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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28927 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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Suppose communism is bad (if you think it's good this isn't addressed to you but sure feel free to chime in). How do you teach normies this?

I mean the kind of normie who lives in a world where powers far beyond them do incomprehensible things like set the prices of stuff in the store, so that some of the stuff they really want is too expensive for them, but look, the store is full of that stuff, so somebody has all this stuff but they're not letting them have it except for way too high a price, those greedy assholes.

And then you try to explain to them how markets work and how prices come to be and it all just comes across to them as some weird bootlicking apologism because they're simply not on that level.

Is there a more "down to earth" approach that is needed? Normies who have deeply internalized rules of decency and ideas of "thou shalt not steal" (often normies with religious backgrounds) seem to naturally be anti-communist.

Now I'm sure some of y'all here (you know who you are) will say these people basically just need to be oppressed because if they have their way civilization is destroyed and everything is shitty for everybody, but if you oppress them then they complain but otherwise you have a civilization that hums along. But I hate this, I feel like there has to be a way to make society work that doesn't require telling a huge segment of the population "stfu and get in line or we're putting you in a cage". And I mean obviously violent (as needed) enforcement of civilized norms is necessary, but I notice there are a lot more people who are sympathetic to communist ideas than are actual active criminals. My point is more about these people, not the active criminals (who I support putting in cages)

Is there really no way to get through to people other than to just tell them shut up and take it because we're trying to run a civilization here

Suppose communism is bad. How do you teach normies this?

You poisoned derailed the discussion by leading with this. Almost no normies actually think communism is good, nor are they yearning for it to any great degree. At worst they have some uninformed ideas that, if you squint, can sort of seem communist-adjacent. Stuff like supporting price ceilings or floors in competitive industries. But even these aren't really doing much damage. Things like "building more housing leads to higher housing + rent prices" has been much more disruptive to a flourishing society, and it doesn't spring from anything related to communism, but rather from ignorance of basic economics.

Almost no normies actually think communism is good, nor are they yearning for it to any great degree.

I put forward that normies think Nazism is bad. If you display a swastika, you are likely to suffer immediate social and possibly even legal consequences due to this belief.

What social and possibly even legal results do you observe from people displaying the hammer and sickle? If you observe a disparity, how large is that disparity? If it is indeed quite large, do you think it is perhaps too large, that the reaction to the hammer and sickle should conform more to that of the swastika? If so, what is the problem with describing this rectification as "teaching normies that communism is bad"?

I don't disagree that normies think Nazism is worse (often far worse) than Communism. That's mostly because of the Holocaust. Communism has some atrocities with higher death counts (e.g. perhaps Mao's Cultural Revolution), but the Holocaust's relatively high death toll + the deliberateness of the whole ordeal is what makes it really pop. If you squint, you can sort of see how many of the deaths in China were accidental. It's hard to do the same for death camps.

If so, what is the problem with describing this rectification as "teaching normies that communism is bad"?

It's not that it's a bad to teach them this, it's that there's not really a point since the vast majority already believe it. Yet for some reason much of the motte thinks a huge chunk of the West still harbors Communist sympathies, so most of his answers were specifically addressing that point.

I don't disagree that normies think Nazism is worse (often far worse) than Communism.

I agree, object to this disparity in perception, and think it is reasonably described as "not believing that communism is bad". It's probably true that, in a sense, most people believe that french fries are bad. I think it's pretty clear that most people think smoking is bad. It seems to me that to the extent that normies consider Communism "bad", they consider it less bad than french fries. I think they should consider it more bad than smoking, and roughly as bad as naziism.

That's mostly because of the Holocaust. Communism has some atrocities with higher death counts (e.g. perhaps Mao's Cultural Revolution), but the Holocaust's relatively high death toll + the deliberateness of the whole ordeal is what makes it really pop.

Communism has no shortage of deliberate exterminations, starvations, mass rape, mass torture, the whole shebang. The Cambodian communists killed one in four of their population. The Russian communists committed every atrocity imaginable at considerable scale. If there is no shortage of historical atrocity, why should we accept such an extreme difference in perception between the two ideologies? Isn't this disparity a problem? Isn't education the obvious solution? Why treat the present state as some immutable fact of nature, rather than critiquing it as we do other social phenomena?

If you squint, you can sort of see how many of the deaths in China were accidental. It's hard to do the same for death camps.

Do people squint in this way for Nazi atrocities? Do we, generally speaking, tolerate those inclined to do so? Why should it be different for the many, many deliberate atrocities on the part of the Communists? Or is it your argument that no such atrocities exist, that the public perception is correct?

It's not that it's a bad to teach them this, it's that there's not really a point since the vast majority already believe it.

I would readily concede that they believe "communism is bad" in the sense that "french fries are bad". I see no evidence that they believe it in the sense that "smoking is bad", much less "naziism is bad." It seems obvious to me that the latter is necessary, given the amount of damage that Communism as an ideology has done and might do again.

Yet for some reason much of the motte thinks a huge chunk of the West still harbors Communist sympathies, so most of his answers were specifically addressing that point.

I can't speak for the community at large, but in my own experience I believe that the West still harbors Communist sympathies because I observe its treatment of previous generations of Communists, and I observe a current generation of violent Communist thugs organizing widespread political violence with the tacit support of their local institutions, as well as local, state and federal governments. Further, I note that Communist ideology appears to be alive and well within the Overton window, while our society chases absurdly diminished returns seeking to further marginalize the already marginalized Nazis. I note that I am routinely lectured on the present threat of nazi ideology by people with the hammer and sickle in their social media bio. I disagree with this state of affairs and believe it should be rectified. Again, "teach normies that Communism is bad" seems like a reasonable shorthand for this aim, which seems obviously unachieved at the present.

The reason the hammer and sickle doesn't draw the same level of opprobrium as the swastika is the same reason anything associated with the Ottomans, or the Mongols,.or the Huns, or the Sudanese, or any other murderous regime doesn't either. There's a tacit understanding that this kind of behavior is historically common and continues to be common until a civilization reaches a certain level of development. Russia had always been a backwater so it was easy to dismiss Stalin as a thug, and most other Communist countries were even further behind economically, culturally, scientifically, and socially. Germany, on the other hand, was one of the most advanced countries in Europe, and had been viewed as such for a long time. The Holocaust wasn't the same kind of mass butchery that had always existed; it was a high-tech process optimized for efficiency with every detail down to the amount of gold extracted from dental fillings meticulously recorded, perpetrated by an army of bureaucrats in business suits and a leader who had been popularly elected. The idea that "progress" could lead to something like that was terrifying.

Germany, on the other hand, was one of the most advanced countries in Europe

The Soviets were treated in the media as one of the most advanced countries in the world.

I'll suggest the conflict theory explanation instead: The average person doesn't think Communism is very bad because decades of leftist media propaganda has tried to minimize any bad things that Communists did from at least the 1960s until Communism died out. And even afterwards, they never tried to stir up hysteria about Communists being around every corner like they did with fascists.

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