cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/65174189
Florida public schools will force students to take a Heritage Foundation-backed class on the “evils of communism.”
I’m a GenXer and I have literally been fed anti-communist propaganda since I was a very small child. It’s only in the last 20 years or so that I finally “woke up” and realized how absolute bullshit it all really is.
I don’t think this is necessarily due to age. I think it’s just that circumstances have made capitalism look so bad that you realize that the propaganda was exactly that.
Also gen X & I remember always playing as the U.S.S.R. in any game that let me choose because of the absolute banger of a national anthem!
first, so theres no confusion. i am against this program and its a facist move. i want to take a detour on your comment.
this article is more about socialism but people always confuse the two. i am a capitalist who believes in socialist programs. i believe in public health care, free public schooling (include universoty), and universal basic income. please use mybtaxes to pay for all of it.
capitalism is about owning your own busisness, ehich i agree with and does not conflict with everything socialism. not everything needs to be privately owned but we should have the freedom to privately own a business.
but your comment wasnt on socislism but communism. i have an honest question and not a snarky one, if you really love communism, why not move to a communist country? i genuinely want to know. communism doesnt support private property either and thats very important to me. i am also genx and for most of my kife, i have been happy with my country. my ideal president was barrack obama.
now that this country is becoming religous facist at the highest levels, i have thought aboit leaving so again , i wasnt being snarky. if i loved communism, i wouod have left.
sorry for the long comment, i judt hope you see i have a genuine curiosity, which is hard to communicate in a forum.
if you really love communism, why not move to a communist country?
First, there are no truly communist countries. Just authoritarian ones that use communism as a method of control. And now we live in an authoritarian country that uses capitalism as a method of control.
I also didn’t say anything about “loving communism”, whatever that is supposed to mean.
Prager U doesn’t make a distinction between socialism and communism. That’s the same propaganda we all got growing up in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s. Conflating one thing with another. And that is the problem. Prager U is going to tell kids that paying taxes so that a poor person can eat is communism and taking your property away to give it to someone who doesn’t want to work for a living. They’re going to tell kids that taxing rich people will prevent them from having enough money to create jobs for good hard working Americans. And that giving things away for free will make people not want to work.
These are the same lies we grew up with. Only with the failed state of the USSR as a “good example” of how communism(socialism) always fails. Ignoring the fact that it was deep corruption and authoritarian rule that actually destroyed the USSR.
Edit:
capitalism is about owning your own busisness
No, it is not. It’s about using the labor of other people to enrich yourself.
no capitalism is and only is, the private ownership of commerce
Literally the definition of capitalism is private ownership of the means of production.
Commerce is the act of selling and buying goods.
You should… Idk, get better at thinking?
capitalism is about owning your own busisness
No, it is not. It’s about using the labor of other people to enrich yourself.
Maybe it’s about acquiring capital.
i have an honest question and not a snarky one, if you really love communism, why not move to a communist country?
You say this is honest, but this question has never been asked in good faith. Is the only reason you live where you live because the economic system it uses? Do you have no ties to the area besides? No family or history, or national pride? No job or property, or friends, or anything else? Do you speak every language and are accepted by and accepting of every culture, so you can just go anywhere and feel at home?
Anyone who asks this can fuck right off. At minimum, seeing issues and wanting to fix them for other people is enough of a reason to stay and try to change things. If you can’t see why people don’t want to uproot their lives to go somewhere else, even if that somewhere else existed and was exactly what they wanted, you aren’t actually being honest.
ibwas being honest and said that i am thinking of moving, depending on how midterms go. i do tjink changing things for the better isbworthbstaying but I don’t think communism is for the better. its not in the identoty, which is why I asked. since i am contemplating leaving witht the facist direction this country is taking , i wanted to know their reason
if you really love communism, why not move to a communist country?
If you don’t like people with a different world view why don’t you move to israel?
Presumably the best way to fight Israeli genocide is outside of Israel;
the best way to fight Uighur genocide is outside of the PRC;
the best way to fight Iranian theo-fascism is outside of Iran;
and the best way to fight capitalism, is outside of a capitalist country.
