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Comment by corporate_shi11 | Hacker News Reader

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You’d probably call me a leftist although I don’t have any group that I would feel at home with. It is quite hard for me to find any idiot in my friends circles that would defend the soviets or sympathize with them. As somebody who studied philosophy and reads quite a lot I can assure you that the amount of left intellectuals who are still defending the SU is equally low — at least in Europe.

So what you are postulating here seems to be colored strongly by your own world view and where you live. Instead of offering us a interesting new perspective that would help leftists to leave their own bubbles, your comment seems to only show your own lack of experience in that area. You might have missed for example that “the left” is usually much more fractured and less uniform than the right: most things you could validly criticise have pretty certainly already been criticised by another left fraction or even within one fraction. So doing as if there was any unified opinion here says rather more about your own bias than anything of substance about the other side.

Many US observers often seem to paint a black and white picture of what is much more nuanced. E.g. saying that everybody who doesn’t support the silly ideas of your president is automatically on the side of the Russians certainly boldly outlines your views, but suffers from the significant disadvantage of not describing reality. Let me assure you: especially conservative Europeans are fed up with how the US acts on trade lately.

Minds change over time. Back before the USSR disbanded and their decades of various problems were revealed, there were a sizable number in the US with some sympathies with the Soviet Union (if not for its then-governance, there was at least sympathy for the possibilities and future of the communist country). Even Bernie Sanders decided to have his honeymoon in the Soviet Union to improve relations and find lessons to bring back home.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-bernie-sander...

With both Warren and Sanders proposing to tax rich people at levels not seen outside Communist countries, it's hard to believe the left doesn't sympathize with the Soviets, at least pre-Stalin Soviets.

U mean countries like France? :-)

I am afraid I can’t follow your logic there. Taxing rich people the same as everybody else (instead of paying them money) doesn’t make you a communist. Even taxing rich people more doesn’t make you a communist. Eisenhowers tax bracket in 1951 was 91% (!) above 400 k$. I am not an American, but I’d be rather surprised if Eisenhower turned out to be a Soviet all along.

These kinds of progressive tax brackets are pretty normal in most democratic nations, most of which are part of the NATO, which isn’t exactly a big fan of the soviets either.

Btw. there is a ton of influence beeing excerted by the Russians via russian oligarchs who got many politicians in their pockets. If you want to figure out who they are, you just have to check who constantly decides in the russian interest, while hurting the interest of their own nation.

> These kinds of progressive tax brackets are pretty normal in most democratic nations

What's the highest wealth tax you know of in a NATO nation? Is it near 8%?

Sanders has openly said that he doesn't think billionaires should exist, and has a history of supporting communists, so I don't think I'm stretching very hard here.

> Many on HN, like many Leftist "intellectuals" probably would (and/or did) sympathize with the Soviets.

On what grounds do you base such an absurd accusation?

Ironically no one is downvoting him. Just you.

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