Socialism FAQ

The Bullshit asymmetry principle, or Brandolini's law:

The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.

Socialism FAQ

Didn't communism fail? It works in theory but not in practice.

Did Socialism work in the USSR, and didn't the fall of the USSR bring more prosperity to Russia? IE, how to respond to "Communism doesn't work.", 2
Do Publicly Owned, Planned Economies Work?, audiobook
Why, in your opinion, have most attempts to form countries based economically on communism and socialism (USSR, Cuba, China) fail?
Were people really going hungry / starving in the USSR?
Why did the Soviet Union fail?
What about the gulags? 2 3, 4, 5
Didn't the USSR kill millions of it citizens, with most people living in poverty and dying early?
What about Stalin, the purges, the holodomor, etc? A revleft podcast.
Was Stalin actually a good leader?
What good did Stalin do?
Why are there no modern revolutions, in the past 40 years?
Didn't Capitalism bring people out of poverty? The UN says poverty has halved in the last few years.
Isn't worldwide global poverty decreasing?

What about human nature?

History and human nature.
What about human nature?
Doesn't socialism go against human nature?

Schools of thought

Glossary of Socialism Terms.
What are the different forms of Marxism and what are their differences?
What are the differences between Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, Trotskyism, MLM, and Stalinism?
Can someone give us a quick like-we're-five rundown of the distinctions between Trotskyism, Maoism, orthodox Marxism, and so on?
What's the difference between anarchism and communism?
What's the difference in economic structure ( production and distribution) of anarchism, anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, and Marxist communism?
Parenti on Anarcho-Syndicalism / Worker-Coops.
TheDashRendar - Where do tanks come from? How anarchists vs marxists wage warfare.
Comrade Hakim - On the difference betweeen "liberatarian" and "authoritarian" socialism.
Huey P. Newton on the faults of western anarchism.
What is the communist response to a lot of Anarchist criticisms? A Megathread.
What are Mao's contributions to Marxism? (MLM)
What is Stalinism?
Looking for reference to types of communism.
What was Engels Contribution to Marxism?
Were the nazis socialist? What about national socialism, the national socialist movement (NSM), and the national front?, 2, 3, 4
What is Fascism?
Did Karl Marx use "socialism" and "communism" interchangeably?
What is Luxemburgism?
Is the revolutionary DotP a separate material stage apart from lower phased communism?
Is socialism the lowest stage of communism or is it the transition to communism, in between capitalism and communism?
What about Left Unity? Engels letter to Bebel.

On Ultra-leftism / Left-Communism

What about the USSR, wasn't it authoritarian? Watch this brilliant talk by Micheal Parenti, or read his article, Left anticommunism, the unkindest cut, audiobook
Why do most Marxists dislike ultra-lefts / left-communists (the "not real socialism" crowd) ?
Hakim - Why the USSR was socialist - A critique of left-communism.
Cockshott - Socialism and surplus - Why the USSR was socialist.
Where are communists on the political compass?
Lenin - "Left-Wing" Communism: An infantile disorder. Audiobook
Western Marxism's martyrdom / purity complex.

Did economic planning work?

Did Socialism work, in the USSR?
Do Publicly Owned, Planned Economies Work? audiobook
My economics teacher said that the planned economies communist countries had are proven failures. Is this true?
Do planned economies have any elegant math behind them?
Is there a surplus in socialist economies? How is it different from the surplus in capitalism and feudalism?
How did early hunter gatherer and agricultural societies work? Were they egalitarian? How did private property come about? Why did women have a higher status? How did classes and inequality arise?
How can economic planning solve the climate and food crisis?
Towards a new socialism - Cockshott and Cottrell audiobook
Why are communists against markets?

Who would sweep the floors under communism?

How can people be expected to work hard if they don't get payed more FOR working harder? (I know nothing about communism)
What prevents cultural, technological or scientific stagnation in a communist society? Also what motivation do people have to work at their Jobs?
What about automation / robotics? Why do some communists say innovation has stopped?
Would people innovate under Communism? Doesn't capitalism create innovation?
How does communism deal with lazy people?
How does communism/socialism deal with human laziness?
What about people who refuse to work?

What about cooperatives?

Can cooperatives bring about socialism?
Couldn't small anarchist / anarcho-communist communes replace Capitalism?

What about democracy? Can't voting fix our problems?

Red Phoenix - Pacifism - How to do the enemy's job for them. Youtube Audiobook
Halim Alrah - Why liberal democracies are a sham.
What about social democracy / democratic socialism / the Nordic model? Isn't Sweden socialist?
Why can't you acheive socialism through voting in our current democracies?
Comrade Hakim - Why electoralism always fails.
Why not just vote leftists into office: what's wrong with democratic socialism?
What about harm reduction?
Why Sanders is not a socialist - Anticonquista
What's wrong with the DSA / Democratic socialism?
How do socialists feel about elections? What about democratic socialism?
Can a one-party state really be a democracy?
Why is Chinas one party system outperforming western democracies that have abysmal approval ratings?
How the capitalist democratic party sabotaged the Sanders campaign.
Paying one half of the poor to kill the other half: Why Marxists should not support Sanders.

Pacifism and Violence

What about Pacifism / pacifist socialism? Is violence necessary to acheive socialism? What about Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi? audiobook
Is a bloodless revolution possible?
What is imperialism?
The CIA, Gene sharp, and it's pacifist color revolution regime change tactics.
Was the civil rights struggle in the US really nonviolent? Malcolm X - message to the grassroots.
- FBI cointel directives on "nonviolent" groups.
Is a state really necessary to transition into communism?
Engels - on authority.
An Overview of Leninism, Lenin - State and Revolution , audiobook
Luxemburg - Reform or Revolution, audiobook
Trotsky - Fascism - What it is and how to fight it, audiobook

What would X be like under communism?

What does housing look like in Communist countries?
How would a record company/label work in a communist society?
Music tours and traveling in a socialist state?
How would airlines work for the workers and the customers in a communist world?
How would a society without the family work?
Record Collecting
How would everyday life be different in a Marxist society?
How would non-essential products their production be promoted in a traditional Marxist economy?
How would media be handled in a Communist state?
What is going to happen after the revolution?
How would a communist economy really function in practice?
How does communism deal with niches?
How would residentials be fairly distributed under full communism?
How do police / cops differ in socialism?
- An interview with some traffic cops in China.
What if some people don't wanna be communist?

On Economics and Sociology

Can someone ELI 5 the Labor Theory of Value?
Is the Labor theory of value (LTV) scientifically correct? What about academic economists and the subjective theory of value (STV)?
Is human labor the source of value because human beings do not normally work for free?
Value as a necessary product of labor?
What is the right way to think about the relation between value and labor?
Whats so bad about land ownership / renting / private property? Why do socialists want to abolish it? Don't landowners do work?
I am in trouble understanding how exactly would a private property abolition work.
Private property: Cause or result of alienation?
In Marxian economics, is 'value' distinct from 'price'? What does 'value' indicate, exactly?
can you explain the theory of alienation to me in a "explain like I'm five" manner?
If private property is abolished, does this mean anyone can enter "one's home" (or where one lives) and cannot be expelled?
Shouldn't capitalists be rewarded for Risk / Financial investment? Well shouldn't business owners be rewarded for their financial risk? Do Capitialists deserve profit? Is profit proportional to risk?
What is the power of the US dollar / US currency?

On Nationalism and Internationalism

Nationalism and internationalism, where do leftists stand?
Nationalism and Communism?
Why is patriotism bad?

On Women's Liberation

Is it necessary to be a feminist to be a communist?
How would eliminating Capitalism help women's liberation? Why did the patriarchy develop as it did?
What is intersectionality, and how is it related to Marxism?
What real solutions does socialism have for women, LGBTQ, etc.?
On Feminism
What is proletarian/marxian feminism?
Hello comrades! can anyone explain the idea of marxist-feminism?
What about the history of Marxist Feminism?
Thomas Sankara - Women’s liberation and African freedom struggle
Clara Zetkin - Lenin and the Women's Question
Witchcraft - Class struggle and women's liberation in the middle ages.
Interviews with Women in the USSR.
What's wrong with "more women CEO" / imperial feminism?

On Race and Class

How is Race related to class / Marxism?
What about class reductionism / the dirtbag left?
How is racism related to capitalism?
Was the US communist movement anti-racist?
Is Racism human nature?
Lenin on Anti-Semitism.
What about identity politics / race and class?
How would eliminating capitalism help marginalized groups such as women, gays, racial minorities, etc?
What about black-on-black crime (Insert racist thing here)?
What about Beyonce / Black Capitalism?
What is the labor aristocracy? 2 3 4

On Guns / Firearms / Violence

What is the socialist stance on guns?
Is it true that gun ownership correlates to increased murders and violence?
Do Marxists oppose individual terrorism? (Trotsky)
Where do socialists stand on gun violence and acts of terrorism?
Will the revolution necessarily be violent?
How can we justify owning firearms in the wake of mass shootings?

On Capitalism

Crash Course socialism.
What exactly is capitalism?
Glossary of Socialist terms.

