Interesting to read about the hysteria in the US at the time. I find it interesting how largely forgotten this period seemingly is and also how utterly bizarre it was. It seems reminiscent of current times and the hysteria/conspiracies many politicians try to openly sow. Also interesting to see the strength the Catholic Church had to influence the Irish state and how relatively quickly that power has disappeared almost entirely.
I recently watched Beat the Devil. I thought it was pretty dreadful. I had no idea it had a cult following and I can't imagine why. The film really runs out of steam about halfway through and most of the actors seemed to be going through the motions. It is certainly not among the Huston films that I would recommend. Watch The Maltese Falcon or The Misfits first.
That said, Ebert put it on his "Great Movies" list:
It's also possibly interesting for having had a 28-year old Truman Capote as screen writer. Except that I really think Capote wasn't a good fit for Hollywood. Breakfast at Tiffany's did not translate well to screen.
On the other hand, Roman Holiday is among my favorite films. It's the quintessential romcom.
For a terrific and unusual red-scare inspired film, let me recommend Johny Guitar. Now that's a film that deserves a cult following.
Um... it's famously a film[1] staring Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard.
I thought it was okay. It was obviously toned down a lot from the book to meet then current sensibilities which would not offend an audience today. Ironically, there's a comedy bit with Mickey Rooney[2] that probably didn't offend American audiences at the time but that has not aged well. I also thought they added a bit too much slapstick.
I don't see how this platitude adds anything to the conversation. What happened in the USSR does not excuse the American state enacting a less extreme version of it domestically. The red scare was a tragedy for those that were harassed by the state or excluded from certain positions.
That, I always have difficulty with these types of replies.
What should you do when someone, in a serious discussion, says that the Earth is flat, with a straight face?
Are they mocking you? Perhaps mocking the debate at hand? Are they trolling? Or maybe they are just naive and don't know that they are embarrassing themselves?
Maybe just treat them as a troll? But the thing is that when they appear just as some naive, maybe young person, the generous take would be to explain the ridiculous thing they are saying.. but I always feel so fool when I do that. Plus, I don't have the patience anymore.
In that he was devout in any economic theory it was capitalism. Crony capitalism but capitalism. He literally made slaves work for private companies, you don’t get more capitalist than that.
The German industrialists of the early 20th Century feared unionism, socialism, and communism. They backed Hitler and funded the Nazi party. In turn, Nazis enacted the Nacht und Nebel slave labor program, Lex Krupp, and allowed companies such as Krupp to take property from conquered nations.
You are right. Those not killed within a week's time were sent to to concentration camps. Many were forced labor (slave) and then moved to death camps.when they could no longer work. My apologies for being unclear.
Ideologies are just that: ideologies. No implementation of the ideology gets close to what the ideology tries to be.
Socialized health care isn't communism. It's just admitting that the "free market" isn't a magic panacea that automatically makes everything work. (Kind of like how most of us get our water from the government, or how we get our protection from our government-run military.)
Equating socialized healthcare with communism is a poor argument: Canada, Australia, and the UK have socialized health care, and those countries are very capitalist. If you don't like socialized health care, I suggest looking at how those countries operate and build your arguments based on observed facts of those systems' weaknesses.
US implementation of individual freedom is pretty close to what individual freedom ideology tries to be, so long as you understand individual freedom as others not interfering with your life as opposed to others being forced to help you. Even if your hot topic is guns or abortion, you may want to check the laws around Europe compared to laws in whatever is your favorite US state where you are free to move to anytime.
In Dennis v. United States the government jailed the leaders of the american communist party, and the supreme court upheld the conviction.
And if it's said that it's justified because they were the leaders: in Harisiades v. Shaughnessy the supreme court ruled that immigrants can be deported for being a previous member of the communist party, not even in any sort of leadership position. This includes just being a member for a year or two several decades ago.
You can make the argument that those were cases from the last century, so how about being arrested for exercising your first amendment in the wrong place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone
For something even more recent, protesters attempting to stop a massive new police training center* are being charged with domestic terrorism
While there is definitely plenty of latitude around "free speech" in America, it's not limitless and the government will happily jail you if they disagree with what you're saying.
