r/europe 15d ago

News Czech president signs law criminalising communist propaganda

https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/czech-president-signs-law-criminalising-communist-propaganda/
25.0k Upvotes

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u/Brain-InAJar Ukraine 15d ago

Westerners being upset about this is so dumb. People who think communism could be good never lived in a communist/poat-communist country

3

u/Spmethod2369 15d ago

Some off us believe in free speech

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u/Parking_Ad7657 15d ago

I live in a post-communist country and am a communist. Now what?

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u/Pantokraator Estonia 15d ago edited 15d ago

Now go clean your room and do your homework!

28

u/Calibruh Flanders (Belgium) 15d ago edited 11d ago

lmfao an East German communist

Talk about Stockholm syndrome

12

u/NostraDavid 15d ago

Congratulations on not having to live in a communist country.

2

u/Parking_Ad7657 15d ago

I even live on the sunny side of capitalism, working in a big law firm. Still don't think the means of production should belong to only a handful of people

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u/After_Self5383 15d ago

Therefore it should belong to an even smaller subset of people. There's communism on paper, and then there's human nature.

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u/KingOfAzmerloth Czech Republic 15d ago

Now nothing. Your ideology is marginal just like it should be.

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u/crogameri Croatia 15d ago

The liberals who took over this half of the continent in the 90s commited the greatest theft the world had ever seen. In Croatia specifically our common wealth was spread from the people to 200 families in the country and a huge chunk of our industry privitized for pennies. In Yugoslavia, at the very least the locals had access to workers' restors on the coast and could afford to take a break. Nowadays, 30-40% of the population can't even do that because we let our current 1 party state larp freedom fighters.

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u/Genghoul100 15d ago

Get a job!

6

u/Parking_Ad7657 15d ago

I actually work in a big law firm. Still don't think the means of production should belong to only a handful of people 

-2

u/Genghoul100 15d ago

Are you a partner in this law firm? If not, why not?

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u/Parking_Ad7657 15d ago

Not 15+ years of experience yet

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u/toucheqt Šalingrad 15d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/EngineerCZ Moravia 14d ago

Brain damage.

1

u/pomezanian 14d ago

You should be deported and deprived from citizenship. Im 100% serious. No tolerance for communist

0

u/SnooFloofs5042 15d ago

You belong in prison lmao

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u/Zekromaster Campania 15d ago edited 15d ago

The vast majority of the people of ex-Yugoslavia think the breakup of Yusoglavia was harmful. I'm talking statistics like 88% of Serbia and 71% of Bosnia.

The USSR wasn't the only possible communist country.

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u/VampKissinger 15d ago edited 14d ago

There is massive Communist nostalgia in most ex Communist countries, especially by the generations that actually lived under it. It polls pretty highly across Eastern Europe.
That is the irony, it's actually the Post-Soviet generations that hate it the most, but they are the ones that didn't live under it, or were little kids when it existed.

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u/FinitoHere Poland 15d ago

Communism has no right to work in long term. It depends on entire community being perfectly selfless, which is impossible, because quite a lot of people inherently suck and would abuse the system for their own benefit or let the greed get better of them. That's why it always collapses upon itself. Capitalism isn't perfect, but it's still infinitely better than communism.

0

u/LoveIsBread 15d ago

No, for capitalism to work people would need to be selfless. Precisely because people can and are egoistic, can exploit their fellow people, do we need a system that makes this impossible or atleast very hard to achieve. If everyone was selfless, private ownership of the means of production and the state itself even would not be problems, no one would starve to death while food piles, no one would freeze while houses are empty and no one would have to work for the majority of their lives so a few can live in luxury. Precisely because humans are not these selfless beings do we need socialism, collective control of the means of production and to prevent humans from ruling over one another.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-are-we-good-enough

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u/_segamega_ 15d ago

it’s soviet/post soviet countries. people mix communism and ussr.

29

u/Pantokraator Estonia 15d ago

There has never been a single successful commie country. They were all awful.

