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We need to accept that some of these ideas ... are inherently dangerous. Maybe but somehow we don't focus on dangerous ideas. Communism is by far the most dang

by blfr 9y ago

We need to accept that some of these ideas ... are inherently dangerous. Maybe but somehow we don't focus on dangerous ideas. Communism is by far the most dangerous idea devised in the west. It infected dozens of societies and led them to a century of poverty, slavery, and hundred million deaths. Yet someone who's open about being a communist won't really be ostracised in SF. Communist flags are available on Amazon. Communist subreddits are not banned. So no, I don't buy this new wave of censorship as a defence against dangerous ideas.

papaf 9y ago
century of poverty, slavery, and hundred million deaths I am genuinely curious about where you get the figure of 100 million deaths from. I also believe that all the societes that had slaves were capitalist ones. But we can both agree that communism leads to poverty although the poorest countries in the world are failed states rather than communist: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-poorest-countries-in-the-world.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-poorest-countries-in...
- blfr 9y ago
  Black Book of Communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism
  - bjl 9y ago
    In other words, one of the least respected books in modern historical scholarship.
    - barry-cotter 9y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communis... The highest death tolls that have been documented in communist states occurred in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, in the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. The estimates of the number of non-combatants killed by these three regimes alone range from a low of 21 million to a high of 70 million.
- jhbadger 9y ago
  The death toll of communism is debatable because a lot of deaths in the Soviet Union and China were due to famine, and people can argue how much of it was due to the inefficiency of collective farming, or deliberate starving of people the government didn't like, or just bad luck. As for "all societies that had slaves were capitalist" -- it is unclear what you mean by that. Certainly the US was capitalist and had slavery, but many (indeed most) pre-capitalist societies had slavery.
- UncleEntity 9y ago
  > I also believe that all the societes that had slaves were capitalist ones. German POWs were kept as slaves until, IDK, the 80's?
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    They all came home around 1955
vidarh 9y ago
That's because most people who take more than a cursory glance sees that there are multiple different ideologies lumped under the same name there, diverse enough that the supporters of some have historically been the most brutal persecutors of supporters of others - Among the millions dead you list are huge numbers of communists that fought against the regimes you complain about, in many cases in open armed conflicts. Raise more specific ideologies, like Stalinism or Maoism or even Leninism and you will certainly meet a lot more opposition, and rightly so, because many on the left are closest ideologically to victims of the followers of those ideologies. E.g. one thing most people forget about the October "revolution" was that it wasn't a revolution at all, but a coup against the socialist provisional government - it was the Bolsheviks overthrowing the revolutionary socialist/communists and largely Marxist groups that had popular support after the elections to the constituent assembly went against them. So painting them all with one brush is not just ignorant, but offensive to the many socialists and communists who took up arms, and fought and died to try to stop those regimes. Your example is pretty much equivalent to complaining about capitalism because various governments allowing some variation of private ownership of capital have committed atrocities.
- barry-cotter 9y ago
  > That's because most people who take more than a cursory glance sees that there are multiple different ideologies lumped under the same name there, diverse enough that the supporters of some have historically been the most brutal persecutors of supporters of others This argument would be more credible if the least awful Communist regime wasn’t a toss up between Cuba and Yugoslavia. Every single attempt at actual communism has gone so terribly that any rational person would flee a country that was about to turn communist with the clothes on their back.
  - vidarh 9y ago
    This is a ludicrous argument. You're free to argue that actual Marxist socialism is somehow impossible, given that it has not been demonstrated other than at a small scale. That's a matter of opinion. But the failure of these regimes does not change the fact that they were so far ideologically divorced from Marxist socialism and communism that most of them have met armed resistance from socialists and communists. And does not change the fact that the name has been used by groups with diametrically opposed world views. The point was not to argue whether or not socialism is possible or viable in any particular form, but to point out why communism gets treated differently from nazism: There are only totalitarian nazis, while among people who call themselves communists you find people ranging from totalitarian via supporters of parliamentary democracy, to anarchists, and within those groups the former have throughout the last century been among the ones who have murdered most of the latter. E.g. during the Spanish Civil War, Stalins Comintern agents were more successful at murdering high-ranking anti-Stalinist communist leaders than Franco's fascists was. Anti-Stalinist socialists and communists are as opposed, or more so, to the type of regimes you talk about as they are to the nazis or facists I've personally faced Stalinists who believed I belonged in labour camps because my views on socialism includes a firm belief in democracy, and I've personally made it clear to very same people that if they were to ever gain power, I'll take up arms against them same as I would against fascism or nazism.
UncleEntity 9y ago
> Yet someone who's open about being a communist won't really be ostracised in SF. Communist flags are available on Amazon. Communist subreddits are not banned. So no, I don't buy this new wave of censorship as a defence against dangerous ideas. Try flying a rebel flag off your SF apartment balcony. Or even something not as inciteful like saying you support the current sitting president.
dang 9y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15924284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15924284 and marked it off-topic.
gdudeman 9y ago
I'd like to challenge this. If you go into a startup and say "I'm a communist," many of them are going to be pretty skeptical of your ideas. You will find yourself in a lot of awkward conversations if you make this a thing you want to talk about. If you pitch a VC and throw in "btw, I'm a communist," or they find your online writings about being a communist, you aren't getting a check. If you apply for upper management at Google and you say "I want to overthrow capitalism because I'm a communist," you're going to have a really, really hard time. I don't think it's arguable that communists are actively operating in America and causing capitalists to have longer jail sentences or killing them when they wouldn't kill communists. So, no, I don't think communism is a threat whereas anti-semitism and racism are immediate threats. I don't think that we need to jail all people who are racist, but I think it's just fine to not talk to them or to yell at them or even to fire if they feel the need to express their beliefs in a way that gets in my business or stops me or my team from doing our work.
- vidarh 9y ago
  > If you pitch a VC and throw in "btw, I'm a communist," or they find your online writings about being a communist, you aren't getting a check. A friend of mine has had half a dozen startups funded in the Bay Area, and most of the books on show in his living room is Marx, Engels and Trotsky. He now runs a VC fund. One of the first things he told me when I met him was that he used to be a member of a communist party. If you make a big deal of it in contexts where it would seem weird, like as part of a pitch, then yeah, because it'll make them question why. But the Bay Area is quite more tolerant of left wing views than the rest of the US. That's not to say it will not affect you - said VC above did tell me he once lost a job over it, but the one time he knows of it was an "outsider" not someone from the Bay Area that prevented him from getting hired.

