i go out of my way to experience different cultures and it seems like the immigrant communities in the united states originating from communist countries tend to be some of the chuddiest people imaginable. chinese, russian, cuban, vietnamese. literally every person who i ever talked to that has lived in a communist country and then moved to the united states, or is like second or third generation from that, tends to be incredibly reactionary and anti communist. i feel like i am a more well versed communist when talking to people that lived in a communist country.
its like that everyone that comes to the united states from a communist country forgets the values of marxism, socialism, and communism. i have been too polite to ask what really made these people move to this fucking shithole and if i had to guess they have something severely wrong with them and they want to participate in some small business tyrany and become capitalists. like all these assholes be chasing the dollar and they bring great shame on their own nationality even being here.
i have had much better discussions with people from countries that are still being exploited by capitalists since they already have an understanding of what colonialism and capitalism even is and they arent here to try to become small business owners or worse. people from puerto rico dont got the brain worms that cuban expats do for example.
and i should mention, they all state, they love their country but they blame everything bad with their country on communists. It infuriates me hearing these people, who were born in a nation with socialized healthcare, state controlled industry, basic welfare for citizens, just trash talk the system that make them so successful in the first place and gave them the resources they probably didn’t deserve to open up a shitty restaurant selling borscht. they would know exactly why these social programs cant meet demand if they just took the blindfold off and realized that america, the great fucking satan, is the reason why the global economy is so unequal ITS ALL BECAUSE OF FUCKING AMERICA NOT COMMUNISM YOU STUPID FUCK!
ive been told not to view myself as more communist than others, but i fucking am around these parts with expats who are not communist whatsoever, that makes me more communist than them. if i was to draw a hundred mile radius around myself odds are there probably wouldnt be someone more communist than me. nobody in my life reads theory, every fucking time i tried reaching out with dsa or the bernie shit i have only met shitlibs, i have found no comrades in bipoc communities, the lgbt, religion, or labor. just having someone say to me face to face they are a communist would help me anchor my belief system to something real and not entirely made up and on the internet.
idk, communism is basically what i use to fill my god hole and its fucking hard to find communists irl and its real shitty that people from communist countries arent oftentimes communists. i just want some validation in my belief in communism by someone who is fucking real.
My conclusion is that just because you lived in a socialist country doesnt mean youre smart or understand socialism or geopolitics. Im friends with a lot of Venezuelans none of them know what the sanctions on their country entail. I dont believe Maduro is perfect either but it sure is a one sided argument on their end. One of them is a full blown pro-usa boomer style chud. They are stupid shitheads when the socialist take over and they continue to be after the fact. Theres no magical socialism button that makes people less stupid.
My conclusion is that just because you lived in a socialist country doesnt mean youre smart or understand socialism or geopolitics.
Just because you lived in a Communist revolutionary government, doesn’t mean you ever got to experience the benefit of communal equality.
Remember, the vast majority of people in the countries that had revolutions were made up of the rural poor. When a revolution succeeds, it doesn’t happen everywhere at once.
Reactionary forces and a host of their allies will carve toe holds and propagandize to the population under their control . It takes damn near a generation just for a revolutionary government to stabilize and that’s if they aren’t still fighting off fascist.
This is inherent to any revolution, not just socialism or communism. However, the problem is more pronounced with communism as the infrastructure requirements for command economics. This is typically even further exacerbated by the previous government, who usually try and punish the general public by destroying key infrastructure on the retreat, usually attempting to lay the blame on revolutionaries.
It’s perfectly understandable why a person who fled any kind of revolution would hate the revolution. In their memory of the status quo things were bad, but they still had a home, a family, a community. We are beings made of memories of our past experiences, thus it is easier to to glorify what we know moreso than what we could know.
Revolution is hard. If it happens in a western nation people on both sides of the divide will loose homes, families, and communities. And if history has anything to tell us, there is a slim to zero percent chance that any of us would would ever live to see the transition of revolutionary government to post scarcity communism.
