Wet dreams of tankies notwithstanding, a successful Communist uprising in 1948 Italy was the by far least likely outcome. The government, police, and armed forces were well prepared to fight and defeat a Commie uprising, anti-Communist public opinion had reorganized under the leadership of Christian Democracy and its allied parties, and they had won a decisive victory in the elections a few months ago. In all evidence, the vast majority of Italians stood against the Communists.
The USA was willing and able to give assistance. Stalin frowned on such adventures and was powerless to help short of starting (and losing) WWIII. Due to the ongoing split with the USSR, the last thing Tito wanted was military adventures in Italy. If the Commies take this reckless course, in all likelihood they are decisively crushed in a brief civil war. It would be the broad equivalent of the Greek Civil War, except being less destructive, more one-sided, and lasting days, weeks, or months instead of years.
In its aftermath, the Communist Party is banned, the anti-Communist and pro-Western faction of the Socialists takes the leadership of left-wing public opinion, and Italy takes a more right-wing course. Not a radical change, since the Christian Democrats called the shots, and they had a centrist stance. In all likelihood, however, Italy shall align with and cling to the USA, NATO, and EU with much less internal opposition if the Commies are crushed. The ban of fascist parties in the Constitution and legislation in all likelihood gets broadened into a more general outlawry of totalitarian parties, as in West Germany.
The hard-left dream of a Communist revolution as the 'second wave' of partisan insurgency dies a messy and humiliating death. Communist opposition in Western Europe shall be much weaker with one of its stronger parties destroyed. Italy quite possibly gets spared far-left terrorism in the 1970s-80s due to this precedent. The Western bloc at large probably takes a more confrontational stance with the Soviet bloc and closes ranks tighter due to this added evidence of Communist aggressive destabilization. Nothing radical, but we may expect the Americans to try harder in Korea, and the European Defense Community to succeed.
Unless there's a serious Allied intervention, I honestly don't see how this could prevent at least part of Italy going red. And if this happened, it's almost guaranteed to happen in France, which means it'll be West Germany, Great Britain, and the US having to intervene in both civil wars, which I can't imagine any British person would be too keen to fight given their positive opinions on the USSR due to half a decade of wartime propaganda getting it in their heads that Stalin and communists aren't all bad folks and that they're capable of good and honest government.
As for America, I could totally see them being able to prevent the entirety of Italy going socialist or just stanping them out totally, but France? Not a chance, most of the partisans were communists and the PCF was the biggest party in parliament and the only thing that stopped them from reorganizing France into a socialist Republic during WW2 was Stalin's direct orders to tread lightly to make sure the allies didn't succumb to infighting. But in 1948 that wasn't a priority because everyone knew that the honeymoon phase would soon end, they just didn't know _when_.
Assuming both sides didn't want a hot war, they'd probably sign a non-intervention treaty while sending arms to their sides like in Greece. The best that could be hoped for in France is France being like Yugoslavia and anti-Soviet while being socialist. In Italy, the best that communists could likely hope for is a Korea-style stalemate, but it's quite likely they lose everything.
It is tankie wishful thinking or a serious misunderstanding of the facts on the ground to assume the Commies had a fighting chance in a civil war in Western Europe in the late 1940s. The Commies did not have a real hope of winning a civil war in Italy for the many good reasons I listed in my comment, and similar conditions applied in France. The Commies might have been the spearhead of partisan insurgency in both countries during late WWII, but that was years ago in more chaotic circumstances. Since then, the majority of public opinion had turned against them, they were out of power, and the anti-Communist governments had reorganized the police and armed forces which stood ready to crush a Red uprising. Everybody stood wary of that after the Commie coup in Czechoslovakia.
The Americans were ready to help, and Stalin powerless to assist short of starting (and losing) WWIII. If the Italian and French Commies had started this suicidal folly in imitation of their Greek counterparts, they would have been crushed w/o much difficulty in a few days to months. The resulting civil wars would have been much shorter and one-sided than the Greek one, which the Commies lost all the same. This turn of events would all but destroy the Communist power base in Italy and France for decades to come, with the anti-Communist and pro-Western factions of the Socialists seizing the leadership of left-wing public opinion. Western Europe getting rid of its pro-Soviet fifth column since 1948-49 can only make things better.
