Who has had family/friends that suffered under Communist oppression?

[WillyBrandt]

Note what country this occured in. Since I've noticed a few hammer and sickles, I'm wondering if I'm the only one who recoils as though they've seen a swastika.

My family suffered in Cuba. And every time I see I see a DUer post a hammer and sickle, it's a personal slap in the face, and a sign that morons are sympathizing with murderers.

What is the hammer and sickle? Despite the lies and delusions of the sophists, it's straightforward. It's a conscious or unconscious sign of applause for the gulag, the show trial, the labor camp. It's a smile at the dehumanization of individual man.

[metisnation]

1. truth lies

in moderation from everything too much socialism is a bad thing but then again so is to much capitalization..there is a balance we must strike.

[WillyBrandt]

2. I'm no market fundamentalist--but the H&S is a symbol of

dehumanizing oppression.

[Name removed]

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[burrowowl]

3. No one

but family in Mexico that suffered under U$ oppression.

[corporatewhore]

4. same here

[Name removed]

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[JohnKleeb]

5. Well Willy

I have relatives who lived in communist countries as subjects, I am not sure if they suffered or not, btw this is the former yugoslavia we are talking about here, and these relatives I never knew.

[Shanty Oilish]

6. Russia

On my father's side, a lot of folks escaped Russia, some in the czar's day, some later (1920's). They were practicing unmodified communism in the 20's, when my great-uncle was shot for being a history professor.
On my mother's side, the Latin American dictators who sent her people running for their lives, did not themselves try to enforce communism, but all would have recognized Castro as a comrade in spirit.
You are right to recoil.

[SoCalDem]

7. My family is also Cuban, and yet the symbol

does not really bother me that much.. It's just a symbol..and a symbol of defeat as well..

Most "symbols of dread" linger on long after the countries/ groups they have been associated with have vanished or been vanquished..

My family left Cuba with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, and after a time here in the US, I doubt that any of them would return for anything more than a brief visit..

The fact that the symbol can get a rise out of certain groups is the reason that so many hateful people hang onto them.. Look at the stars & bars.. Probably 90% of the people displaying it could not give you much historical detail of the civil war.. They only know that it makes black people nuts to see it, and that's good enough for them.. They can no longer walk up to a black person and make them move out of the way, nor can they call them names...but they can "put them in their place" simply by flashing the stars & bars..

Same goes for the swastika.. The swastika design has been a native american symbol for centuries, but it is forever tainted by the nazis' use of it.. Skinheads & neo-nazis have trotted it out again.. it's for effect..

The attention paid to these symbols is what gives them the power..

To me, the hammer & sickle was just a decoration on the USSR flag...The big bad russians were paper tigers.. Even during the height of their control, they were mostly hot air..

My family in Cuba were Bautista supporters and landed gentry, so they did lose everything, yet the younger family members have long ago "put all that away"..

[WillyBrandt]

8. I'm not going to take the blame for the hatefulness of a symbol

It is the hateful employer of a symbol for inhuman purposes that bears the blame. I know you weren't saying otherwise, but just wanted to put that out there.

[SoCalDem]

10. But.. at some point you must "let it go"

If you are constantly looking for bad people everywhere, you will only go where they are, and you will find them everywhere..

My grandmother was very angry when she found out that I was studying Russian history and learning Russian.., but when I explained to her that when you "know" your supposed adversary, you take their power..



And as for the use of symbols now.. Lots of young kids who have only learned a smidgeon of sanitized history, often see the "adventure" and "intrigue" of symbols..

It's not an accident that about every 15 years, Che Guevara becomes trendy again..

[WillyBrandt]

13. Che Guevara... I'm part Argentine

So it really fucks it up for me!

Not a fan of Communist chic, what can I say?

[MinnFats]

9. yes.

i have friends that managed to get out of eastern europe.
and recently i have a book i pulled from my father's stuff on the KGB.
almost everywhere they took power, the reds fucked things up. (i don't include among them the countries that are largedly socialist, such as the scandanavians.)
Also, a brother in law grew up in post civil war Spain. That country was a living hell for those who were on the "wrong" side, that being those opposed to El Caudillo, Francisco Franco, who offered instructive lessons to Hitler and Mussolini.

Thank God Juan Carlos did the right thing and guided the country back toward democracy following Franco's long-awaited death. I was there twenty-some years ago and parties all across the spectrum were flourishing. In Barcelona, eight or 10 parties from one end to the other were in the same square, handing out pamphets and offering speeches from people literally standing on orange crates. They were basking in their new free speech. I came home with much better sense of and appreciation of free speech.

neither the fringe right nor the fringe left has a monopoly on cruelty, stupidity or hateful behavior.

[Paschall]

11. No, but have family/friends that suffered under fascist oppression...

...because they were Communists.

What's in a picture, be it a picture of a hammer and sickle? :shrug:

[WillyBrandt]

12. What's in a picture?

Nothing of its own. But it's never of its own; it can't be detached from its history and usage. When those are included, then what's in a picture?

Hatred and pain and the the reminder of the loss of simple dignity. That's what.

