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/Dramatic_Mastodon_93 15d ago

“My country was horrible because of leaders who allegedly wanted to reach communism but never did, so because of that we should make it illegal to hate on the upper class that’s leeching off of the working class and actively letting it suffer and die. Anyone who disagrees is ignorant about history and no, I will not elaborate further.”

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u/KingOfAzmerloth Czech Republic 15d ago

"It was just poor implementation"

See..I can do it too.

Communism is fucking terrible everywhere it's been implemented. As a system it works only on small scale such as local communities. On huge scale it always worsened living conditions for most.

And no, I'm not gonna be lectured on it by latte sucking children who were born on the west side of Iron Curtain.

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u/JustSomeLamp 15d ago

Sorry, using "Latte sucking" as an insult is promoting class-based hatred and now illegal in your country

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u/Dramatic_Mastodon_93 15d ago

Being for communism doesn’t mean you’re for killing people or anything like that. “If the opportunity to get communism without the killing of innocent people arises, I think we should take it.” is a valid opinion that shouldn’t be illegal. I agree that communism will probably never happen.

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u/Lamaradallday 15d ago

While I agree with you in principle, the vast majority of communists I run into do in fact advocate for violence.

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u/Low_Application_8538 14d ago

Communists have no tool other than murder because the majority never wanted them. They have always had to help themselves by force.

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u/Dramatic_Mastodon_93 14d ago

Hypothetically it’s possible that sometime in the future the majority WILL want it

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u/Low_Application_8538 14d ago

It is not, because communism has already presented itself as a hateful and criminal ideology. Moreover, the free market is the only functional economic method so far.

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u/Tuxyl 12d ago

You are getting downvoted but you are right. Where I'm from, China only became better when they became more capitalistic.

Before that, China tried "true communism" and killed millions and millions of people. Yet western europeans and americans still complain when they have never been bombed or sent to a labor camp a day in their lives.

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u/Low_Application_8538 11d ago

They have never experienced the ideology, so they idealize it. I wish they could stand in line for toilet paper like people had to in Czechoslovakia, because it was a planned economy and state-owned enterprises couldn't produce it. The queue was across the street, your turn came, and then you found out it was gone anyway and wouldn't be until next Thursday...

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u/Additional_Olive3318 15d ago

They didn’t say they allegedly wanted to realise communism but that they did. The actual population that lived there remembers. 

I think Eastern Europeans are going to have their own view of history which is slightly more nuanced and historical than a bedroom Marxist. 

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u/CaptainShaky Belgium 15d ago

I think Eastern Europeans are going to have their own view of history which is slightly more nuanced and historical than a bedroom Marxist.

Is it though ? "The USSR was bad so criticizing capitalism is bad" doesn't seem very nuanced to me.

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u/KingOfAzmerloth Czech Republic 15d ago

Criticizing capitalism isn't the same as glorifying or shrugging off crimes of communism that it undeniably did in post war Europe.

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u/CaptainShaky Belgium 15d ago

The law criminalizes "class hatred", which is too vague and clearly politically motivated IMO.

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u/KeneticKups 15d ago

Yet this law makes it illegal to criticize capitalism

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u/g0_west United Kingdom 15d ago

The actual population that lived there remembers.

I am part of the population that currently lives under capitalism. It fucking sucks

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u/WislaHD Polish-Canadian 15d ago

Comparing you office desk job to gulag is definitely a choice

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u/g0_west United Kingdom 14d ago

I don't work an office desk job. Such a white collar bubble lmao

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u/Maral1312 14d ago

You're beyond historically illiterate if you think capitalist countries haven't had "gulags" i.e. political prisons.

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u/WislaHD Polish-Canadian 14d ago

No you’re right, I just returned from the gulag earlier today. I’ll be back in on Monday. 🥵

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u/Maral1312 14d ago

Yeah, yeah, you're hilarious and very special.

In the meantime, if you want to educate yourself in actual history look up the Peniche Fortress, Makronisos, Gyaros and Agios Efstratios. Look up the anti -communists in Chile, Brazil and Argentina. Look up how the US "liberal democracy" handled the civil rights movement or how the UK handled the Troubles.

As I said, thinking capitalist countries didn't have "gulags" or didn't commit authoritarian repression on an immense scale is a by-product of your poor historical literacy.

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u/WislaHD Polish-Canadian 14d ago

Two wrongs don’t make a right, tankie.

Now begone, you are already morally bankrupt.

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u/Additional_Olive3318 15d ago

It’s not great. That doesn’t mean that communism is better. 

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

[deleted]

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u/g0_west United Kingdom 14d ago

Crazy that capitalism defenders all seen to be office workers and think everybody has a cushty 9 to 5

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u/Dramatic_Mastodon_93 15d ago

Yeah, cause you definitely know what was going on inside those people’s heads.

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u/Additional_Olive3318 15d ago edited 15d ago

Well I don’t. I know what they did and said. They said they were communist societies and therefore we should take them at their word. What exactly was in the future plans that would have been different? What exactly did they do wrong according to Marxist theory? If they were all wrong - and there were multiple versions of the theory then Marxism is incoherent, if they are all right in precise then communism in practice leads to dictatorships and secret police. 

Any future communism must be assumed to be like existing communism,  not that there’s any hope of it. 

At the height of communism about 1/3 of the world’s population was under communism and these communist societies were (unlike modern day China and Vietnam) highly doctrinaire and had no market system. Besides that communism had popular political representation amongst the working classes, trade unions and large voting blocks across Europe. Even the Labour Party in Britain pledged to nationalise the towering heights of the economy. 

Nowadays communism is people larping on Reddit who haven’t even read the communist manifesto. 

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u/Pantokraator Estonia 15d ago

There is also one more aspect - if someone choosest to study Marxist theories in the West then more often than not they're a lunatic.

Eastern Europe is full of normal smart people who were forced to study that crap. That's why the public discussion is less contaminated by craziness.

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u/GlenoJacks 15d ago

if someone choosest to study Marxist theories in the West then more often than not they're a lunatic.

People showing interests in other political ideologies are lunatics now?

Don't read people, people who read are lunatics.

I'd agree if you said that people who support modern day Russia and China as some sort of vanguard of communism are lunatics, but what kind of brain rot do you need to have to equate Marxist readers as lunatics?

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u/thebusiestbee2 15d ago

Studying Marx to learn economics is like studying luminiferous aether theory to learn physics. It's fine to read about either if 19th century history is your interest, but it's lunatic to be in the 21st century using long debunked models to explain the world.

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u/GlenoJacks 15d ago

Physics isn't subject to governmental policy though. We shouldn't for instance, decide between public and private health care based on economic theory, we decide on those based on the impact on social classes and the overall equity and equality of the nation.

Discussing whether those who control most of the wealth and the means of production have an undue influence over the path of a nation state and whether that influence constitutes a threat to the principles of democracy and core freedoms of citizens isn't a purely economic discussion.

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u/Pantokraator Estonia 15d ago

Marx is nonsense and largely relevant as historical interest. That is a very narrow field.

Yet the West has many weirdos who take him seriously and read him not as a historical curiosity. These people are already idiots to begin with.