On Liberalism

Why do communists dislike liberals?, 2
What is liberalism? (Olly from Philosophy Tube)
What about free speech? What about Antifa / Anti-Fascism?
Why do leftists think that FDR co-opted the left to "save" capitalism?
What's wrong with democrats ( insert moderate party here ) ?

On Leninism

An overview of Leninism.
What is the vanguard party? Is one necessary?
Why is a vanguard party necessary in Leninism?
What is Vanguardism and Democratic Centralism?
What is a vanguard party supposed to be like? What qualifies and doesn't qualify as a vanguard party?
Difference between leninism and Marxist-leninism?
Why does left communism reject national liberation movements?
Is it true that Socialism has killed X million people, and how many has capitalism killed?
What's the role of the state in the revolution, and what is a state?
What about the USSR, wasn't it authoritarian? Watch this brilliant talk by Micheal Parenti, or read his article, Left anticommunism, the unkindest cut, audiobook
What is Socialism in one country? What's the controversy around it w/ respect to Stalin and Trotsky? 2 3 4
What did Lenin say about socialism in one country?
Taimur Rahman - Why I am not a Trotskyist.
What is Dialectical Materialism?
Is Chomsky right about Marxist-Leninists being evil?
Chomsky's takes - A thread

On Trotskyism

Primarily to the trotskyists: Can you explain the theories of the degenerated workers state, the deformed workers state and state capitalism and can these theories co-exist in the same country?
A critique of Trotsky?
Regarding Trotsky's ‘‘Permanent revolution’’ and the two-stage theory
How does Lenin's theory of revolution differ from Trotsky's?
What are the main Marxist analyses of fascism? and a question regarding Trotsky's
Did Stalin 'betray' the revolution? (repost of deleted question)
Why was "Lenin's testament" suppressed by the Party after Lenin's death?

On the USSR

Did socialism achieve anything in the USSR?
Why do the majority of Russians regret the collapse of the USSR?
What is Stalinism?
What about Stalin? Didn't he kill millions? (Revleft podcast on Stalin)
Was Stalin's USSR State Capitalist?
What about the term tankies / stalinists? What's the meaning of the term? What about the 1956 Hungarian revolt?, 2. MI6 trained the hungarian opposition to fight soviets in the 1956 revolt.
Hakim - Why the USSR was socialist - A critique of left-communism.
Did Stalin really try to resign 4 times?
Why were there prison labor camps in the USSR and were they justified?
Did the USSR really make an alliance with the nazis? (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), 2, 3, 4, 5
Did the USSR supply the Nazis with raw materials and weapons in the years before WW2?
How many Jews escaped from Poland to the USSR in WW2?
What about the Katyn Massacre?. 2
What contributions did Stalin make to Marxism-Leninism?
Opinions on Defense of Stalin and Mao
Stalin's Purges
Was Stalin anti-Semitic? What about the doctors plot? 2
What are some legitimate criticisms of Stalin?
I need clarification on myths/truths of the USSR/Soviet Union.
I'm fascinated by the idea of communism...
Was the Soviet Union democratic? If so to what extent?
How necessary or productive were the torture, mass executions of captives, and labor camps of 20th-century socialist governments and revolutions?
Why did Lenin abolish factory committees established by workers?
How much of the USSR's "dark history" under Stalin can actually be attributed to Yezhov?
Forced Deportation Under Stalin, 2
Did the Soviet Union manufacture a famine in Ukraine? What about the Holodomor?, 2,3,4,5, 6, A podcast on Stalin, Holodomor, and the purges.
Did Stalin / the USSR intentionally wreck the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War / Revolutionary Catalonia? , 2
Did the early USSR repress anarchists? What about Nestor Makhno and the Free territory of Ukraine?
- A brief history of Nestor Makhno.
ELI5 of the Kronstadt Rebellion.
- What about the Kronstadt sailor's rebellion, why did the USSR stop it? 2.
- What were the sailor's specific demands?.
- Were the sailors anarchists? ( No, they were Left Social Revolutionaries ).
- Trotsky's position on petite-bourgeois attacks in the middle of the Russian Civil War.
Were the Soviet POWs returning from the front on WW2 treated as spies?
Wasn't the fall of the Berlin Wall / East Germany a good thing?, 2, 3, 4
- Democracy, East Germany, and the Berlin Wall by Stephen Gowans
Is it true that people in the USSR only worked 6 hours per day?
Fraud, Famine, and Fascism by Douglas Tottle
The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933 by Mark Tauger
Natural Disaster and Human Actions in the Soviet Famine of 1931–1933 by Mark Tauger
The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933 by Davies and Wheatcroft
Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union by Mario Sousa

Did the Soviet Union repress and kill millions of people?

The Triumph of Evil by Austin Murphy
Human Rights in the Soviet Union by Albert Syzmanski
Another View of Stalin by Ludo Martens
Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives by Getty and Manning
Origins of the Great Purges by J. Arch Getty
The Road to Terror by J. Arch Getty
Other studies by historian by J. Arch Getty
The Legacy of Stalinism by "brown-eggs"
Khrushchev Lied by Grover Furr
Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti
Blood Lies: The Evidence that Every Accusation against Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union in Timothy Snyder's 'Bloodlands' Is False by Grover Furr

Did the Soviet Union and the Warsaw pact nations have functioning democracies?

Soviet Communism: A New Civilization by Sydney and Beatrice Webb
Is the Red Flag Flying? by Albert Syzmanski
Socialism Betrayed by Keeran and Kenny
Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934–1941 by Robert Thurston
The Russians are Coming: The Politics of Anti-Sovietism by V.L. Allen
The 1936 Soviet Constitution
Soviet Democracy by Pat Sloan

Was Soviet Socialism an economic failure?

Do Publicly Owned, Planned Economies Work? by Stephen Gowans, Audiobook
From Farm to Factory by Robert Allen
The Rise of Socialism by William Foster
We Lived Better Then by Stephen Gowans
The Need for Planning by Joseph Ball

Did the citizens of the Soviet Union dislike their government?

66% of Russians polled in 2015 want the USSR back. The story is the same for all the former eastern-bloc countries: 72% of Hungarians say their country is worse off now than under communism, 57% of East Germans, 63% of Romanians, 77% of Czechs, 81% of Serbs (for Yugoslavia), 70% of Ukrainians, 60% of Bulgarians. A twitter thread.
81% of Serbs want Yugoslavia back.
72% of Hungarians say they were better off under communism, 71% say intergration into the EU has weakened their country.
Bulgaria's plummeting birth rate after the fall of the soviet bloc.
Homesick for a Dictatorship
60% of Russians Want Communism Back
Former Soviet Countries See More Harm from Breakup
Russians say Aug 1991 events are tragedy, not triumph of democracy
Struggling Romanians Yearn for Communism
Tajikistan Pines for Old Soviet Union Strength
Referendum on the Preservation of the USSR
Central Asia in Nostalgia for the Soviet Period
Freest Under Czech Communism!
Seven Myths about the USSR by Stephen Gowans
An experiment in living socialism: Bulgaria then and now by F.S.
Growing Up Under Communism Was The Happiest Time Of My Life by Zsuzsanna Clark

On Mao, Maoism, and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and the PRC

What is Maoism?
How many peopled really died during the Great Leap Forward?
Did Mao really kill millions of people in the great leap forward?
What about the mass killing of landlords? What about landlordism?
What about the famines? Did Mao kill millions?
Why did Mao launch the Cultural Revolution? What was he trying to achieve as distinct from the Revolution the Chinese Communists had already won? To what extent did he succeed? Does it have any continuing impact? (x-post from /r/AskHistorians)
What was the cultural revolution? A Documentary series on it, called How yukong moved the mountains
What are Mao's contributions to Marxism? (MLM)
Where should I start with Mao?
Debastardising Mao.
Deng on why Mao's legacy must be upheld.
What about Tibet? (95% of the population were slaves or feudal serfs before China invaded in 1959) audiobook
Mao's liberation of Tibet
Dalai Lama admits his organization recieved millions from the CIA yearly.
Did China really try to save the GDR?
Didn't China cause the Coronavirus? A Megathread.
What about China's corono-virus response? Is there really any sinophobia? 2 3
Debunking NYTimes anti-china covid-19 talking points, especially about Dr Li.
The US went against the CDC recommendations and evacuated 14 corona-virus infected US citizens, sparking the spread of the virus in the US.
An April 2020 poll of Republicans and Democrats finds that 77% blame China for coronavirus, with 54% saying China owes reparations.
Vijay Prashad and Qiao Collective - On the covid timeline, and US Sinophobia.
Did China hide covid?
Taimur Rahman - How China beat the Coronavirus.
What about the suicide nets at Foxconn?

Is China State Capitalist?