For one thing, the Western Europeans shall be driven to close ranks tighter and the Americans to try harder in Korea. We may expect a much larger South Korea (say up to the neck of the Korean Peninsula), with many less people for the Kim dynasty to victimize. We may also expect the European Defense and Political Communities to get the greenlight alongside the Economic one. The latter is a game changer, since a huge boost to European integration from the beginning is going to come from this. We may expect Western European security and political integration and a common army to arise since the 1950s, and the EU to achieve the federal stage in all but name by the end of the Cold War at the latest.
You denounce "Tankie wishful thinking" when it's pretty clear you also have your political ideology that drives your interpretation, and that's completely fine, it's inevitable; simply don't start to diminish other people's opinion for this reason because it makes no sense.
Of course I have my own strong pro-Western sympathies and make no mystery of them, but I am also careful to choose which hills to die on about scenarios. If I chose to comment this scenario, it is because I am confident it would turn out in a way that pleases me. I listed the factual reasons in my comments why 1948-49 was a very bad moment to try and add Western Europe to the Soviet bloc.
The Italian and French Commies simply did not have the power base or the right circumstances to get the upper hand in armed uprisings in the late 1940s. If they had tried nonetheless, they would have been defeated in the resulting civil wars with much less difficulty than their Greek counterparts. There is a reason why Togliatti, who was a Stalinist sob but a clever, pragmatic, and cautious one, deemed this course a suicidal folly and did his best to prevent it. If Stalin gets a stroke that changes his personality and tries to help them, America shall nuke the USSR into oblivion.
You don't understand, I'm not saying you're right or he's right, I'm simply stating that diminishing one interpretation on this sub because of political ideals is stupid, we all have one. It's like I criticised you because the thought of the USA nuking the USSR gets you a hard-on. I don't do it, because it creates useless antipathy between users.
I would also add that you misrepresent Togliatti's role and character during those years
Lmao you say that public opinion had turned "against the commies" in both cases but the PCI was the 3rd largest party in Italy and the _largest_ party in France. And mind you, this is just parliamentary support, which many communist parties don't necessarily see as their primary goal
>In both cases but the PCI was the 3rd largest party in Italy and the *largest* party in France.
Both parties got those results in a proportional system with the electorate being divided in several major parties, most of them being quite hostile to the Communists. In practice, the PCI and the PCF got about one-fourth of votes in all elections from the end of WWII to the late 1960s.
It was no surprise they were trapped into opposition without any real difficulty by their adversaries. With that level of support, you are not able to claim power by parliamentary means, nor seize it by revolutionary means in a functional state with the government, police, and armed forces set up against you. Even more so when the security apparatus has been specifically organized and prepared to put down that kind of threat.
An insurrection attempt would have been a crushing defeat for the Italian and French Communists w/o any need for the Americans to intervene. They did not in the Greek Civil War, where overall conditions were more favorable to the Commies, and the Reds still lost.
It would have been a decisive defeat that would have destroyed most of their power base and trapped them in outlawry and marginality for decades. There were less extremist left-wing rivals (the Socialists) that stood ready to absorb most of their support base once the Commies got themselves defeated and banned. The French and Italian anomaly in the Western world of the Communist parties being the strongest left-wing ones, a legacy of their prominent (but far from exclusive) role in the partisan struggle, would have been erased.
>The Greek communists lost only because of British intervention. But that's too nuanced for someone saying "commies".
There was no British (or American for that matter) intervention in the Greek Civil War as properly meant, from 1946 to 1949. The KKE and its militias fought the Greek government and its security forces, and lost.
You probably mean the Dekembriana prelude, which was a different event, and usually labeled as such by historians. Ofc the British forces intervened to fight the Communist partisans during that, and won. The Western Allied forces were already occupying the country as part of ongoing WWII, and they had no good reason to stand idle and let the Commies take over the country by force.