The fact that this is even question proves how disassociated the modern vanguard is from the proletariat in under developed countries. It basically amounts to victim blaming. “Why didn’t you stay and fight for revolution, didn’t you understand theory”? Well embodied theory is kinda hard to learn when you’re starving, or constantly being shot at by people you don’t know, for reasons you don’t know.
I agree
What’s to be done about this? You make very good points. My gut reaction was that it’s an education problem, but as you pointed out the educational infrastructure probably isn’t even built yet if the revolution is recent.
Tbh, I don’t really know. I don’t even know if armed revolution is even a possibility anymore. When I was a younger man I had hoped that the Internet would be a kin to the printing press 2.0. Something that would galvanize the world over and give a voice to the global poor.
A couple decades later I am beginning to realize that tools seemingly made with the intention of enlightenment and engagement can be reforged by capitalist to blind and mute us. Unfortunately it appears that tools built or reforged for capitalism cannot be co-opted by revolutionaries. I’m sure Murray Bookchin would prob have something witty to say about nature of systemic hierarchy about that one.
I don’t really know what the future of communism or socialism will be. I just don’t think it’s going to arise from the old theory people are completely obsessed about. We live in a completely different world than mao or Lenin, and I think it’s kind of silly for people to attempt to embody strategy and doctrine from a hundred years ago.
yeah you don’t do a revolution and suddenly all the problems go away. That’s step one
People talk out of their ass all the time about everything. Living under a certain government does not make one an expert on that government any more than watching an MLB game makes one an expert on baseball. Tons of people who don’t know shit about either will loudly share their opinions and throw a fit if you disagree.
Thr question isn’t “have they seen it firsthand;” it’s “do they understand the events around them and the associated context”?
plenty of people now live under capitalism and could not explain capitalism if they tried
People in the US get mad at their government when gas prices go up when it’s the result of some OPEC or Saudi decision lol. People have no clue what the causes are of the things that they experience most of the time.
It’s the same in socialist/communist countries: then those dumbasses get convinced to go to the US by all of its propaganda and they continue to believe that propaganda when they live there.
my belief is that there are subsections of society which are more prone to radicalism against the establishment and subsections which are pro establishment and these subsections don’t really care what the establishment is. People with comfortable settled lives will like the establisment no matter what it is the same type of person in England that loves the king would probably have loved Stalin if they had been Russian at a certain point in time and inversely some people who are anti-capitalist because they don’t like the establishment and it’s all too much red tape and bureacratic bullshit would probably be anti-communist in a communist society. Of course people can move between these subsections of society and a successful revolution for example will see people go from one to the other with no change in beliefs. But you’ve only really made it when civil servants are part of your base
East Germany essentially concluded that no matter what they do to try and provide everyone with housing education etc roughly 10% of the population just want to drink smoke fight screw around and rebel against the man.
the vast majority of defectors to the west came from this 10% and of these defectors who risked their life going to west Germany a full third came back because the people who were sitting in front of the tv in east germany thinking that in the west they would have a sports car, penthouse and be married to a model found in the west that their lack of highly in demand skills in the east translated to the west and capitalism doesn’t look after people with no money or marketable skills as well as they had hoped
True stuff
The only time that I have ever been stopped on the streets to be told that comunism sucks was by a Venezuelan
Somebody who probably had no clue that US sanctions were making life in venezuela hard and not socialist policies.
I’ve been trying to read up on the history of Venezuela (and modern-current day), but don’t know where to find a book that wasn’t written by someone with let’s say… vested economic interests.
I know it’s a punt, but would you happen to have any recommendations?
my fiance is great
They’re the people who were so greedy/right wing/religious zealots/psychotic that they left and came to America. What do you expect?
what i do know is people that left countries during/after a revolution, for example cubans moving to florida, is because many of them were wealthy and fled to preserve their fortune/lives in some cases. as to why they do it now, i’m not too sure but i suspect a lot of it has to do with the idolization that some people in socialist countries tend to have with capitalist ones - michael parenti’s blackshirts and reds has a good write-up about the latter in chapter 7. that, and the ones who have the means to leave are also probably wealthy and want to gain more wealth
Most Cubans who arrive in the US today plan on moving back once they get enough money.