Much credit to /u/bayarea415

The backbone of the economy is state ownership and socialist planning. 24 / 25 of the top revenue companies are state-owned and planned. 70% of the top 500 companies are State-owned. 1, 2
Is modern day china communist? Is it staying true to communist values?
Didn't China go Capitalist with Deng Xiaoping? Didn't it liberalize its economy? Is China's drastic decrease in poverty a result of the increase in free market capitalist policies?
Is the CPC committed to communism?
The Long Game and Its Contradictions.
The myth of Chinese state capitalism. Did Deng really betray Chinese socialism?
Do capitalists control the communist party? No, pic
What is socialism with Chinese characteristics (SWCC)?
Why do Chinese billionaires keep ending up in prison? Why are many billionaires and CEOs going missing? China sentences Ex-Chairman of a major bank, guilty of embezzling ~$100M USD, to death in 2019.
How the State runs business in China.
50% of the economy is in the socialist public sector and directly follows the plan (40% if you ignore the agricultural sector). 20 to 30% is inside the state capitalist sector, which is the sector partially or totally owned by domestic capitalists but run by the CPC or by local workers councils. The rest is made up of the small bourgeois ownership like in the NEP.
China pushing forward Marxist training in colleges, attracts 1M students.
China tells the US that it has no plans to weaken the role of its State-Owned-Enterprises, one of the US's main demands in the trade war. "Beijing plans to make the state economy stronger, bigger, and better."
A China misinformation Megathread.

Is China a Democracy?

Is China a democracy?
Workplace democracy in action in the CPC.
What kind of democracy does China have, and how is it different from the west?
In contrast to low US political approval ratings, 96% of Chinese are satisfied with the national government (Edelmans 2016). World Values Surveys says that 83% think the country is run for their benefit rather than for the benefit of special groups. A Harvard research center study of long-term public opinion survey finds that > 95% of Chinese citizens approved their government. How is this possible in a one-party state? (TED talk by Eric X Li)
How does China’s political system work?
How are Chinese leaders elected / chosen? How meristocratic is the system? How do elections differ from those in western bourgeois democracies?
Who runs China? Makeup of the national people's congress.
US policy-makers are misjudging popular support China's Government.
The american dream is alive... in China.

Workers rights

The real wage (IE the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country. This is staggering considering it's the most populous country on the planet. The US real wage by comparison is lower in 2019 than it was in 1973.
US Life expectancy peaked in 2015, is on the decline, and is now lower than in China. 2
- How healthcare works in China (refuting a fearmongering NYT video about health care in China).
- Uninsured Chinese citizens pay an average of $5-7 to see a specialist (the majority of hospital visits ), and with insurance, its free. 95% of Chinese citizens have insurance
Wages themselves are forced to rise in the private sector by the CPC (+16% every years, +400% since 1980) who force the capitalists to accept the presence of CPC chapters who represent the interest of the workers, increasing workers control even in the capitalist parts of the economy.
Eliminated Urban Poverty. On track to eliminate all poverty within a decade.
Trade union laws of the PRC.
The west views China as one big sweatshop, but the actual working hours aren't much more than anywhere else. The average for a migrant worker (most vulnerable to exploitation as they are traveling from the countryside) is 8.8 hours, little under an hour more than a typical working day. Labor strikes are rarely suppressed, and usually get the support of the PRC.
The workplace safety standards of China are better than in the capitalist countries of the West like in Australia who have an higher rate of work related death despite having a GDP per capita 3-5 times higher.
In a typical example of proletarian police accountability, the CPC sentences a police officer to death for killing a pregnant woman in a restaurant in southern China.
The US is losing to China: “Washington is actually far more corrupt than Beijing. If you want to get something done in Washington, you do what you do in Jakarta: just slip some money to the right people.”
China surpasses the US as of 2015 as the world's largest global trading partner.
China 9 years ahead of schedule on meeting its Paris agreement climate change goals.
China meets ultra-low power plant emissions in advance of 2020 goal.

Is China Imperialist?

Debunking the claim that "China is Imperialist"
Is China really imperialist? What's the difference between what Europe did to Africa, and what China is doing?
Yanis Varoufakis on China's foreign policy dealings with Greece and Africa.
Vijay Prashad and Qiao Collective - Is China imperializing Africa?
Danny Haiphong from BlackAgenaReport interview with Anya Parampil from thegrayzone: on the new cold war, and a myriad of lies about China.
The Belt and Road Initiative: the antithesis of Colonialism.
The war on China : and geopolitical significance of the belt and road initiative.
China has forgiven over $10B in debt, over half to Cuba, but also including > 20 African nations, Pakistan, and Cambodia.
After covid, China suspends debt repayment for 77 countries, promises > $2B USD and medical supplies as aid to help developing countries fight covid.
President Xi pledges coronavirus vaccine to Africa first, helps fund African CDC headquarters.
China forgives over $78M in Cameroon debt.
China writes off $36m Mozambican debt.
China writes off substantial amount of Angola debt.
After a group of Guangdong landlords evicted a group of Africans, the CPC arrested them, apologized to the African Union, paid for hotels for the migrants, passed a series of anti-discrimination laws, and spent weeks going to all the restaurants, landlords, and taxis to warn them of the law.
Nato's new enemy: the CPC.
The western media's China hysteria.

What about the Hong Kong protests?

Megathread #1, #2
The extradition bill came about when a man from Hong Kong killed his pregnant girlfriend while in holiday in Taiwan. 1 He fled back to Hong Kong. Taiwan asked for him to be extradited, but Hong Kong did not have an extradition treaty with Taiwan, so the administration in Hong Kong proposed a bill that would allow Taiwan, the PRC, and Macau to request extradition, which the judiciary in Hong Kong can then approve. There were 49 crimes that were to be included in the bill that would allow extradition requests. Some of these were financial crimes (Hong Kong is a popular tax haven for billionaires), and the Capitalists in Hong Kong shit themselves because they are often in breach of PRC law, but protected by Hong Kong's independence as a Special Administrative Region. This bill is completely reasonable, and any fears of the PRC taking over or of the extradition of 'political' criminals is unfounded. The US is encouraging the organizers to keep protesting in order to provoke the administration in Hong Kong to crack down on them, so that they can blame China and keep up their propaganda narrative that 'CHINA BAD!' More here.
AntiConquista - the History of Hong Kong, and the nature of the protest movement, and who's funding it.
The Hong Kong Protests: Irrational chaos.
Bayarea415 on The Hong Kong Protests, and color revolutions.
Hong Kong - The Protest movement unmasked. (Also gets into the inequality and housing crisis driving the movement)
The US has admitted that it’s funding the protests. Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor and HKCTU, along with 68 other Hong Kong “democratic right” organizations earn hundreds of thousands every year from State Department funded NGOs.
American government officials caught ON CAMERA colluding with HK protest leaders.
American Government NGOs fuel Hong Kong Protests.
Joshua Wong, one of the leaders of the protests, travels to US, seeking US intervention. Meets with Marco Rubio, Pelosi, and other senators to garner support. Senators Rubio and Tom Cotton sponsored legislation that would punish Hong Kong or mainland officials who suppressed basic freedoms in the city. Joshua Wong wishes neoconservative Marco Rubio a happy birthday.
Hong Kong Billionaire publisher / media mogul Jimmy Lai, a large donor for the HK protests, meets with Pence, Pompeo, to discuss US intervention., 2
After BLM protests erupt in the US following the murder of George Floyd, Jimmy Lai, one of the leaders of the anti-china protests, distances himself from BLM, stating: "The riots in the US are nothing like the riots in HK... they are destroying everything american, everything HKers are fighting to obtain."
An overview by isgoodrum.
The protestors are beating up anyone from China (lots of anti-china racism from hkers) 2 3
“Something else you won't see in imperialist msm: Hong Kongers organizing to show their support for extradition amendment. "Hong Kongers can't be at ease if fugitives are in the large".
“Over 900,000 real name signatures in "Protecting justice & supporting extradition" petition. Reasons listed: HK criminal committed murder in TW; HK current extradition law has flaws & needs amendment asap; HK shouldn't be fugitive heaven, extradition amendment has many safeguards”.
Hong Kong - British vs Chinese Perspective.
How the US seeded a color revolution in Hong Kong.

What about China spying on its own people?

China’s Social Credit System, and how it isn't actually Black Mirror and how you should stop using facile pop cultural references to demonize countries you haven't bothered to understand.

What's going on with the Uyghurs?

