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dismissed from a high-visibility job: agree supported by the median American in 1950's (or at least 30% of Americans): not a chance
by souprock 6y ago
dismissed from a high-visibility job: agree
supported by the median American in 1950's (or at least 30% of Americans): not a chance
- sudosysgen 6y agoAh but you see, you didn't actually have to be a communist, you just had to close enough to one. For example, Eugene Debs despite getting more electoral support than the Libertarian party ever did, was branded as a communist, and also made a political prisoner.
- yanderekko 6y agoIf your response to being challenged about the 1950s political climate is to raise a story about someone who died before 1930, then that says a lot...
- sudosysgen 6y agoIt got even worse after 1950, it's just that at that point all socialist were already atomized.
- yanderekko 6y agoBut afaik it's simply not the case that 30% of the population was sympathetic to socialism in the 1950s. Maybe if you really tortured the term "socialism", but come on.
- sudosysgen 6y ago30% is an arbitrary number, but even at the time where more people in the US were sympathetic to socialism and were ever sympathetic to modern libertarianism, it was violently suppressed by the state, much less "canceled". As far as how many people were sympathetic to socialism at that point, 15-20% isn't a bad estimate. But if you want something closer to 30% in the 1950s, how about just being black?
- blaser-waffle 6y agoEugene Debs was an out and out socialist, who led the most violent strike in US history. You can make an argument that he didn't make it violent -- that was the Pinkertons -- but he didn't get tossed in jail because he ran an opposition party a la Navalny. He's not the boogyman that some would make him out to be, but he didn't pull punches, either. Got 3% of the US vote behind bars, too.
- sudosysgen 6y agoHe actually went to jail twice. The first time was for screening an anti-war movie.