Smh just one more example of how Fidel was too gracious
Because they actually experienced life in both worlds and know what they prefer based on actual experience.
The majority of people living in post-soviet countries say life got worse under capitalism.
People who actively want to leave socialist countries are a very specific subset of “people who actually experienced both” and aren’t the norm.
Yes, it got worse under capitalism. But I imagine they prefer to live under American capitalism where they get to make money and potentially exploit others than to make 30 cents a day and be the one getting exploited
Yet that is what this post was complaining about. People who have lived both.
Cause and effect van be hard. It’s ok
Some people who have lived both. Not even fuckin’ close to all or even a majority of them.
This post was about people who have lived both. It’s as simple as that. We can extrapolate for sure, but that’s a different conversation.
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When someone is accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression
That is the universal mindset of most exiles from communist countries who lost their feudal “rights”
Except these people are not accustomed to privilege. Hence, they have a unique perspective you and I have never had.
It’s like saying “I like meat more than vegetables”, but never having had meat.
I’d give weight to someone who’s experienced both systems in real life.
You’re assuming that everyone’s experience under the same system is comparable.
This is somewhat true for socialist countries and not true at all for capitalist core countries.
You think that because you have no actual knowledge of those countries and the history of class struggle that defined them
Murderous feudal landlords who owned serfs were privileged, colonial compradors who staffed the ranks of the native colonial police and bureaucracy of European empires were privileged, the criminal plantation owners whose labor force were defined by indentured servitude that was at constsnt risk of being disappeared, were privileged
That’s the problem with liberals, history and class doesn’t exist, instead we have to accept at face value the sob stories of people who were lucky they weren’t torn apart by their victims for the crimes they committed in their home country
luckily the crimes all ended and no one is being exploited now. so like no need for mass mayocide against amerikkka. right?
Comparing across space but not time is misleading. Ask if they preferred life before the revolution to after. The imperial core countries are propped up by centuries of colonial plunder and slavery, of course they seem preferable to someone who is on the side that benefits.
Ask if they preferred life before the revolution to after.
The only place this is applicable to nowadays is Nepal to be fair, unless you find some really old people from Cuba or miscellaneous African/central American countries that were in civil wars.
Exactly. They aren’t moving to capitalist imperial periphery countries, those that have been ravaged and left poor after decades of exploitation, but rather the imperial core itself where the wealth is flocking and where someone with an education and not under the boot of debt can have a comfy life. I can see why someone would defect from East to West Germany for economic reasons alone. It’s good to point out when people bring up fleeing from these countries that they aren’t exactly moving to Nigeria or El Salvador or India.
China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese
In fact, most Chinese people live in China
The joke is that people opting to leave a country are self-selecting. If you are leaving a left wing country chances are it’s because you are a right winger and want to live somewhere that lets you be right-wing.
You want to own a small business in a place without unions, or be a landlord in an area without tenants rights.
Or you want to be on the opposite end of the American foreign policy apparatus; sanctions, death squads and drones.
And lastly. English is the most common second language in the world. It is easiest to move to the anglosphere.
One factor is that people who have the means to move to a different country have some amount of privilege (specifically money or connections) relative to the average person in their home country, even if it’s not necessarily oligarch levels of wealth
That is to say the people who are like “I came here with nothing but $10 in my pocket and created a life for myself with hard work and immigrant grindset!” might be telling the truth about arriving with such meager wealth, but are conveniently leaving out that they somehow were able to afford the thousands of dollars it costs to complete the immigration process (over a years worth of full time work in some countries), and likely have a sponsor in their destination country they could rely on for food and shelter while starting out
not all people who move to the us are privileged though. its just that people that move from communist countries tend to be. like mexican people specifically are sort of an underclass that are exploited for cheap labor. you can find leftist sentiment in immigrants, just not immigrants from places that have actually achieved socialism.
