edit: GUYS fuck stalin and fuck tankies, period. i understand that this community is more sensitive than most to pro-stalinist vibes, and i apologize for unintentionally twinging that nerve, but you need stop calling each other (and me) slurs
good heavens, happy new year, fuck incarceration and murder in all forms
(mods pls also do your job and help with the slurs thing)
edit2: big thank u 2 da mods for helping with the slurs thing u guys rock 😎 💕
Nah instead Stalin just killed 6 million+ Russians, in Soviet Russia you don't need gulag when you have bullet.
“any and all of my country’s actions are beyond criticism because at least we didnt kill them”
An important part of critical thinking is the ability to see flaws in comparisons and arguments even when they point towards conclusions you agree with. It’s telling that you interpreted their comment the way you did.
It's telling, the way you're talking about this. Unless OP is defending Stalin, something I've not seen evidence of. It's pointing out how hypocritical most criticisms of Stalin are. The whole point of it, whether it's 100% accurate. Is to bait hypocrites out into "but Stalin" bullshit. If their gulags are wrong. Maybe we should reevaluate our own similarly troubling practices.
Don't get me wrong, despite being libertarian Marxist. I'm wildly against Lenin, Stalin, Mao, hell Engles for that matter etc. But Americans general hypocrisy make our criticism pointless and largely mute. Making you and the other person ironically, the ones likely failing at critical thinking
You are probably the first libertarian marxist I have seen. It's an idea I played around with at one point.
my response was sarcasm and an intentional fallacy in the form of an appeal to incredulity for the sake of rhetoric ❤️
if you think that counts as an interpretation thats on u bestie
My bullshit-english translator is a bit rusty, but all I'm getting out of this is "I intentionally wrote a wildly incorrect comment just for funsies" in which case fuck off
If you run it through the translator a second time, you get “lulz u got trolled”.
And if you run it through a third time, you get a recipe for an excellent strawberry pie, somehow.
you’re welcome yall 🥰🥧🍓
You kiss your sistermother with that mouth? 😛
Hey, hey. Come on, now. The United States doesn't just lock up brown people. We execute many on the spot, without provocation or probable cause. Credit where credit is due.
The US has killed dozens of times that through social murder.
I'm not saying that Stalin wasn't an autocratic dickhead, but if you're gonna compare him unfavorably to present day US, number of own citizens killed is a bad choice of metric 🤷
Are you suggesting the us gov killed at minimum 6*12 million of it's own citizens? 72 million? At the low end? You said "dozens" plural so 144million or more? Bullshit.
ACAB, injustice is alive and well, and extrajudicial killings are a serious serious issue in America, but your scales are just fantasy
Ok, so maybe not dozens, but regulatory capture and other facets of the US system of laissez-faire for the already rich and powerful coupled with brutal oppression of those already hurting the most directly kills at LEAST a million people a year, maybe double that indirectly or as a major but not sole factor. Multiply that with 29 (the length of Stalin's reign) and you get a hell of a lot more than 6.
Systemic failings are so fucking far from extrajudicial or even judicial killings.
You've ruined your decent concerns with absurd numbers.
People being failed by a system is not a political killing, gulag style. They shouldn't be compared.
Are the victims any less dead? Are the politicians that knowingly created and uphold that system any less culpable for their murder just because they were less direct?
They are when the people making the rules are aware of the consequences of their actions and choose to cause the premature and preventable death of citizens anyway. Which is the vast majority of the deaths.
Gulags were awful, yes, but only a few of them were worse than the worst present day US prisons.
You're letting red scare propaganda cloud your judgment.
Yawn.
I have serious issues with America, but I'm done comparing it to Stalin's ussr. It is simply comical to do so, especially on the topics of incarceration, rights, and killings.
You've moved the goalpost backwards and forwards multiple times, and are therefore generally without merit.
Cya
As well you should
Good idea, since you're very bad at it
When you're significantly biased by red scare propaganda exaggerations as well as the paucity of reporting on US atrocities, I can see how you'd think so. You're not right, but you're wrong in a somewhat understandable way.
I got the multiplicator wrong by mistake once and corrected it when you called me on it. Maybe don't just blatantly lie when accusing others of arguing in bad faith?
Yeah, have a good one, I guess 🤷
"ok so maybe not dozens" does not cover the magnitude of your error. 6 million alone is already unprovably high.
Yeah, because pointing out the fact that underregulated capitalism is even worse than the failed communism of the Soviet Union makes me a tankie who loves Stalin. The same Stalin who I called an autocratic dickhead on this very post 🙄
The world isn't a binary where something stops being awful once something else is even worse. That unfettered capitalism is even worse doesn't mean that the USSR wasn't a shitshow in many ways.
While it's true that "bashing Stalin" (something that I engage in myself) isn't red scare propaganda, dramatically exaggerating the many faults of the USSR while simultaneously greatly minimizing those of US capitalism very much IS.
So if you can stop foaming at the mouth over me being a communist (I'm not. I vary wildly between a European style Social Democrat and an anarchist depending on the subject matter but never ultra-authoritarian like a tankie) and take off your binary goggles for a second, you might actually learn something rather than having a hissy fit.
I deleted my earlier comment before I saw that you replied bc it was stupid and douchey and I'm sorry about that. You definitely aren't a tankie from anything I've seen, the meme just had major tankie vibes and I unfairly assumed you must have been a tankie since you were defending it. Have a good day, sorry for being weird and aggressive for no reason🌸
Apology accepted. We all lose our heads or otherwise act stupidly from time to time. Realizing it and owning up to it is how you can tell the good ones from the bad ones, so you're good in my book! You have a great day too 🫶
Famously no one died in the USSR due to social issues
Fair.
To be even more fair, though, extreme poverty and shortages of (nutritious) food are as severe if not worse in present day US and the richest 1% are hoarding much more than the party fat cats were too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_famine_of_1921%E2%80%931922
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%931933
Your comparison is straight-up deranged, I have no softer words.
Multiply how many people die of starvation or malnutrition a year by 29 (the length of Stalin's reign) and you'll see that I'm right.
Just because the two Soviet famines were faster and got more press doesn't mean they killed more people over a 29 year period than the US "food is for profits and poor people are for exploiting" politics.
I find it very, very hard to believe that there could be two catastrophic famines in the SSSR, and yet that there were no deaths or food issues outside of those two periods (there absolutely were). I only used them as examples, not as a list of all food issues in the Union, while you're implying the latter.
I take it you mean in the US? Ok, let's see.
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2023-04-13/deaths-from-malnutrition-have-more-than-doubled-in-the-u-s
Let's take the second, significantly bigger number, for the sake of the argument. If the number of malnutrition deaths is multiplied by Stalin's reign, it gets us 595k deaths. At the time, SSSR had (very roughly) half the population of current USA, so to keep the numbers proportional and meaningful to compare, we should halve the US deaths: 300k. Stalin did not actually rule during the first famine I linked, only the second one. The second famine killed at least 5.7 million people (again, taking the lower number, in favour of your position).
300k is clearly a smaller number than 5.7 mil. Since the numbers are only relative, we should judge by the ratio: the 1930-1933 famine was 19 times worse death-wise than the current food issues in the USA.
If you have some different, better numbers (though I tried to pick those that are in favour in your claim), or if I miscalculated something, let me know.
TIL Stalin was slightly worse than Biden
Forgive me for the rather mechanical, utilitarianist formulation, but do you honestly think killing 19 people is merely "slightly worse" than killing 1 person?