Thread by @stealyoredbull

Countering common anti-communist talking points, a thread🧵:

#1 “communism is when no food!”

Per the literal CIA, Soviet citizens consumed roughly the exact same number of calories per day as American citizens during the same time. And their diets were considered more nutritious.

Also see Soviet supermarkets:

#2 “ask someone who lived under communism!”

They did:

#4: “Communism is anti-democracy!”

The soviet democracy structure was actually far more democratic than the US #election system.

And here’s a video breaking down Cuba’s election system, which is also more democratic than the US

#5 “Stalin was a dictator!”

Once again, even the CIA has admitted that this was not the case and states that under Stalin, leadership in the USSR was collective and that the confusion about the Soviet system in America was because basically Americans are dumb.

#6: “The nazis were socialists!”

Uhh, no. Hitler admitted he hated Marxism. The nazi economy pioneered privatisation. The Nazis seized state controlled industries & turned them over to private capital to run. Nazis banned unions, and their very first victims were communists.

#7: “Stalin made a pact with Hitler!”

Yes. As did many other countries that you praise for their efforts in WWII including Great Britain. Did you sleep through the entire high school history lecture on appeasement??

#8: “Communism destroyed democracy in Eastern Europe!”

They tell on themselves with this one. Prior to socialism in Eastern Europe, almost all of the countries that came under the USSR were fascist regimes.

#9: “Party leaders lived in luxury!”

Perhaps technically true but socialist states registered the lowest levels of inequality on earth and when compared to the luxury political officials in the West enjoyed, Soviet leaders’ privileges were quite modest.

#10: “Socialism has failed everywhere it’s been tried!”

And yet, according to this study of economic development, political-economic systems, and physical quality of life, “socialist countries showed more favourable PLQ outcomes” than capitalist countries.

#11: “100 gorillion dead!”

This number comes from the Black Book of Communism. Multiple authors of the book have recanted and said one author was just hellbent on hitting 100 million and would have gotten their no matter what.

That figure literally includes nazis killed in…

World War 2 and even includes people who decided not to have children (how they knew they were going to have them at one point is beyond me) and counts the babies they were never had as “victims of communism.”

Further, capitalism kills that many people every decade

#12: “socialism/communism stifles innovation!”

That didn’t stop the Soviets from beating the US into space. Oh, and you’re “twitter for iPhone” reply isn’t really the own you think it is since the Soviets developed the first mobile phone.

#13: “your heroes would kill you for being lgbtq+!”

usually the one they rely on for this one is Che as they claim he prosecuted gays. there’s however no record of that and no primary source for his homophobia. there’s one single quote in Motorcycle Diaries and that’s it.

see⤵️

#14: “Oh yea? Look at Venezuela idiot!”

Yes, let’s look at Venezuela indeed. While not adherent to marxism-leninism, the Bolivarian revolution and democratic socialism in Venezuela has yielded very positive results.

and even then it’s worth noting how in Venezuela, it’s ruling class was allowed to remain in tact and even control food distribution, which it used to create artificial shortages and internally sabotage the Bolivarian revolution. backed by the US ofc. so keep that in mind too.

#15 “the holodomor”

a favourite among nazi propagandists and fans of Anne Applebaum.

This would take a thread of its own, but luckily there’s this nifty piece already in existence:

discomfiting.medium.com/holodomor-fact…

#16 “tankie!”

this is from people who think the 1956 protests in Hungary were led by peaceful students protesting or something.

In reality it was anti-communist fascists who yearned for the days of the Kingdom of Hungary.

Possibly the only good thing Khruschev ever did

Also worth observing how things changed in Hungary after the 1956 uprisings were crushed.

#17 "people were dying to get rid of communism!"

Completely untrue. Look no further than the referendum on the preservation of the Soviet Union. The preserve side won 77-22. That doesn't look like people desperate to get rid of it.

#11 continued: "100 gorillion killed under communism"

Someone provided me with this nifty paper
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

Also, see excerpt from Parenti:

#18: “communism is when no house”

home ownership rates in Vietnam, China, and Cuba are all higher than the US. the USSR eliminated homelessness. after the fall of the USSR homelessness soared. in Cuba homelessness is virtually eliminated.

adding to #4 "communism is anti-democracy!"

Here's an account from a British teacher, Pat Sloan, on his own participation in elections in the USSR. Here is a link to the book, "Soviet Democracy." ia801608.us.archive.org/1/items/in.ern…

#19: “North Korea is a dictatorship and the people who have no food or clothes and are forced to worship the Kim family all day!”

In reality DPRK citizens are provided with food, housing, clothes, free education, medical care, and a right to a job that suits them.

#20: "China is genociding Uygurs!"

Here are some good threads, resources that counter many of the common images and talking points we see and hear online.

Let's start with the "hidden camps"

One "camp" is literally apartments

Ok, "but what about the secrecy?! why won't they allow anyone in??!!" Well, China did. Twice in 2019 in fact despite the US actually objecting to the UNHRC visiting Xinjiang (theguardian.com/world/2019/jun…)

As for the findings of the UN, here's their statement after visiting Xinjiang

moving along to "what about the actual footage and photos of abuse happening?!"

demonstrably manufactured, taken from other sources and attributed to Xinjiang.