I’ve seen anticommunist sentiment from immigrants from global south countries that have never been ruled by any sort of communists, such as India, The Philippines, and even Mexico. I think there does tend to be more leftist sentiment among immigrants in the US from Mexico since compared to many other countries, the physical proximity allows for more undocumented immigration, which for better or worse is more accessible to the working class (people who don’t have the privilege I was talking about), but which also has a dynamic that keeps them in an underclass in the US.
There’s the matter of them having enough means to make it to the US, and in addition to that, they’re the ones who picked the US out of anywhere in the world as where they wanted to go. It’d be like a westerner going to live in a communist country, they would not be a typical westerner.
America caters to everything chuds love and attracts them here.
Think about the flip side, if you lived in a communist country, would you want to leave it to come live in this reactionary hellhole?
if you lived in a communist country, would you want to leave it to come live in this reactionary hellhole
When a lot of immigrants from Cuba, Vietnam, and China came over, the US was around 30-40% of the WORLD’s GDP. These three countries’ lifespans were literally a full decade lower than America’s. The infrastructure and technology was easily many many decades behind
Not to mention a normal job in the US at the time could afford you a house and lifestyle that even the wealthiest of those countries would dream of
I mean yea there’s a fuck load of South Vietnam immigrants but this argument is missing a lot of historical analysis
When a lot of immigrants from Cuba, Vietnam, and China came over, the US was around 30-40% of the WORLD’s GDP. These three countries’ lifespans were literally a full decade lower than America’s. The infrastructure and technology was easily many many decades behind
A lot of Westerners who think the US is bad (materially) literally have no idea what China in the 1990s looked like.
in fairness i dont know what the us looked like in the 90s either.
Exactly the same, except your computer had only one monitor, which was a CRT that took two people to pick up.
Literally the same, the US hasnt changed at all for normal people
There was way less homeless people everywhere. More young people didn’t have to live with their parents as adults because housing costs were lower. Cars were smaller and less dangerous. Etc
Life has gotten worse
Housing cost less, that’s like 90% of what’s different
White supremacist’s version of Mecca. The US is the only country on earth to carry out such a nearly complete and total genocide on an entire continent. The undisputed champions of fascism as we know it now.
The European colonial project that built the US killed literally hundreds of millions of people in the US alone, and that was before it was even the US.
And of those who survived, only ~8% are fluent in ANY of their native languages.
The entire population of North and South America at the start of that project did not exceed a hundred million, and the vast majority of it was in central and southern America. There were not hundreds of millions of people in the US to kill.
Very possibly, every native American living within the modern borders of the US from 1400 to today might have totalled a hundred million, but the colonial project didn’t kill literally every one of them.
This source supports me as far as I can tell.
Research by some scholars provides population estimates of the pre-contact Americas to be as high as 112 million in 1492
To get that down to the population remaining today you would have to have killed hundreds of millions of people.
You do understand that people have children right?
You:
The European colonial project that built the US killed literally hundreds of millions of people in the US alone
Your source places the highest estimates for a north American population at seven million. Most likely it was half that. “Hundreds of millions of people in the US alone” is what I am contesting.
In that timespan, imperialism killed hundreds of millions of indigenous people in the Americas, and that was all necessary to building the US empire. There is no disputing that.
Well it depends, doesn’t it? If I were just an average person from a very poor country and a revolution just happened, and the government was having a hard time getting basic services set up, and suddenly we’re under sanction from the whole world, I’m not sure how I’d feel.
That describes people I know who came to the US from Vietnam. They grew up poor, a massive war happened, then the new socialist government had problems maintaining itself for a while.
Modern Vietnam is absolutely a success story though. It paid off in the end, but it took them a while. They’re building rail transport through the country finally, they’ve got a robust healthcare system, and their education seems top notch. But if I were someone poor coming out of a warzone in 1976 with no idea what 2023 Vietnam would look like, I could see wanting to leave.
