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this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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Comradeship // Freechat
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"Ronald Reagan was a freedom fighter in terms of supporting our Jewish bros & sis in the Soviet Union & opposing vicious forms of communism" - West
Oh Lord...
Freedom fighters is a red flag lol...
He's not wrong in that. The USSR did some Nazi-esque shit to Jews. Just at a slower pace.
Example?
In these instances it's better to ask for source so that upon their failure we can throw quotes like "My source is that I made it the fuck up!"
In this case, it’s fine.
I got an example for them — Stalin spooned 100,000,000 Ukrainian Jews with his comically large spoon
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Soviet_Union
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
While the USSR certainly didn't target Jewish folk as aggressively as the Nazis, that's not really the bar for being horrible.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/prism/534/
I recommend this, heavily.
Soviets ended the holocaust.
In pushing into half of Poland, they saved over 3,000,000 Jews from the Nazi war machine.
In this piece, there are touching quotations from Jewish anticommunists and sympathizers alike saying that they could never hate the USSR. Soviet soldiers spoke Yiddish to them, told them their nightmare was over. They cried and hugged them.
In the Soviet Union, antisemitism was illegal and punishable by death.
addendum from the source
Did you read the first link? Stalin especially disliked Jews and used euphemisms to target them domestically for placement into gulags. Yes the Soviet Union's military might, manpower and resolve were critical to stopping the Nazi menace. Credit where credit is due.
But there were several dynamics that led to Jews being persecuted (obviously less severely than they would have been under Nazi rule) in the USSR pre and post war and especially post war under Stalin. The wiki article does a good job of describing those dynamics.
I do not respect Wikipedia as a source on these matters, and neither should anyone.
Digging through the linked references, we find dead links, snippets of articles with no named authors, and proven propaganda.
As @sicaniv@lemmygrad.ml alluded to, I would recommend looking into the U.S. state department's relationship with Wikipedia (and reddit, for that matter) if you are still committed to using them as a source.
What exactly are you arguing? That the USSR under Stalin didn't target organized religion? Or just that it couldn't have been as bad as the Nazis so Cornell West is a tankie for calling it out?
The goalposts just shifted, and I definitely noticed.
We were talking antisemitism, a specific hatred of Jews and Judaism that has a horrible historical precedent beyond simply being attacked under the umbrella of "organized religion". The USSR cracked down on Church authority, but did not specifically target Jews [or Muslims, for that matter -- I recommend giving Lady Idzihar a watch, she is a Muslim communist woman who shares fascinating (well-sourced) histories regarding Soviet respect for Sharia and so on] on the basis of their ethnicity or religion, or ethnoreligion.
Regarding the USSR's antireligiosity in general, Parenti quote.
The USSR was far ahead of its time on the so-called Jewish question, as it were especially given its temporaries... yes, I am saying the Nazis were far, far worse, and it shouldn't be considered fallacious whataboutism to critically examine these nations within the confines of their material circumstances -- including "the times", as it were.
The USSR, incorrectly in hindsight, were a major proponent for the creation of the state of Israel, deeming it necessary to create a sanctuary for Jewish folk after witnessing the horrors of the Holocaust. They immediately flipped the switch when Israeli settlers started massacring Palestinians, of course, and collectively understood the ramifications of the Zionist settler project. Was this ideological pivot a case of a resurgent Soviet antisemitism? Or are we missing the forest for the damn trees, here?
I consider Cornell West more of a comrade than any so-called communist who does not incorporate meaningful anti-imperialism into their praxis. Still, I do not devote much time thinking of him, beyond my dismay at the understanding that this is almost certainly a losing strategy.
I am first and foremost thinking of the vicious slander levied so frequently against the saviors of Europe (and, according to some, JEWS!) and the existence of contrary truths. I am hoping to enlighten some readers with a small history regarding Jewish people in the USSR. I am hitting back against what I perceive as intellectual injustice.
There were human beings living in the USSR, plenty of them antisemitic - many of them fascists, enemies of the state! That was never the party's line, never the worker's line, never the theorist, the farmer, the people's line. The people and the party (and thusly the state) practiced material opposition to antisemitism, meaningful opposition to antisemitism. The kind where open antisemitism was punishable by death, if deemed necessary.
How the fuck does the U.S. protect Jewish people? By spending billions propping up its puppet state in a strenuous effort to keep the Arab world divided? By having lawmakers who support the creation and expansion of Israel on the basis that it will bring about the end times?
The quote
-- Michael Parenti, Blackshirts And Reds
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Gathering info on communist regime from very anticommunist sources is really wise. There's that book that literally debunks all the lies around anti-Semitism in USSR that @sovereignstate shared but then who likes to read a book instead of a wikipedia article. If you want wiki articles debunking the wikipedia article then you should visit prolewiki.
Trust wikipedia on politics at your own discretion. https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1131552
Imma use this every single time comment like this pops up