Mildly Infuriating

Not everything outside the Overton Window is equally bad

Red scare

I'm pretty sure "eat the rich" is not comparable to "kill 5 million Ukrainians."

And I'm also pretty sure 'rich person' is neither an ethnicity nor a nationality.

every time communism has been tried, it involved massive genocide

This argument is so frustrating, because it totally ignores the fact that the common thread, both for communist countries and capitalist countries, and both for intentional genocide and crises through incompetence, is the consolidation of power in a small set of individuals or group that prioritises their own self interest over the common good.

The big issue with "trying" communism is that it historically has only really occurred through violent revolution. The political instability in these situations gives a perfect opportunity for the seizing of power by exactly those kinds of people.

Never mind the fact that genocide is absolutely not limited to communist countries, and that genocide goes against the actual fundamental principles of a communist system, which is centred on equality.

Yes, the USSR committed genocide - so did Britain and America, and so are modern capitalist Russia and China right now.

There's loads of good reasons both for and against every economic system, communism included. But "communism=genocide lalalala" is just a cheap excuse to totally avoid considering the merits of a different economic system. Doing that denies yourself the opportunity to genuinely consider how a different economic approach, whether that's communism or just using concepts from the ideology, could improve the lives of citizens in a healthy democracy.

Wait til you find out how many people were killed by capitalist governments

So “eat the rich” is just edgy humor or what?

Yes. Most people don't want to eat other people. I would expect the explicit cannibalism to clue you in to a level of irony there.

Weird, because somehow, every time that every time communism has been tried, it involved massive genocide, though perhaps one could argue that the majority of it was the result of incompetency, because the majority of the victims starved to death as a result of disastrous agricultural policies.

Genocide has to be at least a bit deliberate, and generally they just fucked up their economy bad enough agriculture was negatively effected. In the USSR's case at least, the starvation affected the republics pretty equally, too. As Ukrainians were starving so were Khazaks. For political reasons, some parties have tried to make it sound like a targeted ethnic thing, but it just wasn't, and it certainly wasn't on purpose.

but you have to admit that even when taking to low estimates, communism’s death toll is far higher than that of the Nazis. OP is correct, they’re all evil ideologies.

This is the part where the communists come out with capitalism's death toll. Dumb ideology, maybe, evil ideology no, at least not on it's own.

Edit: Also, I take issue with not counting all of WWII as part of the Nazi death count, since they very deliberately made it happen. Consider this was in the space of just a few years, vs. an entire human lifetime for the Soviets.

Every time capitalism has been tried, it also involved massive genocide.

Funny, but it turns out that every economic system invented by humans has massive genocide in its history.

Wild, its almost like the genocide was a power grab tactic, and not something inherent to these economic systems.

Well fuck your thread.

/s

communism has somehow become synonymous with marxism-leninism, it's very sad

and it's the government model that is to blame?

Yes, because it leaves itself so prone to authoritarian takeover. As I’ve said before, this is a feature of communism, not a bug. A single, one-party “transitional” government is intended. You might as well just put up a sign that says “Dictator Wanted.” This is why there isn’t a single instance of communism on a nation-state scale that hasn’t quickly devolved into an authoritarian state. It’s not hard to understand this. Your government model has to account for the reality that people are going to disagree on things and faction out. Your model has to be able to manage that process. Communism insists everyone adhere to the same ideology, and those that don’t just get “re-educated.” It’s a horrible ideology, a horrible government model; naïve utopian fantasy at best, cynical authoritarian scheme at worst.

You are spot on on just about everything. The only thing I take issue with is saying that both werr corrupted by authoritarians. Fascism doesn't exist without authoritarians. It's just a shame that in America, especially as well as plenty of other places in the west, we are miseducated if we are educated at all on the subject.

I honestly don't see how the idea of everyone getting an equal share is an extremist idea in the same vein as a racist ideology. I'm also unsure why you're being downvoted for pointing out the obvious there.