Most of them left because they fought on the south Vietnamese side though and lost the war and fled so they didn’t have to face Justice for their crimes.
why do the hottest water particles evaporate off first
the ones that leave and go to the US are going to be the most pro US before they left
Being in Florida my main exposure to this is Miami Cubans. But it’s pretty obvious why they’re all chuds, they’re the children of the rich people who fled when the communists rightfully took all their shit.
Lots of Venezuelan CHUDS too
Their experience of communism is not the same as your version and experience of communism. If you happen to dismiss their experience by saying it wasn’t really communism, you will get a punch in the face because for them, it was a very real, grim reality they had to go through. And the lies of capitalism are very alluring.
you will get a punch in the face because for them, it was a very real, grim reality they had to go through
You greatly overestimate how much unambiguous hatred there is towards socialist governments. I know plenty of people from Poland, East Germany, Romania, former Yugoslavia that even if they’re not super-politicized, revolutionary marxist-leninists or whatever that are not exactly frothing at the mouth anticommunists. Even if they come to the conclusion that those were not the government they wished, they are often willing to talk about how getting a job was easy, how there was little crime and visible poverty, etc. even the simple yet common “those times were not so bad”.
It’s easy to paint an entire population with the same brush. And it’s understandable, it’s easy and doesn’t require unending investigation.
I am from one of the former Eastern Bloc states. My parents, who were born in the 60s and experienced both literally said at a family meeting a few months ago that that they came to the conclusion that overthrowing the socialist governments in the East was a mistake and they had fallen for the mirage of cheap consumer goods while throwing away the achievements of their socialist governments that they had taken for granted. State provided employment and housing are major things they mentioned as definite positives from that era. And among other people their age or older, this is not in any way a rare perspective. If anything, the loudest victims of communism tend to be born 1990+.
If anything, the loudest victims of communism tend to be born 1990+.
The joys of being marinated in nationalist propaganda every day.
In 2020 during the food shortage/hoarding crisis, I saw some comments about how it’s “just like east Germany” or maybe it was news about east Germany. Anyway, several people from that era chimed in and said that no one ever starved in east Germany. You didn’t many options and the food wasn’t always great, but people didn’t become desperate over that. Then a few Germans born after 1991 started attacking them, calling them dumb or too nostalgic including their own East German parents even though they admit their family is struggling more than ever
Emigrees (certainly the ones I’ve met) are almost always either:
-
Owned significant amounts of capital before communism, or
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Are strivers and/or see themselves as entrepreneurs who will get rich one day; or believe with their intelligence, talent and hard work they deserve to have a lot more than others
I would not expect these kinds of people to have any love at all for communism, of course not. My issue though is that we are supposed to take their experience as a blanket truth for everyone who lives where they came from. It ignores how communism is so much better for people who, for example, do not have parents who own an egg monopoly or a sugar plantation.
(Formatting for this post is getting messed up, not sure why)
We were just poor
My third is apolitical dumdum who moved to the US.
Also if you explicitly state on your immigration papers that you were part of a communist or socialist party, youre prolly not getting in. Theres a whole few questions that ask about that.
-
I know a person who lived most of their 20s, as a woman, in Communist Romania. Romania was by far the “worst” eastern bloc nation, had major economic woes and a lot of misogyny and oppression of women via fertility policies, and she has openly stated that while the leadership sucked and was justly hated, most people wanted to keep the system, which they pretty much all liked and thought they could keep while also getting free speech and MacDonalds.
And she’s pretty pissed about what happened. She’d tile the whole goddam world with the Romanian System circa 1985 if she could, warts and all.
Over 60% of Romanians are nostalgic for Cuseceau. Nostalgia doesn’t mean positive preference though. Neoliberalism has just been so bad that they would rather suffer under him
For some, sure. But she had gone from being a committed communist to Dem Soc in the early 90s, and then, very rapidly, straight back to a level of Communist that makes Maoist Red Guards look like bored 1980s nomenklatura.
She is my idol
i figured the us vetted communist-country immigrants and picked the most rabid anticommunists
An immigrant who is or has been a member of or affiliated with the Communist or any other totalitarian party is inadmissible under INA 212(a)(3)(D), unless an exception applies.
