Something tells me I'm gonna be spending a lot of time in the next two weeks looking for my old 20th Century Russia textbooks to explain why, in point of fact, communism is not some good shit. :|

Socialism is some good shit. At the VERY least, communism needs to be run through a good-quality filter that removes particles of Stalinist and Leninist contaminants.

I sentence all you young antifa whelps to eat in a Polish milkbar for the rest of eternity.

@zebratron2084 Communism's got problems for sure. Good thing we have this republic democracy hybrid with no problems whatsoever!

@zebratron2084 @mawr Or, you know, we could talk about all the non-Russian communist -- really more akin to anarchomutualist than classic Marxist -- implementations and remind people that Russia is not a role model, but a strong counterexample.

@literorrery @mawr I have a horrible sinking feeling that any such argument among the three of us would swiftly descending into semantics over what constitutes "communism" exactly.

But I'll eagerly concede that there were quite a few socialist governments, esp. in Latin America, that would probably have been quite humane but never got to Do Their Thing because of US Cold War interference (read: "discreetly shooting people").

@zebratron2084 @literorrery I know you know that socialism isn't a form of governance, it's an economic platform. The closest thing we have to the practices of socialism in the form of a system of governance is loosely defined as "communism" with many many many different methods and applications named after the dictators who attempted to put their method in practice.

As a result, "Communism" is frequently used as an umbrella term for socialist governance.

@literorrery @zebratron2084 So when folks say "communism is some good shit" they probably have an ideal form in mind that's never actually been tried on a large scale.

@mawr @literorrery I just want some awareness of the very real negative historical baggage that comes with that term. I am TERRIFIED the same thing will happen to my leftist friends that happened to the right. I feel like I'm already seeing it happen.

Dammit, I'm not angry, I'm shit-scared. ;_;

@zebratron2084 @literorrery I can't speak for everyone of course, but I wouldn't back a movement that wasn't well considered-- but I absolutely will enthusiastically support the excitement of the base that will inevitably produce such a movement.

Fight or flight sucks; it teaches us to display anger in public opposition and compassion in private-- and it hurts to switch those things around, but that's how social progress is made.

@mawr @literorrery I know, Mawr, and I really do apologize for getting into it with the both of you -- it's especially silly, because if there's ANYBODY I would trust to do due moral diligence in the event of Really Bad Leftism rising in this country, it'd be you two...