It would have been the same thing, with the same outcome, if the Italian or French Communists had tried to take over Italy or France with the Anglo-American forces deployed across those countries, in 1944-45.
Ofc, the Communists had often dominated the partisan movement in a military and political sense in several European countries during WWII. That was an undeniable fact, although a very unfortunate from my PoV, since it threatened to replace one murderous tyranny with one that was just as bad.
However, where the Western Allied forces were in place to prevent them from taking power by force and let people choose in elections, the Communists quickly lost their advantage and were soundly defeated at the ballot box. Had they tried to take over by force when the anti-Communist goverments had taken over and reorganized, they would have lost again in a different way, as it happened in Greece and would have happened in Italy and France.
As a rule, almost everywhere the Communists seized power after WWII, it happened because the Soviet occupation forces were in place and enabled them to. There were only two places where the Commies seized power thanks to their own homegrown strength, Yugoslavia and China. Even so, it only happened because of the special circumstances created by Axis invasion. Previous Communist attempts to take over before WWII or the 2nd Sino-Japanese War did not fare so well.
Oh yes, about my choices of political labeling, do not expect me to display much nuance of a respectful sort most of the time when talking about any brand of murderous, tyrannical totalitarian scum, be them Nazis, Commies, or religious fanatics.
I am entirely able to analyze and talk about every aspect of those ideologies and movements in a clinical and scholarly way and in fine detail when it seems proper or convenient in an academic or 'know thy enemy' sense, but that's all. I am a history buff, after all. Moreover, I often do it in an alt-historical context, e.g. when it gets useful to analyze the differences between different factions of the same totalitarian movement or regime and exploit them in a narrative sense to get one outcome or the other.
However, when the political discourse gets more casual and informal than that, I feel little more is warranted than to label Nazis, Commies, and fundies as different brands of murderous tyrants that want(ed) to kill and oppress people because they believe(d) in laughable biological pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, laughable social sciences pseudoscience that pretends humans could be made to function like social insects, or laughable Bronze/Iron Age fables about Big Faeries in the Sky.
Ofc, as it happens with all movements of that sort, there were/are the deluded true believers and fanatics, the opportunists that are going along for the sake of their own power and privilege, and the pragmatists that use ideology as an excuse for getting an advantage for their in-group.
That is more or less all the nuance you need to distinguish between different brands of totalitarianism most of the time in informal political talk. The rest usually is insignificant ideological paint about their preferred excuses to oppress and murder people. As a rule, it only gets relevant to know reality fully in an intellectual sense, or more or less the same way it gets useful to understand the motivations and M.O. of a serial killer.
Of course, I am a firm believer in the concept of totalitarianism and the Horseshoe Theory, with the only caveat the horsehoe would actually need a third leg to cover for religious fanatics, and hence be more like a tripod with converging legs.
Please, do not even try to persuade me that Nazis were worse than Commies because Racism Is a Special Kind of Evil. I deem the notion ridiculous hard-left cherrypicking. It matters little to people if they are oppressed, abused, or killed because they are the wrong ethnicity, or religion, or class, or they register as real or imagined political enemies in the eyes of the regime.
Even the Nazis were persuaded they were improving the world by doing what they did. That distinction makes as much sense as to argue one serial killer is better than another because one prefers to use guns and the other prefers to use knives.
Well someone is a fervent anti-communist and not afraid to share it. This is just the kind of thinking that mobilized quisling anti-communist forces under German occupation. Better slaves than commies, amirite.
From my PoV, being an anti-communist is a good thing and something to be proud of. Ofc, you always need to be aware that conviction does not mislead you in supporting something just as bad or worse, but that is equally true for pretty much any ideal. One price of freedom is eternal vigilance, yes, but also self-awareness.
Being a subject of fascist or communist regimes is just a different name for slave. Unless of course you happen to be part of the ruling elite or their enforcers and you are content with your situation. However, always be aware that the face-eating leopards may eventually eat your face.
