Under McCarthy? Being investigated by the HUA committee in that fascist witch hunt was absolutely a compliment. McCarthy and Hoover investigated anyone for communism who said things like âMaybe we should treat Black people like everyone else!â and âWorker safety is a right employers owe their employeesâ and âGee, isnât it fucked up that the cops are investigating my friends for communism when theyâre cops are the ones wearing white sheets to burn crosses and commit extrajudicial murders of innocent people?â
âInvestigated for communism just meant âStood up for civil rights and wouldnât look the other way when they killed people.â Badge of pride, yâall.
Iâm well aware of the post-war Red Scare in the US, but there is a pretty significant difference between being a suspected communist then and being one now, which is why I donât think being a suspected communist is inherently a good thing. I must admit, though, that the context is rather important.
If youâre called a communist by someone from the surprisingly large part of Americaâs population that doesnât know the difference between communism, socialism, democratic socialism, social democracy, etc., then it is definitely a compliment. But the discussion was about being called a communist âalwaysâ being a compliment, not just about being called one in the US by people who use âcommunistâ as a label for basically anything to the left of themselves. There are plenty of historical and contemporary contexts where being suspected of actually supporting communism is neither admirable nor something I would consider a compliment and I would argue that it isnât a compliment in a majority of circumstances.
Communists are allowed to believe that calling someone a communist is always a compliment. I donât agree with that. You donât agree with that. But the person who commented does. And it would be weird if a communist didnât.
Youâre conflating authoritarianism, autocracy, dictatorship, and lots of other -isms and -ships and -cies and even individual political parties across the world with the principals of communism in Marxâs writing. Being an autocrat is wrong. Being a dictator is wrong. Denying human rights is wrong. Gulags are wrong. But thereâs nothing inherent in Marxâs writing that support those methods of governing.
Iâm not communist, and donât agree with communism. But I can still recognize the difference between Marxâs communist principles the autocracy, dictatorship, lack of due process, corruption, and human rights abuses that distinguished Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, and other regimes.
One of my Chinese professors said it always flummoxed her that the West paints all communism as evil because of corruption layered on top of it by different political parties, systems, and leaders. But we insist our capitalist-with-smudge-of-socialism forms of government are democratic and fair despite most of our Western forms democracy under capitalism also having corruption, lack of due process, authoritarianism, and human rights abuses. Modern capitalism violates and deviate from Locke and Rousseauâs definitions of democracy just as much as major communist governments have deviated from Marx.
Communism has been used by autocrats and fascists to create monstrous regimes and thereâs no mitigating that. But so has capitalism. And thereâs a lot of broad brush strokes painted on both sides. And a lot of trying to remove the mote in our communist neighborsâ eyes while ignoring the beam in our own.
Youâre making a distinction that I never denied. Marx did not write a blueprint for Stalinâs gulags, Maoâs Great Leap Forward or Pol Potâs killing fields, and communism as a political philosophy obviously isnât synonymous with every atrocity committed by a government calling itself communist. But youâre going much further than that by essentially separating communist ideology from virtually every major attempt to implement it. When attempts to establish communist systems repeatedly produce one-party states, political repression, collectivization and enormous concentrations of economic and political power, you canât simply dismiss the pattern as âcorruption layered on topâ and retreat to Marxâs writings every time reality becomes inconvenient.
And comparing that record to modern liberal capitalist democracies creates a false equivalence. Liberal democracies have absolutely committed atrocities, violated human rights and suffered from corruption and authoritarian tendencies. But Denmark, Norway, Germany, Canada or modern Britain are not remotely comparable to Stalinâs USSR, Maoist China or Pol Potâs Cambodia. Maoâs Great Leap Forward contributed to a famine that killed tens of millions of people while the state suppressed information and continued disastrous policies. Pol Potâs communist regime killed roughly a quarter of Cambodiaâs population through executions, forced labour, starvation and disease. Stalinâs collectivization, political terror, deportations and gulag system killed and imprisoned millions. These werenât isolated cases of a corrupt mayor taking bribes or a democracy occasionally violating due process they were enormous catastrophes carried out by states attempting radical communist transformations of society.
Capitalism also isnât a political system in the same sense that liberal democracy is. You can have capitalist dictatorships and capitalist democracies, which is precisely why blaming capitalism for every atrocity committed by any state with private property would be absurd. The relevant comparison is between the communist states that actually emerged historically and liberal democratic societies with predominantly market economies. The latter have produced many of the freest, wealthiest and most socially secure societies in human history, including the Nordic countries, while communist experiments have an extraordinarily poor historical record of preserving political pluralism, individual liberty and economic freedom.
So yes, someone who is already a communist can personally consider being called a communist a compliment. But saying it is âalwaysâ a compliment requires treating communism almost entirely as an abstract ideal while insulating it from the historical consequences of attempts to implement it. I donât grant capitalism that privilege, and I certainly donât see why communism should get it.
You could just admit youâre wrong and move on ya know. Nobodyâs reading this self-justifying bs anyway. Look at the people calling their opponents commies now. Itâs still a badge of honor.
Because language is contextual and words have more than one meaning. And when a far-right authoritarian fascist hijacks the U.S. government and calls everyone who challenges him âa communist!!!â even when they clearly arenât â which has happened in a whole lot in the last 100 years of this country â the word takes on a different meaning.
They changed what the word means when they created a new definition completely disconnected from its origin and weapon used it against everyone they hate. New context, new meaning unlocked.
Like how if I called my husband a nasty little bitch it would hurt his feelings and make his reconsider his behavior. But if the orange cheetoh called him and me and everyone else demanding to see the Epstein files nasty little bitches? If he dragged us before Congress as private citizens for televised hearings dissecting our private lives to intimidate us and other Americans? And we stood up to him and outwitted him the way she did? And he kept calling us that because he couldnât do anything else to us? Weâd high five and get matching t-shirts. Hell, heâd probably carve that on his tombstone.
Youâre conflating âcommunismâ with âinvestigated for communism.â
Most of the people investigated for communism werenât communist. They just supported civil rights and thought (correctly) that Hoover and McCarthy were racist pieces of shit with zero regard for the Constitution.
And even those that were communist had the right to hold those beliefs. Just like Republicans and Democrats have the right to hold their beliefs and people who are racist fucks have the right to hold those beliefs. Being a communist isnât a crime. Government officials abusing their power by creating blacklists and denying people due process is and was criminal. McCarthy was a megalomaniac who hijacked the federal government, illegally surveilled Americans, falsified evidence, and destroyed lives to serve his own ego.
Thatâs a whole lot more dangerous than a starlet reading some Marx.
Right China the USSR, Cuba and North Korea all just happened to turn into dictatorships under communism. Iâm not saying it doesnât happen in capitalism but at least weâre not batting 1000 on dictators.
Can attest to this. So many people have almost no understanding of what communism as an ideology is and how certain communist regimes conducted themselves is unrelated. It's not communism that means sending people to gulag. Gulag comes from authoritarian rule which can be carried out by any political ideology.
If you were a halfway decent person and opposed the abuse of human rights occurring at that time, you got investigated by the FBI for communism and grilled by congress
2
u/Dogger27 Aug 08 '26
âEven investigated for communismâ should never be considered a compliment.