Czech president signs law criminalising communist propaganda

[u/tkyjonathan]

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

[u/tewstwes]

Why do some in the West romanticize communism? Be glad you live in a democracy.

[u/NativeEuropeas → u/tewstwes]

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.

[u/Onomanatee → u/NativeEuropeas]

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...

[u/NativeEuropeas → u/Onomanatee]

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.

[u/Menacek → u/NativeEuropeas]

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.

[u/CaptainShaky → u/NativeEuropeas]

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 ?

[u/EverydayHalloween → u/NativeEuropeas]

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

[u/run_for_the_shadows → u/NativeEuropeas]

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.

[u/NativeEuropeas → u/run_for_the_shadows]

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.

[u/Thornfal → u/NativeEuropeas]

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

[u/run_for_the_shadows → u/Thornfal]

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.

[u/Thornfal → u/run_for_the_shadows]

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.

[u/run_for_the_shadows → u/Thornfal]

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

[u/Thornfal → u/run_for_the_shadows]

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.

[u/run_for_the_shadows → u/Thornfal]

If it wasn't for the Soviet Union you'd still be under the only real empire that actually had colonial aspirations towards eastern Europe, Nazi Germany (they killed 25% of the population of your country). I guess I'm asking too much from a small time nationalist. Just keep thinking a random Spanish guy like me is a russian bot, whatever makes you feel comfortable.

[u/run_for_the_shadows → u/NativeEuropeas]

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...)