Depends more on the community and the instance than the platform itself.

The US Empire, in Marxist analysis, is the international dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, supported by its vassals like Canada, Australia, western Europe, Japan, the ROK, etc. As the US Empire decays, world imperialism weakens, and the ability for socialism to rise gains.

I see lots of non-Statesian content too, mostly from the communists. Lemmy.world tends to be Statesian centric, but is far from communist.

The strong presence of communists is very normal, actually, though I don’t know what you mean by “American-coded.” Lemmy was created and is developed by communists, and communists in general are atttracted to FOSS tools and platforms.

I work out in the morning, before work.

Well fascists are still remaining in today’s age, I don’t need to mention on what is happening in USA with Trump and in Russia with Putin. It cannot be argued that Horthy was a controversial person (liberals like I hate him), an antisemite scum, and enacted policies which were fascist, like limiting jews number in pursuing higher education to an X number in 1920, but as the Head of State even having basically absolute power, he barely used his powers when any then present party made legislations and such.

You’re running interference for a fascist for not using the state as much as he could have? He was a Nazi collaborator.

Stating that Horthy gleefully assisted the Nazis are incredibly biased, because this was more nuanced than a simple black and white comparison. While in fact he did part with the Nazi regime more than the USSR, a gleefully nazi supporter wouldn’t have banned the Arrow Cross Party.

He sided with the Nazis in World War II and participated in the Holocaust.

Additionally he refused Hitler’s demands when he wanted hungarian troops to help the attack on Checzhoslovakia, took in polish refugees in 1939 when the war broke out and helped them escape to the allied powers if they wished to do so, and only joined the war in 1942. He also wanted to leave from the war in 1944, but he was forced to resign and give power to the banned Arrow Cross Party in threat of his son’s life.

You’re again running interference for someone that sided with Hitler and participated in the holocaust.

On the other side Horthy ofc done some other vile things, such as the war crime of the Novi Sad raid, putting jews on forced labor programmes, deporting them to ghettos, etc., but fortunately atleast they weren’t so insane to comply with nazi deportation requests in 1942-44.

Again, trying to minimize Holocaust participation.

In this case he used his executive powers and replaced the then antisemite party in 1944 and stopped the deportation of Jews into nazi territory, but ofc this feels more like a trying to leave the Axis powers, and not feeling the blood of dead jews on his soul.

Horthy never once needed to side with the Nazis, nor participate in the Holocaust.

But let’s go back to the 1956 Revolution. You insist of thinking that the whole Revolution was made entirely or mainly by fascists, so let’s see what kind of leaders were present in this revolution.

I don’t insist that, actually. Color revolution typically has some progressive or faux-progressive elements that get steered by fascists.

Imre Nagy -> Main figure of the revolution, former member of the Communist Party (because he was expelled after trying to relax the brutality of stalinist hardliners scums), held socialistic beliefs who was against stalinism and would have let coalition parties to exist in a socialist framework. Executed by Kádár

An anti-communist that wanted to weaken the socialist system, a-la Kronstadt. He was expelled for undermining socialism, not for “trying to relax brutality.” Rather than helping Hungary, coalition parties would have likely undermined and destroyed the socialist framework given the intense presence of fascists.

Pál Maléter -> Initially fought with the Axis in WW2, but became a communist and fought against the nazis in Transylvania. Was a member of the Communist Party. He insisted to only support the revolution if it goes against any horthyst restauration efforts… Executed by Kádár

So a former-Nazi that had a change of heart, but then went the Kronstadt-way similar to Nagy. Willing to destroy socialism.

Miklós Gimes -> Political friend of Imre Nagy. His parents were jews, but he was converted to unitarianism. Founder of Magyar Szabadság. Held socialistic beliefs. Executed by Kádár

Same as the prior 2.

Géza Losonczy -> Was a member of the Communist Party. Held socialistic beliefs. Directed the Communist Party led newspaper called Szabad Nép.

Same as the prior 3.

Zoltán Tildy -> Christian, former member of the Smallholders’ Party. Voted in the 2nd jew legislation, which also limited higher education and factory ownership under an X number. However later he stated that “anti-Semitism was contrary to the principles of humanity, and warned that it began with hatred of Jews and extended to all men”. and created a Holocaust memorial… There is also another document stating he was present in commemorating jewish victims of the Holocaust. Also he was a part of the antifascist Magyar Front.

Same as the prior 4, former member of a right-wing populist party and former anti-semite.

Béla Kovács -> Also a member of the Smallholders Party. He was participating in anti nazi movements. Anti communist. Soviet authorities deported him and sentenced to 20 years, just because of not supporting the Rákosi regime.