What's going on with the Uyghurs / Xinjiang province?
XinJiang: Facts vs Fiction.
A Pakistani Diplomat given full access to “re-education camps” and this is what she found.
- Despite claims of "erasing Uyghur culture", they stated: "I did not find any instance of forced labor or cultural and religious repression. The imams we met at the mosques and the students and teachers at the Xinjiang Islamic Institute told us that they enjoy freedom in practicing Islam and that the Chinese government extends support for maintenance of mosques all over Xinjiang. [...]The most visible sign of protection of Uyghur culture by the government is the government-run bilingual kindergarten schools where children learn Putonghua as well as Uyghur language and culture from a very young age."
Egyptian media delegates provide a detailed insight of the situation in Xinjiang
A majority of Muslim countries support China's policies in XinJiang, and don't believe the western lies told about it.. 54 Countries in total. 2, 3, 4 Supporters: Algeria, Angola, Bahrain, Belarus, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Comoros, Congo, Cuba, DR Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Gabon, Kuwait, Laos, Nigeria, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Togo, Turkmenistan, UAE, Venezuela, Zimbabwe.
China's policies in the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region lift 1.85 million people out of poverty from 2014-2017.
US fuels terrorism in China: “1 million Uyghurs never verified”
China’s Xinjiang Problem – Made in USA.
No, the UN did not report China has ‘massive internment camps’ for Uighur Muslims.
What about Democracy now and the Intercept's claims about the Uyghur camps?
Religious freedoms in China explained.
Thousands of Muslims from the Uyghur province make Hajj Pilgrimage yearly. 11k Chinese Muslims travel from Xinjiang on free chartered flights to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj, in 2019.
EU rejects China offer of Xinjiang tour.
A wikileaks cable from 2011 shows that the US coordinated with groups to incite separatism in Mongolia, XinJiang, and Tibet.
The sources for an Australian documentary about the uyghurs, turn out to be members of the FSA and TIP, right wing, ultra-nationalist Turkish terrorist orgs. The two men with links to terrorist groups were interviewed on nearly every Australian TV station for a week. 2
If China Is Anti-Islam, Why Are These Chinese Muslims Enjoying a Faith Revival?
A New York Times "expose" of re-education centers in Xinjiang lied and mistranslated every claim.
Reddit holds an AMA for an "Uyghur Activist", who turns out to be Rushan Abbas, a CIA agent who worked for Homeland Security, Department of Defense, Department of State, Department of Justice, and various U.S. intelligence agencies, and even worked at Guantanamo bay, the US muslim torture camp. 1 2
Reddit holds yet another AMA with Sophie Richardson, the "China director" at the US soft-power regime change agency Human Rights Watch. The comments expose her as not speaking chinese, and spreading blatant lies about China.
A case study in Anti-Chinese racism.
RodericDay - A thread about the key sources for Uyghur Genocide (Especially Adrian Zenz).
Breaking down the BBC's visit to XinJiang.
More sources debunking this here.

What about the Falun Gong?

An investigation by the Refugee Review tribunal of Australia found the claims of organ harvesting, and prison camps, were provided by two unreliable witnesses, and can't be verified, by any of the major sources reporting it.
The claims mainly come from a self-appointed, private organization called the China Tribunal, run by British barrister Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who unsurprisingly served as a prosecutor in a UN trial regarding the former Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, whose role was attempting to pin war crimes on Slobodan Milošević.
The "sources" for the claims are a few international members of Falun Gong.
Its a cult, outlawed in China, akin to Scientology. The founder of Falun Gong, Li Hongzhiu, is racist, and homophobic. Li teaches that homosexuality is not the standard of being human, the priority of Gods will be to eliminate homosexuals and that gays are demonic in nature.
What is Falun Gong, and why do they believe "Trump was sent by heaven to destroy the communist party."? One famous Falun Gong practitioner, Jennifer Zeng, writes that Chinese people view Trump as their "powerful Grandpa", and hopes that he ends the Communist Party, in the same way that Reagan "got rid of the Communist party of the Soviet Union."
Claims that race-mixing severs our connection to the Gods.
Believes that modern science was invented by Aliens as part of a scheme to take over human bodies.
Believes that feminism, environmentalism, and homosexuality are part of Satan’s plan to make us into communists
CNN claims of organ harvesting are not credible.
The hospital that supposedly holds 6000 falun gong prisoners, was visited by various US officials after the claims, and found to be just a regular hospital.

What about the Tiananmen square massacre?

Tiananmen Square "Massacre", A Propaganda Hoax.
The truth about the Tiananmen square protests
It wasn't a massacre of peaceful students, but a skirmish between PLA soldiers and armed detachments from the pro-capitalist / free market reform movement. The protest movement, as evidenced by their own accounts, called for market liberalisation, and free market reforms, rallying around a replica of the statue of liberty. After the movement had been building in the square for seven weeks, unarmed soldiers were sent in to disperse the protesters, after which many soldiers were beaten to death, torched, and lynched. The New York Times death count went from 2600, to many thousands, to 8000, to tens of thousands. In reality only around ~200 (including soldiers) were killed or trampled, in smaller clashes outside the square. The on-scene New York Times reporter disavowed the article, especially about machine-gunning of protesters. A wikileaks cable from a US ambassador to the US state department, confirmed that no killings or machine-gunnings took place in the square.
A British Lie.
Deng XiaoPing was ill at the time, and the CIA had an inside man inside the party, Zhao Ziyang, dubbed China's Gorbachev, who promised to open the door to market liberalisation if the protest movement had succeeded, like those of Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Georgia, and the USSR.
The protest movement followed the line of "color revolutions", in which the US tried to destabilize and create counter-revolutions in eastern Europe and Latin America after the fall of the USSR. The strategy was to stir division within and without, by inundating the media with news of massacres of "peaceful", pro-capitalist / market reformers.
The defeat of a counter revolution in China.

What is Radio Free Asia?

It, along with Radio free Europe, and Free Cuba Radio, were created by the CIA in the 1950s-60s, as a propaganda arm of the US.
In its current form, its controlled by another US government agency called, Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), whose aim is to "reinforce one another in a shared mission vital to U.S. national interests". It's standards include "Be consistent with the broad foreign policy objectives of the US".

Did Mao kill millions of people?

Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward? by Joseph Ball
Monster or Liberator? by Carlos Martinez
The Battle for China's Past by Mobo Gao
Was Mao Really a Monster? The Academic Response to Chang and Halliday's "Mao: The Unknown Story" by Benton and Chun
How did Mao manage to kill ~78 million people? by Godfree Roberts

Was the PRC a totalitarian dictatorship?

The Rise of the Chinese People's Communes by Anna Louise Strong
The Chinese Road to Socialism: Economics of the Cultural Revolution by E. L. Wheelwright
Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village by William Hinton
Shenfan: The Continuing Revolution in a Chinese Village by William Hinton
Turning Point in China: An Essay on the Cultural Revolution by William Hinton

On the German Democratic Republic (GDR)

What about the GDR?
Was the GDR really more democratic than west germany?

On Cuba

A Cuba and Fidel Megathread.
Just how socialist was/is Cuba?
Why, in your opinion, have most attempts to form countries based economically on communism and socialism (USSR, Cuba, China) fail?
In defence of (and questions about) Cuba
Did the cuban people like Fidel Castro?
Multiple questions about Cuba
Did the US really think Castro was a dictator? Answer: No.
Why did people flee Cuba / Did Cuba have a famine in the 1990s?
Did Fidel Castro persecute gay / LGBT people? What about the UMAP prisons?
How are gay rights nowadays in Cuba?

Was Che a murderer and/or a racist?

Che: A Revolutionary Life by Jon Lee Anderson
Debunking the 'Che Guevara Was Racist!' Lie by Cuervo Rojo

Is Cuba a functioning democracy or a terrible place to live?

20 Reasons to Support Cuba
Cuba: A Revolution in Motion by Isaac Saney
Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion by Arnold August + http://www.democracyintheus.com/
Cuban Democracy Fact Sheet
All in This Together: Cuba's Participatory Democracy
The Elected Delegate and the Dissident in Cuba's Municipal Elections by Arnold August
2002 Cuban Constitution
Work and Democracy in Socialist Cuba by Linda Fuller

On North Korea

Is north korea a totalitarian dictatorship? Are they all really required to get the same haircut? A short documentary.
South Korea boosts reward for defectors to $860k USD.
Are north korean defectors really paid to lie by the south? A short documentary.
What is everyday life like? A conversation with a North Korean Citizen.
Why do some communists support the DPRK?
What exactly is Juche?
Is the DPRK socialist?
How do elections work in the DPRK?
Human rights and the DPRK
What evidence is there than DPRK is not engaged in gross violations of human rights?
Can someone explain Songbun (Caste system) of the DPRK to me?
What about Otto Warmbier?2

Do North Koreans believe in unicorns and think Kim Jong-Un is immortal?

Western DPRK Propaganda: The Worst, Occasionally Hilarious, and Often Racist, Lies by Alyx Mayer
Anti-DPRK Propaganda War – a Cavalcade of Comedy by Red Youth
Tourist who took camera inside North Korea shocked by 'ordinary' lives of citizens

Is the DPRK a Fascist Monarchy?

Korea Resilient! Socialism in Democratic Korea by Vince Sherman
How to Think about Socialism in Korea
Understanding North Korea by Stephen Gowans
A Model of Democratic and Participatory Socialist Planning by MasCapital
Constitution of the DPRK
Socialist Korea: A Case Study in the Strategy of Economic Development by Brun and Hersch
Interview: Understanding and Defending North Korea
Democracy: US vs DPRK – Towards the Annihilation of a Narrative
The secret genocide in South Korea you’ve probably never heard of

On Venezuela

What's going on with venezuela? Rebuttal to John Oliver's venezuela show, and overview of the situation in Venezeula. Censored youtube link.
An ocean of lies about VZ.
What about the US trying to send aid to VZ? The US has blocked the shipment of Insulin, Dialysis, and Malaria medicine.
Who's crashing Venezuelas economy?
Capitalist sabotage in Venezuela.
What about the black markets?
Are the people in VZ really starving?
Are the US after venezuela's oil reserves?
Whats going on in Venezuela?
Is venezuela moving towards communism?
The U.S. Has Venezuela in Its Crosshairs
The Venezuelan government invited the UN to send observers to monitor the 2018 elections, but the opposition opposed this move and directly petitioned the UN not to accept the invitation. Maduro's May 2018 Election were declared fair by over 1500 international observers.
On the 2019 Venezeulan coup attempt. The Trump administration discussed Coup plans with the plotters shortly before.The US pushing regime change. Venezuelans march to oppose regime change. The hand-picked right wing successor, is a US puppet.
A group of Venezuelan military deserters, who are based in Cúcuta (Colombia), are protesting to demand the payment of 250 thousand pesos that Colombian authorities.
A VZ Megathread.