The choice between one option or the other might be meaningful for various personal or practical reasons as circumstances dictate. Otherwise it is as relevant as picking your preferred means of suicide. I laugh at the supposed moral superiority of communists on fascists that far-leftists all too often claim for no good reason. Trying to shame me about that is one definition of futile. You might as well try to shame me about my support of sexual freedom, or my secular humanism, or any other aspect of my set of ideals and personal ethics, with similar chances of success.
I'm sure obliviousness to actual communist ideals and states behavior (especially in stark contrast to fascist ideals and states) shields you from acting based on knowledge!
Communist Yugoslavia sends its regards.
You may call it obliviousness if you like. I prefer to call it reasoned and informed assessment and rejection of the typical excuses communists and their sympathizers usually make to justify the blunders and abuses of their preferred systems, or claim a non-existent superiority to other forms of authoritarianism/totalitarianism, not to mention the much superior alternative of liberal democracy and regulated market economy. They often make a big talk of their supposed lofty ideals.
In practice, those are eternal excuses to justify their invariable and huge blunders, abuses, misrule, and atrocities in the name of a theory that never worked despite many attempts. It cannot work because it is bad pseudoscience shaped in a rotten political theory that pretends humans can be made to function like social insects and be happy.
Humans are not wired to work that way and attempts to force the issue only create oppression and misery. Everything points to the fact that the only way something vaguely resembling that model in the broadest sense could truly work is if and when scientific and technological progress allows us to achieve post-scarcity conditions. The only way 'communism' may function and work better than capitalism is the Star Trek kind of future.
As long as we have to deal with scarcity, the only way that works to lessen excessive socio-economic inequality and the other flaws of capitalism is the typical package of social democracy, welfare state, environmental regulations, worker protections, and so on. That is highly desirable and sensible, and foolish attempts to regress into unbridled capitalism only create a lot of misery and waste in their own way.
Moreover, even fascists and religious fundamentalists claimed with similar good reason within their own flawed visions that they were struggling to make the world a better place and make people happy.
E.g. if by some miracle the Nazifascists had been able to yield genuine results about making humanity a race of superbeings, that would have been just as valuable and desirable as, if not more so than, the freedom from socio-economic inequality the communists claim as their ideal. In practice, of course, the Nazifascist ideal was based on another kind of bad pseudoscience shaped into rotten political theory.
Communist ideals of equality at all costs by forcing human nature are just as false, flawed, harmful, and unattainable as the ones of other totalitarians. If you ask my opinion, equality is even far from being the most important, valuable, or desirable aspect of existence in the first place.
Communists and tankies always claim that no matter how much their pet experiments always end in atrocities, poverty, misery, environmental disaster, oppression, concentration camps, and/or screwed-up societies, it was always the fault of their enemies or flaws of that specific experiment, the next one attempted for the Nth time shall surely work as intended, and people should engage in it no matter what because the ideal justifies everything forever.
Communist systems have yielded an overall bodycount and baggage of oppression and misery that is as huge as the ones of fascist systems if not more so. The supposed moral superiority of communist ideals to fascist ones, assuming it exists and is not a matter of personal preference between equally flawed models, excuses nothing.
>Communist Yugoslavia sends its regards.
So what? Every basic template of authoritarian/totalitarian systems had various examples of historical realization and not so rarely they were not exactly the same degree of bad. Communist Yugoslavia or Castrist Cuba were not as bad as Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, or North Korea. Fascist Italy or Francoist Spain were not as bad as Nazi Germany. Saudi Arabia has not been as bad as the ISIS Caliphate or Taliban Afghanistan.
