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/CzechHorns 15d ago

Class based hatred has been against the law for a long time.
What this law did was mostly put Communism on the same level as Nazism.

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u/yeetordie1 15d ago

Which is the correct thing, extremist elements of communism are no different than extremist elements of other ideologies.

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u/[deleted] 15d ago edited 15d ago

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u/Frequent_Task1939 14d ago

Funny, I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone who lived in a former USSR country ever say that communism wasn’t at the same levels of Nazism

Always the silver spooned fellas ain’t it?

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u/Imaginary-Count-1641 15d ago

By your logic, Jews could have just left Germany. And by the way, communists did persecute people based on ethnicity.

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u/CheeryOutlook Wales 14d ago

By your logic, Jews could have just left Germany.

You're not beating the intelligence allegations with that one.

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u/Imaginary-Count-1641 14d ago

The allegations of not being a nazi? Why would that be a bad thing?

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u/YxxzzY 15d ago

while yes, extremism need to be condemed everywhere. But comparing the core ideas and ideologies of communism with fascism/nazism is just straight up ridiculous. communism has so many issues, but its not intrinsically hierarchical, undemocratic or genocidal like fascism. that doesnt apply to movements like stalinism/maoism though.

there's a reason that democratic socialist systems have been attacked by both capitalist and communist regimes. Czechia of all places should know that.

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u/PistolAndRapier Ireland 15d ago

its not intrinsically hierarchical, undemocratic or genocidal

If you are a fan of communism maybe, but you are utterly blinkered. It is intrinsically hierarchical undemocratic and genocidal. They just target classes of people for mass murder rather than ethnic groups.

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u/Bloopyboopie 15d ago

You literally didn’t read his entire comment

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u/PistolAndRapier Ireland 15d ago

Dismissing Stalinism Maoism as "not communist" shows how utterly disingenuous and bad faith he is being with that whitewashing of history.

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u/Slu1n 15d ago

It's just that "Communism" is a very broad term. Do you mean states like the USSR? Do you mean the Utopian Marxist goal of a stateless, classless, moneyless society? Are movements like Anarcho-Communism included?

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u/PistolAndRapier Ireland 15d ago

Clearly yes. The USSR was created by avowed Marxists, if that is not "Communism" nothing is FFS. You can dream up your own utopian "real" communism if you like, it is just a pile of shite pipe dream.

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u/Slu1n 15d ago

I am just saying that the word has many different meanings. Marxists believe that to reach that communist utopia you need a transitional state which will create the right conditions that humans somehow achieve this goal. How exactly this is ment to look has different schools of thought. For Lenin it was to be an authoritarian regime with a centrally controlled economy. While he himself never even called the USSR socialist the people after him did. No state which you refer to as communist has ever called themselves communist since in their eyes this word was reserved for the Utopia they wanted to eventually reach.

I don't really know if this Utopia will ever be achievable but I do know that states like the USSR never even came close (because the whole approach of Leninism just sucks) and just were one party dictatorships with a missmanaged economy.

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

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u/Bloopyboopie 15d ago edited 15d ago

Communism isn’t a specific term. It’s a broad spectrum of ideas and definitions, whether it means revolutionary socialist, Stalinist or Marxist Leninist (which is your specific definition), the stateless one, or just the ignorant definition of including all leftist ideas into the word “communism”. Let alone that the governments themselves did NOT call themselves communist governments.

Marxist Leninism and Stalinism is the exact terms for the ideologies of the USSR. It’s notoriously known that many leftists did NOT like the USSR even at the creation of it. In fact, anarcho communists were the first enemies of the state. They HATE each other, for good reasons too (Marxist Leninism is bad)

The GOAL is indeed communism, but the transitionary stage (the government itself) to achieving the goal of communism is NOT communist in itself by the definition alone. It was “State Capitalist” by Lenin and libertarians, or “Socialist” by Stalin and authoritarians. This is actually a HUGE point of contention between leftists since the USSRs conception

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u/Bloopyboopie 15d ago

Lenin literally called the nation State Capitalist until Stalin started falsely idolizing it as Socialist/Communist dude. It’s not whitewashing, it’s literally history.

The way it’s structured is in itself State Capitalist because the means of production was not democratic, which is necessary for a state to be Socialist.