People

Whats so bad about Elon Musk?

Crushes unionization attempts at tesla factories, promising free frozen yogurt in return.
Employees at Tesla suffer twice as many serious workplace injuries than the industry average.
Forced to pay out ~$4 Million in a class action lawsuit to 4,100 SpaceX employees who say the company refused to allow them to take legally mandated breaks during the workday, as a consequence of how the company structured its shift patterns.
Uses public money to fund private ventures, costing taxpayers $4.9B.
Attracts new investors by hyping failed projects, leading many financial investigators to consider Tesla a ponzi scheme.
Musk fires Tesla worker for testing positive for THC, then goes on the Joe Rogan show and smokes weed himself. In reality the worker was fired for her union organizing and supporting the United Autoworkers Union.
Wants to privatize space travel, leaving colonization and exploration to to the richest few.
Actively feeds his own cult of personality, as it raises his company's stock price. Criticism of Musk or Tesla is often met with toxic harrassment, especially against women. Reddit: Why is there such a big cult of personality around Musk? One such "Tony-Stark" from Rolling-Stone.
Despite rumours of Musk being a self-made mad scientist genius, he was born into a wealthy white South African family, and his father owns Emerald mines. His wealth comes not from scientific discovery or innovation, but from his father funding his first business ventures, and from buying and selling companies such as PayPal, Zip2, SolarCity, SpaceX, and Tesla.
Despite being hailed as a leader in the fight against climate change, he donates 7x more money to Republicans. Is it any surprise that a union-busting capitalist donated heavily to the Republican Party?
Musk takes advantage of international crises to raise Tesla's stock price. In one case, Musk promised to "fix" Puerto Rico's power grid after it was decimated by Hurricane Maria. He deploys solar panels to a hospital, dozens of news articles were written about the business-saviness of this decision, and the stock price soared. PR reps told Musk they don't want their power grid privatized by billionaries.
As a PR stunt, Musk promised to build a mini-submarine to rescue a boys soccer team that got trapped in a Thai cave in 2018. After receiving vitriol from the Thai and rescue community, Musk called one of the cave rescuers, a pedophile,2. After the rescuer sues Musk for defamation, Musk pays 50k to a private investigator (and former felon), to dig up dirt on the rescuer., and was told to use "aggressive tactics". Musk's team then told the investigator: “We would like you to immediately move forward with ‘leaking’ this information to the UK press. Obviously must be done very carefully.” Musk and his team even lobbied the Thai gov and prime minister to get a local official to reverse a statement saying the mini-submarine wasn't practical, before the children had been rescued.
Goes after whistleblowers, including sending the police after Martin Tripp ( who reported on Tesla's fraudulent activities to the SEC ), who Musk claimed was an active shooter. Goes after several journalists who criticized him. A twitter thread of the Nov 2019 swatting police report, and those targeted by Musk.
In another PR stunt in April 2020, after dismissing covid fears as "dumb", he states that he will send 1k ventilators to the New York City hospital system. He ends up sending 40 out-of-spec ones, that doctors warn could spread the virus further. He also claims that SpaceX is working on ventilators. After faltering first quarter 2020 Telsa sales, he goes on a twitter rant to "FREE AMERICA NOW", and demands that the lockdown be ended at its height in April 2020.
After the US-backed overthrow of Bolivia's president Evo Morales (mainly for control of its lithium resources), the unelected interim opposition leader Jean Anez privatises Bolivia's state lithium company, and invites Elon Musk to produce batteries there. He concurs, and Tesla's stock price soars. In response Elon Musk says: "We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it."
Fired his assistant of 12 years for asking for a raise. Divorced his wife after telling her that his life "operated quite smoothly" in her absence.
Was a friend of Jeffrey Epstein.
Rocket jesus broken promises #1, #2

Whats so bad about Bill Gates?

He's a philanthro-capitalist imperialist: using the bill and melinda gates foundation charity as a bargaining chip to work in the interests of billionaire elites. Youtube Audiobook
- The Gates foundation tests pharmaceutical products on humans for profit, usually in poorer countries without regulatory bodies. One such mass test, on behalf of Merck and Pfizer, of a harmful HPV vaccine on 23,000 girls in india kills 7 girls, sterilizes hundreds more, and leads to public outrage.
- The Gates foundation helps big pharma find test markets for their drugs, selling them in the global south. This includes drugs such as Gardasil, Norplant, Cervarix. A South African newspaper declared: “We are guinea pigs for the drugmakers.” In the case of Gardasil, the drug-pushing was cloaked in the language of environmentalism, popular empowerment, and feminism. Melinda Gates evoked “choice” in support of her family planning initiatives, but in reality was not poor women, but a handful of the world’s wealthiest people who have presumed to choose which methods of contraception will be delivered, and to whom.
- Funnels hundreds of millions in grant money to corporations, such as Mastercard, Merck, Pfizer, ABC, NBC, Univision, Scholastic, and Pearson.
- Philanthro-capitalism undermines local communities, dismantling their democracy and autonomy in health care, by making them fully dependent on US billionaires, who are completely unnaccountable.
- Philanthrocapitalists are currently rushing to take power in a system of global health and population control. Bill Gates warned of “huge population growth in places where we don’t want it, like Yemen and Pakistan and parts of Africa.”, echoing overpopulation fears that have inspired eugenicists since the time of Malthus. Population control is a form of social control, directly targeting the bodies and dignity of poor people, conditioning them to believe that life’s most intimate decisions are outside of their competence and control.
- Elite charitable funds are a legal means of tax avoidance. Under US law, investments in charitable foundations are tax-free; moreover, investors are not required to sell their stock positions and may continue to vote their shares without restriction. By sheltering foundations, the US Treasury effectively co-finances the activities of Gates foundation and its investors.
- The Bill Gates global health empire promises more empire and less public health.
- Since he is the largest donor to the WHO, he pushes funding for "headline grabbers" such as Malaria and HIV, despite local experts telling policy-makers that other ailments such as Tuberculosis, malnutrition, and bacterial disease are the biggest causes of death.
- Used philanthropy as a front to generate profits for businesses in the agricultural and health sectors.
Citations Needed - The Not-So-Benevolent Billionaire - Bill Gates and Western Media.
Post from a web developer about Microsoft's monopoly practices in the 1990s.
Microsoft crimes masterpost.
How Bill Gates got rich / Is he really evil?
His charities promote corporate interests above health care.
Book about the golden handcuffs of the philanthro-capitalism of Bill Gates.
The Gates foundation has spent over $1B to break up public schools, in favor of private charter schools. 2, 3, 4
Despite the myth of his "humble origins", and a "rags to riches" story, his mother served on the board of directors for many corporations, and comes from a wealthy banking family. His father was a wealthy corporate lawyer, and co-owner of the law firm Preston, Gates & Ellis. The family owned a summer lake house on Puget Sound, and sent their son to the [most prestigious, private high school](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakeside_School_(Seattle%29) in Washington state, where he met fellow Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

What's so bad about George Orwell?

He's antisemitic, homophobic, and racist. Specifically, he snitched out Jews, Black people, Homosexuals, and communists to British Intelligence. His list includes him writing:
- 8 variations of “Jewish?” (Charlie Chaplin), “Polish Jew, (Tom Driberg)” “English Jew,” or “Jewess.”
- Paul Robeson - "ROBESON, Paul (US Negro) ...Very anti-white. [Henry] Wallace supporter."
  - Paul Robeson wasn't anti-white, just look at the welsh coal miners for whom Robeson Campaigned.
  - The testimony of Paul Robeson (one of the people Orwell snitched on), to HUAC (House of Unamerican activities committee) during the red scare.
- Stephen Spender - "Sentimental sympathiser... Tendency towards homosexuality"
- Hugh MacDiarmid, Scottish nationalist poet, and anti-imperialist.
- George Padmore, Trinidadian journalist and anti-imperialist campaigner.
His books Animal Farm and 1984 are used widely as anti-communist propaganda in schools in the US and UK. So much so that his animated animal farm film was funded by the CIA. There's a reason they teach George Orwell in schools and not Franz Fanon, Che, Huey P Newton, Malcolm X, Lenin, CLR James, etc.
Orwell, anti-communist: A criticism of Orwell and his Work - By Isaac Asimov.
Orwell - "I have never really disliked Hitler."
Rainer Shea - Orwells 1984 - Anti-communist propaganda.
Orwell worked as a British imperial cop in Burma for 5 years. His short story, Shooting an Elephant, uses ethnic slurs and denigrates burmese people.
A reddit thread on George Orwell, Thread #2.