One could go to, say, Cuba, or North Korea, or any country one thinks is truly, or at least mostly, Communist, or maybe a rebel-held area, and fight against capitalism and/or build socialism.
there is never was aUighur genocide.
that is western made up anti-China BSThey will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
I loved the 100’s of ‘leaked’ mugshots from a few years ago of the ‘prisoners’. This was with them probably.
From Adrian Zenz the religious nut and rabid SinophobeAll quite good generic Uyghur faces but with a button in weird places and other anomalies what we know recognize as AI artefacts.
Didn’t even bother to do some Photoshopping.BTW don’t they have orange suits in Guantanamo where they hold Uyghur terrorists?
FWIW, I got it from wp:Persecution of Uyghurs in China; though yes, both the extreme left and extreme right tend not to like Wikipedia.
As it’s a non-free image, I think it’s intentionally degraded in order to better argue fair use.
Also, FWIW for any lurker: wp:Adrian Zenz.
Maybe the Uighur genocide should be put into wv:Category:Wikidebates.
The Guantanamo detentions are, of course, unjust, as was the state-sanctioned murder of Osama bin Ladan (who should have been tried in the US proper, with Bill of Rights followed (but alas, Obama had an election to win)).
That said, I don’t think 100 000s, much less millions, have gone to re-education camps in Guantanamo;
and yes, the Chinese commies will say that the Uighurs weren’t extracted from Central Asia, like America has extracted many from that area—I’ll grant them that; but as I’m a bit sympathetic to anarchism and at times regard nation-states as fictions, state cults, with 100s of millions of adherents, it’s somewhat of a moot point to me.
It’s like the current US-Iran war: they’re both wrong, and I wish neither Trump and Hegseth, nor the theo-fascists who rule Iran, success.
Silver lining:
Conservatives have learned absolutely nothing from the failures of the D.A.R.E. program…
My favorite thing from the DARE officers coming to school was them teaching us what street drugs looked and smelled like so we wouldn’t get ripped off buying oregano instead of weed or drywall instead of cocaine. 😃
Also, all the different common household things you never would have thought to huff that could be huffed to get you high. Someone out there is huffing freon apparently.
Our equivalent gave us recommended pricing to make sure we don’t get scammed.
Funny how “communism always fails on its own” or “is a failed ideology”, yet is/was so significant, that it has to have it own special section.
Maybe let them cook, if this is as moronic as it sounds, it could turn out like D.A.R.E.
This is a stupid idea, but I have faith kids will smell the BS
This country hasn’t been at risk of going communist in eighty years. The right are such scared fucking babies.
It’s just propaganda. It’s not anti communist it’s pro capitalism/imperialism and ultimately pro fascism.
They want to brand Socialism as Communism so we stay stuck in Tickle Down delusions
Remember, kids: if communism is evil and communism is “taking your hard-earned money away and giving it to people who don’t work hard enough,” then it’s your duty to demand the government stops those communist bailouts given to corporations that won’t support themselves.
Alongside “Pedo Worship 101”?
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I already kind of wrote off any kids raised in Florida. It’s like Mississippi or Alabama at this point.
As a Mississippi communist I resemble this statement.
As a Mississippi communist
Damn. Talk about being behind enemy lines! 😬
“Stop indoctrinating the children”
Is that what they call what the rich like to do to kids now?
Once they finish their classes they get a free abduction to Little Saint James!
Had a friend’s son tell me, very insistently, that Kim Jong Un convinced everyone in his county that he doesn’t poop. Also, that he’s planning to nuke South Korea, and we need to do something to stop him.
This was a kid with very liberal parents going to a very liberal middle school.
Red Scare shit is already everywhere. But I guess we’ve got to keep cranking the hysteria up to 11
I heard that one about Kim a few times, alongside some more crazy “What the people actually believe” and it scares me. Do some actually believe such obvious nonsense, or are they all loudly claiming to believe it knowing the consequences for wrongthink? Do they think they’re the only ones with a working brain and everyone else is brainwashed, or do they understand they’re all in the same boat?
Or maybe is none of it real, I’ll be honest I cant even prove North Korea even exists, I’ve only seen it on maps and on TV, on the same medium that brought me Ghost busters.
The hyper capitalist south is by no means great but I’d rather that than a disappearance state with cardboard walls. Authoritarianism is bad regardless of economic structure.
