To Westerner, they never saw communism in action, only propaganda.
Which means that kids can proudly wear their capitalistic-made Che Guevara t-shirt at school.
However, in Eastern Europe it's an absolute no, wearing such shirts is worse than the nazi symbols
because it shows support to extreme atrocities in front of people who were victim of them.
- a theoretical economic model that is opposed to capitalism
- the atrocious regimes of the 20th century calling themselves communism you are referring to that have vanishingly few things to do with the first.
Vanishingly few people in Western Europe support these atrocious regimes. And therefore, communism the way you are using it. What's more, there's not much propaganda for communism here (I believe there was propaganda in the past, though). The confusion is usually here and people mostly don't see communism with a good eye because of the confusion (or because they are knowledgeable and oppose the theory - which is a better reason to be against it). Now, it's true that we have weaker feelings about it than in the US (and, I guess, the parts of the words that suffered from the atrocious regimes).
(The usual response to this is that theoretical communism invariably leads to these atrocious regimes, but I believe we don't know this - invariably, it seems they've been set up by possibly sadist assholes with huge egos and thirsts for power, we haven't tried without - as well as we don't know if it would work. I don't have any further useful point to make in this discussion so I probably won't engage in it.)
I'm sorry I was not clear enough, but I'm afraid I won't be able to express myself better so I'll just leave it at that.
You are free to make this point if you want, just don't make it look like it comes from me because it doesn't.
I've learned about communism from two types of sources. Philosophy books and history books, and the takeaways are quite different.
It's a reasonable hypothesis, just not the only one.
This week I only saw white people in the streets. I could conclude all people walking in my city are white. But that's false.
But I'd say we don't have any example neither: regimes from your history books weren't "communism" we find in your philosophy books. You can see it if you read both carefully enough.
(and again, I'm not stating communism can work, because we don't know that).
But even if we assume both "communisms" are the same: you are saying "Communism has failed N times, therefore it will always fail". You don't know that (though I would admit it's quite solid evidence in this case)
We don't know. And I'm not arguing for or against communism here neither.
So would you agree with the statement that all attempts failed?
You see, you're mockingly presenting me as simply going "never happened therefore can't happen". I would say that you're the extreme opposite where you're going "what happened doesn't matter, we learned nothing from it".
You know, we can reason about the future past the data...? There's a reason why communism failed all attempts. That reason is something which apparently you're missing, but I'm using to support my prediction that it can't work.
Yes, to the extent there were none, really. And if we consider all the regimes calling themselves communism, yes, sure, failed in every possible ways too, of course.
> you're mockingly
No no no, I wouldn't dare making fun of you / mocking you. I have no interest doing so and I would not find this funny. I'm sorry I made you feel I'm mocking you, in any case that was not my intent.
> There's a reason why communism failed all attempts.
You didn't address the hypothesis I exposed in my first comment and that I will restate: any regime calling themselves "communism" were set up by huge assholes using the noble name to call their totalitarian views and misusing the concepts to make it look more legit. Maybe they even liked the idea but still wanted the power.
I feel like I won't convince you and that's fine.
On my side, I haven't discarded the hypothesis that communism can't actually work. We don't know either way.
Ok lets break it apart.
> any regime calling themselves "communism" were set up by huge assholes ( ... )
Agreed.
> ( ... ) using the noble name to call their totalitarian views.
Wrong. Research into the inner circle writing of Stalin show that he and the top people in the party believed themselves to be communists and doing the right thing for the ultimate goal of making the world communist. He wasn't just "using the noble name" (lol?). He behaved like a communist even when no one was looking as per the decisions he made even after attaining absolute power. I'd suggest you read Steven Kotkin's book "Stalin". Of course, if you dispute the expert take I'd have to ask for your credentials.
EDIT: bit frustrating to talk to someone whose starting point is "it's unknown if X" when X has been known for a long time. It's like, do your homework before coming in here. I'm out, good luck.
Taking a shortcut. I meant using a name that possibly had good reputation back then.
For the rest, I'm no expert on the topic, you seem to know better than me, continuing to argue would be pointless.
edit: (to answer your edit) Okay, but then why didn't you counter me right away with solid arguments if you had them from the start? Happy to learn from an actual expert! Like, you could have just written: "Actually, there's strong evidence that both are the same. Here are some references: ..."
I don't agree with it, but you've coined a first rate phrase there.
Though they failed in that regard too I think.
As a Hungarian, this is just not true. The Western view of communism has been imported and the more time goes on, the more the younger generations base their views on what's cool in the West vs what their old and uncool grandparents blabber on about.
With the Internet and media and travel options and exchange semesters etc. the Western European attitude is diffusing into the east as well. It was already cool to wear Che t shirts 20 years ago in Budapest. Though of course Budapest has always been a West oriented cosmopolitan liberal city, so copying the west in this is not so surprising.
1956 is also interesting as it became relevant politically again with the war in Ukraine. And it is my impression that many people in Hungary look at this not as something happening in a bordering country but as if trying to see it through Western European/North American eyes. A bit like vampire Transylvania, which might as well be a totally different entity than Erdély. So is "Ukraine whose flag the celebs put on their profile pics" a separate entity from Ukraine, east from Nyíregyháza and Mátészalka, where the cheap cigarettes come from etc. A very different set of connotations.
Similarly, the communism that's cool is mentally compartmentalized away from historic reality like 1956, Rákosi, Kádár etc.