Russian ties, if present, are indeed dangerous. Laying unsupported claims to “russian connection” is just as bad as any other libel or damaging unsupported claim. Should we spend time eradicating russian influence - absolutely. How do we do it without turning it into a witch hunt? I don’t know how.
I do agree that red scare rhetoric is increasing but buy in large it’s directed at China and Xi. Anti-communist tropes do show up in popular discourse on Russia but in my experience it’s less so in discussions on influence campaigns but in talk of Russia’s territorial ambitions (understandable considering the place of Soviet symbolism in Russian nationalism and war propaganda).
Russians are not ethnically communist
Russians are not ethnically communist
Nor are they actually communist, despite claims they might have made to operating under that ideology.
Russia is fascist authoritarianism.
My opinion is that no government was truly communist for long as it depends too much on people’s altruism, of which there is little. Any government that claims to be communist isn’t.
Communism will always be an unstable political system, it always decays into some sort of corrupt authoritarianism due to humans’ self-serving nature.
I think that conflating concern about Putin’s influence with McCarthyism is a bit of a stretch.
It honestly reads like the author dismisses the potential of foreign influence affecting both domestic actors and politics outright without proof. There’s ample evidence that Russian state-affiliated actors have worked with social media influencers to foment outrage, for example. That’s not a “new red scare”, that’s straight up proof of intelligence operations designed to undermine Russia’s geopolitical opponents.
Yeah but the if you like Russia doing this, would not you shill ‘red scare’ too?
Is there any truth to the allegations? Beats me, but seeing the possibility dismissed as as a preposterous notion that can only be part of a “New Red Scare” does not decrease my estimation of the chances of it.
Man I wish North Americans were as scared of fascism and genocide as they are communism.
All the people with ties to Russia are fascists in this case.
All forms of extremism are bad.
“All forms of extremism are bad.” Is itself an extreme statement.
Cool. Now, let’s start getting into whether communism is “extremism” or not, rather than just begging the question.
Any talk of communism is a “red” herring when it comes to this topic. Russia isn’t in any way officially, notionally, or superficially communist.
People still be calling Russia communist even though the Soviet Union famously fell under Boris Yeltsin
… and people calling themselves communist still leaping to its defence, for some inexplicable reason.
Yeah I don’t get that one either.
Maybe they lie…?
It’s more the idea that a lot of communists have that “anything that challenges American global hegemony = automatically good.”
I didn’t realize that was even open for debate…
That’s because western propaganda has destroyed your ability to learn or think critically about anything left of capitalism. It’s not really your fault, it’s trillions spent on creating that mentality.
No, it’s because communism is an extremist ideology. You literally can’t go farther left on the political spectrum than communism. That is the very definition of extremism.
By the way, capitalism is not a political ideology. It’s an economic one. I am a capitalist, but a centrist Libertarian one. I used to consider myself left of center, but the insanity of the left since Oct 7, 2023, has caused me to shift right of center.
“Economics” aren’t political?
This comment demonstrates what the parent comment said.
Capitalism is indefensible from a libertarian perspective. A central libertarian tenet is that legal and de facto responsibility should match. However, the capitalist employer-employee contract inherently involves a violation of this tenet. The employer gets 100% of the legal responsibility for the positive and negative results of the enterprise. Despite workers’ joint de facto responsibility for using up inputs to produce outputs, workers as employees get 0%
It’s been a long time since I’ve read any of this stuff - do you have a reference for the claim about legal and de facto responsibility?
That being said, I would argue that they are not incompatible but rather that capitalism acts as a constraint on liberty. That being said, it is the economic system in which liberty is maximized relative to any other system. No doubt that’s why it has persisted.
Using the left and right spectrum is idiotic and not indicative of how extreme an ideology is. It’s like… 6th grade understanding of the nuances and philosophy of political, economic, and social issues and was created to make capitalism seem like a reasonable centrist position.
Actually, it sounds more like you’re dismissing a standard political spectrum model to make communism sound less extreme than it is. Would you feel better if I used the word ‘radical’ rather than ‘extreme’?
You literally can’t go farther left on the political spectrum than communism.
By the way, capitalism is not a political ideology.
You contradict yourself.
By your own logic, if capitalism isn’t a political ideology then neither is communism.
The fact that you wrote these in the same comment lets everyone know that either you are ignorant, or you are extremely misinformed on the subject at hand.
Communism is inherently a political/economic ideology. Capitalism is primarily an economic ideology with political implications.
Oh false equivalency, I wondered if you’d rear your stupid head here.
How is that a false equivalency?
I mean, this is blatantly obvious, but you’re probably American or some other western propaganda laden countries citizen, so I’ll let it slide. To compre Communism to Fascism is like comparing apples to some fruit that’s entire ideology is based on corporate slavery and racial inequality. You understand how apples have nothing to do with that and are not similar in any way. So to compare the two as if they are the same is a false equivalency.
The underlying ideologies are different, but I suspect the common feature the commenter was referring to is the practical tendency of both fascism and communism to develop into a totalitarian state.
And capitalism hasn’t?
Capitalism certainly has flaws, but if you think the “oppression” in the US or western Europe is in any way comparable to that under the major fascist and communist regimes of Stalin, Mao or Hitler, I’m not sure what to say. We are from different planets.