[bluestateguy]

14. My great granparents fled Bolshevik Russia in 1918

They were liberal Democrats all their lives, but never associated Communism with liberalism.

[union_maid]

15. A friend

She and her family fled Romania about 40 years ago. They're Jewish, too and Jews were not faring well in that environment. They're very liberal but have no use for the Soviet Union.

[burrowowl]

16. Over 200,000

Guatemalean Indians killed under Ray-gun and Iran-contra dealy.
Not all my relatives, but have some Mayan in me and many were Mayan.
Not to mention .... United Fruit, American Smelter and Refining, ...
all had help from the U$ gov. in 1910 or so the Marines were sent to quash a mining strike in Mexico on the request of ASR ... the poor Indians, they didn't want to be miners, they couldn't afford the food from the company store, their children died because they couldn't hunt or farm ...

[JohnKleeb]

17. Jesus christ, I am sorry, thats terrible

My relatives havent really suffered under the US government really honest but if they were Serbs they prolly would have, I still have family in the balkan region, my people the Slovenes were unaffected. Yes I opposed the Kosovo war.

[burrowowl]

18. Massacres in Latin America

are less impressive than those in Europe, less population. Percentagewise, I think the massacre of the Guatemalan Indians where whole tribes and cultures died could be equivalent.
Let us not forget the genocide of the Armenians by the Turks and that
communism under the USSR was actually 'state capitalism' and not communism. The most communistic fellow I know is Jesus.

[JohnKleeb]

19. Yeah I know

Reagan, I know. Not the USSR, I am not Russian. My grandfather though a conservative democrat offers some praise to Tito for being able to hold the Yugoslav republics together, I personally have no problem with the sickle and hammer.

[burrowowl]

20. Tito was not in the USSR

he was in the so-called communist bloc.
In France, I knew many Yugoslavs from varius places in Yugoslavia. Something happened to blow it apart after the fall of the USSR. Could the U$ have been involved, possible.

[Yupster]

34. Yugoslavia was a multi-ethnic

state made up of groups who had been fighting each other for centuries. It was not at all unexpected that there would be pressure for it to spin into pieces once Tito died.

Honest. The USA is not the reason that the Moslems, Croats and Serbs don't like each other. The US isn't behind every wrong in world history.

[ArwenJade]

21. All totalitarian governments are oppressive

I'm not excusing communist dictatorships, but I think oppression has more to do with control and violence than the political systems.

[mouse7]

22. Just people screaming for attention

There's one in particular that who should have the I.D. "MUNCHAUSEN BY PROXY" with as many personal crises and strange life turns that seem to scream for attention from their threads.

I wouldn't worry about it too much.

[Minstrel Boy]

23. I have the same viceral response to this symbol:

I'm sorry; I recoil. Whatever virtue it once represented has been lost to me. I see it now, and I think only of the causes for which it's been waved in the last half century, the millions who have died on its account, and how it's been whored as never before by the Bush regime's pirates, thugs and murderers.

To me, it's drapery, cloaking the horror show of the National Security State. It ought to be flown upside down as a distress signal for a dying republic. And just as with you and the hammer and sickle, Willy, when I see a DUer post "Old Glory", I take it to mean "morons are sympathizing with murderers."

[thebigidea]

24. Half my family suffered in Cuba. The other half in Poland under the Nazis.

Then the Communists.

They think its all happening again here and they'll have to flee again.

The Cuban side doesn't consider a hammer and sickle a "slap in the face" - and neither do I, for that matter. It seems about as relevant as talk of the Tsar.

[Nile]

27. Friends from Vietnam.

After the U.S. pulled out the thousands were sent to re-education camps.

[RebelOne]

28. I had neighbors who came from Ukraine.

The mother grew up in Russia when it was still Communist and she never had anything negative to say. And her son said he was happier over there than in the U.S.

[NewJeffCT]

29. China

My wife has only been in this country for 4 1/2 years, and her whole family still lives in mainland China. They certainly don't feel oppressed - being from Nanjing, they dislike the Japanese more than the communist government in China.

[Muddleoftheroad]

30. A friend lost her grandparents in Cuba as well

Yes, like you, the hammer and sickle make me want to puke.

[Octafish]

31. Like you, Willy, my friend's family is from Cuba.

The father was a prominent physician. He and his family moved here in 1961, IIRC. I got to know them in Michigan, where they settled before moving to Miami in the 1970s. For some reason, Castro put the doctor's brother up against the wall.

Castro killed a good man. That shows me the true colors of the commies: murderers. Just like Josef Stalin and the Soviet commies, and Mao and the Red Chinese, and their business partners, the Bush Organized Crime Family.

[formernaderite]

32. My great grandfather spent 20 years in a Russian concentration camp...

...because his daughter and her husband a doctor fled Kiev. Your screen name is also the fellow who closed the largest library of Soviet and Russian publications in Munich, Germany under pressure from the Soviets. It was an ugly period, I have a huge extended family on my dads side who were killed and imprisoned. I realize that many Americans don't have the whole story on what happened over there.
On a small scale, such as a commune where everyone has a role in the decision making process, the ideal of communism can work. However, when coercive means of force are used the ideal instantly dies.

