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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
You
poisonedderailed 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.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"?
The conflict with Nazism is a conflict theory conflict. Nazis have it good under Nazism, so they cannot be reasoned out of trying to do a Nazism, only suppressed.
The conflict with Communism is much more of a mistake theory conflict. Even the Communist elites had it worse than Capitalist elites under Communism, and it's more of a common knowledge that Communism was bad for everyone in general. That's why it doesn't need as much suppression.
It's the same "the right thinks the left is stupid, the left thinks the right is evil" thing, which rings true in the first place because the right-wing ideologies are usually the pragmatically selfish ones.
The notable problem with Communism is not that it made people generally poor. The problem is the vast amounts of rape, torture, hideous murder, rampant slavery, mass starvation, occasionally intentionally induced, and the general pattern of systemic efforts to mutilate the souls of those unfortunate enough to be held in its thrall. The fact that you have bypassed these to argue for common knowledge that Communism is bad because even elites weren't as rich as westerners rather underlines the point.
Communism is in fact a conflict theory. It is in fact predicated on making things good for Communists, and is explicit that this should come at the expense of non-communists, who are to be exterminated without mercy. It cannot even be argued that "non-communist" was a category one chose for themselves; communists routinely assigned the label on the basis of who your family was, and even on ethnicity when convinient.
I firmly believe that the left is evil, and am baffled that others are confused on this point. Certainly there has never been an empire more evil than Communism.
As others have noted, there were rape, torture, hideous murder, rampant slavery and starvation in many states across history, generally eased back on as such atrocities started to be less economically efficient and contributing to state security than not doing those things. So the notable thing about Communism is that they decided to do those things, up to eleven, and got nothing good in return. Elsewhere you say that those things would be immoral even if they resulted in great economic efficiency, and I agree, but I could find quite a few people even here on this forum who seem to be ready to return to premodern atrocity levels in return for some societal gains.
I think it's obvious the way Nazis determined their outgroup was quite a lot more rigid and, dare I say, final, than the way Communists did it. I'd guess there were more Communists of noble or otherwise undesirable descent than there were Jewish Nazis.
When there's no basis of injecting yourself into the power structure other than power, it doesn't look as bleak as having to be a blonde blue-eyed white man.
Also, I don't mean to say that Communism is a mistake theory, but that normies view "current society vs communism" as a mistake theory fight, as opposed to "current society vs nazism".
When you call an entire half of the political axis evil without even stating where you believe the center it, it does get confusing, yes.
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