by blfr 9y ago

papaf 9y ago

century of poverty, slavery, and hundred million deaths I am genuinely curious about where you get the figure of 100 million deaths from. I also believe that all the societes that had slaves were capitalist ones. But we can both agree that communism leads to poverty although the poorest countries in the world are failed states rather than communist: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-poorest-countries-in-the-world.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-poorest-countries-in...

blfr 9y ago
Black Book of Communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism
- bjl 9y ago
  In other words, one of the least respected books in modern historical scholarship.
  - barry-cotter 9y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communis... The highest death tolls that have been documented in communist states occurred in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, in the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. The estimates of the number of non-combatants killed by these three regimes alone range from a low of 21 million to a high of 70 million.
jhbadger 9y ago
The death toll of communism is debatable because a lot of deaths in the Soviet Union and China were due to famine, and people can argue how much of it was due to the inefficiency of collective farming, or deliberate starving of people the government didn't like, or just bad luck. As for "all societies that had slaves were capitalist" -- it is unclear what you mean by that. Certainly the US was capitalist and had slavery, but many (indeed most) pre-capitalist societies had slavery.
UncleEntity 9y ago
> I also believe that all the societes that had slaves were capitalist ones. German POWs were kept as slaves until, IDK, the 80's?
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  They all came home around 1955

vidarh 9y ago

That's because most people who take more than a cursory glance sees that there are multiple different ideologies lumped under the same name there, diverse enough that the supporters of some have historically been the most brutal persecutors of supporters of others - Among the millions dead you list are huge numbers of communists that fought against the regimes you complain about, in many cases in open armed conflicts. Raise more specific ideologies, like Stalinism or Maoism or even Leninism and you will certainly meet a lot more opposition, and rightly so, because many on the left are closest ideologically to victims of the followers of those ideologies. E.g. one thing most people forget about the October "revolution" was that it wasn't a revolution at all, but a coup against the socialist provisional government - it was the Bolsheviks overthrowing the revolutionary socialist/communists and largely Marxist groups that had popular support after the elections to the constituent assembly went against them. So painting them all with one brush is not just ignorant, but offensive to the many socialists and communists who took up arms, and fought and died to try to stop those regimes. Your example is pretty much equivalent to complaining about capitalism because various governments allowing some variation of private ownership of capital have committed atrocities.