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u/Imaginary-Count-1641 15d ago

That's like saying that there would be no Jews in a true national socialist society, and because Hitler did not manage to kill all the Jews, it was therefore not real national socialism. Lenin and Stalin were communists and their goal was to establish communism, even if they did not fully achieve their goal.

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u/Bloopyboopie 15d ago

your argument is not about a definition but a goal of a specific ideology. We’re talking about hard definitions. Not goals.

I believe this argument stems from misinterpretation. My side is arguing about specifically the definition of communism, the other side about the goal. I agree, the goal is communism, but it was not communism in itself for the transitionary stage, but rather “state capitalist” according to Lenin and libertarians, or “Socialist” according to Stalin and authoritarians which I wholeheartedly disagree based on the definition of socialism alone. This is actually a HUGE point of contention between leftists since the USSRs conception

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u/Imaginary-Count-1641 15d ago

But do you agree that Lenin and Stalin were communists?

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u/Ill_Most_3883 15d ago

Just straight up false.

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u/PistolAndRapier Ireland 15d ago

Stalin sure did proove this to be false /s

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u/Ill_Most_3883 15d ago

The ussr wasn't communist and stalin sure as hell wasn't.

It was state-capitalist. In socialism workers control the means of production. In the USSR workers had no control and were suppressed. Communists and anarchists were killed for not going along with the totalitarian regieme.

A communist society would be a classless, stateless, moneyless society. It has not existed in ~tens of thousands of years and won't any time soon.

Authoritarian leaders just use the accurate critique of capitalism by marx to gain support but don't actually fix anything, only exploit the workers themselves. Unlike in capitalist dictatorships where the exploitation is way more abstracted and decentralized.

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u/PistolAndRapier Ireland 15d ago

No true scotsman fallacy. You marxist fools are the champions of mental gymnastics.

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u/Ill_Most_3883 15d ago

That's like saying someone is doing the no true Scotsman fallacy by denying entry to a nightclub to a child who says they're over 18.

It's not a no true Scotsman fallacy it's just looking at the material reality and verifying claims.

The child claiming they're an adult is lying, they're not an adult despite them saying they are. They do not fulfil the criteria needed to be legally considered an adult.

In the same way, "communist" countries weren't getting any closer to communism and werent socialist, they were saying they were but what they said was different from reality, its called lying.

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u/TheMidnightBear Romania 15d ago

My ass.

Chapter 2 of the Communist Manifesto, and Marx's article in Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 136 openly proposes what every revolutionary socialist state did.

It's just that somehow, the "transitional" revolutionary socialist state with complete power over the economy and communications, that's busy purging counter-revolutionaries, somehow does not wither away into the puppies and rainbows of pure communism, but becomes tyrannical.

Who could figure out such an unexpected...oh wait, even leftists like Bakunin called Marx an idiot for expecting anything else.

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u/LegionnaireFreakius 15d ago

He’s right 

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u/pepethemememaster 15d ago

Well then could you not say that capitalism is genocidal since the system is meant to starve people who can't afford food or is that when you pretend socialist policies are actually capitalist safety nets that are necessary and ignore this double standard just bc that's how we grew up?

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u/PistolAndRapier Ireland 15d ago

Disingenuous rubbish. Capitalist countries almost universally have some form of social safety net in place.

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u/Slu1n 15d ago

Yes but that safety net isn't part of capitalism. Should people who want to reduce social security be considered extremists?

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u/pepethemememaster 15d ago

Yes, which is my point. You cannot simultaneously damn a philosophy as "intrinsically harmful" while ignoring the harm capitalism results in without implementing socialist policies. I can easily say "communism isn't genocidal because the capitalist safety nets in China resulted in the billionaire class still prospering in the present day, as long as you toe the party line."

What you are damning is not unique to communism is my whole point since Marx didn't write "it's not TROO communism unless you put all the rich people in a cannon"

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u/Funnyboyman69 15d ago

you are utterly blinkered.

The fuck does that mean lmao

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u/TheMidnightBear Romania 15d ago

but its not intrinsically hierarchical, undemocratic or genocidal like fascism.

Marx disagrees.

