7 ms·
Czech president signs law criminalising communist propaganda
- decremental 1y ago[dead]
- ngcazz 1y agoFirst they came for the communists.
- alephnerd 1y agoFirst the ŠtB came for Masaryk... (And Fascists+Nazis are banned as well in Czechia today, so the precedent exists)
- ashoeafoot 1y agoFirst the fascists and the communists came to do common conquest, so first they came for the weaker nations .. There was a whole akward year where all the comintern was ordered to praise and love hitler. True love to the idea is when you share poland over a dinner date.
- lostmsu 1y ago> common conquest As opposed to the British Empire and, essentially, everyone else who could?
- jesterson 1y agoYou must have forgotten whp have eventually conquered Hitler. Hint: it is not "allied forces", which are keen to claim so more and more in recent years.
- somedude895 1y agoThe Soviets would have gone under without lend-lease from capitalist US. They've paid much more in blood for which they deserve all the respect in the world, but defeating the Nazis was a joint effort. It's really strange how some revisionists in the West want so desperately to minimise their own part in defeating evil.
- jesterson 1y ago> The Soviets would have gone under without lend-lease from capitalist US That story has been heard many times. The reality is - we would never know that, so we can speculate as much as we would like.
- _mlbt 1y agoIt was a joint effort. Most serious World War II historians acknowledge that there were many important efforts among all of the Allies and the underground resistance in occupied nations. The siege of Stalingrad was crucial to the downfall of the Third Reich, but so was Normandy, the North Africa campaign, and the invasion of Italy. Opening up a second front pushed the Wehrmacht too thin, ensuring Allied victory. It is entirely possible that the Soviets would have ultimately defeated Hitler, but the actions by the Western Allies hastened Nazi Germany’s demise.
- jesterson 1y agoAgain it's a pure speculation. If I give you $100 and you conquer a villain while losing all your family while I will spend the time in restaurant. Can I say I actually conquered the villain? Sure, if I want to think i did. Thats how "allied forces" behave. The history is being rewritten all the times and "serious historians" are nothing but grifters on the runway.
- hollerith 1y agoEarlier you wrote, <<You must have forgotten whp have eventually conquered Hitler. Hint: it is not "allied forces">>. Well which is it: the Soviets conquered Hitler or we would never know who conquered Hitler?
- wyattblue 1y agoBoth should be banned, or neither should be banned
- peter-m80 1y ago[flagged]
- xigoi 1y agoPlease read something about the history of communism in Czechia.
- baal80spam 1y agoOr anywhere, for that matter.
- spwa4 1y agoCommunism just turns an entire country into a single company that is the police as well and therefore that company doesn't even have a choice: it must use violence against its workers, just for public order. And, by definition, a lot of people can do better for themselves under communism and must be prevented from doing so ... That's the source of one criticism of communism: that communism effectively replaces money with violence. And what always goes wrong is that some psychopath realizes that a single central decision point that enforces it's decisions through violence ... yummy. People in Eastern Germany lived this, involuntarily: difference between fascism and communism ... there is no practical difference. Central undemocratic all-encompassing decision making enforced through violence is oppression, and of course, you cannot have democratic socialism. In theory it's obvious, and in practice, Israel tried that and they voted to end socialism as soon as it was realistic, even though a LOT of institutions in Israel are still communist, they are far less capitalist than China is.
- CrackerNews 1y agoThe state exists in the first place because it has a monopoly on violence. Doesn't matter whether it is democratic republic, fascist, or Marxist-Leninist. For MLs, violence is wielded on behalf of a state capitalism that constitutes itself of local governments based on local workplaces. Money historically is a substitute for a form of violence through blood debts. The USSR believed money could be replaced with restricted labor vouchers to get rid of profit incentives and better direct economic flow more efficiently. However, this central planning approach failed to integrate itself in the rapidly growing pace of global trade, leading the Soviet bloc to be outpaced by the first world. The example of democratic socialism or Israel has a nuance because state capitalism by nature cannot extract profits and surplus value as well as private enterprises, but they must exist alongside them and compete instead of existing in a wholly separate economy like the Soviet bloc did.
- southernplaces7 1y agoOh the irony of this.... I detest communism and the sheer idiocy of so many of its tenets, as well as the particularly dogmatic (and fortunately archaic) rigidity of those who vomit them out. But no, you don't weaken an insidious ideology by banning its ideas.
- OfficeChad 1y ago[dead]
- krapp 1y agoHow do you weaken an insidious ideology? Letting insidious ideologies flourish and debating them in the marketplace of ideas doesn't work. So how do you do it?
