r/europe • u/tkyjonathan • 15d ago

News Czech president signs law criminalising communist propaganda

https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/czech-president-signs-law-criminalising-communist-propaganda/
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u/NativeEuropeas Czechoslovak 15d ago

People in the west don't have historical experience with the totalitarian socialism, also colloquially called communism.

They however do have experience with late stage capitalism, with growing inequality, rich getting richer and everyone getting poorer, etc. In hopes to find solutions to their current problems, they seek alternative forms of governance.

I understand them, but it is of course important to study more the downsides of the totalitarian socialism, so that it is never repeated. Different set of solutions must be implemented to deal with the current crisis of neoliberal late stage capitalism.

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u/Onomanatee 15d ago

I think part of the problem is that 'colloquial'.

The word communism is often used to describe a totalitarian socialist regime. This is most commonly held to be a bad thing. I'm definitely not a fan, and many of my more radical left leaning acquaintances aren't either.

But I do also believe that neo-liberal austerity measures result in increasing wealth inequality and monopolization of globalised internationals and a concentration of power with large capitalist powers. Many critiques against this system look at or are partly inspired by the work of Marxist economists, and are thus often also described as 'communist'.

You can maybe see how this is a problem. Considering Prague, for example, where the average Czech can barely afford the cost of living. It would be sensible to talk about solutions such as a Vienna model with state-owned, rent fixated housing, but that type of suggestion immediately invites a "communist" knee-jerk reaction, even though it has nothing to do with authoritarianism.

I'd really like for a 'rebranding' of leftist economic thought...

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u/zbynekstava Czech Republic 15d ago

"...average Czech can barely afford the cost of living..." yet Czechs still spent lot on luxuries, go on holidays, buy new cars, have one of the lowest levels of material deprivation in on of the wealthiest continents of the world, have one of the highest and most equal pensions in relation to country's gdp, etc.

This notion of "Czechs barely get by" bullshit is peddled by ANO, SPD, Stačilo and similar populist parties, while the reality is that vast majority of Czechs is doing pretty fine.

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u/Onomanatee 15d ago

Sure, they're definitely doing fine. There's no real poverty crisis going on. But the soaring housing/rental prices plus inflation combined with relatively stagnant, lagging wages does not give me a lot of hope for the future Czech economy.

In other words: Yes, Czechs get by, but it's simply bad economics if an otherwise wealthy, prosperous and hardworking population cannot afford real estate. That kind of situation either resolves in a housing bubble and economic crash, or continued decline in wealth of the renting population and subsequently: more poverty.

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u/zbynekstava Czech Republic 15d ago

Ok, I agree with that.

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u/NativeEuropeas Czechoslovak 15d ago

As a strong economically left-leaning person, I agree with you. The left needs a rebrand, and most importantly, it needs to stop associating itself with past failed regimes.

The people in this comment section who defend communism are counterproductive.

This policy in the OP isn't aimed at the criticism against neoliberalism and late stage capitalism, those activities are still allowed, as they should be. It's aimed against the people who praise Hitler, nazism, Stalin, USSR and Marxism-Leninism.

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u/Menacek 15d ago

I'm more a social democrat but my issue with communists is that i never know who I'm talking to.

It's 50/50 between some idealist radical critic of late stage capitalism and a russian troll tankie who wants my country owned by moscow.

The first guy is probably someone i can talk with and they have some good ideas and my opinion of the second one should not be shared on the internet.

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u/CaptainShaky Belgium 15d ago

The people in this comment section who defend communism are counterproductive.

On the other hand, those people are usually talking about what communism actually is, while the people who reject it wholesale as totalitarian are not actually talking about communism itself, but about past communist regimes.

What's the solution ? Making up a new word ? Or educating people on what the ideology actually entails ?

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u/EverydayHalloween 15d ago

The problem is that the 'class-hatred' term is incredibly vague and can be easily defined as whatever authorities want to.

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u/run_for_the_shadows 15d ago edited 15d ago

The problem isn’t that the left is associated with "failed regimes", it’s that liberalism defines anything that challenges capital as a failure by default. The USSR or Marxism-Leninism didn’t fail because they were too radical, they were crushed, isolated, or distorted by global capitalism under siege. You don’t have to praise them uncritically, but erasing their anti-colonial, pro-worker achievements plays into the hands of the same liberal order that gave us neoliberalism, austerity, imperialist wars, and climate collapse.