So an outright anti-communist, that the supposed “communists” were willing to work with, simply due to opposing communism. This is why the previous 5 need to be deeply questioned in motive, if they were willing to work with anti-communists to undermine and destroy socialism. This was a member of a right-wing populist party.

Anna Kéthly -> Former member of the Social Democratic Party. Opposed all anti-jewish legislations. She made socialistic articles. Opposed of merging into the Communist Party, and several of the Social Democratic Party members including her were arrested by the communists.

Again, another anti-communist.

József Dudás -> Was a member of the Communist Party before WW2, also was a member of the Smallholders party after WW2. Communist beliefs. He was also a member of the antifascist Magyar Front. Executed by Kádár

Another right-wing populist you claim to have “communist beliefs.”

Sándor Kopácsi -> Not jewish, however his parents and himself were anti-fascists and hid and rescued their jewish friends. They saved Katalin Fodor and Mihály Gyarmathy, Pál Fodor, Miklós Világ, László Neumannn and myriad of others. Sándor specifically rescued Ibolya Fried from a ghetto. Source 2

Cool, still working with anti-communists.

Béla Király -> Fought on the Eastern front with the Axis both before the Arrow Cross got into power and after. He guarded a jewish batallion in the Don River, where he gave them warm clothing, decent food, and medical attention. Israel gave him the “Righteous Among the Nations” accolade. Joined the Communist Party. Rákosi regime arrested and tried to hang him due to charges on espionage. Ernő Gerő, a hardliner stalinist paroled him. He is the one who became the leader of the Hungarian Freedom Fighters Federation by the CIA in 1963, where the HFFF was created AFTER the 1956 revolution. You may wish to disprove me that a HFFF existed before 1956, however this certain HFF was made by the hungarian Communist Party and it’s purpose was to train the population, especially with slogans such as “Take your aim at the imperialist enemy! Fire!”. There is no evidence that this HFFF is the same HFFF that Béla became the leader of in 1963

A member of the Axis that collaborated with Nazi Germany and fought for the Arrow Cross Party.

Gergely Pongrátz -> Definitely anti communist, including his parents. Led the Corvin Köz, part of the rebel military after Pál Maléter. He hated his more communist friendly allies, like Maléter Pál, but cooperated with the nevertheless. I didn’t find any specific antismeite or Nazi Germany supporting viewpoints, however he founded the Jobbik party which was undeniably a far-right party in the mid 2000s.

So an outspoken member of the far-right everyone else was willing to work with.

As you can see this leadership groups was pretty varied, but it definitely had way more socialist or communist friendly participants than possible fascists. It would be foolish to label the entire revolution led by fascists only on 1 possible fascist out of the 11 definitely non-fascists and primarily socialist leaders.

To the contrary, I see a ton of right-wing populists, and a few supposed “communists” that were more than willing to work with them, as well as some outright fascists.

Any antisemite killing is vile, but it is important to distunqish if these were systematically planted by XYZ governments, or these were more individual and isolated cases by crazy antisemite individuals. I can also forge that the russian civil war was lead by fascists if I want to, because some sources claims the jews were persecuted in XYZ places by individuals from the Red Army.

The Hungarian fascism was home-grown, not planted, but was emboldened by the west. That’s my point. The CIA didn’t make Hungary fascist, they helped existing fascists. The fact that the fascism was Hungarian and not entirely from the US doesn’t make it better fascism.

But lets go back on Aptheker more then and his book. It is important to know that Aptheker was a soviet apologist communist in the american Communist Party, where this publishment exiled him from said party, which can imply huge bias (as you may call it, a think tank book). Ofc this goes to the other way too. I wouldn’t trust a published book made by a nazi or a far-right article made by Orban, but valuable facts can possibly still be present in these if we can verify it.

Aptheker was a communist, and used sources both from communists and the west. You’re again equating communists with Nazis to make a point, but you were more than willing to downplay Horthy’s fascism and the Nazi-collaboration of Hungary.

Using “counter-revolution”. The definition of a revolution is going against the currently established authority / government. If you imply the 1956 revolution is a counter-revolution, then simply I guess in some way the Communist Party wasn’t the ruling party and never had any power in Hungary despite clearly them having absolute control over it.

This is just phrasemongering. Socialism is revolutionary compared to capitalism, wishing to reinstate capitalism and/or fascism is trying to turn the clock back, ie counter-revolutionary, and serves the bourgeoisie.

Right under that journalist who was willing to provide favorable / biased views a communist leader in change of him being allowed to visit said country in the CIA doc.

Not sure what you’re getting at, here.