- rightbyte 1y agoMy feeling is that it in fact does work. Most ideological death marches I have witnessed in my party have also been accompanied by lack of debate due to unilateral threats of de juro or de facto expulsion by some sort of manufactured consent that seems to come from nowhere.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dinfinity 1y agoExactly. Broken ideologies and populism break down very fast in the face of proper debate, but that debate needs to be had and broadcasted very very loudly and broadly; Otherwise it is drowned out by the unchallenged propaganda.
- southernplaces7 1y ago>Letting insidious ideologies flourish and debating them in the marketplace of ideas doesn't work. Aside from defending free expression as a matter of principal, yes it actually does work over time. Except during a brief, half-baked spell of McCarthyist schizophrenia in the 50s, the United States, during the whole course of its massive cold war with the USSR, never saw fit to ban support for communism, the publication of communist literature, open talk in support of communism, or even the existence of an actual communist party inside its borders (thanks 1st amendment). Despite this, said ideology simply having to compete in the marketplace of ideas and practical reality, slowly turned into more of a running joke than any real threat in any meaningful sense to U.S society. Bear in mind the obvious too: once you create the legal right to legally repress insidious ideas, it's a very small leap for successive administrations to also start banning "insidious" ideas, meaning anything they happen to not like out of some self-serving convenience. In the west, there has been, since 2016 in particular, an intermittent fever of force-fed fears about the so-called dangers of misinformation, one promoted by media and politicians both, only for that very same idea to be used by one robust list of real authoritarians specifically to crush disagreement with their particular variants of nonsense, mendacity and propaganda.
- lostmsu 1y agoThe way I read it is this law criminalizes discussing prohibition of ownership of production tools.
- stubish 1y agoNo. it pretty specifically prohibits the establishment, support or promotion of particular movements. It does not mention discussion, or even discussion of specific ideas that happen to be part of a prohibited movements ideology. You can say 'ownership of production tools should be prohibited', but you can't say 'and that is why Communism is great'. You probably shouldn't rate Das Kapital more than 3 stars, just to be sure.
- lostmsu 1y agoThe idea of my comment was that Communism is (as in the definition) a prohibition of ownership of production tools and nothing else. Every other bit of baggage it is associated with these days is as orthogonal to it as color is orthogonal to height.
- baal80spam 1y agoCommunists killed more people than the Nazis did so it makes sense.
- krapp 1y agoI mean, if we're going by body count alone then religion easily outpaces communism and Nazism.
- rabid-zubat 1y agoI doubt it. Even if you sum up all Jihads, Crusades, some honor killing bullshit then it would probably still be less than both commies and nazis. Earth not so long ago was a pretty empty place. I guess more people died from plagues than religion itself.
- krapp 1y agoWe're not comparing the sum total of all possible means by which humans can die, we're comparing ideologies committing willful murder, and more abstractly, theism versus atheism. Religion has been killing people for thousands of years, whereas Nazism and Communism haven't even existed for centuries. There is no rational calculus by which one can justify banning Nazi and Communist ideology because of their death tolls and extremism and not also ban the practice of every major religion.
- ted_bunny 1y agoThis trope is a great timesaver that immediately identifies someone as confidently ignorant and not worth engaging.
- benterix 1y agoThe "what killed most people" in general is meaningless as you can manipulate it in a way to support any statement. And yet, there is some truth in ascribing a lot of violent deaths to communist circumstances, at least in the last two centuries. The fact that, as opposed to Nazism, in Communism killing others was never a direct aim, in practice human life somehow lost much of its value and people were dying in various ways, both individually in prisons etc., as well as en masse like in Holodomor.
- rixed 1y ago> The revised legislation introduces prison sentences of up to five years for anyone who “establishes, supports or promotes Nazi, communist, or other movements which demonstrably aim to suppress human rights and freedoms or incite racial, ethnic, national, religious or class-based hatred.” Why is it necessary to name some vague adversary? Why is it not enough to punish the promotion of authoritarianism and all forms of hatred?
- rgavuliak 1y agoBecause Czechia has lived through communism so its propaganda is aimed at a concrete period in history, same with nazism. Also - law needs to be concrete enough to be enforceable.
- antonymoose 1y agoIs that what the “or other movements” clause does? In any case, I don’t see the harm in naming and shaming the historical worst of the worst?
- CrackerNews 1y agoBanning the promotion of authoriarisnism and all forms of hatred is vague and could blowback onto the original writers of this legislation.