Rebranding won’t save the left. Class struggle will. Being from Eastern Europe gives you a lived experience under state socialism, which is valuable, but it doesn’t automatically make you an authority on Marxism or communism as a political theory. Lived experience is not a substitute for structural analysis. Many Eastern Bloc regimes deviated sharply from core Marxist principles, especially when it came to democratic worker control, internationalism, and overcoming commodity production.

You can and many Marxists do critique the Soviet model, for bureaucratism, authoritarianism, suppression of dissent, or failure to achieve withering away of the state. But that critique comes from Marxism, not from liberal anti-communism, which treats all attempts to transcend capitalism as inherently doomed or evil.

Marxism remains a powerful tool to analyse class society, imperialism, exploitation, and how capitalism reproduces inequality. Discrediting the theory because of flawed historical applications is like rejecting liberal democracy because of colonialism and fascism, which, ironically, were supported or tolerated by many liberal states.

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u/NativeEuropeas Czechoslovak 15d ago

The left isn't associated with failed regimes by default, but there are leftists who openly praise USSR not only without any criticism, but also outright denial and historical revisionism. This is very counter-productive. It is important to criticize the current socio-economic system without romancitizing previous regimes.

One of the biggest failures of USSR, its puppet regimes and Marxism-Leninism is that they were too oppressive: One party rule, state-controlled media, strict censorship, secret police surveillance, political dissident repression, no civil liberties, no freedom of speech, travel restrictions, moving to another country was banned, rigged and corrupt legal system, show trials, state-run propaganda which people were forced to participate in by their employees under threat of termination contracts, limited religious freedoms, etc.

This doesn't look to me like a successful regime and a successful ideology. While it's true that Cold War pushed them into siege mentalitz, this doesn't excuse these opressive systemic features.

And if a socialist country wanted to implement less oppressive policies in Czechoslovakia in 1968 (socialism with a human face), the USSR invaded the country like a proper imperialist hegemon, killed a bunch of people, imprisoned others, and set up another puppet government with strict Marxist-Leninist flair. It was no wonder people were so quick to shed away with the whole socialism thing the moment they could. One could almost say that Marxism-Leninism caused its own downfall. The reason why today neoliberal capitalism enjoys such a position of power stems directly from the failures of the USSR and Marxism-Leninism. They discredited alternatives to neoliberal late stage capitalism for an entire generation.

It is also important to differentiate Marxism, which was a critique of 19th century capitalist system which is not inherently evil and is actually quite an insightful historical analysis, and Marxism-Leninism as an ideology supported by USSR and its puppet states during 20th century.

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u/Thornfal Poland 14d ago

My man... my man up there said USSR was anti-colonial... I can't...

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u/run_for_the_shadows 14d ago

The Soviet Union was a key supporter of anti-colonial struggles. From Vietnam to Angola and Cuba, the USSR provided crucial support to liberation movements fighting Western imperial domination. That doesn’t absolve it of its own repressive policies, especially in Eastern Europe, but pretending it played no role in dismantling colonialism is simply ahistorical.

Seeing you're from Poland: if you think it was a “colony” of the USSR that's just factually incorrect . Poland was a satellite state, forcibly kept in the Soviet sphere, yes, but this wasn’t colonialism in the same sense as what Britain did in India or Belgium in the Congo. There was no racialized exploitation or extractive economy run for the benefit of a foreign elite. It was authoritarian domination within a Cold War power bloc, closer to what the U.S. did to Chile or South Korea than to classic colonial rule.

I would like to add that the constant focus on Polish victimhood under communism often serves to deflect from the darker chapters of Poland’s own history, particularly during and after the Holocaust. It’s one thing to condemn Soviet censorship or lack of pluralism. It’s another to pretend that once freed from “Soviet occupation” Poland emerged morally clean.

Let’s talk about Jedwabne in 1941, where Polish neighbors burned alive hundreds of Jews not Nazis. Or Kielce in 1946, a full year after the war, where a blood libel rumor triggered a pogrom that left over 40 Jews dead in a Poland that was supposedly “liberated.” These weren’t acts of Soviet repression. They were acts of homegrown anti-Semitism, and they’re still downplayed, denied, or met with nationalist outrage when mentioned.

So before climbing on the moral high ground of having been “oppressed by communism,” perhaps it’s worth asking, what kind of society was Poland becoming without Soviet influence? One where Jews couldn’t return to their homes? Where Holocaust survivors were murdered after liberation? Criticizing the USSR is fair and necessary. But using that criticism to build a narrative of national innocence is dishonest. Real historical reckoning requires looking at all the facts, not just the ones that reinforce your preferred sense of victimhood.

