Why do they still believe in it?
Every once in a while on here, I'll see an article or a stray comment in a discussion that casts a favorable light on, or wistfully refers to, Communism and its long-touted wonders. We've all seen them here and there. I mean, we've even got our own Commies and Socies here on JU.
What I don't get is how people can still look favorably on such a horribly repressive, corrupt and proven inefficient system, a system that only seems to foster dictators and tyrants. It makes no sense to me. Even, hell,---ESPECIALLY---the people who lived under it are glad it's gone.
The NeoComms (we'll call them) say, "Well, okay, it didn't work....but maybe if we change this, or maybe if we do that, it will." The only thing wrong with that is that it's exactly what Stalin thought; it's exactly what Mao thought...Castro...Pol Pot. The promised Utopia failed to emerge, but "goshdarnit, we'll make it work, no matter what". And people have died by the millions. Pogroms, purges, collectivization, wars, policies of oppression aimed at individuals and groups, assassinations, etc....millions dead. Some say as many as 100 million. Perhaps more. Exact numbers from Mao's "Great Leap Forward" are, to this day, still unavailable.
I'm reading a book right now...it's called "Reagan's War" by Peter Schweizer, which details Reagan's forty-year struggle and campaign against Communism, first in Hollywood and at last on the international level, challenging it directly.
On page 213, in the second paragraph, a few lines especially leapt out at me:
"Surprised diplomats even encountered support for Reagan's policies among the Soviet intelligentsia. 'One hears (Soviet) intellectuals praising the US Administration's foreign policy, since toughness is the only thing the Soviet leaders understand'."
How ironic is it that, here in the West, our so-called "intellectuals" are usually the Neocomms, the ones praising the ways and means of communism, to this day, really, while their counterparts in the USSR were secretly giving the thumbs-up to their nation's enemy---that rabid, conservative, capitalist pig Ronald Reagan. And can anyone tell me why, children? If you haven't figured it out, I'll tell you:
Because those here in the West never actually had to live there, that's why. They never had to live in a police state that flagrantly censored their words. Western "intellectuals" never lived a under a terribly repressive government that tossed them into prison or, worse, mental hospitals, if they voiced dissent. Never had to fear that midnight knock on the door. Never had to suffer shortages and to do without so the State could function.
Only our geniuses here in the West seem to think it's a sad thing that we won. Only they hate Reagan for being right all along.
Communism works, but only it you're willing to allow the oppression of the masses, and, of course, to kill for it.