I’d rather that than a disappearance state with cardboard walls
Would be crazy if South Korea had a massive, brutal police state or a long history of improvised slums and ruthless exploitation of it’s citizenry.
Good thing we’re sanctioning North Korea to the hilt, guaranting none of those horrible practices become common place throughout the Western aligned Asian states
Yes, because north Koreans must have a gene for authoritarianism or something. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with having all of its towns destroyed and 20% of its population killed by the US in a savage bombing campaign where more bombs were dropped than in the entirety of WW2, and have been under a deathly and relentless imperialist siege since.
Capitalism is what enables that very authoritarianism.
When the proletariat and bourgeoise start becoming dissatisfied, distract with a fabricated crisis and blame another group, splitting them apart. --> oligarchy furthers and the bourgeoise and proletariat are further impoverished. This goes together with an increasingly large police apparatus and surveillance capitalism.
Two main outcomes arise:
Either the bourgeoise takes matters in their own hands, supported by the oligarchy; and fascism arises. The oligarchy supports this, as it allows themselves to concentrate the proletariat into trade unions fully appointed by them.
Or, the proletariat takes matters into their hands, and liberate themselves from the chains of capitalism and fascism. But the capitalist oligarchy, again, might attempt to subvert that revolution, by supporting conservative and authoritarian elements for propaganda purposes; they will back oil, coal, and gas industries, rather than renewables, as the former ones are often headed or governed by pro-fascist leaders.
But the red path between brown fascism and gold greed, that narrow path of communism and socialism, is the path of liberation; the path in where the proletariat liberates itself from both fascism and capitalism, and defeats authoritarianism. The Rojava, the Zapatista, the Makhnovishna, Frisian freedom, and Free Catalonia, have shown us that such a path is very much possible.
Death to capitalism and long live communism. Get fcked fascist piece of sht.
Fuck Stalinism and tankies.
Hitler and Stalin were allies 1939 to 1941.
Long live Freedom.
What does that have to do with Communism?
Many would describe them as Communists, or at least socialists, including, presumably, themselves.
We might as well add Trotsky, Lenin, Castro, Mao, Hoxhua, Guzmán, Luxemburg, and maybe General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, Pol Pot.
Is that freedom in the room with us now?
I suppose yes, as wt:thon perhaps is in many rooms.
These people don’t see the evils of indoctrination? Teach history. Teach cause and effect and show the results. Then let people decide for themselves. This dumbing people down and telling them what to think isn’t helping anyone at all.
Americans think it’s normal to pledge allegiance to a flag in school, they thank people for “their service” Indoctrination has been happening the whole time and it works.
I don’t do either of those things anymore. I barely want to stand for the national anthem. Our military worship in this country is basically taken on a cult like energy.
Don’t many countries do this?
Like North Korea
Absolutely not. First time I heard of the ““pledge””, I felt disgusted. It’s literally nationalistic indoctrination. Nazi Germany also did it.
They are afraid people will decide they don’t really like a .01% hording 50% of the worlds wealth like dragons in their lairs on piles of gold.
- That gold might not be gold.
- Gold might not be that valuable.
- They might not be as rich as they’d have us think they are.
- They might not be as powerful as they’d have us think they are.
Billionaire apologists can fuck off.
If billionaires fucked off, our economy would hardly be the worse for it (provided we didn’t panic).
Using schools for political indoctrination, misinformation, and propaganda in violation of student and teachers Constitutional rights? Yes, that sounds like Florida.
Every school in the country has always been used for indoctrination, misinformation, and propaganda. It’s just what capitalists have to do to convince everybody to support a system that benefits the rich at the expense of everyone else.
Suggest an alternative that actually works? The Nordic countries and those with pension/single payer are also capitalist.
A healthcare/retirement system doesn’t change your economic model unless you did something really wrong (like the United States did).
Socialism and communism have had far better outcomes for the majority of people. Not without mistakes or abuses of power, but even if we take the most dubious and exaggerated of accusations of communist atrocities at face value, they still pale at the casual everyday waste of life under capitalism.
You realize at this point communism almost doesn’t exist anymore, right?
Kind of like the DARE program taught kids to do drugs this will backfire and create communist.
I too immediately thought of DARE.
Yep that is the what we are talking about. A utter failure.