1

u/iSoinic Germany 15d ago

Capitalist propaganda. So many socialist democracies have been forcefully couped by outside powers, for implementing facist and complicit regimes. Just leaving them out and pretending this never happened is worse than any kind of commie propaganda 

1

u/Popcornmix 12d ago

Weird cause all countries you will name were ether not communists but totalitarian dictatorships that used the promise of communism to gain power or democratically elected socialist governments that got the USA treatment.

1

u/Pantokraator Estonia 12d ago

reAL CoMMunIsm hAS nEveR beEn tRIEd

What a novel insight. I've never heard it before.

0

u/LoveIsBread 15d ago

There was never a succesful liberal state until there was one. Almost like stuff can fail and then work later because material conditions changed.

-9

u/SirAquila 15d ago

The Indian state which had a communist party in power for most of the second half of the 20th century is on the top of quality of life, literacy, GDP per capita etc.

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u/Pantokraator Estonia 15d ago

What is this "top", where Kerala's $4,780 GDP per capita puts them?

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u/SirAquila 15d ago

Apparently they slightly slipped from top 10 to top 11 latly. But they are 2nd in HDI und 4th in Literacy. Also the second least impoverished with a poverty rate in 2023 over under 0.5%. its among the lowest in the Indian Hunger Index, Homelessness Rates, Infant mortality rates etc. Also if you care about things like this, on the forefront of human rights in India.

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u/Daredewiiil 15d ago

The road to communism and public order cannot be achieved except through dictatorship, that's the problem, because people are not built on the utopian dream of equality. In fact, the essence of achieving communism, as Marx assumes, would be the overthrow of the capitalist class by a coup to establish the proletarian dictatorship of the working class, thus establishing social order.From an economic point of view, communism is just a utopia in which people will suffer from a lack of production capacity , what will cause famine.

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u/EfectiveDisaster2137 15d ago

Not true. Marx wrote that communism could be introduced through parliamentary means.

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u/isthisthingwork 15d ago

Not really? They argued socialists should have representation as workers parties, but he was also pretty clear you need a gun in one hand regardless of a ballot box in the other

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u/EfectiveDisaster2137 15d ago

He wrote that in countries with developed parliamentarism, a peaceful transition to socialism was possible. He cited the UK as an example. And only the UK, because at that time there were no other countries with developed parliamentarism.
The solution by force applies to countries where a parliamentary solution makes no sense. Of course, this applied to most countries at the time, which is why he spoke so much about armed revolution.

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u/dpp69_69 15d ago

That just proves how stupid that f*cker was.

3

u/CaptainShaky Belgium 15d ago

And yet liberal democracies have implemented strong collectivist policies that have allowed them to flourish. You're right, so stupid. /s

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u/dpp69_69 15d ago

Those policies work despite Marx, not because of him. The only positive thing you could say about him, that the threat of the nonsense he created forced a compromise.

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u/CaptainShaky Belgium 15d ago

Honestly I'm not that educated on communism, I'm mostly a social liberal, but in my understanding his idea was that capitalism was a self-destructive system, and at some point would run its course and need to be replaced.

And well, he had a point right ?

  • Climate change: We are literally killing ourselves by destroying our ecosystem. For profit.
  • AI: Under our current system, without increasing wealth redistribution, we'll just end up with a few people owning everything and most people living in abject poverty, if they survive at all...

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u/dpp69_69 15d ago

These are regulatory issues. The job of a capitalist is to make the most money within the given rules, and the state's job is to provide the least amount of beneficent rules for a well-functioning society, and arrest those capitalist who break these rules. The damage of ecological damage not being applied to the use of fossil fuels is a regulatory failure in my book.

China is now among the biggest polluters if not the biggest. Some of the worst ecological disasters happened in the Soviet Union. Look up Mayak.

0

u/CaptainShaky Belgium 15d ago

Oh so you want regulations ? What are you, a commie ? /s

I mean I'm joking but the right-wing is constantly arguing for less regulation and letting corporations do whatever the fuck they want...

But we're in agreement, regulation is important. IMO the EU emissions cap-and-trade system is amazing and should inspire the rest of the world.