Aptheker clearly thinks burning communist and communist aligned literature is a vile thing.

He’d be correct.

But when we are talking about cleansing and removing fascistic, everything is quite acceptable then. He would still prefer to see some of the books being present as examples, but clearly he doesn’t find major issues with it, even if he realized this degenerated into a full-scale censorship.

Yes, it’s much better to censor fascist literature than communist. You’re equating fascism and communism in this point, censorship was employed against fascists and capitalists.

There are some publications which analyzies Apthaker takes coming from the Young Socialist in this example, where he automatically thinks that the Social Democratic Party supported Horthy, because they existed under his regent

The SDP being more friendly to Horthy than the Bolsheviks were to the Tsar isn’t unheard of. In Germany, for example, the SPD sided against the KPD and indirectly aided the Nazis in coming to power.

He clearly dismisses and doesn’t talk about how each eastern bloc countries were exploited and it’s resources were straight up funneled into the USSR, with way way less things to receive from them, which only started to turn around way later after Stalin’s death.

He dismisses this because the extent was exaggerated. The RSFSR was more developed, but did not export capital nor did it have any colonies nor neocolonies. Socialism involved lots of trade, and all of the members in the socialist bloc dramatically benefited from socialism. The sheer scale of plunder by capitalism far exceeds the uneveness in the USSR.

The author also presents that he took the Communist Party’s opinion of Laszlo Rajk’s execution as absolute truth with no question, only to be finally changed about this subject.

As a communist, he sided with the predominent opinion among communists, until shown proof of otherwise. Not surprising.

But what about the sources? It seems like he indeed cherry-picks too by using bias far-right sources and fabricated communist sources with no independent verifications.

But what about the sources? It seems like he indeed cherry-picks too by using bias far-right sources and fabricated communist sources with no independent verifications.

Yep, he does use far-right sources, like the New York Times, when they admit inconvenient truths. When capitalists praise communists, this makes it easier to accept than the standard demonization. Further, the idea that non-communist sources, independent and opposed to the system, need to confirm communist sources is deeply misunderstanding how media works. Discrediting a source because ideologically opposed sources don’t back it up is false.

What is more damning is that his claim of the initial hours of where the freedom fighters supposedly instantly began to do antisemitic remarks, causing chaos, attacking innocent policeman has no source.

Your own source automatically discredits non-communist sources that back up his claims.

And not only that he states that noone knows who shot into the public at the Parlamient square which is absolutely debunked by now, and it was made by the ÁVH members with some tanks as additional measures.

Much of this article itself is unsourced, and as we know Wikipedia is right-wing biased. Even if this is indeed true, his lack of knowledge doesn’t mean he is incorrect.

With so so much bias and willfully keeping off informations, it’s hard to trust any of his statements. One statement can be accepted, that antisemitism were indeed present in 1956, albeit in rural and isolated incidents. A fresher analyisis has a publication on the presence of antisemitism in 1956.

Your own sources were equally biased, and removed information as well. Being biased does not inherently mean incorrect, and your own articled willingly discredited communist-aligned sources.

As we can see these indeed happened, and in really cruel ways, but only in small instances. 4 towns and a few villages compared to the 3184 villages and 58 towns. There are also eyewitness accounts despising antisemite people’s remarks in Budapest by the crowds, but I can’t find sources for these.

Other jewish members aiding the revolution: Donáth Ferenc, István Kovács, György Fazekas, Erika Szeles, István Angyal, Istvan Eörsi, Gábor Földes, József Gáli, Miklós Krassó, László Nickelsburg, Ottó Szirmai

Peter Hidas, your source, was a participant in the 1956 counter-revolution. Hardly an unbiased source, with clear motivations to minimize the pograms. The presence of Jewish people in the counter-revolution does not discredit the fascist nature of it, but again confirm what I always said: there were faux-progressive elements combined with fascist elements in an overall counter-revolution.

While it can be agreed that pre-Stalin era leaders such as Lenin probably wasn’t antisemite, what about Stalin? He murdered a number of high profile jewish politicians, maybe this is just a coincidence, he was a paranoia filled psychopath maniac after all. Khrushchev and other people claimed he having antisemite sentiments, although I don’t know if there are verifications for these. While publicly he stated not being an antisemite, his actions seems suspicious. What about suddenly dissolving a pro-communist JAC in the name of imperialism according to him?. And what about this statement? It just seems convenient to call everyone who you don’t like an american agent or any word. But if he really thought they were american agents, it still specifically hurted jewish communities.

Perhaps the Doctor’s Plot where it so happens to be that a higher percentage of them were jews.

