private militarized merchant company that had racialized human trafficking and slavery as a core pillar of the company’s operations and profit.
There was literally never a time in human history that capitalism existed separately from racism. Capitalism was built on the foundations of racism and integrated all aspects of racism into its mechanics.
In an academic setting of pure abstract theory you could potentially invent a theoretical form of capitalism that isn’t racist, which could be useful for thought experiments or maybe some creative fiction. But Capitalism as you and I know it has always been fundamentally enmeshed with racism as we know it.
Right, which is why I said “in our timeline.” The concept of capitalism is not inherently racist, but historically racism has always been part of it. Kind of like how the fact that communist countries have failed historically does not mean that communism itself is always doomed to fail.
Only one communist country “failed” and that was the USSR. Every other communist revolution is still in existence. And even when we say the USSR “failed” we mean that it succeeded in so many ways, including successfully overthrowing an empire, poverty alleviation, famine alleviation, military victory over the Third Reich, educational advancement, medical advancement, space exploration advancement, and on and on.
What you said was “In our timeline, it’s mostly white dudes.” What I said was that the foundation of capitalism rested on violent human trafficking, violent slavery, and violent extraction. While we could potentially develop a concept of capitalism that isn’t racist, I don’t know that we’ve proven that. It’s obviously possible to talk about capitalism and ignore racism, just like it’s possible to talk about the US and ignore indigenous genocide, but I don’t think we can develop a concept of the US that doesn’t inherently have indigenous genocide in it.
Capitalism required substantial accumulation of extreme wealth, which seems like it may have only been possible through extreme exploitation and it’s unclear whether such extreme exploitation is possible without something like racism to divide the world’s people into those that can be exploited without limit and those that reap the benefits.
The US is a physical place. Capitalism is not a physical thing.
…in our timeline.
Either way, thank you for the history lessons.
On this we disagree.
It literally is not a physical thing.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/capitalism
The fuck is wrong with you?Define “capitalism,”, please.(ETA strikethrough to unwarranted rudeness. Sorry for losing my patience.)
I see so you’re saying Stalin was more of a figurehead and not some sort of person “in charge” of the operation of the party and thus his leadership is irrelevant to what the party was doing? A man who kept his personal beliefs from influencing the government as a whole?
Look I don’t even hate communism no more than I hate capitalism. “Real (insert your view) had never been tried! These problems aren’t a problem with the system, the leaders aren’t really trying to be pure (blank)”
I get it. Don’t get fooled into thinking communism around the world is some great utopian dream. Racism, exploitation, corruption… it’s the same everywhere. You’re eating cereal and believing the blue bits aren’t the same flavor as the red bits. It’s an illusion.
No, I’m saying that just because you can point to Stalin’s personal racism doesn’t mean that the party itself integrated racism into the party platform. You claimed that the Communist Party was racist, and then used pogroms as an example, but none of the pogroms in the region were executed by the Community Party and the ONE retreat you have presented is that Stalin wanted to harm the Jews but ultimately the party did not. That’s not evidence for your position. It’s evidence against your position.
You don’t have to protect me. I promise. I’m a big kid now. I wear big kid pants and I almost never wet my bed anymore.
No. It’s not. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of racism, and you really need to educate yourself. Racism as you and I know it is European racism. It is a distinct historical process. It has a starting point, it has a historical development driven by historical material conditions, and it spread around the world via the European empire. It is not some kind of platonic ideal, it is a specific construction.
Absolutely. These are words we use to describe the behavior of systems. The systems exhibit these behaviors to a greater or lesser extent and they have different reactions to these behaviors.
For example, when business leaders in China cut corners and sold tainted baby formula to make more money, and it resulted in sick and dead babies, the state executed them. Meanwhile, Nestle kills babies all over the world and the US calls it “shareholder supremacy”.
So yes, exploitation and corruption ARE the same everywhere, but different systems stand in different relation to these phenomena.
You seem to be confused.
The doctors plot happened. Many Jewish people were rounded up tortured and executed by the regime! People died for being Jewish. Stalin died before rounding up all the Jews but the communist party rounded up and killed Jews for being Jews. That happened.
“And this wasn’t an isolated incident. It came after several years of increasingly antisemitic repression under Stalin, including the campaign against supposed “cosmopolitans” and the destruction of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee”
Oh I see all the racism in Russia is actually everyone else’s fault not Russia. Got it.
The Han Chinese were already racist before communism so it doesn’t count either.
Wow I’m so glad communists regimes can’t be racist because nothing counts.
You say I have “one” example. The truth is I just don’t have all day to list the many many examples. Especially since after each example I give you’ll only stomp your feet and say “that doesn’t count!” Every time. What’s the point.
Yes, several hundred people were arrested and interrogated for a suspected plot against the country’s leadership. I wouldn’t exactly call that a pogrom. Fewer people died than the US police kill in a month.
Yes, it did. I don’t deny it. I just don’t think your characterization of it matches the reality.
The JAC was created by the Communist Party at the order of Joseph Stalin. It wasn’t something separate that the Communist Party then attacked. Stalin convinced the leadership to disband the formation because he believed that their international connections with England and the US vis-a-vis Israel was actually problematic. What do you think? Was he perhaps right about this? Did he see in the structural formation of the international Zionist movement something that maybe wasn’t the best thing to be part of a communist party? I think perhaps he was correct in this regard, given everything we’ve seen coming out of Israel.
Yes, Stalin did in fact do this. He ordered it, he organized it, he oversaw it. For 5 years. Out of 70. So your claim that the communist party was a racist organization because of 7.2% of their existence under a single 5-year term of a single leader is really grasping. I don’t disagree with you about Stalin’s particular 5-year anti-semitism spree.
Yeah, obviously you don’t got it. You have a specific rhetorical goal and everything that supports it is grand narrative and everything against it is specious. Sorry. I don’t respect your way of processing history.
Yeah, that’s not what I said. I said that the specific ways in which the Han were Han supremacist prior to the communist party emerging were not only distinct from the communist party itself, which as all theory and practice shows incorporates the material conditions of its founding but that the CPC specifically has taken explicit action against Han supremacy because it recognizes it and acknowledges it as something that needs to be addressed. Something that is fundamentally different from liberal power structures around the world.
You really need to read more.
You literally cited “pogroms” that never happened and then you cited The Doctor’s Plot, which was not a pogrom, and I think I’ve thoroughly addressed it here. You can pretend you have so many examples that you’re too busy to share, but I don’t believe you, and I don’t think anyone else does either.
I mean, you can pretend that me providing historical context is stomping my feet, but what is in fact happening is you are stamping you’re feet saying THE PARTY IS EVIL because a specific 5-year period of a party led by a single person acted against Jews and killed a relatively small number of them (although it did really do a lot of damage to Jewish institutions throughout the USSR, and it is a real black mark against Stalin and the Communist Party).
You’re not convincing. You make overly broad claims, and then challenged you narrow your evidence but you don’t narrow your claims. It’s quite problematic for your position.
But I promise, I won’t stamp my feet at you. I will only bring evidence and analysis.
“Interrogated” lol
You’re a very serious person with well reasoned opinions and are well informed of history and you are clearly seeking after truth and understanding.