cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19125321
We are an extremely rightwing society and it is normalized to the point that my fellow citizens can’t even accurately identify Leftist policies. Socialism is considered evil. Our propaganda machine has done its job very effectively for decades.
Well, I do consider socialism to be “evil” because quite often it is non-voluntary. I am 100% on board with voluntary socialism (e.g. unions and co-ops), but I’m very much a fan of consent and really don’t want others to be making decisions for me. A lot of policies I support could be considered “socialist,” but I refuse to identify as socialist because of the proximity to forms that absolutely seek to take away individual self-determinism.
What was that leftists like to say about Nazis in a bar? If you tolerate Nazis in your bar, you’re a Nazi bar?
Surely that applies here. So many socialists tolerate or even defend terrible regimes, such as that in Venezuela, China, and Cuba. That certainly doesn’t mean all socialists tolerate it, but given the track record of socialism in producing authoritarian regimes, I have to think that many (most?) willfully ignore it, which is almost as bad. That doesn’t mean every implementation of socialism is bad, it just means I cannot give blanket support to “socialism” and need a lot more qualifiers first.