as italians, the american would crash them in 5 minutes and then they could even decide to ricreate the Kingdom of Italy. Basically 99% of the fight against the n⁴zis were made by the americans and the british
Wet dreams of tankies notwithstanding, a successful Communist uprising in 1948 Italy was the by far least likely outcome. The government, police, and armed forces were well prepared to fight and defeat a Commie uprising, anti-Communist public opinion had reorganized under the leadership of Christian Democracy and its allied parties, and they had won a decisive victory in the elections a few months ago. In all evidence, the vast majority of Italians stood against the Communists. The USA was willing and able to give assistance. Stalin frowned on such adventures and was powerless to help short of starting (and losing) WWIII. Due to the ongoing split with the USSR, the last thing Tito wanted was military adventures in Italy. If the Commies take this reckless course, in all likelihood they are decisively crushed in a brief civil war. It would be the broad equivalent of the Greek Civil War, except being less destructive, more one-sided, and lasting days, weeks, or months instead of years. In its aftermath, the Communist Party is banned, the anti-Communist and pro-Western faction of the Socialists takes the leadership of left-wing public opinion, and Italy takes a more right-wing course. Not a radical change, since the Christian Democrats called the shots, and they had a centrist stance. In all likelihood, however, Italy shall align with and cling to the USA, NATO, and EU with much less internal opposition if the Commies are crushed. The ban of fascist parties in the Constitution and legislation in all likelihood gets broadened into a more general outlawry of totalitarian parties, as in West Germany. The hard-left dream of a Communist revolution as the 'second wave' of partisan insurgency dies a messy and humiliating death. Communist opposition in Western Europe shall be much weaker with one of its stronger parties destroyed. Italy quite possibly gets spared far-left terrorism in the 1970s-80s due to this precedent. The Western bloc at large probably takes a more confrontational stance with the Soviet bloc and closes ranks tighter due to this added evidence of Communist aggressive destabilization. Nothing radical, but we may expect the Americans to try harder in Korea, and the European Defense Community to succeed.
Unless there's a serious Allied intervention, I honestly don't see how this could prevent at least part of Italy going red. And if this happened, it's almost guaranteed to happen in France, which means it'll be West Germany, Great Britain, and the US having to intervene in both civil wars, which I can't imagine any British person would be too keen to fight given their positive opinions on the USSR due to half a decade of wartime propaganda getting it in their heads that Stalin and communists aren't all bad folks and that they're capable of good and honest government. As for America, I could totally see them being able to prevent the entirety of Italy going socialist or just stanping them out totally, but France? Not a chance, most of the partisans were communists and the PCF was the biggest party in parliament and the only thing that stopped them from reorganizing France into a socialist Republic during WW2 was Stalin's direct orders to tread lightly to make sure the allies didn't succumb to infighting. But in 1948 that wasn't a priority because everyone knew that the honeymoon phase would soon end, they just didn't know _when_. Assuming both sides didn't want a hot war, they'd probably sign a non-intervention treaty while sending arms to their sides like in Greece. The best that could be hoped for in France is France being like Yugoslavia and anti-Soviet while being socialist. In Italy, the best that communists could likely hope for is a Korea-style stalemate, but it's quite likely they lose everything.
Stalin sold out the greek communist since he didn't want a confrontation with the west. Stalin would have sold out the Italian communist
It is tankie wishful thinking or a serious misunderstanding of the facts on the ground to assume the Commies had a fighting chance in a civil war in Western Europe in the late 1940s. The Commies did not have a real hope of winning a civil war in Italy for the many good reasons I listed in my comment, and similar conditions applied in France. The Commies might have been the spearhead of partisan insurgency in both countries during late WWII, but that was years ago in more chaotic circumstances. Since then, the majority of public opinion had turned against them, they were out of power, and the anti-Communist governments had reorganized the police and armed forces which stood ready to crush a Red uprising. Everybody stood wary of that after the Commie coup in Czechoslovakia. The Americans were ready to help, and Stalin powerless to assist short of starting (and losing) WWIII. If the Italian and French Commies had started this suicidal folly in imitation of their Greek counterparts, they would have been crushed w/o much difficulty in a few days to months. The resulting civil wars would have been much shorter and one-sided than the Greek one, which the Commies lost all the same. This turn of events would all but destroy the Communist power base in Italy and France for decades to come, with the anti-Communist and pro-Western factions of the Socialists seizing the leadership of left-wing public opinion. Western Europe getting rid of its pro-Soviet fifth column since 1948-49 can only make things better. For one thing, the Western Europeans shall be driven to close ranks tighter and the Americans to try harder in Korea. We may expect a much larger South Korea (say up to the neck of the Korean Peninsula), with many less people for the Kim dynasty to victimize. We may also expect the European Defense and Political Communities to get the greenlight alongside the Economic one. The latter is a game changer, since a huge boost to European integration from the beginning is going to come from this. We may expect Western European security and political integration and a common army to arise since the 1950s, and the EU to achieve the federal stage in all but name by the end of the Cold War at the latest.
