VikingHippie

Yeah, because pointing out the fact that underregulated capitalism is even worse than the failed communism of the Soviet Union makes me a tankie who loves Stalin. The same Stalin who I called an autocratic dickhead on this very post 🙄

The world isn't a binary where something stops being awful once something else is even worse. That unfettered capitalism is even worse doesn't mean that the USSR wasn't a shitshow in many ways.

While it's true that "bashing Stalin" (something that I engage in myself) isn't red scare propaganda, dramatically exaggerating the many faults of the USSR while simultaneously greatly minimizing those of US capitalism very much IS.

So if you can stop foaming at the mouth over me being a communist (I'm not. I vary wildly between a European style Social Democrat and an anarchist depending on the subject matter but never ultra-authoritarian like a tankie) and take off your binary goggles for a second, you might actually learn something rather than having a hissy fit.

Systemic failings are so fucking far from extrajudicial or even judicial killings.

Are the victims any less dead? Are the politicians that knowingly created and uphold that system any less culpable for their murder just because they were less direct?

People being failed by a system is not a political killing

They are when the people making the rules are aware of the consequences of their actions and choose to cause the premature and preventable death of citizens anyway. Which is the vast majority of the deaths.

gulag style

Gulags were awful, yes, but only a few of them were worse than the worst present day US prisons.

You're letting red scare propaganda cloud your judgment.

Multiply how many people die of starvation or malnutrition a year by 29 (the length of Stalin's reign) and you'll see that I'm right.

Just because the two Soviet famines were faster and got more press doesn't mean they killed more people over a 29 year period than the US "food is for profits and poor people are for exploiting" politics.

Ok, so maybe not dozens, but regulatory capture and other facets of the US system of laissez-faire for the already rich and powerful coupled with brutal oppression of those already hurting the most directly kills at LEAST a million people a year, maybe double that indirectly or as a major but not sole factor. Multiply that with 29 (the length of Stalin's reign) and you get a hell of a lot more than 6.

Fair.

To be even more fair, though, extreme poverty and shortages of (nutritious) food are as severe if not worse in present day US and the richest 1% are hoarding much more than the party fat cats were too.

See also: one of several reasons why Elizabeth Warren isn't president right now.

I believe that she honestly believed it and had no fraudulent or otherwise malicious intent but not to make absolutely sure it wasn't one of those cases was stupid and unwittingly offensive as fuck!

I just want to know the story behind your username. Did a tuber betray you somehow?

So a 10 year prison sentence isn't 10 times worse than a one-year sentence? You think 3 people in prison for a month each is worse than two people with a year each?

The US has killed dozens of times that through social murder.

I'm not saying that Stalin wasn't an autocratic dickhead, but if you're gonna compare him unfavorably to present day US, number of own citizens killed is a bad choice of metric 🤷

It's the terror of knowing what this world is about..

Never has been, never will be.

To this day nicknamed "The Sooner State" after a bunch of white colonizers who cheated to get lands already stolen from Native Americans before other white colonizers had a chance to steal them "fairly".