QuoVadisHomines comments on Kapitalism

[–] QuoVadisHomines@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 year ago (14 children)

My former boss was in a gulag for most of his teens. He was not paid and to this day he has no idea what crime he was convicted of. He just knows he served time and was targeted by guards because he was Jewish and the Soviets were very bigoted.

Maybe take a second to ask yourself what your real life experience is with the USSR.

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[–] AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com -3 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Surely people going to jail for the wrong reason is something exclusive to the Soviet Union and not to all countries with a legal system? Like, damn, I feel sorry for your boss, but in dire circumstances such as those of the late 30s / early 40s in the USSR, excesses and abuses were sadly made because of the overwhelming conditions.

Your boss may have spent his teens in a gulag, but the fact that he lived to tell you that is because the Soviets managed to miraculously defeat the Nazis and prevent them from genociding the Slavic peoples they categorised as "Untermenschen" according to the infamous "Generalplan Ost", which implied genocide of almost all people between Germany and the Urals. If it wasn't for the Soviets, your former boss would have been murdered in a concentration camp by the nazis.

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[–] QuoVadisHomines@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Surely people going to jail for the wrong reason is something exclusive to the Soviet Union and not to all countries with a legal system?

It isn't common for people to be sent to slave camps as a punishment for years without knowing why they were charged. That’sthe kind of evil unique to totalitarian shitholes like the USSR.

Your boss may have spent his teens in a gulag, but the fact that he lived to tell you that is because the Soviets managed to miraculously defeat the Nazis and prevent them from genociding the Slavic peoples they categorised as “Untermenschen” according to the infamous “Generalplan Ost”, which implied genocide of almost all people between Germany and the Urals. If it wasn’t for the Soviets, your former boss would have been murdered in a concentration camp by the nazis.

The same nation you are praising put him IN a concentration camp for no fucking reason other than potentially because of his race.

Like, damn, I feel sorry for your boss, but in dire circumstances such as those of the late 30s / early 40s in the USSR, excesses and abuses were sadly made because of the overwhelming conditions.

No, you don’t. You wouldn’t be supporting their evil actions in this case if you had any empathy.

You are making a lot of apologies for overt racism, why are you doing this and why do you think the USSR’s racism should be praised?

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[–] AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com 0 points 1 year ago (5 children)

It isn't common for people to be sent to slave camps as a punishment for years without knowing why they were charged

Ever heard of Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo?

That’sthe kind of evil unique to totalitarian shitholes like the USSR.

The Gulag episode lasted less than two decades, by the mid-50s it was a thing of the past and never resurfaced in the country. Almost as if it was a mass hysteria response to Nazi infiltration, and not born out of a desire to oppress people inherently. Again, at the peak of the Gulag system, the prison population was similar to that of modern USA. Much more authoritarian if you ask me

The same nation you are praising

Yes, I'm praising this nation because even if it did mistakes, by industrialising eastern Europe and by eliminating Nazis it saved hundreds of millions of lives.

You wouldn’t be supporting their evil actions in this case if you had any empathy

I'm not supporting the excesses of the Gulag repression, it's something that we can and should criticise. I'm supporting the rest of things of the country, which led to the saving of hundreds of millions of people from hunger, disease and Nazi genocide. The Gulag repression seems horrible until you realize the Nazis murdered 27 million Soviets at that time. It was an extreme measure carried out in extreme times.

You are making a lot of apologies for overt racism

I'm not. If he was jailed for his race that's wrong. You're just making too much criticism of the country thst saved Europe from fascism and which saved hundreds of millions of lives in the process.

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[–] QuoVadisHomines@sh.itjust.works 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

I am not talking about WWII at all because it is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. WWII was over for years by the time he was imprisoned for no apparent reason without a trial he attended.

You are bringing up WWII because there is no moral ground for you to support and justify the USSR’s evil actions otherwise so you keep hamming your irrelevant claim because otherwise you’ll have to accept the USSR wasn’t a good moral nation bit was really quite racist, evil and oppressive (all of which are true).

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[–] AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I am not talking about WWII at all because it is irrelevant to the discussion at hand

I brought up WWII because the peak of the Gulag system was starting on 1936, and by Stalin's death in the mid-1950s it had essentially disappeared, it was a system implemented during a time of extreme necessity due to dekulakization, maintained during WW2 and the Nazi hysteria of the late 1930s after the assassination of Kirov, and dismantled after Nazism had been eliminated from Europe.

really quite racist

The USSR was patently the least racist nation in Europe. While in my homeland of Spain education in Basque and Catalan was forbidden, the Soviet Union for the first time in history guaranteed the citizens of all the republics an education in the official language of their choice, leading for the first time to universal education in Ukrainian, Kazakh, Belarusian, or even minor languages such as Mari for those who spoke it and desired to be educated in such languages. In France, up to 1993, there were no public schools teaching children in Occitan language, and even now I don't think there's even one. Fuck, the "Union of Socialist Soviet Republics" doesn't even have a toponym or an ethnicity in its name, how many countries can claim the same?!

evil and oppressive

Look. I'm a Spaniard. In 1936, we had a fascist coup which resulted in a civil war between fascists and anti-fascists. The policy of the western world was to do nothing and to leave the war to itself while the Nazis and the Italian Fascists bombed the fuck out of my country's partisans (ever heard of Picasso's Gernika?). The only nation in the planet to help the antifascist struggle was the Soviet Union, which is the only source of Spanish antifascists of weapons, planes, tanks and military training against the fascists. It's crazy to tell me that the only nation that helped the fight against fascism in my homeland was "evil and oppressive". Your grandpa, a Jewish man, would have been murdered if it weren't for the Soviets. The very fact that you're here is because of the 27 million lives that the Soviet Union sacrificed in order to save Europe from Nazism.