Again, quoting my prior comment:

Anti-semitism was punishable by death penalty in the USSR, this is largely Red Scare fearmongering. In fact, the soviets were accused of being jewish supremicists, hence the hysteria around “Judeo-Bolshevism.” The USSR was the opposite of anti-semitic:

Source: Works, Vol. 13, 1930 - January 1934 Publisher: Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954

"National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.

Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle.

Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism. In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty."

• J. Stalin January 12, 1931

This is teetering into Double Genocide Theory, a form of Holocaust trivialization by painting the soviets as antisemitic. This is really just projection.

Sure! Here are some not “think tank” sources on these subjects! Opposition parties being removed from running in the election due to communist party pressure, soviet troops deporting the secretary of the Smallholders’ Party, blackmailing an elected prime minister into exile, communists being able to vote like 15-20 times aka blue-ballot election fraud, another source

NYT is a capitalist propaganda rag too, though. They’ve been called out numerous times for willingly participating in pro-imperialist narratives, especially in Palestine recently.

Forcing every peasant into giving their land to coop’s and requiring such an insane plan requirement that didn’t leave you enough seeds to replicate the next harvest as well was a failure

The communists socialized production, and committed an error afterwards. It sounds like you’re arguing that production shouldn’t be socialized at all, and that socialization caused the error, not the mistakes in calculation. There’s good reason crop yields in all socialist countries went up overall post-collectivization.

Fascists were indeed jailed and executed, but you miss the point. The revolution didn’t happen because the communists executed Arrow Cross Party members and such, but because the Communist Party won in a fraud, instilled fears with ÁVH, produced famine due to the failure of collectivization, issued massive censorships, not being able to leave the country as a hungarian, making staged show trials (László Rajk) and conveniently sending anyone who dares to question the government to Gulags, not just straight up fascists.

The counter-revolution happened because lingering fascist elements from a decade ago were emboldened by the west, and while there were some legitimate greivances, the character of the counter-revolt was fascist and western supported. Kinda like what’s happening in Iran recently, legitimate greivances twisted into extreme fascist violence. Socialism was amazing for the Hungarian People’s Republic overall, achieving astounding economic growth and development.

If we are think tank-ing, then Comrade’s Library is also a think tank source. Hearing the word “progressive” and sending people to work camps only getting 1 soup per day in Siberia, Recsk or other places doesn’t sound too progressive to me.

Comrade’s library isn’t a source, it’s a book repository. That’s like debunking a public library as a source when I tell you to read a book housed within it. Soviet prisons were quite progressive overall, and pretending the only ones that existed were the ones in harsher conditions is classic propagandizing, exaggerating extremes and pretending they were the norm. The soviets even abhored using handcuffs as being too barbaric. Read the book.

Yes, I can see that the CIA funded the Radio Free Europe. I have expressed all the others previously.

Then it shouldn’t be surprising that it emboldened the fascists, just like Fox News with the Jan 6 rioters in the US Empire.

Both the west and the soviet bloc had a proven track record to support their ideologies or give a huge prestige blow to eachother. Everything was explained earlier, but fascism didn’t outweigh the socialistic ambition of the revolution, especially seen by the leadership and antisemitism being in small isolated incidents.

Fascism absolutely outweighed the minor progressive side, especially considering the “progressive” side still ultimately wanted to liberalize the economy and sell out to the west. This sparked one of the largest migrations of Hungarian Jews out of Hungary since the Holocaust itself.

Overall to me it seems you are upplaying the amount of antisemite, fascist, Horthy sympathizers in the Revolution from an incredibly biased source from Aptheker, who was even removed from his communist party, making up facts, and conveniently not mentioning relevant informations trying to paint the 1956 Revolution as an event made by fascists and the west, and trying to pretend that anyone who questions the Communist Party is a fascist, even if they are socialists and not a hardliner stalinist.

You’re downplaying the role of fascism in Hungary, as though they all disappeared after 1956. The fact is, the overwhelming majority of those oppressed by the communists were fascists, hence the widespread pograms and Jewish flight from Hungary.

Anyone who does election fraud, state-wide censorship, sending anyone to work camps, eliminating the option to emigrate, doing propaganda 24/7, and shooting into civilians is a monster to me. Maybe if Lenin wouldn’t have died so early, we wouldn’t have seen the light of stalinism. Who knows.

The fascists were doing worse in Hungary, at a far larger scale. Stalin continued Lenin’s legacy. You’re confusing the incredibly tumultuous period post-war with the entirety of the socialist experience.

The only good thing I can say about you is that the commie apartment block program was a really great investment, even if they were poor quality, it did make considerable amount of subsidization into these to have something for people to live in, even there was like 6 people in 1 small apartment.