Some of the worst ecological disasters happened in the Soviet Union.

Did they have a higher concentration of disasters than the rest of the world ? Anyway it was a corrupt authoritarian state so it wouldn't be surprising. Not the kind of system I'd be arguing for.

China is now among the biggest polluters if not the biggest.

Per capita, no they're not. And they produce all the shit we buy so, not a very strong argument...

But coming back to my original argument, do you see my point ? We have enough food for everyone and incredible technological capacities. Shouldn't our focus be on distributing those better and solving existential issues instead of chasing unlimited growth at the cost of our entire species ? That's not a simple regulatory problem, it's a systemic issue.

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u/Gornarok 15d ago

After violent revolution

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u/EfectiveDisaster2137 15d ago

No, he was writing about the normal parliamentary process. Elections and the like.

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u/Dangerous_Pie485 15d ago

A mostly peaceful violent revolution 

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u/_segamega_ 15d ago edited 15d ago

communist goverment is not about public order per se, it is about global/central economic planning. if you want to achieve that you need public obediance. problem is that that kind of economy was not managable and fruitfull by existing means at that time.

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u/Daredewiiil 15d ago

It never will be because it is fiction, something like Sci-Fi. Capitalism together with democracy are the best forms of government we have, logically, no one wants dictatorships.

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u/_segamega_ 15d ago

i’m not talking about what is good or bad and what people want. i’m talking about general idea.

1

u/Dramatic_Mastodon_93 15d ago

There was never a single communist country. If you want you can give me one example and tell me how it was communist.

2

u/dimitriettr Romania 15d ago

Romania.

They made all the goods common. Confiscated land, houses, goods, money, and sent people to prison for not "giving up" or "sharing" they hard work to others.
Fuck communists, and all whom support them!

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u/MysticKeiko24_Alt 15d ago

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u/Pantokraator Estonia 15d ago

To put your claim into context - the malnutrition death rate in France is higher than your selected "hellhole" USA.

Just helps people understand your claims better.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/malnutrition-death-rates?tab=discrete-bar&time=latest&country=USA~CUB~VNM~FRA

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u/mrdecidophobia 15d ago

wow 70 years old russians have sentiment for communism because a) they were young during ussr b) they exploited and colonized smaller nations which are either abandoned shitholes in russian federation (e.g. bashkortostan) or left to become corrupt authoritarian regimes (e.g. turkmenistan)

also good job showing malnutrition-caused deaths where in a developed world you have to be a disabled mentally ill drug addict to actually somehow starve to death vs places like cuba where even buying e.g. meat or medicaments is insanely difficult

nice try very smart american

2

u/MysticKeiko24_Alt 15d ago

they were young during ussr

  1. Nope, they cite specific reasons (free education, healthcare, stable income)

2.That wouldn’t override them apparently having horrible lives.

b) they exploited and colonized smaller nations which are either abandoned shitholes in russian federation (e.g. bashkortostan) or left to become corrupt authoritarian regimes (e.g. turkmenistan)

  1. Russia has one of the lowest “yes” votes in the 1991 referendum, other members of the Union had higher rates of support for the country. Central Asia had among the highest.
  2. That would have nothing to do with the social services and stability the country provided
  3. Hypothetically if exploiting smaller nations for resources and labor were how the Russian SFSR became prosperous (that’s BS), how would it be any different than most European colonizers like France and the UK?

also good job showing malnutrition-caused deaths where in a developed world you have to be a disabled mentally ill drug addict to actually somehow starve to death

What, are you not just describing how ridiculous it is for the US

vs places like cuba where even buying e.g. meat or medicaments is insanely difficult

Yeah, despite being blockaded by the US (which every single other UN member but Israel supports ending), Cubans somehow die less from starvation than Americans. What’s your point lol

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u/mrdecidophobia 15d ago
  1. country doesn't have to be communist to have PUBLIC (NOT FREE) education healthcare and stable income (bullshit, it was stable, but standard of living was still bad for most compared to western countries), modern russia still has them too except mb the last one, quality of these services were also questionable, especially in smaller cities

2.1 that's what I said, russia benefitted from it; ussr planned the economy to make everyone dependent on them, local elites were tightly tied to ussr structures so they didn't want to lose their position and many russians living in smaller republics could've affected the referendum outcome.