barry-cotter 9y ago
> That's because most people who take more than a cursory glance sees that there are multiple different ideologies lumped under the same name there, diverse enough that the supporters of some have historically been the most brutal persecutors of supporters of others This argument would be more credible if the least awful Communist regime wasn’t a toss up between Cuba and Yugoslavia. Every single attempt at actual communism has gone so terribly that any rational person would flee a country that was about to turn communist with the clothes on their back.
- vidarh 9y ago
  This is a ludicrous argument. You're free to argue that actual Marxist socialism is somehow impossible, given that it has not been demonstrated other than at a small scale. That's a matter of opinion. But the failure of these regimes does not change the fact that they were so far ideologically divorced from Marxist socialism and communism that most of them have met armed resistance from socialists and communists. And does not change the fact that the name has been used by groups with diametrically opposed world views. The point was not to argue whether or not socialism is possible or viable in any particular form, but to point out why communism gets treated differently from nazism: There are only totalitarian nazis, while among people who call themselves communists you find people ranging from totalitarian via supporters of parliamentary democracy, to anarchists, and within those groups the former have throughout the last century been among the ones who have murdered most of the latter. E.g. during the Spanish Civil War, Stalins Comintern agents were more successful at murdering high-ranking anti-Stalinist communist leaders than Franco's fascists was. Anti-Stalinist socialists and communists are as opposed, or more so, to the type of regimes you talk about as they are to the nazis or facists I've personally faced Stalinists who believed I belonged in labour camps because my views on socialism includes a firm belief in democracy, and I've personally made it clear to very same people that if they were to ever gain power, I'll take up arms against them same as I would against fascism or nazism.

UncleEntity 9y ago

> Yet someone who's open about being a communist won't really be ostracised in SF. Communist flags are available on Amazon. Communist subreddits are not banned. So no, I don't buy this new wave of censorship as a defence against dangerous ideas. Try flying a rebel flag off your SF apartment balcony. Or even something not as inciteful like saying you support the current sitting president.

dang 9y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15924284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15924284 and marked it off-topic.

gdudeman 9y ago

I'd like to challenge this. If you go into a startup and say "I'm a communist," many of them are going to be pretty skeptical of your ideas. You will find yourself in a lot of awkward conversations if you make this a thing you want to talk about. If you pitch a VC and throw in "btw, I'm a communist," or they find your online writings about being a communist, you aren't getting a check. If you apply for upper management at Google and you say "I want to overthrow capitalism because I'm a communist," you're going to have a really, really hard time. I don't think it's arguable that communists are actively operating in America and causing capitalists to have longer jail sentences or killing them when they wouldn't kill communists. So, no, I don't think communism is a threat whereas anti-semitism and racism are immediate threats. I don't think that we need to jail all people who are racist, but I think it's just fine to not talk to them or to yell at them or even to fire if they feel the need to express their beliefs in a way that gets in my business or stops me or my team from doing our work.

vidarh 9y ago
> If you pitch a VC and throw in "btw, I'm a communist," or they find your online writings about being a communist, you aren't getting a check. A friend of mine has had half a dozen startups funded in the Bay Area, and most of the books on show in his living room is Marx, Engels and Trotsky. He now runs a VC fund. One of the first things he told me when I met him was that he used to be a member of a communist party. If you make a big deal of it in contexts where it would seem weird, like as part of a pitch, then yeah, because it'll make them question why. But the Bay Area is quite more tolerant of left wing views than the rest of the US. That's not to say it will not affect you - said VC above did tell me he once lost a job over it, but the one time he knows of it was an "outsider" not someone from the Bay Area that prevented him from getting hired.