Under INA 212(a)(3)(D), an officer must first determine whether the organization in question meets the definition of Communist or any other totalitarian party.
The regulations define the Communist Party as:
-The Communist Party of the United States
-The Communist Political Association
-The Communist Party of any state of the United States, of any foreign state, or of any political or geographical subdivision of any foreign state;
-Any section, subsidiary, branch, affiliate, or subdivision of any such association or party;
-The direct predecessors or successors of any such association or party, regardless of what name such group or organization may have used, may now bear, or may hereafter adopt; and
-Any communist-action or communist-front organization that was required to register under former Section 786 of Title 50 of the U.S. Code, provided that the applicant knew or had reason to believe, while he or she was a member, that such organization was a communist-front organization.[30]
“Any other totalitarian party” is defined as “an organization which advocates the establishment in the United States of a totalitarian dictatorship or totalitarianism.”[31]
“Totalitarian dictatorship” or “totalitarianism” refer to systems of government not representative in fact, characterized by:
-The existence of a single political party, organized on a dictatorial basis, with so close an identity between such party and its policies and the governmental policies of the country in which it exists, that the party and the government constitute an indistinguishable unit; and
-The forcible suppression of opposition to such party.
After determining that the group in question meets the definition of the Communist or any other totalitarian party, the officer must determine if the person is or has been a member of or affiliated with that group. If the group does not meet the definition, then the person is not inadmissible under this ground.
https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-8-part-f-chapter-3
Wait a minute. So people who are inadmissible include those associated with a that forcibly suppresses opposition, but trust us, we’re not doing that to communist parties. Don’t worry, you can totally trust us!
But you see if two parties are doing the oppression it isn’t Totalitarian!
when the us headhunts for only labor aristocracy and persecuted car salesmen you get a negative feedback loop of people who consider themselves the best and above their countrymen. i want the global south to judge these judas’ for abandoning their country. obviously not all are bad but i feel like miami would be a lot emptier if there was some kind of reckoning against reactionary people.
you get a negative feedback loop
Umm akshually you are describing a positive feedback loop 🤓
(I knew what you meant I just couldn’t help it)
Or even if the US just allowed those rich gusanos stealing wealth from all over Latin America to be investigated and prosecuted by their home countries for the thefts and corruption that made them into rich Miami gusanos.
The US is the greatest haven for anti-social greedy criminals in the entire world.
Hilariously the CPC does not reach the definition of a Communist party. Nor does those of the DPRK or the former DDR because they tolerate multiple parties.
the us only allows chuds to immigrate
Grouping communists (party associated with powerless laborers btw) with terrorists
You’ve gotta think that this low-effort propaganda is losing its steam but all the evidence points to the contrary
im not a chud
do you live in a cave? do you eat human flesh?we had a struggle session on why the word troglodytes is bad, ive heard the argument that cannibals are the real vegans. if you adhere to hexbearist thought you are in fact a chud.
i am a cave beast, which is a synonym to cum goblin
Hey now, I freely admit I was on the wrong side of the Great Troglodyte War.
I live in an area with a lot of Vietnamese folks, and they are rabid anti-communists. Some of them in my neighborhood will fly the old South Vietnamese flag. One time I was eating at a restaurant one of them owns. An elderly guy walks in with a Vietnam veteran hat. The owner of the restaurant, an elderly lady, comes out and kisses the guy on the cheek and hugs him. Gives him a free meal and it was like a huge event.
It’s creepy and weird. A lot of them are Catholic too which makes it even weirder.
I’ve seen the old South Vietnam flag flying around here too. It is weird and creepy.
How is it weird? They are the people that fought on the south Vietnamese/French/US side and got their assets kicked and had to flee to the US so they wouldn’t be held accountable for their crimes after the war. And often the most rabid anti-communists are religious zealots.
It’s creepy and weird. A lot of them are Catholic too which makes it even weirder.
Not really, that was the religion of the French, so they (or their ancestors) tried to integrate with the religion/culture of their colonial oppressors. Not surprising they would be chuds.