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[–] QuoVadisHomines@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It’s crazy to tell me that the only nation that helped the fight against fascism in my homeland was “evil and oppressive”

No, it is entirely accurate. They did some good and a LOT of evil. Totalitarian states tend to be evil. They were no exception.

Your grandpa, a Jewish man, would have been murdered if it weren’t for the Soviets.

No my FORMER BOSS was in a gulag again without a trial which you seem to be avoiding discussion of.

My grandfathers fought the Nazis in Europe and Japanese in the Pacific. A great uncle fought in Spain and in Germany against fascists both times. MY ancestral history empowers me to fight the evils of totalitarianism, why doesn’t yours?

The very fact that you’re here is because of the 27 million lives that the Soviet Union sacrificed in order to save Europe from Nazism.

Obviously this is not true at all.

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[–] AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

Sorry, mixed up grandpa and boss, hence the "the fact that you're here". The fact that you could have that conversation with your boss is because the Soviets gave everything to save him.

My grandfathers fought the Nazis in Europe and Japanese in the Pacific. A great uncle fought in Spain and in Germany against fascists both times

So all your family fought on the side of socialism against fascism and now you spit on their tomb by saying "socialism is just as bad"?

The Soviet Union was the most advanced and humane state of its time. Western Europe was murdering tens of millions through imperialism in the global south, the US had literal Jim Crow era laws against black people and was killing tens of millions through imperialism in Central/South America. If it weren't for the fucking Bolsheviks, the entirety of Eastern Europe would have been genocided by Nazis and the few remaining people colonised, never to industrialise. The Soviet Union was the first country to guarantee truly universal healthcare, education and pensions, and only then did Europe have to follow through for fear of revolution. Highest unionisation rates in the world, abolished houselessness and unemployment. It certainly had flaws, but it's literally the best it had to offer. For every Stalinist repression victim you quickly go dig up, I'll show you ten Africans murdered by French/Belgians, or a hundred Indians murdered by British.

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[–] QuoVadisHomines@sh.itjust.works 1 point 1 year ago*

So all your family fought on the side of socialism against fascism and now you spit on their tomb by saying “socialism is just as bad”?

My family fought against totalitarian systems not “for socialism”. The USSR wasn’t socialist and it never planned on becoming that after the communists lost the first election.

My family fought fascists and authoritarians. You back authoritarians who oppress the people. Do you see the difference?

Why do you think your whataboutism will work this time?

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[+] umbrella@lemmy.ml -3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

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[–] QuoVadisHomines@sh.itjust.works -1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

No one is in a US prison who has not had the opportunity to be present at their trial or know why they are charged.

The nation I am talking about ceased to exist decades ago so whatever “your country” is it isn’t the USSR which is what we are talking about.

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[+] umbrella@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

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[–] QuoVadisHomines@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Not according to people I know who experienced both. In the USA you know your charges and you might not be enslaved.

The USSR was evil and racist. It’s one of the reasons why they failed.

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[+] umbrella@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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[–] QuoVadisHomines@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

hence the “might not get enslaved”. You might not get enslaved in the US system. The USSR was enslaving all in the gulags.

As you have repeatedly backed the evils of an authoritarian racist system are you in a place to judge anyone morally?

Please change, we don’t need more people defending racism.

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[+] umbrella@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

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[–] QuoVadisHomines@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago

so thats a big change of tone here.

No it's what was said in a previous post. Your lack of reading comprehension in this case is worth noting in light of what follows which is incorrect and inane.

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[–] ping@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

My former boss was in a gulag for most of his teens. He was not paid and to this day he has no idea what crime he was convicted of.

Maybe your former boss was bullshitting you. Maybe he knew precisely why he was in prison, but didn’t want to admit his crimes to his employees. It’s pretty common for ex-cons to falsely claim innocence.

He just knows he served time and was targeted by guards because he was Jewish and the Soviets were very bigoted.

There were many prominent Jews in the Bolshevik revolution, and Jews continued to be active members of the Communist Party, in soviets, and in the Politburo.

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[–] QuoVadisHomines@sh.itjust.works 1 point 1 year ago

My degree is in the downfall if the USSR. I have spent a lot of time reading accounts of prisoners. Many never knew because they were not present at their trial.

He has the numbers tattooed on his arm. I know people who knew him in Belarus that I knew separate of him who talked about it.

There were prominent Jews in the politburo. There was also a fuckload of antisemitism as anyone who lived in the USSR could tell you. The USSR was just as racist as every other European nation.