John McCain

War Criminal, who pushed for US military intervention in Syria, Libya, Serbia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam. Imperialism 2.
Despite giving lip-service to progressive causes, never actually voted for any of them. The "maverick" label was a false construct.
Voted against Martin Luther King day, and women's reproductive rights for his entire political career.

What about the new atheists? (Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens)

Hidden beneath a superficial rationalism, they provide a seemingly intellectual defense of imperialism, push islamophobia, and use it to create a smokescreen for the injustices of global capitalism. 2,3

Gandhi

Was Gandhi really a racist? What about Gandhi's legacy? A great lecture by Arundati Roy.
Gandhi - The jews should've killed themselves instead.
Red Phoenix - Pacifism - How to do the enemy's job for them. Youtube Audiobook

Noam Chomsky

Is Chomsky right about Marxist-Leninists being evil?
Awful chomsky takes.
https://archive.li/YVNk3
https://libcom.org/history/john-deutch-chomskys-friend-pentagon-cia
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/why-chomsky-felt-guilty-most-of-time-war-research-and-linguistics-at-mit/
https://libcom.org/history/chomsky-pol-pots-genocidal-regime-cambodia
https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/13cf816e-8e40-41c8-bb76-d453a3261d8b
Endorsed Biden in the 2020 election, even after Tara Reide's rape allegations. 2

What's wrong with Bernie Sanders?

Supports US imperialism. 2
- Voted for US intervention in the following nations: Afghanistan, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Yugoslavia,2, Bosnia, Haiti, Congo, Liberia, Sudan, and Ukraine.
- Warmongers on the Bill O'Reilley show for the US to intervene against Russia, Syria, and China.
- Supports drone bombing: "They have, at times, been effective.". Another interview: "Drones have done some good things. They've been selective; they've taken out people who should be taken out"
- Staunchly supports Israel in their displacement of Palestinians (while blaming hamas for the conflict). Says he will not move back the US embassy in Israel back from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, after Trump moved it the previous year.
- Supports GW Bush. Supported warmonger John McCain after his death.
- Claimed that the 2016 election of Maduro in Venezuela "wasn't free", and called for more "US Aid". Called Maduro a "vicious tyrant" in 2019 Democratic primary debate.
- Goes back on his 1985 semi-pro-cuba statements: "The Cuban economy is a disaster. No, I do not praise Fidel Castro."
- Praises the Hong Kong protestors, tells China to back off.
- After the Jan 2020 US assassination of Iranian general Soleimani, Sanders showed remorse for the "4500 brave US troops who died", and trillions of dollars spent on the war in Iraq, instead of the 1M Iraqi civilians killed.
Bernie is against open borders, believes in strong border and anti-immigration policies. 2
- When asked about the 2018 Migrant caravan, where Border agents tear gassed migrants, Bernie replied, "not all migrants seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border have a credible claim. "You have to look at it case-by-case."
- Believes that Russians are to blame for the failure of US democracy. "Protecting american democracy from foreign invasion.". 2020 Campaign trail: "Americans are sick and tired of Russian intereferenc in our elections"
Why Sanders is not a socialist - Anticonquista
Shills for democrats, campaigned for Hillary Clinton. After conceding the 2020 democratic primary to Joe Biden (even after Tara Reide's rape allegations against Biden surfaced), Sanders tells his supporters that it would be "irresponsible" for progressives to not support Joe Biden. His support for Biden comes 2 months earlier than the last election when he supported Hillary. When asked about why one of his former secretaries publicly refused to support Biden, Sanders stated, “She is my former press secretary — not on the payroll”. 2. “I will do everything I can to help elect Joe,” Sanders continued. Says Biden will be "more receptive to progressives than past democrats." "I have a better relationship with Joe Biden than I did with Hillary." Says "Biden could be the most progressive President since FDR."
Equates socialism with US corporate bailouts.
Thanked Jeff Bezos for deigning to raise amazon wages, Bezos responds with "you're welcome".
In the wake of the George Floyd murder, and the call to defund police, Sanders says the country needs "well-trained, well-educated, and well-paid professionals in police departments."
His election, as well as Medicare-for-all, would, like the new deal, be a bribe between capital and workers in the imperial core: Give us a bigger cut of the profits from exploitation of the global south, and we'll become more invested in preserving the empire.
Paying one half of the poor to kill the other half: Why Marxists should not support Sanders.

What's wrong with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

She's a social democrat, not a socialist, fronting for the Democratic party.
Voted for Trump's 2020 War budget, allocating $738 Billion to military spending (a 3% increase over the previous year).
She supports Israel, and its genocide of Palestineans.
Goes along with democrats and Republicans in backing US puppet Juan Guaido over Maduro in Venezuela.
Believes, like other democrats, that Russia rigs US elections
After Evo Morales was overthrown in a US-backed coup, she retracts her pro-Morales statements, and meets with a coup-supporting group in Washington. 1
After Trump fires John Bolton (who tried and failed at starting wars with North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran), she goes full neocon, angry that Trump isn't going to war with North Korea.
Believes that Trump "betrays" US values.
Claims that socialist theory is only for priviledged few with college educated parents, and that working class people aren't capable of understanding theory. Is unaware of the Spanish-speaking socialist tradition.

What's wrong with Elizabeth Warren?

She supports Capitalism.
She was a republican most of her adult life, during the Vietnam and Reagan eras... until 1996. She does not talk about her republican past in her autobiography, or speeches. She became a democrat to support free markets: "I was a Republican because I thought that those were the people who best supported markets. I think that is not true anymore" 2
She claims she doesn't take PAC money, that democracy shouldn't be for sale, but much of her funding comes from wealthy donors, at a minumum of $10 Million.
How Elizabeth Warren is courting the establishment democrats.
Defends Israel's continued bombing of Gaza Hospitals and schools. Signs a letter in 2016 asking Obama to veto any UN resolution for Israeli settlement expansion.
Supports US troops in South Korea. 2
Wants a "green" US military.
Copies Sanders program of full student debt cancelation, adds eligibility requirements.
Marked herself as "American Indian" for 6 years during her professorship at Harvard Law school, makes unverified claims of Cherokee ancestry, despite her family tree consisting of those who dispossessed Cherokees, and growing up in a wealthy white household. Uses her "Cherokee heritage" as political points in campaign speeches and political ads, greatly angering native american groups. Called for the arrest of Greg Grey Cloud, a Crow Creek Sioux activist protesting the Keystone XL pipeline from the Senate gallery. 2, 3
Defends the US assasination of Iranian General Soleimani, calls him a terrorist.

Kamala Harris

Much credit to this post.

