6 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 25.9 ms ] thread
(comment deleted)
The very first sentence does the american-right-wing trope of conflating communism and socialism, which makes the article already suspect:

> The Victims of Communism Museum could play a role in disabusing young Americans of their fascination with socialists.

and that's pretty much all you get because of the hard paywall.

I havent heard of the source before and the other headlines on the site all look _very_ right-leaning. Here are some samples:

    The Transgender Contagion Includes Fox News
    Are We All Going to Be Gay?
    Democrats Refuse to Learn Anything
    Adoption Remains a Better Option Than Abortion
National Review is a conservative magazine with a long and distinguished pedigree. Founded in the the 50's by Bill Buckley, it was a centerpiece of the post-Goldwater conservative movement, and later of neoconservatism. They are kind of in decline now though, the shift to online hurt them and they represent the more "establishment" wing of US conservatism that Trump left in shambles
Visiting museums of communism in Prague and Berlin was an eye-opening experience. When everything was "provided" by government, those daring to criticize the government in any way soon found themselves with the worst jobs and houses (if they were lucky) or imprisoned (if they were not.) In nearly every part of society and industry, advancement was determined by political loyalty and purity rather than skill or capability. For example, people with no knowledge of agriculture issued farming edicts; with feedback treated as treason, the bad ideas just continued, leading to poor production and even starvation in some places.

It will be interesting to see how this museum compares with its eastern European counterparts.

If done right, this is a good thing.

Communism gets a weird pass on its sins, which are serious and many. I remember being at a social event an some grad student had a cheeky shirt with Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Castro, Mao, et al. wearing pointy party hats, blowing into noise makers, surrounded by confetti. Underneath the scene it said, "Communist Party", a very clever little play on words.

I couldn't help wondering how this was a socially acceptable thing given that Communism is responsible for an untold amount of human suffering in the 20th century, with some estimates citing a 7 or 8-figure death toll. Brutal. Now imagine for a second that instead of the scene described above, you had a shirt with Hitler, Goebbels, and Eichman throwing confetti, wearing birthday party hats, and blowing noise makers.