There’s nothing inherently wrong with being a communist. You don’t have to agree with it as a political philosophy (I don’t), but it’s no worse than being a capitalist.
Let's not go down the "those aren't real communists" route. The communists in the West were by and large always very cozy with the SU. Hell, they loved Stalin so much and wanted to hear so little that Orwell sat down to write a fable to explain the issues to them.
One of the most famous moments was the waving of an imaginary list with known communists embedded in the government. Regardless of your view on the 'realness' of those who actually were communists, the point is that it was largely speculative who was part of them. The concerns of the BLM protestors are not that there are hidden racists, but overt bad actors with tangible track records of oppressive behaviors.
Another of the famous moments was when McCarthy called out Frederick G. Fisher, a young lawyer, as a proxy attack on his political opponent, Joseph Welch. "Before this moment, I never appreciated your cruelty," remarked Mr. Welch, noting, "you have sat within six feet of me and could have asked me about Fred Fisher." He asked the Senator: "Have you no decency, sir?"
He was offended, and thought it indecent, that this young man, a nobody and a nonentity, should have his name paraded front of the entire nation, accused of betrayal, his reputation jeopardized not by any proceeding undertaken for the sake of justice, but rather, in the mainfestly unfair court of public opinion, for the sake of his outrage machine.
Eighteen months ago this nation witnessed Nicholas Sandmann, a random eleventh grader from Covington, Kentucky, excoriated on national television. There are those who still believe it was justice, that the boy had it coming, and declare that he has a "punchable" face. If someone has stood up and called this indecent, it was little noted. CNN settled a lawsuit over the matter, but has not issued an apology; our outrage machine has rolled on to other matters, and will continue to do so with little heed to justice.
I never said they weren't "real" communists, I said there's nothing wrong with that.
There is a difference between communism and nazism.
Communism is simply the belief that the workers should own the means of production. It's like being a "witch". You might think it's complete nonsense and doesn't work in the real world (I'd agree with you), but if people want to be witches (or wiccans or whatever), they should be allowed to be.
Nazism, on the other hand, is an inherently evil ideology. Hopefully, I don't have to explain why.
And once again, you've mistakenly conflated communism with totalitarianism (which is what 1984 is actually about).
> Nazism, on the other hand, is an inherently evil ideology. Hopefully, I don't have to explain why.
The situation I was referring to has nothing to do with the Nazis: it was after WW2 when the East/West conflict ramped up and Berlin was divided in two sectors (Soviet/Western controlled), but surrounded by the Soviet controlled sector of Germany. The Soviet Union then decided to enact a blockade to stop transports to West Berlin and starve the population to force the Western Allies to give up Berlin. It's what lead to the massive air transport operation dubbed "Raisin Bombers" that sustained the West Berlin population.
> And once again, you've mistakenly conflated communism with totalitarianism (which is what 1984 is actually about).
Yeah, yeah, "this time, it will all be different, we won't have concentration camps, we won't have purges, we won't have mock trials". At some point you can accept that some mechanism in your system leads to the undesired outcome, and that, even if you have not yet discovered it, there is most likely a causal relationship.
First, it's not "my system". I'm not a Soviet apologist, I'm not a communist, and frankly I don't even think communism is a workable system of government.
But I would the same exact things about libertarianism.
Just because I don't agree with something doesn't mean I think people should be prosecuted for it.
I get that you're trying to say that there's something inherent in communism that causes totalitarian states, but you are confusing correlation with causation.
Whatever terrible things have been done in the name of communism (and absolutely, some of the worst attrocities in history have taken place under communist rule), the same or worse things (slavery, genocide, oppression, colonialism) have been done under capitalist rule.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with being a communist. You don’t have to agree with it as a political philosophy (I don’t), but it’s no worse than being a capitalist.