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Remember, the social Democrats sided with the Nazis over the socialists. They’ve done it every time they’ve been given the opportunity, and will continue to do so as many times as people fall for their shtick.
“The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."
-Audre Lorde
Yeah, that's not true is it? The SPD fought against the Nazis all the way up until the end and were the largest force against them in the Reichstag. It was the communist that refused to ally with them against the Nazis as the Stalin enforced policy was to not collaborate with "social fascists" (i.e. any party not taking orders from Moscow) and directed far more opposition to them than to the Nazis until it was too late.
The SPD voted for WWI, betraying the communists. The government, with the support of the SPD, then dismissed the chief of police and had the GKSD murder dissidents and communists, including Rosa Luxemburg, among other Spartacist members, in cold blood.
The SPD betrayed the people, sided with the bourgeoisie, and then led Germany straight into the material conditions that produced the Nazis while still playing at reformism in the face of literal fascism.
Sort of like how Social-Democrats like Bernie and AOC are playing at reform in the face of literal fascism today. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.
All I'm getting out of this is that the German communists didn't oppose the Nazis because of grudges and spite, instead of swallowing their pride to prevent actual fascists from seizing power. Typical accelerationist ends-justify-the-means bullshit. No wonder the United States had to bankroll the Soviet war effort, communists can't accomplish a damn thing without purity testing everyone who could help, doing their best to cut off the nose because it will at least spite the face.
Have you not heard, first they came for the communists? They were literally the first people taken out, specifically because they violently opposed both the traitorous social democrats who sent thousands of working class men to die in a rich man’s war, and the later developed Nazi party. It was social democrats, which are by definition capitalist and not communists, who murdered their Allies and sided with the nationalists.
Are you trying to refute my point by agreeing with me? Bold move.
I think the difference is, you’re saying the communists were infighting. The communists were United, they had their internal conflicts, (direct action vs parliamentarianism) but they were together. It was the CAPITALIST Social Democratic Party that murdered them. CAPITALISTS murdered them. Not other communists. Bernie Sanders isn’t a communist. AOC isn’t a communist. Neither was the SPD.
In other words, yes, you are. I almost wish you could see how funny this is from the outside. You just don't get it at all, do you?
Gustav Noske, the "Bloodhound of the SPD", used Freikorps (proto-fascist and/or monarchist) militias to kidnap and murder communists, who at the time were more influential than the SPD in many parts of the country.
And this should inform modern political theory because?
They were taken out first because they were easier
I think it’s because they were more dangerous. There’s a reason the Nazis kept the socialism in their party name. Communism and socialism were immensely popular in Germany. Without that corruption, or with a more informed working class, it’s unlikely the Nazis would have been govern the opportunity they needed to consolidate power under their rule.
I’ve heard your theory, too, for sure. I’ve just never seen a book to back it up. Do you have one? I’m always looking for more books about German pre-WWII history, it’s one of my favorite topics.
Communists were easier because they were further out to the left. Easier to destroy the extreme first
So you’d like to damn them for murdering the communists, but also damn modern social democrats for not dealing with fascists in an extra-legal fashion? I understand you’ll never accept the communists weren’t exactly shining paragons, but you must see the irony here.
Lmao. They murdered their political opponents that were fighting for the working class, and collaborated with the ones who were destroying it. Hmm.. sounds kinda familiar. Which party put more money into policing than any other in history when they were most recently elected?
Which party released a memo (that thankfully leaked or we wouldn’t know) telling journalists and officials not to call for Israel to stop their genocide?
It’s almost as if they both serve capital and use us as pawns while they make money and kill people both domestically and abroad.
Communists famously improved the quality of life for every russian/russian citizen, how silly of me to forget.
Are you trying to equate american democrats to social democrats of europe? We hate our democrats, they’re just the best option under the first past the post voting system.
Very nearly, yes. Unironically, look up life expectancy for citizens of the Russian Czardom pre-revolution. It literally more than doubled under Soviet rule. The Soviets had many problems, at least 40 big ones, but they succeeded in turning a peasant and slave society into an industrial society, doubled life expectancy, provided homes to everyone, provided vacations to everyone, and more.
They had issues, certainly. The criticisms that apply to them often apply to the US also though, and other liberal democracies. For example, the USSR couldn’t have dreamed of having a surveillance state even half as effective or powerful as the one in the United States. The gulag system at its peak, wasn’t even close to the current American prison system, either in terms of per capita or total numbers. And 40% of the population was freed every year. Most of the things we’ve been taught to fear about the Soviets we experience far more viscerally than they did. We have secret police, we just call them “undercover” or “plainclothes”. Hell, in 2020 people were literally being grabbed off the streets by un-uniformed police and stuffed into unmarked black cars. I could literally go on for hours, and provide hundreds of pages of books with data verifying, just the ways that the US is definitively more totalitarian and more violent than the Soviet Union at even its height of oppressive action.
We couldn’t strive to replicate the errors of the Soviets, but that doesn’t mean we should neglect the successes, either.
The idea of the USSR being an objectively better entity than what came before and after itself is a hard pill for many to swallow. Even from a cold, pragmatic, and critical position it can be hard to reconcile, even decades after the Cold War proper.
The USSR was better for Russia than what came before, for all the satellite states they annexed and stole resources from they were worse.
If the US is disappearing people into forced labor camps and working them either close to death or to death now doesn't make it a good thing when the USSR did it.
No, neither would be good, certainly. And yes, the US utilizes forced labor in nearly every prison in the country. Likely all of your license plates, and probably much of your office furniture, were made by prisoners. Involuntary servitude and slavery is prohibited, except as punishment for a crime.
The point is to point out that the belief that the USSR was some unbelievably oppressive society with instant gulags and that did nothing for its people is objectively wrong, and in fact it was at even its worst Significantly less oppressive both domestically and abroad than the current United States. It objectively lifted millions of people out of poverty, though. It objectively lifted the life expectancy in most of the allied SSRs. In fact, the majority of citizens in post soviet states today preferred life under socialism.
What specific satellite states are you referencing? I’d love to look up more.
The baltics are probably the best example of states harmed by USSR imperialism.
The USSR was unbelievably oppressive, especially to the annexed satellite states, the US being the same seems rather irrelevant, also as I pointed out it mostly benefitted the Russian people, not the annexed states they controlled.
Also I definitely need a source for the majority of people currently in ex soviet satellite states saying life was better under the USSR. Saying stuff like that here will most likely get you punched because pretty much anyone older than 40 either lost someone personally to the USSR occupation or knows someone who did.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalgia_for_the_Soviet_Union
The dissolution of the soviet union caused quite a lot of economic issues in countries more integrated into it's economy so a poll that says a country was harmed by the dissolution isn't saying much. I'm pretty sure quite a few German citizens would say they were harmed by the fall of the Nazi regime when it fell, that has no bearing on which was better or even which people prefer. Also in the poll for that source it seems the most anti USSR countries were skipped for some reason.
Also the living standards of 2011 Lithuania and Ukraine must have been pretty bad, I'm assuming that would also be the case for countries like Moldova too but that study only covers the 3. Lithuania is a bit of a surprise though but I doubt the numbers are anything close to that now as quality of life in the baltics has improved massively since the USSR.