[Yupster]

35. The difference is

that on a small scale, each person can see the results of their hard work.

On the large scale though, the person who works hard and works not at all each get the same, and soon the person who works hard notes that if he takes it easy there won't be any noticable difference in production either. When production spirals down, the state uses force to try to get work moving.

Theoretically the answer to this is the cration of "Communist Man" who works not for himself but for the good of society.

This all seemed so reasonable and doable in college, but once I got some real jobs, it seemed pretty lame. That's probably why college professors are about the only people left in the world who believe in it. A relative of mine is still a professor who is a true believer. He's kind of a Peter Pan story. Went from student to grad student to grad assistant to lecturer to assistant professor to tenured professor all without ever leaving campus. Reminds me of Peter Pan still fighting Captain Hook when the rest of us lost boys have grown up.

[Darranar]

33. deleted by poster

[Broken]

36. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The stars and stripes represent genocide to me.

Capitalism was created from indentured servitude, the slave trade, and genocide against the Native Americans. The very system is built upon the intiation of force against the people formerly using the land. For without this capitalism would never have arisen, it is not a natural process created from freedom.


The land that is now owned privately was originally stolen from those who were using it. For example the Native Americans. This is also the case for Europe, where capitalism first originated after/around abolishing fuedalist kingdoms using our modern day 'nation states' (the fuedal kingdoms were created by the initiation of force). The 'property owning' class of that time period used the state to wrestle away fuedal lands/kingdoms into the hands of private individuals. And here we are today with remnant's of previous intitiations of force that effect the whole world, including workers of the 1st world..

And now the First world captalists govt.'s maintain themselves by oppressing the 3rd world with terrorism and military support of dicatatorships. This is where the outrageous luxuries of the first world are made possible. It is kept up through violenece. (Not to mention the U.S. being the world's arms dealer).


You may rightly talk of the crimes communist govts. have done as you wish. But I believe such a discussion should put capitalism in persepective.

[Broken]

37. Is this not oppression?

"Since 1985 over 3,800 union workers and leaders have been assassinated in Colombia, making it by far the most dangerous place on earth to fight for workers' rights.

In 2001, according to the United Workers' Central (CUT), the country's 600,000-member central trade union, there were 169 assassinations of union workers, 30 more attempted assassinations, 79 "disappeared" or kidnapped, and over 400 reports of threats and intimidations. More union workers are killed annually in Colombia than in the rest of the world combined. And, as of this week, 2002 shows every indication of keeping pace with 2001's horrific toll: 45 unionists have been killed so far in Colombia."
http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia110.htm

And........

"Workers suffer constant harassment and intimidation by the right-wing paramilitary group, United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC).

"Most of the threats and intimidation were forthcoming during periods of collective bargaining", Mr Suarez said. "Many union offices have been sprayed with gunfire. More than 60 union officials are in hiding."

Last year more than 50 union leaders were killed in Colombia and more than 1500 in the past 10 years. According to the United Workers Central, since 1995, 3800 unionists have been assassinated, and many others have "disappeared" or been kidnapped.

The paramilitaries have declared the death penalty against all union leaders. Mr Suarez also said there was full complicity between the AUC and employers, the state and the paramilitary.

"Corporations like Coca Cola benefit from low-wage labour in Colombia and turn a blind eye to the murder and union-busting because it benefits their bottom line", he said.
http://www.cpa.org.au/garchve5/1089coke.html


Here's this----



"The efforts to stop unions on the banana plantations have been going on for a long time, but now we're seeing a descent into pure thuggery.The Ecuadorian government has a responsibility to prevent this kind of violence............In late April, the Ministry of Labor recognized three trade unions formed by the workers from Los lamos, a positive step towards respecting workers' right to organize.

According to Ecuadorian workers' organizations, however, three more union activists were reportedly illegally fired on May 2. On May 6, largely in response to the firings, the workers of the Los lamos plantation group declared a strike. Though a workers' organization allegedly requested police protection for the striking workers, none arrived until violence erupted.

At approximately 2:00 AM on the morning of May 16, between 200 and 400 hooded, armed men entered the Los lamos plantation group, where workers living on the plantations were sleeping. Reports indicate that the hooded men banged on workers' doors with rifle butts, dragged roughly eighty of them from their homes, hit many with rifle butts, insulted them, looted their homes, and told many that they would be killed and dumped into the river. The hooded men also fired at at least one striking worker, injuring him critically and causing the subsequent amputation of his leg. Approximately six hours later, about six policemen reportedly arrived at the plantations. "
http://hrw.org/press/2002/05/ecuador0522.htm





Our media and govt. speak of atrocities Communist govts. are guilty of. But these people are invisible.

It is workers being treate dlike this that would make them prefer dicatotorship over the "liberty" of the "free market".

[Broken]

38. oppression

http://www.doublestandards.org/enemies.htm#b

[Mairead]

39. Who has family/friends that suffered under Capitalist oppression?

To start with: all the Cubans in Cuba!