And these massively progressive programs extended to education, healthcare, development, jobs, and more. The fascists wanted to take them all away.

And on the other hand where 47% polish people are living better and 35% are worse isn’t mentioned in Poland’s wiki. How convenient.

Poland is a seperate conversation, and too benefited dramatically from socialism while having serious problems with fascism.

This 72% of are regarding the Kádár era, which is indeed true according from my grandma’s and parents’ statements, however this doesn’t mean that economic life was great all times. At Rákosi people had to resort back to a ticket based system in order to get basic food like bread, where the last ticket system was in WW2 or WW1, mainly due to the force of collectivization and industrializations in an agricultural country with plenty of farmable land.

Nobody ever said economic life was great at all times. Coming out of World War II and dealing with the political instability of lingering fascism was immensely destructive. The Kádár era was better not because Kádár was a better person, but because socialism had had longer to solidify.

Additionally this poll was made in 2009, 3 years after the deviza crisis in Hungary and 1 year after the 2008 bank crisis.

Not many polls regarding socialism are made, further the longer we are removed from the dissolution of socialism in Europe the less reliable polling results become.

Luckily Kádár wasn’t as a hardliner stalinist like Rákosi, but he especially prioritized wellbeing in order to not experience another 1956 again. Life did improve around the mid 60s, especially by abolishing the collectivization efforts. It seems private farmland ownership works better than having everything in the state.

Rákosi also prioritized wellbeing, you can’t just snap your fingers in a post-war, post-fascist environment to make things better. Rákosi was more of a hardliner, and this over-reliance on soviet-style economy without adhering to Hungary’s conditions did slow growth, but it was still positive. Selling out to the IMF was disastrous, as this contributed to the decline in socialism and its dissolution.

Even if hungarians lived in goulash communism, it was still forbidden to act against the government, critiquing the soviet occupation, talking about 1956, questioning Kádár, etc

Again, simply letting western media have their way with Hungarian public opinion and provoke another 1956 would have been another tragedy.

There were more hospitals, subsidizied house programme, starting to be able to attend vacations, seeing some whitelisted western media, but only those which aligned with communist interests, like the Bud Spencer + Terence Hill movies. (These are simple but pretty entertaining movies, I can easily recommend Who Finds a Friend Finds a Treasure) We can also thank for the Information Age for better living, where basically all countries improved by it worldwide.

Socialism indeed produced good results for the people, as did the internet.

Unfortunately after the oil crisis, Kádár wasn’t able to retain the current living conditions, so he had to resort into a debt spiral indefinitely. This caused the start of massive inflation, especially after the regime change. Also emerging unemployments

Selling out to the IMF was avoidable, and exactly where even the “progressive” elements in the 1956 counter-revolution were heading. You’re arguing for disaster to have come earlier.

Also collectivelly all the eastern bloc countries have lost their companies due to the western items were usually much better, like Trabant, Lada (still exists tho, but not as popular anymore), Ikarus etc. Maybe if we would have remained non-communist, then we would have had more competent companies, who knows.

Building up industry in lesser-industrialized countries took time. China is now overtaking the rest of the world, but it didn’t happen overnight. If the Eastern Bloc was never socialist, then they would have had the slower growth they had post-socialism.

EDIT: Atleast we can hopefully agree, that the current monopol corpos such as Google, Amazon, etc. are downright evil.

Sure, I believe that, but it seems that you’re more aligned with them than against.

These claims didn’t get any verifications, so it either happened or not. This seems to be why this claim didn’t get much popularity in non-communist cirlces, and with independent historians. If true, they were only able to make modest help, all the insurgencies made in all towns and cities were grass-roots movements. It’s either wishful thinking or a heavy bias if one wants to believe in unverified claims.

MI6 trained and both MI6 and the CIA supplied arms for the Fifth Column elements in Hungary. This is a common tactic, these “stay behind” operations and mechanisms for arming far-right death squads was the basis of Operation Gladio.

The CIA indeed broadcasted the Radio Free Europe, but only after they got surprised when the revolution has happened. It is important to note that foreign involvement only supported the revolution, and didn’t organize it or were physically involved with a bunch of troops such as the USA in the Vietnam war, and the USSR in the Afghan war

RFE began broadcasting its propaganda in 1949. Foreign involvement was in aiding, supplying, and arming the far-right, emboldening them to strike. Nobody is claiming that the west physically invaded Hungary, but instead that they provoked the most violent reactionaries into violence, a tried and true method of Color Revolution.