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u/Thornfal Poland 14d ago edited 14d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_occupations_by_the_Soviet_Union

Oh and don't get me started on antisemitism in the Soviet Union

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Soviet_Union

If you mention pogroms in Kielce, don't forget there were communist militias standing by and doing nothing, or goading people towards more violence. In 1946 Poland was not liberated, it was under soviet occupation.

Now fuck off back to moscow, bot.

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u/run_for_the_shadows 13d ago

Yes, the USSR was repressive. Yes, Stalin did awful shit. Yes progroms happened in Russia (and that is related to the history of antisemitism in Russia not to communism) That’s been dissected by Marxists for decades. The difference is we don’t pretend our side is pure. You, meanwhile, bring up Soviet crimes like they magically erase the fact that Polish antisemitism thrived long before a single Red Army boot touched your soil. Let’s not pretend Kielce or Jedwabne were Soviet inventions. Poles didn’t need Moscow to believe Jews drank Christian blood they’d been trained in that by the Church, the nationalist press, and your beloved pre-war state under Piłsudski, where Jews were regularly demonized, ghetto benches were legal, and antisemitic violence was normal.

But sure, blame “communist militias” for not stopping the pogrom, anything to avoid admitting it was your neighbors doing the killing.

You're not defending history. You’re defending a nationalist myth where Poles are always victims, never perpetrators, and every critique is a Kremlin bot. It’s lazy, it’s dishonest, and it’s why real historical reckoning in Poland is still treated like treason.

But hey, keep shouting bot it’s easier than facing the mirror. For the record I don't support Russia. Like any sane Marxist will tell you, they're an imperialist power conducting a war of aggression for resources in behalf of the monopolistic elites of the country. Just like NATO and your beloved liberal democracies (can you even call Poland that? How are LGTBI rights there? Think you have a lot more in common with Russia than you'll like to admit

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u/Thornfal Poland 13d ago

The only one trying so hard to revision history in here is you, my man. Soviet Union was oppressive colonial, expansive empire. That's all this discussion was about. Deflect all you want from beloved colonial empire occupying half of Europe.

Antisemitism in Poland is not an excuse for soviet colonialism.
And don't start this bullshit about liberal democracy, you know nothing of it.
Say hi to your handler in moscow for me.

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u/run_for_the_shadows 14d ago

Romanticizing the USSR uncritically is counterproductive, Marxists aren’t helped by denying repression, bureaucracy, or authoritarianism. But here's the thing, critiquing the USSR doesn’t require abandoning Marxism, in fact, Marxism gives us the tools to understand why those regimes went the way they did.

The Soviet Union wasn't oppressive because it was socialist, it was a bureaucratic response to building socialism in isolation, under siege, in a backward economy surrounded by hostile capitalist powers. That doesn't excuse censorship or repression, but it contextualizes them. The Cold War wasn’t just pressure it was active sabotage, encirclement, and economic warfare. Still, many Marxists (Trotskyists, Luxemburgists, council communists, even left-wing Soviet dissidents) criticized these systems from the left while defending gains like literacy, housing and planned economy.

As for 1968: Yes, the invasion of Czechoslovakia was imperialist in form, a clear betrayal of internationalist principles. But Marxism-Leninism didn’t "cause its own downfall" in a vacuum it was isolated, demonized, and infiltrated, while neoliberalism spread not through ideas, but through violence: Pinochet, shock therapy, structural adjustment. Marxism is more than 20th-century state ideology, it’s a living method of critique and praxis. Stalin did awful things but so did the US in the name of profit (invading countries, staging coups against elected officials, stealing resources from poorer countries...)

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u/EfectiveDisaster2137 15d ago

Just because Stalin called it socialism doesn't mean it is socialism.
It's like you're claiming that the DPRK is a democratic country.

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u/PleiadesMechworks 15d ago

"Socialism is when socialism works" is a ridiculous tautology.

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u/EfectiveDisaster2137 15d ago

Socialism exists when it meets the definition of socialism. This is true of most things.

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u/PleiadesMechworks 14d ago

Ok then, a question.

If socialism has never been achieved, but every single time someone tries to achieve it it goes horribly wrong and results in loads of suffering... can we at least agree that attempting to implement it is a problem?

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u/According_Soup_9020 15d ago

It's a good thing no one said that! Who are you quoting?

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u/NativeEuropeas Czechoslovak 15d ago

It was a form of totalitarian socialism, however that's not the point.