Here's another example where one forgot to scrub the uploader's name and took a video about human trafficking in Myanmar and claimed it was Uyghurs being beaten in Xinjiang, banking on their followers not knowing Chinese.

#21 “The US won WWII and defeated fascism!”

This more an attempt to downplay that it was the USSR that defeated the Nazis.

In reality, US corporations heavily supported and provided money and weapons to the Nazis. The US IC openly preferred the Nazis and helped many escape.

After the war the US helped put together a covert group of stay behind units made up of former Hitler youth and other fascists to serve as a bulwark against communism in Europe.

The US also worked w/the Vatican to prop up Italian fascism, laundering money thru the Vatican bank

The US didn’t “defeat fascism” it’s been its biggest supporter since WII.

Eisenhower signed a pact with Franco providing fascist Spain w/US military and economic support.

Nixon & Kissinger helped plot a coup in Chile that led to Pinochet’s reign.

and Reagan, in addition to backing the Contras, also was chummy with Efrain Rios Montt, Guatemala’s dictator in the 1980s who was later convinced of genocide. Reagan called him a “man of great personal integrity.”

Even today, Obama, Trump, and Biden have all embraced Modi.

#22 “socialism is utopian!”

Bro, just admit you didn’t read the book and leave. marxists.org/archive/marx/w…

#23 “Communism is theft! You just want to take all my things!”

Erm, no. We want collective ownership of the means of production. Nobody is trying to collectivise your phone or your fleshlight.

Also, if you’re worried about theft you should hate capitalism.

#10 “socialism has everywhere it’s been tried.” continued…

Despite this claim and others that “everyone dies” if you look at life expectancy, it’s hard to see socialism as anything but a tremendous success.

In the USSR, communism doubled life expectancy.

In China, life expectancy went from roughly 35 to 65. Much of this was due (both in the USSR and China) to prioritised public health initiatives, providing free healthcare.

In Cuba life expectancy went from 70 to 78 and today it’s the same as the US. Again, this is a direct result of Castro prioritising health. Cubans live as long as Americans and the infant mortality rate is lower than in the US

Further, in the USSR, here is a paper from 2006 that actually tried to challenge the common notion that the Soviet Union improved living standards by using different metrics and still in the conclusion concedes that they couldn’t find anything that says otherwise

Similarly, in the same paper mentioned earlier in this thread, in the metrics of Health, Health Services, and Nutrition; socialist countries out performed capitalist countries in the Physical Quality of Life Index.

#24 "The Gulag!"

So how many people were held in Stalin's gulags? The definitive study by J. Archer Getty et al. using data released from the Soviet archives have a much different answer than Ovseenko or Conquest.

The authors say most high estimates are from "guesses, rumors"

When it comes to documentable figures, at the height of the Great Purges, the gulag population was about 2,000,000.

For comparison, the prison population in the US in 2016 was about 2.3 million.

As for the idea that the Gulag population was predominantly a form of political persecution (jailing political dissidents), Getty et al note that this too is a misconception that is not supported by the data.

#25 “Human nature!”

This one is odd since capitalism is only about 300-400 years. You’d think something so “human nature” would have materialised way earlier.

In fact, archaeology tell us that early humans as early as 12,000 years ago, lived communally.

#26 “I saw in the news all the time about people suffering under communism!”

You saw propaganda. Literal fake news made by the CIA during the Cold War to shape public opinion and brew anti-communism by planting fake stories via Radio Free Europe to paint communism as bad.

Additionally, the CIA used Operation Mockingbird to control what the America public saw and thought and had journalists on their payroll to pump out slanted and fake news that pushed the CIA’s own narrative of events.

*disclaimer* while some of these points are longer and some are shorter, as this thread is ongoing i want to just point out that in no way is this meant to be a master’s thesis. this is just to provide some quick counters to common points we encounter to get you started.

and let’s keep it real, usually the people using the arguments i address in this thread, if you respond with these thats either going to be the end of the conversation or they’ll just laugh and call it propaganda and then block you.

#27 “The poor in the US are better off than most people in the world”

That does tend to happen when your country is built off exploitation of other countries and extracting their resources for yourself and install US business friendly dictators i those countries. cont..

But when you look at poverty levels in the US compared to similarly developed nations what you actually find is that poverty in the US is significant worse than anywhere else.

This analysis of OECD countries found that the US child poverty SOL is far worse than other nations.

And then there’s this report from the UN which investigated poverty in the US and concluded that by far the US has the worst poverty in the developed world. Meaning that the poor in the US are far worse off than the poor in other developed nations.

#2 “ask someone who lived under it” continued…

#28: “why don’t you move to a communist country?!” (usually yelled from people who also support building a wall and banning immigrants)

Ignoring the obvious lack of understanding from these people about what communism is