If you are commenting these to undermine the 1956 revolution, then we can also undermine all the insurgencies / revolutions / civil wars if any foreign involvement got into it, even if it was mainly / only by broadcasting radio signals, like these soviet attempts in regime changes or upholding them, or american attempts.

There’s a massive difference between soviet aid for anti-colonial and anti-imperialist forces, and the west arming and supporting fascists. My point isn’t that intervention is always bad, but instead that the west intervened in ways that furthered imperialism and fascism while the soviets were liberatory and expanded socialism.

The claims of the Arrow Cross Party being involved in 1956 was a propaganda campaign made on false allegations by János Kádár… This is the source which contains his speeches where Kádár tried to legitimize his regime found on page 460. He (rightfully) executed Mihaly Francia Kiss, a former White Terror member probably as a legitimization of his propaganda, but there is no mention of him being involved in the 1956 uprising. Not in here either… Kádár never provided proof for these involved Arrow Cross Party members.

MI6, when training the far-right elements, found despondent Hungarians that were supportive of the previous fascist regime. This included Arrow Cross Party members, but not exclusively, and the idea that no Arrow Cross Party member or supporter took place in the anti-communist violence has no proof whatsoever, while there is evidence of their presence.

Any former Cross Party shadow power was neutered by ÁVH’s action in finding political enemies. Also in 1944-45, these nazi scums were executed as well. You can only stay on this belief, if you assume that the ÁVH was ineffective at this mission.

The ÁVH did fail, that’s why so many Nazis in Hungary went unpunished, and why the counter-revolution could have begun in the first place.

So your source says "A colour revolution is a term given to a revolution that appears to be led by the proletariat in search of liberal ideals, but is actually coordinated and funded by imperialist interests. ", and the definition for imperialism saying "It is a global system of economic, political, and military domination, with the imperialist powers using a variety of means, including economic sanctions, military interventions, and cultural influence to maintain their dominance over other nations. " by conveniently saying the non-capitalist can’t be imperialist. Cambridge and Wiki includes every ideology too…

Cambridge and Wikipedia define imperialism through liberal, pro-capitalist analysis. Prolewiki takes Lenin’s observations about imperialism, which actually take analysis of imperialism to scientific levels. It’s like Wikipedia saying trees are plants and stopping at that, while Lenin goes further into it, describing trunks, leaves, and other common characteristics. Wikipedia and Cambridge are of course liberal biased, heavily so, and since late-stage capitalism necessitates imperialism, it obscures this.

Going by this definition the Rakosi led puppet communist party using proletariat-led like slogans and campaigns which won with the blue ballot election fraud with USSR involvement, common people being exiled to Gulags who dared question the regime and instilling fear via ÁVH, forcing all the eastern bloc countries into the Warsaw Pact, etc. seems pretty imperialistic to me, or an oppressor. Same deal.

Intervention isn’t imperialism, nor is imprisoning fascists. Imperialism is specifically about international extractionism, which late-stage capitalism necessitates. You think you’ve made a point by changing the definition of a word, but taking Prolewiki’s definitions consistently, the USSR was not “extractionary imperialist,” while the west was.

If you want to call your definition “influence imperialism,” then this isn’t a bad thing. The Statesian north liberating the slaves in the south would classify as imperialism, as would the soviets winning World War II, as would the PLA liberating Tibet.

Fair enough, even if these said journalists are extremely biased, or going against the establishment (rightfully), a healthy government shouldn’t exile or silence people and their media. Let people have all the free informations they can get. Unfortunately a lot of countries silenced media, like the banned communist books in the USA, Stalin removing any journal, article he doesn’t like, and only allowing movies which aligns with the USSR’s interests. Well these are media, but reality also aligned with non-communists, by showing the truths about Gulags, but Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was exiled there by the USSR. Others: Osip Mandelstam (prison camp), Isaak Babel (executed), Lina Shtern (exiled), etc. Subsequently all the other satellite stated used massive censorship too.

Censorship is employed in all states, by the class in power. It is better for the working classes to restrict the speech of capitalists and fascists than to let them use Radio Free Europe and other such propaganda outlets to spark counter-revolution and tragic bloodshed, but you seem to be arguing that that’s a good thing.

Thanks, comrade! 🫡

Trying to do my part to help the good fight.

Independent scholars across China, the USSR, Cambodia, Ethiopia, and North Korea all documented millions upon millions upon millions of deaths from engineered famines, purges, forced labor camps, and political executions.