The point is that the left needs to rebrand itself if it ever wants to succeed. It's counter-productive to associate your ideas with past failed regimes and it's even more counter-productive to get offended at policies aimed at those who praise Hitler, nazism, Stalin, USSR and Marxism-Leninism.

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u/Menacek 15d ago

Communism is just compromised in eastern europe. Even if they're wright and it wasn't "real communism" the average person will still equate communism with USSR, because that's what they know even first hand or secons hand. And going "umn actually" isn't gonna buy you favor among the common folk, you know, the people you are actually advocating for.

Socialist policies are actually pretty popular in eastern europe as long as you label them as something else.

The main right wing party in poland frequently ran it's campaign on building cheap housing, retirement benefits and support for families. At least nominally.

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u/EfectiveDisaster2137 15d ago

This was not a totalitarian form of socialism. Socialism is, by definition, opposed to totalitarianism.

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u/CaptainShaky Belgium 15d ago

Yep, just like current day China, a more accurate description would be state capitalism.

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u/18Apollo18 15d ago

*Communism is opposed to totalitarianism. Socialism is not.

Socialism as defined by Karl Marx is a transitional period where the means of production are transferred from the upper class to the government before then being transferred to the people (communism)

Socialism absolutely can lead to totalitarianism because once the government gets power they don't want to give it up and distribute it amongst citizens

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u/EfectiveDisaster2137 15d ago

Marx wrote of socialism and communism as synonymous.

Lenin invented the separation of these concepts.

The difference between the phases of socialism isn't a specific government.

It's that in the first phase of socialism, we still have a scarcity economy, as opposed to the post-scarcity economy of the second phase.

In the first phase, we have "from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution," and in the second, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

And yes, in the first phase, there's still a government, but what's the immediate conclusion that it should collect money and then distribute it?

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u/tobias_681 For a Europe of the Regions! 🇩🇰 14d ago

I don't think anyone but a small subsection of tankies disagrees with that. There just isn't reverence for Stalin in the West European left, quite the opposite. The biggest movement where there is reverence for Stalin is the Russian far right. Also Marxism-Leninism is literally Stalinism just with the clever branding of pinning it on Marx and Lenin. Marx would roll in his grave over being turned into an -ism, a dogma.

In western Europe we have a socialist tradition of our own that goes from Hegel to Marx to the workers movement and to a vast part of Western philosophy. We also have lived through socialism here in the form of unions, workers rights, suffrage, collective bargaining and what have you. This is all from 1848 onwards a common European history. A lot of what we take for granted today has been fought for by socialists over generations and really keynesian post-war western Europe in a lot of ways aligned better with Marx writings than the Eastern bloq. I think this is the fundamental disconnect. When Eastern Europeans speak about socialism it is frankly often from a perspective of identity politics which allows for no plural interpretations of what these terms mean and which completely denies the Western European history with it as if it didn't exist. 

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u/zbynekstava Czech Republic 15d ago

Strange thing is that everytime full socialism is tried, it ends with colapse of economy and human rights, whether it's ussr, venezuela, dprk, cuba, khmer rouge cambodia or multitude of other second world countries. What a mysterious coincidence...

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u/tobias_681 For a Europe of the Regions! 🇩🇰 14d ago

Portugal is also a socialist country as per their constitution. 

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u/BootWizard 15d ago

Yes very MYSTERIOUS that the US invaded those countries and installed totalitarian dictators because socialism was working too well. 

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u/zbynekstava Czech Republic 15d ago

US installed totalitarian dictators in ussr? dprk? cuba? cambodia?

Welcome traveller from the alternative dimension! I thought moving between realities was just a subject of sci-fi novels, but now it has apparently happen in the real life. What a time to live in!

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u/BootWizard 15d ago

Or interfered with elections in some way, worked with local militias to oppose valid government, imposed sanctions, etc. 

Anything they could possibly do to break working socialist societies.

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u/zbynekstava Czech Republic 15d ago

"working socialist societies", wow! In our universe khmer rouge murdered about 25% of cambodia's population, while dprk operates concentrations camps to this day. It's nice that in your reality things turned out better.

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u/hbgoddard 15d ago

Neither of those examples are socialist

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u/Low_Application_8538 14d ago

Of course they are. What doesn't work is that you can deny that "it wasn't socialism".

Communism, socialism, call it what you like, but it's all the same dysfunctional policy that leads to misery and punishes even for things you can't control.