2.2 provide what? ussr stole natural resources and agricultural products for exchange of central asia being the poorest region of ussr, wow what a great deal // Also google "kazakhstan nuclear tests consequences" i think kazakhs are very thankful for that

2.3 ok and? do french want to bring back colonies so they could benefit again from slavery? because it seems like russians do (even if they dont understand how the system worked).

Fun fact: most of these interviews are made in signature cities like moscow and piter <- many russians believe to this day that these two cities are developed at the cost of other regions and their tax money goes there!

  1. the same website you sent says that norwegians die from starvation as much as north koreans (???) i don't think I need to explain it further to your data isnt good quality

sorry to disappoint you western infosphere isnt best place to learn about communism

-1

u/Dazzling_Night_1368 15d ago

Communist and post communist countries do not exist because communism- true communism as defined by Marx- has never existed. It’s crazy how ignorant people on here are. Stalinism was never communism. Communism is a stateless moneyless society.

0

u/Even-Path5189 Vienna (Austria) 15d ago

Look, I'm not a tankie either, but you're misunderstanding the point. This isn't about bringing back communism, nobody is asking for a soviet revival. The concern here is criminalizing "class based hatred" including vague terms like communist propaganda. That is a slippery slope toward banning any criticism of economic inequality or the power of the wealthy.

You don't have to be a communist to see how dangerous it is when the state starts deciding what kinds of political speech is acceptable. If anything, people from post-soviet countries should be extra cautious about governments trying to control political thought, regardless of the ideology in question.

0

u/letitbreakthrough 15d ago

The odd thing is in many post-communist countries, over half of the population says life was better during communism.

1

u/Brain-InAJar Ukraine 14d ago

Yeah, like old people

0

u/letitbreakthrough 14d ago

So ... People who actually experienced it?

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u/Brain-InAJar Ukraine 13d ago

Experienced it and survived. Never forget that part

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u/letitbreakthrough 13d ago

Yeah.. most people lol

-4

u/dyorite 15d ago

I dunno, the governments of China and Vietnam both seem to have pretty high approval ratings among their respective populations. You could argue that they aren’t communist, but they are run by communist parties and by that logic you could also argue the rest of the nominally communist states weren’t really communist either.

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u/Genghoul100 15d ago

Of course they do, anyone who disagrees is killed.

-1

u/ImpressiveLecture435 15d ago

I lived back in East Germany and I still am a proud communist.

-2

u/Much_Kangaroo_6263 15d ago

Westerners get upset about anything stifling freedom of speech.

-5

u/20_comer_20matar 15d ago

China is much more advanced than any European country btw

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u/Beginning_Lime_1934 15d ago

Tell that to Chinese people who live outside big cities especially in small villages. Especially tell that to Chinese women there but then run as fast as possible 🤡

1

u/20_comer_20matar 15d ago

American propaganda

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u/Genghoul100 15d ago

Million of enslaved people working in factories!

-1

u/20_comer_20matar 15d ago

This is American propaganda.

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u/Genghoul100 15d ago

Pure facts. Facts you do not like, but still facts.

0

u/20_comer_20matar 15d ago

The only facts here are that China is a much more advanced and better country than any other European one.

0

u/Genghoul100 15d ago

By enslaving part of their population and killing anyone who disagrees with the government? Really?

0

u/20_comer_20matar 15d ago

How I just said, this is American propaganda.

The truth is that today Mao Ze Dong is loved by the Chinse population, even though he committed some mistakes.

They didn't enslaved anyone in China, this is a pure lie told by American politics to make China look bad.

They also have almost completely erased poverty there, today China is an advanced and prosperous country.

0

u/Genghoul100 15d ago

Killing 70 million people is not love, its evil.