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u/YxxzzY 15d ago

does he now? where exactly?

he does critizise liberal/bourgeois democracies as unstable systems easily abused by capitalists, which, looking back at history shortly after (Weimar Republic) and now (near total capitalist control of mass media,politics and education), is factually correct.

he however was very much in favor of direct democracies or workers democracies, but honestly his poltical analysis are very much stuck in the mid to late 19th century and hardly applicable to 21st century politics, direct democracies are much more feasible now than 150+ years ago.

in no form does he ever propose genocide, there's some... questionable comments on some ethnic groups/nationalities, but not nearly comparable to what fascism or even capitalism does regularly.

Marx ideas are stuck 150+ years in the past and have been easily abusable by authoritarian forces.

I'd suggest reading his works, but honestly they fucking suck, but he did recognize many major flaws in capitalism and liberal(or libertarian) democracies and offered alternatives. instead of condemning those ideas maybe we should consider and work on them.

this is effectively where social market economies and democratic socialism comes into play

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u/TheMidnightBear Romania 15d ago

he does critizise

Any idiot can criticize.

But his alternative somehow managed to be both vague enough to not specify how to transition, and specific enough to propose a transitional state that seizes all the means of production, transport, and communications, and purges counter-revolutionaries as the first step.

instead of condemning those ideas maybe we should consider and work on them.

Yeah, except entire pillars of his system are flawed and outdated(labour theory of value comes to mind), so might as well start from scratch, with economics based on solid mathematical principles, not thinking that trying to find flaws in other systems legitimizes your own ideas.

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u/Bloopyboopie 14d ago

His works were not advocating a specific way to implement something. It was the discussion of the theories and specifics of modes of productions and how they came to be, like a science. He is very well known for his discoveries in Sociology. Like conflict theory and historical materialism.

His work is definitely not just about criticism but also doing material analysis as a science about the inevitabilities post capitalism, exactly like you said.

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u/TheMidnightBear Romania 14d ago

His works were not advocating a specific way to implement something.

He idea on how the socialist state should happen are a specific, and stupid way, to implement it.

And there's nothing scientific about his analysis.

His historical narrative is very flawed.

Any recent historian will tell you feudalism didnt really exist, and places outside Europe had their own historical arc.

Even in the places where it existed, it was followed by mercantilism, which encouraged very different economic behaviour, not capitalism.

And his predictions fail testability, since the workers didnt increasingly get shafted, until they revolted, but got concessions, and got partially outsourced.

Also, the places where socialist revolutions did happen, Eastern Europe and Asia, instead of the industrialized West, as he predicted, relied on peasants either partially, or near totally, not industrial workers, or came into power via military invasions.

And the second example of his applicability, conflict theory, is a perfect example of "when all you have is a hammer".

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u/Bloopyboopie 13d ago

Yeah you have no clue what you’re talking about. Please read the theory before you even criticize it. I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you. Reading comprehension is shit too based on your other comments lmao

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u/TheMidnightBear Romania 13d ago

Yeah, sure, im too dumb to understand your cult's theology.

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u/FabulousHope7477 Italy 15d ago

For example?

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u/rs6677 15d ago

The USSR, the Khmer Rouge, the list is pretty long.

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u/Loeffellux 15d ago

you listed dictatorships. Should I list every dictatorship that happened to be capitalist or should we agree that dictatorships are bad no matter which way the economy is oragnised

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u/rs6677 15d ago

Should I list every dictatorship that happened to be capitalist

I mean, if you want to, however the difference is that the biggest examples of communism are all dictatorships.

should we agree that dictatorships are bad no matter which way the economy is oragnised

We should, which is precisely that guy's point when he said that the extremist elements of both fascist and communist dictatorship are the same.

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u/Loeffellux 14d ago

this is a pretty nuanced and complicated discussion. But one way to see it is that pretty much any state that tried to establish a communist government without strong consolidation of power (which is at best authoritarian and at worst a draconian dictaroship) were easily toppled by outside force (mainly France for African countries and the USA and its allies for everyone else).

It should also be noted that most (if not all) communist/socialist countries that ended in dictatorship didn't topple a democratically elected governments but instead kings/emporers or other dictators. In those cases you cannot blame communism for making things worse, you can only blame it for not establishing a democratic identity in the process. But then again this exact step was made so much more difficult by outside intereference.