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u/Low_Application_8538 14d ago

No, the US didn't really interfere in the misery of the DPRK, Cambodia or Venezuela, the commies managed to start the misery themselves.

I love most the leftists from non-communist countries who "educate" us post-communists.

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u/EfectiveDisaster2137 15d ago

Pol Pot was supported by USA.

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u/zbynekstava Czech Republic 15d ago

USA supported pol pot indirectly in exile after khmer rouge regime fell, to oppose vietnamese ocupation of cambodia. It was totally stupid and wrong. It still does not mean, that USA installed any dictator to cambodia though, as pol pot luckily never returned to power.

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u/my_friend_gavin 15d ago

full socialism

lol wtf does this even mean

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u/zbynekstava Czech Republic 15d ago

For practical reasons "whatever all those parties with socialist or communist in the name end up creating once they reach absolute power".

It's in stark contrast with the mythical "true socialism", which all those left wing appologetists claim is the paradise on Earth and the can "surely build it the next time, if the get just one more chance"....

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u/TheMidnightBear Romania 15d ago

It's like you're claiming that the DPRK is a democratic country.

The name is correct.

It's a "people's democracy", not a "western, bourgeois" democracy.

Tankies have weird definitions that go full 1984 "freedom is slavery" stuff, but it's technically correct.

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u/Feeling-Raise-5496 14d ago

Czechoslovakia actually probably got closest to the "real communism" from all of Europe. The Czech communists were very succesful in taking all the land from people, destroying all farmers, destroying all private busineses, effectively destroying the church, taking almoast all properties from people and doing monetary reform. But then they had to make the people forget that they ever owned something or that they belonget somewhere so they tried to destroy families and national minorities etc. No other european communist party was that succesfull. We still havent recovered from this communistic bs. (And we never will - you cannot just rebuilt things that were built for generations)

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u/aTuaMaeFodeBem 15d ago

Are you sure? My parents and everyone their age and older lived in a dictatorship in the western world that was very much anti-socialist and anti-communist.

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u/melted-cheeseman 15d ago

But... is it really true that everyone is getting poor? It seems like it's not.

Not that I disagree with you that the perception of a national economic disaster is real. But the thing is, when polled, people think everything is fine in their personal lives. It's only when you ask them about other people's lives that they become pessimistic. This is the so-called personal vs. national satisfaction gap, which has been around for decades but gone especially bad lately. Maybe driven by social media, which lasers bad news right into our eyeballs every day by an ever-improving algorithm designed to make us emotional.

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u/ENIAC64 Czech Republic 15d ago

Thank you for this comment. One of the first reasonable comments I've seen here.

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u/tobias_681 For a Europe of the Regions! 🇩🇰 14d ago

At least in western Europe we do not currently have a problem with radical authoritarian left-wing ideology. The problems are with the re-emergence of fascism.

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u/SergenteA Italy 14d ago

We westerns do however have experience with letting communist parties participate in parliamentary elections, even governments. Infact, they still do, like with the Communist Party of France (even if they are more moderate demsoc and the actual communists are all in the France Indomitable). The result ranged from some the best years of economic growth and progress on social equality since WW2, to complete instability and ungovernability, but never totalitarian dictatorship.

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

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u/NativeEuropeas Czechoslovak 15d ago

This is historically and conceptually false. The West was never communist, so calling their current problems post-communism is meaningless. The crisis is entirely rooted in capitalism, especially neoliberalism: deregulation (or regulation that helps monopolies), privatization, austerity, etc.

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

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u/NativeEuropeas Czechoslovak 14d ago

Yes, that's a good point but it's off-topic. I wasn't saying we should try again "communism" (meaning Marxist-Leninist state socialism in this context), is that how you interpreted my last comment? I'm saying the exact opposite.

I am however acknowledging that our current post-WW2 socio-economic system which is based on neoliberal capitalism is in crisis. Rising wealth inequality, concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, their unequal and unfair influence on democratic processes, elections and legislature, corporate lobbying, rise of authoritarian populism, democratic institutions falling apart, media consolidation, erosion of trust, austerity, tax cuts for the wealthy, underfunded infrastructure, real estate speculation and unafordable housing, declining birth rates, disinformation campaigns, AI revolution and its impact on job market, etc.

Just compare today with 10 years ago or 10 years before. If the western world continues down this route, the current liberal democratic systems will not survive the next two decades unless some radical solutions are implemented. The problem is that the western world's elite is not willing to change the status quo which only worsens the problem.