This is not even getting into topics like COINTELPRO
In theory, Guantanamo Bay detains foreign nationals who did a lot more than just say "oh one day the world will be better off as a theocracy". Planning to overthrow US government to build either communism or theocracy is illegal and I am Ok with that. Speech is something not mandatory for me to hear and something I am not forced to follow.
In practice, I am sure there are many abuses and lack of due process to establish that each detainee is in fact a terrorist. But comparing that to extermination of millions by Stalin or Ughur reeducation camps in China is ridiculous. It's a small number of individuals who slipped through the cracks, and any system has cracks.
It was a common position among European and American communists that the Stalinist turn was a grave error that communists should strongly oppose, and that the USSR was not heading towards achieving communism (remember, not even China today calls itself communist, they have a communist party working towards that goal). For most western communists, it was a question of when not whether you had your "Kronstadt moment".
Likewise, I wouldn't put every excess of a capitalist state on the head of someone who calls themself a capitalist. Should they be held a priori individually responsible for the late Victorian famines in India and Ireland? The various coups and dictatorships in the Middle East, Central and South America? The sanction regimes whose explicit goal is "to bring about hunger" because it violates the anti-sovereignty "sphere of influence" Monroe Doctrine?
> It was a common position among European and American communists that the Stalinist turn was a grave error that communists should strongly oppose…
That was a “common position” in the sense that it was around, but it wasn’t the overriding position until 1956, when both the brutal Soviet invasion of Hungary and Khrushchev’s changes allowed European communists to make an easy break with Stalin. Before that, many European Communists were reluctant to alienate the Soviet Union or be tarred as Trotskyists.
Then in the mid–late 1960s, the decline of Stalin’s popularity gave way to a rise in Mao’s popularity among some French, British, and German Communists, a position which has also dated badly.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the Communist movement in many European countries remained fragmented, with the largest parties being post-Stalinist, but splinter parties still upholding Stalin and Mao as the models of their struggle. Interestingly, some of the smallest splinter parties operated just like cults of the Scientology sort, only without any religious basis – there was a trial in the UK fairly recently about an old Maoist party keeping a woman hostage for years.
Sure, a similar situation occurred with Mao -- many followers who were afraid to criticize for too long (and many others who were not so afraid, though they are often left out because they failed to comprehensively demonize China). Does that repudiate communism in its entirety as a school of thought and action? I don't think so -- that's why I disagree with the root comment who conflated communist with Stalinist, and who was defining the bounds of (barely) acceptable opinion as (paraphrasing) "minor increase to the welfare state", with anything further being equated with Stalinism or anti-semitism. I agree there are quasi-Marxist cults, I know the story you're talking about.
(I'd argue the continued lack of development of what the "dictatorship of the proletariat" as opposed to the current "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" can successfully look like, and how to then achieve "the withering away of the state" -- or even how to take power in the place where it's supposed to, the developed capitalist countries like Germany, without just gesturing at "the contradictions" and saying the people will get there -- that's what destroyed the Old Left communists. I have a different but no less critical appraisal of the New Left, and the Millennial Left. None of these projects even have a vision for how to get a vision for the future).
My post was correcting a single factual error that I quoted. I don’t appreciate you replying to my post in an attempt to draw me into your political battle.
No problem, I agree with your factual assertions. The root comment used some less nuanced but similar assertions (and some other inconsistent assertions) to make an objectionable political point, and so I think it’s still useful to repudiate their politics on the basis of your assertions.
Trotskyists were common, and hence, it was a common position -- I didn't say universal. I'm not even a Marxist/communist, never mind some scholar of sectarian subgroups, but that's just one popular example among many.
And that folks is how brainwashing works. I explicitely stated !A, yet someone claims I stated A. For anyone interested in substantial conversation - as I understand it, in UK you pay certain tax for NHS and in return you get access to certain medical services at certain quality/timeframe, that not everyone is happy about. Nevertheless, the government does not generally prevent you from getting other services on your own dime, or ban private research into new medical treatments. I understand that there have been a few contraversies regarding babies who NHS declared braindead and inelligable for transfer to another willing hospital, but those are rare corner cases where there are legitimate arguments from both sides. For these reasons, I do not consider public healthcare implemented simularily to NHS to be equivalent to communism, and if I were to consider moving from US to UK, different healthcare systems would not even be on my top 10 list of deciding factors.