Under her jurisdiction, in "progressive" San Francisco, 56% of all inmates in SF jails were black, along with 40% of all arrests (Only 5.8% of the population is black). Ignores police brutality, protected 14 of her officers who were caught sending extremely racist text messages. Oversaw San Francisco’s felony conviction rate rising from 52% to 67% in only 3 years.
- As part of her tough on crime approach she assigned senior prosecutors to misdemeanors like graffiti and vandalism, tripling the number of cases brought to trial.
- After a federal judge orders California to expand prison releases to reduce crowding, her office argued in court that if forced to release these inmates early, prisons would lose an important labor pool.
- Spent years jailing disproportionately black nonviolent cannabis users while opposing taking cannabis off DEA’s list of most dangerous substances and literally laughing at the idea of legalizing it multiple times, even as her Republican opponent ran to the left of her on the issue. She then tried to pander by admitting to smoking herself despite prosecuting others, but got her story all wrong. Drug convictions under her office soared, convicting more people of marijuana possession than her predecessor (she also admitted to smoking marijuana) 2
- Laughs about threatening parents with jailtime for truancy. 2. The stories of several mothers she jailed.
- Pushed a law that forced schools to turn over undocumented students to ICE.
- Opposed reforming California’s three-strikes law, which is the only one in the country to impose life sentences for minor felonies and incarcerates black people at 12x the rate as white people, three different times, even while her Republican opponent supported reform.
- Tried to deny a transgender inmate healthcare and endangered trans women by forcing them into mens prisons, leading to the rape and torture of at least one trans inmate.
- Appealed a judge ruling that the death penalty was unconstitutional and won on a technicality, resulting in continued executions.
- Supports the controversial DNA search technique that can be used on people even if they’ve not been charged with a crime.
- Supported the discriminatory practice of cash bail in court, until 2016.
- Protected serial child rapists by refusing to prosecute in the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal.
- Lied about her state’s solitary confinement to block a suit by inmates, claiming there was none in California when there were about 6,400 victims of the practice, which is considered torture.
- Opposed legislation that would require independent investigation of fatal police shootings despite criticism from many civil rights advocates including California’s Legislative Black Caucus.
- Opposed statewide implementation of police body cameras and ignored police brutality, multiple officers raping a teenager, and other officers sharing racist and homophobic messages, despite multiple requests from the public defender.
- Stood by silently as $730 million was spent on moving inmates to for-profit private prisons.
Fought to uphold wrongful convictions from her office, in one case, she witheld information about a police lab tech who was fabricating evidence (and a judge admonished her for it). She refused DNA testing to prove the innocence of a man on death row. Defended Johnny Baca’s conviction for murder even though judges found a prosecutor presented false testimony at the trial, to which she relented only after a video of the oral argument received national attention and embarrassed her office. She hid evidence of exculpaltory evidence of a man who was convicted solely by one witness (he is still serving a 70 year prison sentence). When evidence pointed towards a black defendant being framed by police, Harris avoided DNA testing to keep him on death row.
- Used a technicality to stop the release of a man serving 27 years-to-life after being wrongfully convicted of possession of a knife under the three-strikes law she supported. When civil rights groups and nearly 100,000 petition signatures got him released after 14 years she took him back to court again for a crime he didn’t commit.
- Protected several of her officers with records of misconduct, by refusing to provide their names to defense attorneys, so that their convictions would be upheld and people would stay in prison.
- “Systematically violated defendants’ civil and constitutional rights” in crime lab scandal.
- Kept her Orange County DA office from being charged for running an unconstitutional jailhouse informant program they tried to cover up.
- Oversaw a state prosecutor falsifying a confession to get a life sentence and then destroyed the evidence, upheld a conviction secured by a prosecutor lying under oath, and oversaw the framing of another man. The officers were not fired, but the state was forced to pay out ~13M USD.
- She fought against providing compensation to those her office wrongly convicted.
- Sponsored a bill allowing for prosecutors to seize profits before charges are even filed and opposed a bill that would reform civil asset forfeiture.
- Defended a prison’s religious discrimination in hiring policy
- Refused to review a case in which a pharmaceutical CEO killed his wife but made it look like a suicide after their son died under mysterious circumstances as well.
- Refused to prosecute PG&E for its massive gas pipeline explosion.
- Claimed to be unaware of sexual harassment and retaliation by her top aide over a 6 year span.
- Refused to investigate Herbalife’s exploitation and fraud, received donations from people connected to the corporation.
- Refused to prosecute Trump's treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin, despite his bank's illegal forelosure practices, which ruined thousands of lives. She also was the only democratic presidental candidate to get money from him.
A favorite candidate of wall street. Helped raise money with a former wells fargo banker who defended the fake accounts scandal.
- Backtracks on medicare for all, says she doesn't want to do away with private insurance.
- Accepted thousands of dollars of campaign funds from Donald and Ivanka Trump multiple times.. Accepted money from Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO and a charter school magnate. 2
Voted to give Trump increased military spending two different times.
Mocks the activist call to “build more schools, less jails”. Mocks criminal justice reformers as unrealistic..
- Says that Kaepernick's take-a-knee protest in support of black lives matter, was a russian op. Claims that "russian bots" are targeting her.
Voted two different times to block federal funding for abortions.

Pete Buttigieg

https://www.democracynow.org/2020/2/12/pete_buttigieg_south_bend_black_community

Biden

Biden on young, black, "super-predators"
Biden - "I don't want to defund the police, we need more police. Trump wants to tho"
https://soundcloud.com/katie-halper/joe-bidens-accuser-finally-tells-her-full-story
https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1251644551367925760
https://twitter.com/historic_ly/status/1258861634812067841?s=20
Biden's segregationist anti-busing views
Biden - We need more arrests, triple the police, prosecuters, judges, and prison cells.
Biden - Lock em' up.
Biden on George Floyd protesters - "Shoot em in the leg instead of the heart." Then goes on to suggest an additional $300M in funding for police.

Greta Thunberg

http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/01/17/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-political-economy-of-the-non-profit-industrial-complex/

Slavoj Zizek

"Immigration has to be restricted to prevent the rise of Fascism."
Helped work to overthrow Yugoslavia.
He's anti-USSR, anti bolivarian revolution, supported the coups in Ukraine and Libya
More here

What's wrong with Barack Obama?

Imperialism

After winning the Nobel peace prize, he dropped an average of 30k bombs / year during his presidency, mostly on Muslim countries, 2, 3. In 2016 alone, dropped 26,171 bombs in the Middle East and North Africa, up 3000 from the previous year. The countries bombed include Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and Somalia.
Began a campaign of drone assassinations in the Middle East and Africa, in which 90% of those killed were not the intended targets, but innocent civilian bystanders, including women, children, and US citizens. 1. Drone strikes are used by the military and the CIA to hunt down and kill people the Obama administration has deemed — through secretive processes, without indictment or trial — worthy of execution. He authorized 10 times more drone strikes than George W Bush, 2. The Obama assassination program is detailed in the drone papers.
On 3 October 2015, he ordered a United States Air Force AC-130U gunship to attack the Kunduz Trauma Centre operated by Doctors Without Borders, in northern Afghanistan. The attack killed 42 people and wounded 30 more. The airstrike constitutes a war crime (attacks on hospitals are considered war crimes), and is the first instance of one Nobel peace prize winner (Obama) bombing and killing another (Doctors without borders). CNN and the New York Times deliberately obscured the US's responsibility for the bombing, with the headline, "US is blamed after bomb hits afghan hospital". 1,2
In 2010, President Obama directed the CIA to assassinate an US citizen in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, despite the fact that he had never been charged with any crime, killing him with a September, 2011 drone strike. Two weeks later, a separate CIA drone strike in Yemen killed his 16-year-old American-born son, Abdulrahman, along with the boy’s 17-year-old cousin and several other innocent Yemenis. In a predictable display of bipartisanship, in January 2017, Trump ordered a SEAL strike, and reports from Yemen quickly surfaced that 30 people were killed, including 10 women and children. Among the dead: the 8-year-old daughter of Anwar Awlaki, sister of the 16 year old killed by Obama. 1
Escalated the war in Afghanistan, deploys an additional 30k troops in 2009.
Admitted to supporting and arming Neo-Nazis and other ultra-nationalist groups like the Azov battalion in Ukraine to overthrow it's former pro-Russia govt, 2. Ukraine now has a pro-US, nazi-glorifying government with ultranationalism, anti-semitism, neo-nazi pogroms, and attacks on LGBT groups.
Obama and Hillary Clinton rigged Haiti's 2010 election, threatening the then-president with removing US financial aid, unless their OAS candidate, Michel Martelly, won the election, after he forced other popular candidates to drop out. This is a continuation of "Operation uphold democracy", in which US troops invaded Haiti to overthrow democratically elected president Jean-Baptiste Aristide in 1991, who is still in exile. Lobbied to lower Haiti's minimum wage to $0.30 / hour.
Obama continued backing Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president who helped the US fight Saddam, giving him $2B every year. After Mubarak was exposed for corruption in the 2009 Arab Spring, the US entered talks with Suleiman, a CIA collaborator and Mubarak's vice president intelligence chief known for torturing people on behalf of the US. The US then granted him asylum and medical treatment.
Obama continued support for Israel and their genocide of Palestineans, leaving a parting gift of his presidency to Israel of $38B in military aid over the next 10 years. “Prime Minister Netanyahu and I are confident that the new MOU will make a significant contribution to Israel’s security in what remains a dangerous neighborhood,” Obama wrote.
Finally acheived the US goal of overthrowing Gaddafi and destabilizing Libya. From 2011 onward, began conducting an extensive bombing campaign (>110 tomahawk cruise missiles) in the Libyan Civil Wars of 2011 and 2014. This includes 7,700 air strikes, resulting in 30,000 -100,000 deaths. Loyalist towns were bombed to rubble and ethnically cleansed, and the country is in chaos as Western-trained and armed Islamist militias seize territory and oil facilities and vie for power. The Misrata militia, trained and armed by Western special forces, is one of the most violent and powerful in the world.1 The country has since collapsed into a chaos of child soldiers, slavery, and violence between extremist groups, a haunting repetition of what US imperialism has left in its wake in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. An interview with Gaddafi's former spokesman about the US overthrow of Libya. When pressured, Obama stated that "not managing the aftermath of overthrowing Gaddafi" was "the greatest mistake of his presidency."
In 2009, Obama and Hillary Clinton assisted in the military coup of democratically elected leftist leader Zelaya of Honduras, who the US saw as a threat to US business interests, 2. Leaked emails found that Hillary was brokering a deal with the coup leaders, to ensure Zelaya would be prevented from returning to power, and Obama blocked a proposed resolution requiring Zelaya's return. After the coup, at least 116 anti-US environmental activists have been murdered by the pro-US regime. 2 The US now faces massive immigration from the very same countries it destabilized, then deports them in a never-ending cycle of oppression. Obama says that deporting Honduran immigrants will send a message that "they will not be welcome to this country."
Obama grants immunity to Bush Jr's CIA torturers.
Expands drone bases in west Africa, including this one in Niger.