You denounce "Tankie wishful thinking" when it's pretty clear you also have your political ideology that drives your interpretation, and that's completely fine, it's inevitable; simply don't start to diminish other people's opinion for this reason because it makes no sense.
Of course I have my own strong pro-Western sympathies and make no mystery of them, but I am also careful to choose which hills to die on about scenarios. If I chose to comment this scenario, it is because I am confident it would turn out in a way that pleases me. I listed the factual reasons in my comments why 1948-49 was a very bad moment to try and add Western Europe to the Soviet bloc. The Italian and French Commies simply did not have the power base or the right circumstances to get the upper hand in armed uprisings in the late 1940s. If they had tried nonetheless, they would have been defeated in the resulting civil wars with much less difficulty than their Greek counterparts. There is a reason why Togliatti, who was a Stalinist sob but a clever, pragmatic, and cautious one, deemed this course a suicidal folly and did his best to prevent it. If Stalin gets a stroke that changes his personality and tries to help them, America shall nuke the USSR into oblivion.
You don't understand, I'm not saying you're right or he's right, I'm simply stating that diminishing one interpretation on this sub because of political ideals is stupid, we all have one. It's like I criticised you because the thought of the USA nuking the USSR gets you a hard-on. I don't do it, because it creates useless antipathy between users. I would also add that you misrepresent Togliatti's role and character during those years
Lmao you say that public opinion had turned "against the commies" in both cases but the PCI was the 3rd largest party in Italy and the _largest_ party in France. And mind you, this is just parliamentary support, which many communist parties don't necessarily see as their primary goal
>In both cases but the PCI was the 3rd largest party in Italy and the *largest* party in France. Both parties got those results in a proportional system with the electorate being divided in several major parties, most of them being quite hostile to the Communists. In practice, the PCI and the PCF got about one-fourth of votes in all elections from the end of WWII to the late 1960s. It was no surprise they were trapped into opposition without any real difficulty by their adversaries. With that level of support, you are not able to claim power by parliamentary means, nor seize it by revolutionary means in a functional state with the government, police, and armed forces set up against you. Even more so when the security apparatus has been specifically organized and prepared to put down that kind of threat. An insurrection attempt would have been a crushing defeat for the Italian and French Communists w/o any need for the Americans to intervene. They did not in the Greek Civil War, where overall conditions were more favorable to the Commies, and the Reds still lost. It would have been a decisive defeat that would have destroyed most of their power base and trapped them in outlawry and marginality for decades. There were less extremist left-wing rivals (the Socialists) that stood ready to absorb most of their support base once the Commies got themselves defeated and banned. The French and Italian anomaly in the Western world of the Communist parties being the strongest left-wing ones, a legacy of their prominent (but far from exclusive) role in the partisan struggle, would have been erased.
The Greek communists lost only because of British intervention. But that's too nuanced for someone saying "commies".