Who are these “independent scholars?” No modern historian using data from the soviet archives, or other such reputable source, believes that there were “engineered famines” in socialist countries. Famine existed, and was in all cases a common phenomenon pre-socialism, ended by the communists. The highest plausible death total from purges in the soviet union is around 700,000, though actual analysis shows that this number is simply those condemned to death, when it was common for the soviets to walk back death condemnations, meaning total executions is far below. The majority of deaths in socialist prisons came from starvation during World War II, when the Nazis took Ukraine, the USSR’s bread basket.

Adding on to this, Cambodia’s “agrarian communism” isn’t recognized by the overwhelming majority of Marxists as actually socialism. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge denounced Marxism, and they worked with the US Empire, being stopped by the Vietnamese communists.

To the contrary, millions of deaths from engineered famines have been proven by capitalists, such as the Bengal Famine by Churchill. Churchill had this to say:

I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.

There is also the capitalist Nazi Germany, which inflicted the holocaust, murdering tens of millions in around a decade.

Whether the exact total is 60 million, 80 million, or more, the sheer magnitude is confirmed far beyond the Black Book.

The sheer magnitude is confirmed to have been far less both in ratio and in total than capitalism.

Facts: Communist governments were responsible for mass mortality on a historic scale.

To the contrary, communist governments have been responsible for mass uplifting in life expectancy and poverty eradication on a historic scale. From the USSR:

To the PRC:

Communists have been responsible for doubling life expectancy, tripling literacy rates, eradicating poverty, rapidly improving production and distribution, democratizing society, and far more.

I believe presently most instances use Matrix for this.

The US Empire has been collapsing for a long time. Trump didn’t turn ICE into gestapo, it already was. Christian nationalism rose as a consequence of imperialist decay, and a necessity to turn austerity inwards as the spoils of imperialism are drying up. What we can do is organize to establish socialism, by joining orgs such as the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

It cannot be stressed enough that the rise of the far-right is a consequence of the material reality of dying imperialism. The US Empire, post-World War II, has been the world hegemon and plunderer of the global south, the largest exporter of death and genocide. As the global south is decoupling from the US Empire and developing, this is causing an internal shift towards oppressing the US populace more to protect the superprofits from imperialism lowering.

The 1990s, in recent history. The dissolution of the USSR was catastrophic, both for those living in the socialist side of the world and those without.

It’s dissolution was a dramatic setback in the global transition to communism. 7 million people are estimated to have died indirectly as a result of that, and we spent the next decades in bleakest reaction to it.

The Black Book of Communism was debunked by its own writers. Conquest was described as obsessed with reaching 100 million, and to do so he included Nazis killed during World War II, non-births as deaths, made up numbers, dramatically exaggerated existing events, and more. Citing the 100 million number in the modern day when even those that helped invent that claim have since denounced it isn’t particularly historically truthful.

Even including famine, and the mass starvations in soviet prisons during World War II (when the Nazis took Ukraine, the USSR’s breadbasket), life expectancy doubled in the USSR compared to pre-socialist levels:

Literacy rates went from 20-30% to 99.9%, healthcare and education were made free and dramatically expanded, and Russia itself went from semi-feudal to space in half a century. Socialism was an incredible success, even if there were flaws and struggles along the way.

The soviets were absolutely better than the Nazis, the Nazis committed mass genocide and tried to wipe out jewish and slavic peoples. This is teetering into Double Genocide Theory, a form of holocaust trivialization. The soviet union was a massively progressive movement over its history while the Nazis were brutal butchers.

Yea that one bugged me a lot. There were literal nazis let out of prison, and lynchings of Jewish people and communists. Trying to downplay the anti-semitism was sad to see.

The USSR wasn’t an empire, no, and the 1930s famine was a tragedy, but wasn’t intentional nor inflicted.

The USSR was a socialist federation. It wasn’t dominated by finance capital and late stage capitalism, and as such did not share the same drive capitalist countries have to export capital and plunder internationally. The USSR had no colonies nor neocolonies.

As for the 1930s famine, it was caused by a combination of factors, including adverse weather conditions, and bourgeois farmers called “kulaks” burning their crops and killing their livestock as protest against collectivization. There was no intention to cause a famine, nor to steer an existing famine, and as such it was a tragedy but not a genocide.

But let’s assume that all of his claims are true, since both the soviets and the west spied on eachother a lot. So even if MI6 trained some hungarian it had a mere effect compared to the huge grass-roots uprising in various cities by the commoners.

Your source confirms that MI6 aided the fascists. The west took advantage of far-right elements and aided them, they didn’t invent new far-right elements. CIA propaganda outlets like Radio Free Europe stoked grassroots resentment against the communists, combined with MI6 training and arming former members of the Arrow Cross Party. This strategy of taking existing levers and massively tilting the scales and facilitating them, forcing more radical action, is the way color revolutions typically play out.