Empowering Finance Capital

A leaked email revealed that the US bank Citigroup hand-picked Obama's cabinet, 2, in 2008, at the beginning of the financial crisis.
- Refused to prosecute any bankers or executives responsible for the 2008 crisis. His attorney general stated, "Some banks are just too big to prosecute."
- Gave an $85B bailout to automotive giants GM and Chrysler when they requested it in 2009.
- Injected money into the private sector to bailed out wall street, 2 with his top-down 2009 ARRA stimulus package.
- Extended Bush-Era corporate tax rates, 1% increased their share of US wealth immensely during his term.
- At an elite gala for wealthy oil execs, he tells them to "just say thank you", for turning the US into the world's largest oil producer and making them all richer. He approves a 117M ton expansion of coal production, outraging climate activists.
Obama went back on his campaign promise for a single-payer health care system, and removed the public option from his ACA ( a proposal mostly taken from Mitt Romney, and written by health-care industry moguls), which granted massive subsidies to empower the parasitic health insurance industry ( ~1.2 Trillion USD ), forcing those unable to afford insurance to pay a $700 yearly fee for not having it ( called the "shared responsibility provision" ). His ACA is essentially a huge govt subsidy directly into the pockets of private health companies along with a mandate that forced people to pay these companies as well. At least 1/4th of US workers are trapped in the gig economy, and many more are employed at less than full-time hours without insurance.
Did nothing about ballooning student loan debt ( now > $1T, an 86% increase during his tenure ), refusing to institute forgiveness programs, or allowing student loans to be discharged through bankruptcy. Obama federalized the system to where the government now profits immensely from both interest on loans it makes directly to students, and defaults. Outsourced federal student loan debt collections to private loan firms for a huge profit. 2
Presided over the largest foreclosure crisis in US history, did nothing about it.
The Obama era was one of the greatest decreases in working class and black wealth, 2 in history: home equity decreased by ~$17k between 2007 and 2016. His housing policies led to millions losing their homes. While Wall street banks recieved $29 Trillion in bailouts, $75 Billion in relief was set aside for housing foreclosures and mortgage assistance. Instead of being paid to families, this was paid to mortgage servicers, and the services found ways to pocket the money and continue foreclosures: by the end of the program, less than 20% of the funds were used, and most had dropped out of the program due to foreclosures. The Obama administration refused to prosecute the fraud, or any of those responsible for the 2008 financial crisis.
Visited Flint Michigan during their lead-water poisoning crisis, to support the governor's non-response, and do damage control for the democratic party, outraging citizens. Refused to give federal aid to the city, or call a state of emergency. In a highly offensive gesture during a town hall meeting, he made light of the situation by pretending to drink the poisoned tap water. Eventually authorized FEMA to give a pithy $5M to the city, while estimates suggested that at least $100M is needed. 100k citizens, including 8-10k children have lead poisoning as a result of the state's negligence.
Spends his post-presidency jet-skiing with billionaires, making ~400k for every wall street speaking engagement, buying a massive multi-million dollar estate, and doing anti-China netflix documentaries. His net-worth increased 3000% post-presidency.

Mass Imprisonment

Deported over 3M immigrants during his presidency, 2 Deported over 400k people in 2012 alone. Helped grow ICE, and the US mass immigrant detention system.
- In the present day, ICE (U.S._Immigration_and_Customs_Enforcement), the police tasked with immigration enforcement, operates over 500 prison camps, holding over 34,000 undocumented people deemed "aliens", 20,000 of which have no criminal convictions, in the US system of immigration detention. The camps include forced labor (often with contracts from private companies), poor conditions, lack of rights (since the undocumented aren't considered citizens), and forced deportations, often splitting up families. Detainees are often held for a year without trial, with antiquated court procedures pushing back court dates for months, encouraging many to accept immediate deportation in the hopes of being able to return faster than the court can reach a decision, but forfeiting legal status, in a cruel system of coercion. After the creation of DHS and ICE, the budget for immigration enforcement doubled from $6.2 billion in 2002 to $12.5 billion in 2006 under Obama. 1, 2,3
- Banned all immigration from Syria and Iran.
Scaled up the war on drugs, imprisoning minorities at far greater rates than ever historically. Gave no support to Black lives matter, the Ferguson protests, or the dakota access pipeline protests, allowing local authorities to brutally repress these movements.
- The War On Drugs, a policy of arrest and imprisonment targeting minorities, first initiated by Nixon, has over the years created a monstrous system of mass incarceration, resulting in the imprisonment of 1.5 million people each year, with the US having the most prisoners per capita of any nation. One in five black Americans will spend time behind bars due to drug laws. The war has created a permanent underclass of impoverished people who have few educational or job opportunities as a result of being punished for drug offenses, in a vicious cycle of oppression. 1, 2
- Obama authorizes the use of Military equipment for police.
- Massively grew the US prison–industrial complex, and the rapid expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies. Such groups include corporations that contract prison labor, construction companies, surveillance technology vendors, companies that operate prison food services and medical facilities, private probation companies, lawyers, and lobby groups that represent them. Activist groups such as the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) have argued that the prison-industrial complex is perpetuating a flawed belief that imprisonment is an effective solution to social problems such as homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy. 1
- On April 12, 2015, Freddie Carlos Gray, Jr., a 25-year-old Black man, was arrested by the Baltimore Police Department for possessing what the police alleged was an illegal switchblade under Baltimore law. While being transported in a police van, several cops held him down, putting pressure on his spinal cord, after which he fell into a coma and died, sparking a series of protests in Baltimore; riot police responded violently, and called in the national guard to aid against the "thugs", as they were labeled by Obama in a press conference. After the protests were put down, the police officers were given separate trials, and all of them were found innocent. 1
After the ATF was caught in a scandal of selling guns to drug cartels, Obama defends and refuses to prosecute.

Mass surveillance

Obama authorized the massive, behind-closed-doors growth of the worldwide US surveillance system.
- Since 2012, the US military has a state-run and funded astroturfing campaign to manipulate public opinion online, and spread pro-US propaganda through government funded sockpuppets, called Operation Earnest Voice.
- The 2010 US diplomatic cables leak by Chelsea Manning revealed a pervasive policy of using US ambassadors as spies, supporting dictatorships, spying on the UN, strong-arming for US companies abroad, and disrupting nuclear disarmament talks. The scope of these leaks touches every country the US has a relationship with, and they are better detailed here. 1, 2
Obama ruthlessly went after and jailed whistleblowers, 2, indicting more than all previous presidents combined. 2, 3
- In 2010, Chelsea Manning was imprisoned under the espionage act for a series of leaks which embarrassed the US government, including the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike, Afghan War documents, Iraq War documents leak, US diplomatic cables leak, and the Guantanamo Bay files leak. The leak was, in Manning's Words: "possibly one of the most significant documents of our time, removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of 21st century asymmetric warfare". 1
Encouraged the FBI to use informants to infiltrate US Muslim communities, blocked their exposure by expanding the definition of state secrets.

More

Search for Obama on this List of US Atrocities. More here, 2, 3

Others

What's so bad about Winston Churchill? , 2, 3
What about Jordan Peterson?
Is Christianity / the Bible Communist?
Was Mark Twain a socialist?
What's so bad about Ronald Reagan?
What about Tulsi Gabbard?,2
What's going on with the finnish bolshevik being accused of a rape fantasy with a minor? Chat log, Major NSFW.

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Socialism FAQ

Contents

Socialism FAQ

Didn't communism fail? It works in theory but not in practice.

What about human nature?

Schools of thought

On Ultra-leftism / Left-Communism

Did economic planning work?

Who would sweep the floors under communism?

What about cooperatives?

What about democracy? Can't voting fix our problems?

Pacifism and Violence

What would X be like under communism?

On Economics and Sociology

On Nationalism and Internationalism

On Women's Liberation

On Race and Class

On Guns / Firearms / Violence

On Capitalism

On Liberalism

On Leninism

Further reading

On Trotskyism

On the USSR

Further reading

On Mao, Maoism, and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and the PRC

Is China State Capitalist?

Is China a Democracy?

Workers rights

Is China Imperialist?

What about the Hong Kong protests?

What about China spying on its own people?

What's going on with the Uyghurs?

What about the Falun Gong?

What about the Tiananmen square massacre?

What is Radio Free Asia?

Further reading

On the German Democratic Republic (GDR)

On Cuba

On North Korea

Further reading

On Venezuela

People

Whats so bad about Elon Musk?

Whats so bad about Bill Gates?

What's so bad about George Orwell?

John McCain

What about the new atheists? (Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens)

Gandhi

Noam Chomsky

What's wrong with Bernie Sanders?

What's wrong with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

What's wrong with Elizabeth Warren?

Kamala Harris

Pete Buttigieg

Biden

Greta Thunberg

Slavoj Zizek

What's wrong with Barack Obama?

Imperialism

Empowering Finance Capital

Mass Imprisonment

Mass surveillance

More

Others

Other Topics

Why are socialists against bitcoin mining?

Did atom bombs really end WW2?

What about overpopulation / unsustainability?

Why don't socialists support a UBI / Universal Basic income?

DSA / Jacobin

VaushV

Buddhism

/r/MoreTankieChapo