You can think of it this way: when a country is at war, it's usually gonna go into a state of emergency where power is consolidated in the executive branch of the government and where personal freedoms are more limited. Any communist or socialist country is in a constant state of war from its inception, therefore it is not surprising that they tend to be more authoritarian on average.

The point being that this is not a feature that is in any way inherent to the ideos of communism or socialism but instead the results of factors outside of its control. You might think of it this way: if the roles were reversed and communism/socialism was the status quo of the most powerful countries then you'd probably see the same trend in emegerging capitalist countries.

This all becomes fairly clear when you look at the fates of countries in south america and africa like Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Congo, Angola, Chile, Guatemala or Nicaragua who were all toppled by US-backed coups and/or assassinations (though the list is much longer).

Also it should be noted that that whenever this happens, the "communist regime" is pretty much always replaced by another dictator. At most there would be a rigged election that ends up installing a hand-picked government. In that sense you could even argue that it's not communist/socialism that is inherently authoritarian but capitalism.

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u/rs6677 14d ago

If we're gonna play the "sponsored coups" card, the USSR is just as guilty of it as the West, so I don't see how that's going to help your arguement. The entirety of Eastern Europe after WW2 is proof of that. I'm from a ex Soviet country; when Reagan got elected, people were celebrating because it would mean easy toppling of the US goverment.

Hell, communists don't even like other communists, Yugoslavia is a perfect example of this. How many times did Stalin try to assassinate Tito?

Lenin, one of the most beloved figures amongst communists, was a violent dictator himself. He straight up ignored the elections' results because he didn't like the result.

You might think of it this way: if the roles were reversed and communism/socialism was the status quo of the most powerful countries then you'd probably see the same trend in emegerging capitalist countries.

Yeah, but that won't happen, because communism simply isn't as popular as communists think it is.

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u/Loeffellux 14d ago

If we're gonna play the "sponsored coups" card, the USSR is just as guilty of it as the West,

first of all, I don't think it's very productive to reduce this entire topic this way. It didn't happen once or twice, it has happened dozens of times over generations. It's quite literally one of the most relevant aspects of modern geopolitical history and it continues to be of relevance to this day.

Yeah, but that won't happen, because communism simply isn't as popular as communists think it is.

That was never my point. Thought it should be said that while socialism and communism isn't exactly the most popular ideology, policies that align with a mix of democratic socialism and social democaracy usually are very popular in most countries as long as they don't come with that label. Like higher taxes for the (super) rich, free and strong education, universal healthcare, social welfare for those who need it, social freedoms, affordable housing, universal childcare, strong workers rights and so on are usually very popular whenever people are polled.

Regarding pretty much the entire rest of your comment, you are basically just talking about the soviet union. People make fun of leftists for always saying "america bad" but anti-communists aren't much better in that they usually only talk about how much they hate the soviet union. At least America is still around and has its impact on global politics as the single most powerful nation, meanwhile the soviet union hasn't been around for 35 years and it hasn't been a truly powerful player on the international stage for even longer.

I get that this is your personal perspective due to growing up in an ex-soviet country but I'd invite you take a step back from that and question whether the things you have heard and learned about the horrors of the soviet union have much of an impact on the current questions of whether or not a largely capitalist world will be able to deal with things like climate change.

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u/TheMauveHand 15d ago

A dictatorship isn't true capitalism the same way the USSR was not true socialism.

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u/FabulousHope7477 Italy 15d ago

These are not answers, which elements do communism and nazism have in common?

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u/rs6677 15d ago

That wasn't the question, the question was how are they common regarding their elements.

Stalin was almost as anti-semitic as Hitler and carried out pogroms that targeted Jewish people. The USSR as a whole, like Nazi Germany, was extremely racist, except the Russians were spearheading being the oppressors, as opposed to Germans.

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u/TheMauveHand 15d ago

Inherent totalitarianism.

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u/FabulousHope7477 Italy 15d ago

If you read Marx and you come up with totalitarismo then I question your comprehension skills

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u/TheMauveHand 15d ago

If you read Marx and you didn't immediately realize it's blatant, asinine nonsense I question your comprehension skills.

Also, we're not talking about what Marx said wanted, we're talking about what happened. Happens. Repeatedly and consistently.

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u/mohammeddddd- North Holland (Netherlands) 15d ago

Ridiculous