The “fascist elements” author was expelled for a time by the CIA in suspicion of being biased towards the communists.

Reality aligns with the communists, any honest journalist would be found guilty of such bias. Anna Louise Strong was also punished for honestly reporting on the socialist sphere as a Statesian. The CIA and US State Department find it unacceptable when journalists report positively or sympathetically towards communists and socialists, and pull various levers to silence them.

Another CIA document which doesn’t believe there was a rise of fascism.

Former far-right elements made up a portion of the communist government and millitary, as this was only a decade out from World War II. The fact that they were retained doesn’t mean they weren’t fascists, or that they had pulled a full 180. Just a decade prior, Horther’s regime had been gleefully assisting the Nazis, such a complete turnaround is impossible in such a short span of time.

“Anti-semitism was marginal. From sources I checked, anti-semitic acts and various messages did happen and come up (mainly in the countryside), they were more sideline occurences that did not come to shape the overall tone of events.”

Downplaying the infestation of anti-semitic pograms described as especially bad in Hungary. The “freedom fighters” restarted the pograms, and would mark the homes of Jews with black crosses, for nightly executions by the fascists. The fact of the matter is that the counter-revolutionary moment was starting and facilitating pograms, while the communists had stopped them.

Just by seeing how many antisemite people every country has even now, it is reasonable to assume that these incidents weren’t way above than the average. However Stalin and Brezhnev used antisemitism extensively under their rule

Anti-semitism was punishable by death penalty in the USSR, this is largely Red Scare fearmongering. In fact, the soviets were accused of being jewish supremicists, hence the hysteria around “Judeo-Bolshevism.” The USSR was the opposite of anti-semitic:

Source: Works, Vol. 13, 1930 - January 1934 Publisher: Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954

"National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.

Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle.

Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism. In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty."

• J. Stalin January 12, 1931

On the other hand, killing communists by the revolutionaries was definitely a more common thing. Imagine as a young student seeing the Communist Party win with a huge blue ballot election fraud, implementing brutal planned economy tactics which lead to country-wide famine (my grandma as a child seen newspaper as a rich person’s item, life was so brutal), your people being deported to Gulag just because they dared to even question the dictatorship in any way, instilling fear by the ÁVH, political members being executed on false charges, etc. and not having the urges to kill hardliner stalinists with a lead pipe. Ofc killing people are awful, but brutal times can bring out the extremes of some people.

Linking a right-wing anti-communist think tank for the majority of your sources, and cherry picking tragic mistakes in order to justify killing communists is awful. Planned economy aided food production, and fascists were jailed, that doesn’t justify murdering leftists.

The soviet prison system was actually very progressive for the time. Mary Stevenson Callcott documented it quite well in Russian Justice. Similarly, the soviet stystem of democracy was dramatically expanded on what came before it, documented by Statesian journalist Pat Sloan in Soviet Democracy. Coming out of World War II, when Hungary had sided with the Nazis and gleefully participated in the holocaust, political struggle was rife. As such, trying to erase the fascist elements from a post-World War II Hungary is a process that takes more than a mere decade (as we see with the reintroduction of lynchings and pograms by the countet-revolutionaries).

That CIA document happened way after 1956, and the CIA was caught in a surprise after the revolution have began. They were only doing small intelligence gathering before that.

The CIA did not spark the revolt, but they assisted with it, as did MI6. As shown earlier, CIA propaganda outlets like Radio Free Europe stoked grassroots resentment against the communists, combined with MI6 training and arming former members of the Arrow Cross Party. This dramatically emboldened the fascists and radicalized them, steering and fostering an environment for counter-revolution.

Also if the CIA would have funded this uprising then the revolter party wouldn’t have been a socialist lead party by Imre Nagy.

The west has a proven track record of supporting liberalization and undermining socialism, which is what Imre Nagy was doing, along with allowing the lynching of Jews and communists. There were progressive elements in Nagy’s faction, but these progressive elements were outweighed by the overall fascist nature of the movement, and as such the worker councils established during 1956 need to be understood within that context. Similar to Kronstadt, fascists took advantage of anti-communist “left” dissent to steer a grassroots movement into a darker, terroristic direction.

Overall, your goal here seems to be to downplay antisemitic lynchings, paint lynching communists as a good thing, and try to pretend that the soviets were brutal monsters, all while linking right-wing anti-communist propaganda outlets. This whitewashes literal Nazis. According to polling, 72% of Hungarians are worse off than under socialism, being proud of resisting such a liberatory system is deeply confused.

Yep, I wrote about that more in-depth here. What I’m talking about is the modern usage of the term, especially here on Lemmy.