We are living in post post modern times, which happen to be hyper globalised, so that the authors' feeling of past times are way past us. He could start to read Francis Fukyama - End Of History[0] to understand what happened in 1989.
I Lost My Past (2017)
31–40 of 193 posts
Re: I Lost My Past (2017)
#32[flagged]
Saying "Communism is evil" is no different than saying "Capitalism is evil" with nothing to back it up. Contrary to maybe-current opinion, Communism and Democracy are not diametrically opposed: the former is an economic policy, the latter a system of government. You can have both, one or the other, or neither all at once. Sure, maybe the governments that tried to implement communism failed on the world stage. Some to…
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Re: I Lost My Past (2017)
#33> Thus I came to realize that all these other memories from Eastern Europe and Communism that pop-up on today’s screens and “populate” the literature, have almost nothing in common with me. And yet I lived under such a regime for thirty years! There's a reason why in scientific discussion anecdotal evidence is dismissed. There's no singular canonical experience that people in Yugoslavia share. Also, people can live a…
Yes, but he's not denying the other things happened, but pointing out pretty much exactly what you say: there's no singular canonical experience. But often we are presented a narrative of such a singular experience.
Do we though? We generally consider Iraq under Saddam not to be a good place to have lived in. A terrible place if you're a Kurd and your village gets attacked with nerve gas. And a bad place if you're an ordinary citizen that isn't specifically targeted because of his ethnicity, but there's always the risk of Uday Hussein driving by and just fancying murdering you for no particular reason.
And yet, of course, the upper echelons lived very well. They had palaces, anything they wanted was imported for them from the West, even if not allowed for the average citizen. Certainly, they didn't complain about their villages being gassed, or their sons being tortured to death by the sociopath son of the dictator.
But saying "there's no singular canonical experience" feels very strange in that regard, because there was, but with a few exceptions.
Re: I Lost My Past (2017)
#34Well the Soviet Union was imperialism, wasn't it?
Re: I Lost My Past (2017)
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but he's not denying the other things happened, but pointing out pretty much exactly what you say: there's no singular canonical experience. But often we are presented a narrative of such a singular experience.
Do we though? We generally consider Iraq under Saddam not to be a good place to have lived in. A terrible place if you're a Kurd and your village gets attacked with nerve gas. And a bad place if you're an ordinary citizen that isn't specifically targeted because of his ethnicity, but there's always the risk of Uday Hussein driving by and just fancying murdering you for no particular reason. And yet, of course, the up…
You're making the point for me. You're presenting a narrative that the vast majority of Iraqis would also not have experienced. Most did not live in the regions that were gassed. Most did not have family who got tortured.
That does not mean Saddam wasn't a psychopath and a brutal oppressor. The fact he did those things are enough to condemn him as the evil dictator he was. There's no need to erase other experiences.
Re: I Lost My Past (2017)
#36> the liberation of Saigon That was a jarring phrase that helped underscore the great divide between East and West.
In this particular case, the North was in the right. As far as they were concerned, the Americans were just one more occupier in a long line of Western occupiers. And even though the Americans didn't intend to become occupiers, that's ultimately what happened (a theme that's repeated itself many times). The Americans and the Vietnamese were fighting different wars with each other. So the North pushed out the occupier…
Western or Eastern, Japan occupied Indochina for a few years during WW2, and Ho Chi Minh rose as a big resistance leader opposing them.
However for the rest you're on point. South Vietnam was a fake regime propped up by the French initially and then the US, had no legitimacy, wasn't democratic ( which could have been a saving grace for it) and was in US-backed violation of the Geneva conference. That's not to say there weren't anti-communists in Vietnam, they were just a small minority (Ho Chi Minh had very strong support in the North, which was more populous).
Re: I Lost My Past (2017)
#37Well the Soviet Union was imperialism, wasn't it?
It was, in the end, even if it started as direct opposition of imperialism ( to an extent; export of revolution was one of the tenets of Lenin and early Bolshevism, and that might be considered a type of imperialism).
However i think the author is talking more about the smaller Eastern European communist countries in general ( Yugoslavia, East Germany are mentioned), not the Soviet Union.
Re: I Lost My Past (2017)
#38I grew up in Hungary where the socialist leadership (it is a very interesting fact how much they avoided the word communism and used socialism everywhere but I digress) was hell bent on continuously raising the standard of living because Janos Kadar was afraid of another revolution. (As his deranged last speech in 1989 revealed, he had nightmares for decades of his comrade, Imre Nagy, the prime minister in 1956, whom…
> it is a very interesting fact how much they avoided the word communism and used socialism everywhere but I digress
In Bulgaria the official line is that the country and regime are socialist, which is on the path to communism which everyone should work towards. There were even slogans in factories and other public places about this.
The rest of your story is tragic. I'm sorry you had to live through such times.
Re: I Lost My Past (2017)
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Saying "Communism is evil" is no different than saying "Capitalism is evil" with nothing to back it up. Contrary to maybe-current opinion, Communism and Democracy are not diametrically opposed: the former is an economic policy, the latter a system of government. You can have both, one or the other, or neither all at once. Sure, maybe the governments that tried to implement communism failed on the world stage. Some to…
I lived under this regime and i absolutely remember it as evil. Big mistake of 1991 was to let Russia form.
> Big mistake of 1991 was to let Russia form.
Russia form? Russia already existed, as the Russian socialist federal republic, a part of the Soviet Union. What would have been the alternative to letting Russia inherit the Soviet Union by being the last one remaining?
Re: I Lost My Past (2017)
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Saying "Communism is evil" is no different than saying "Capitalism is evil" with nothing to back it up. Contrary to maybe-current opinion, Communism and Democracy are not diametrically opposed: the former is an economic policy, the latter a system of government. You can have both, one or the other, or neither all at once. Sure, maybe the governments that tried to implement communism failed on the world stage. Some to…
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Are you saying there have been less executions under other political systems?
Communism isn't evil, it's the people doing evil that are evil. Evil doesn't exist without evil people to perpetrate it. The problem with everyone being equal is that nobody really wants to be equal. The guy pushing the communist ideals doesn't want to be the rubbish collecting guy instead of the politician, even if the income was the same.
I don't think communism is good, or viable, but if it could ever work the the way it should it would not be evil.