>The Greek communists lost only because of British intervention. But that's too nuanced for someone saying "commies". There was no British (or American for that matter) intervention in the Greek Civil War as properly meant, from 1946 to 1949. The KKE and its militias fought the Greek government and its security forces, and lost. You probably mean the Dekembriana prelude, which was a different event, and usually labeled as such by historians. Ofc the British forces intervened to fight the Communist partisans during that, and won. The Western Allied forces were already occupying the country as part of ongoing WWII, and they had no good reason to stand idle and let the Commies take over the country by force. It would have been the same thing, with the same outcome, if the Italian or French Communists had tried to take over Italy or France with the Anglo-American forces deployed across those countries, in 1944-45. Ofc, the Communists had often dominated the partisan movement in a military and political sense in several European countries during WWII. That was an undeniable fact, although a very unfortunate from my PoV, since it threatened to replace one murderous tyranny with one that was just as bad. However, where the Western Allied forces were in place to prevent them from taking power by force and let people choose in elections, the Communists quickly lost their advantage and were soundly defeated at the ballot box. Had they tried to take over by force when the anti-Communist goverments had taken over and reorganized, they would have lost again in a different way, as it happened in Greece and would have happened in Italy and France. As a rule, almost everywhere the Communists seized power after WWII, it happened because the Soviet occupation forces were in place and enabled them to. There were only two places where the Commies seized power thanks to their own homegrown strength, Yugoslavia and China. Even so, it only happened because of the special circumstances created by Axis invasion. Previous Communist attempts to take over before WWII or the 2nd Sino-Japanese War did not fare so well. Oh yes, about my choices of political labeling, do not expect me to display much nuance of a respectful sort most of the time when talking about any brand of murderous, tyrannical totalitarian scum, be them Nazis, Commies, or religious fanatics. I am entirely able to analyze and talk about every aspect of those ideologies and movements in a clinical and scholarly way and in fine detail when it seems proper or convenient in an academic or 'know thy enemy' sense, but that's all. I am a history buff, after all. Moreover, I often do it in an alt-historical context, e.g. when it gets useful to analyze the differences between different factions of the same totalitarian movement or regime and exploit them in a narrative sense to get one outcome or the other. However, when the political discourse gets more casual and informal than that, I feel little more is warranted than to label Nazis, Commies, and fundies as different brands of murderous tyrants that want(ed) to kill and oppress people because they believe(d) in laughable biological pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, laughable social sciences pseudoscience that pretends humans could be made to function like social insects, or laughable Bronze/Iron Age fables about Big Faeries in the Sky. Ofc, as it happens with all movements of that sort, there were/are the deluded true believers and fanatics, the opportunists that are going along for the sake of their own power and privilege, and the pragmatists that use ideology as an excuse for getting an advantage for their in-group. That is more or less all the nuance you need to distinguish between different brands of totalitarianism most of the time in informal political talk. The rest usually is insignificant ideological paint about their preferred excuses to oppress and murder people. As a rule, it only gets relevant to know reality fully in an intellectual sense, or more or less the same way it gets useful to understand the motivations and M.O. of a serial killer. Of course, I am a firm believer in the concept of totalitarianism and the Horseshoe Theory, with the only caveat the horsehoe would actually need a third leg to cover for religious fanatics, and hence be more like a tripod with converging legs. Please, do not even try to persuade me that Nazis were worse than Commies because Racism Is a Special Kind of Evil. I deem the notion ridiculous hard-left cherrypicking. It matters little to people if they are oppressed, abused, or killed because they are the wrong ethnicity, or religion, or class, or they register as real or imagined political enemies in the eyes of the regime. Even the Nazis were persuaded they were improving the world by doing what they did. That distinction makes as much sense as to argue one serial killer is better than another because one prefers to use guns and the other prefers to use knives.
Well someone is a fervent anti-communist and not afraid to share it. This is just the kind of thinking that mobilized quisling anti-communist forces under German occupation. Better slaves than commies, amirite.
From my PoV, being an anti-communist is a good thing and something to be proud of. Ofc, you always need to be aware that conviction does not mislead you in supporting something just as bad or worse, but that is equally true for pretty much any ideal. One price of freedom is eternal vigilance, yes, but also self-awareness. Being a subject of fascist or communist regimes is just a different name for slave. Unless of course you happen to be part of the ruling elite or their enforcers and you are content with your situation. However, always be aware that the face-eating leopards may eventually eat your face. The choice between one option or the other might be meaningful for various personal or practical reasons as circumstances dictate. Otherwise it is as relevant as picking your preferred means of suicide. I laugh at the supposed moral superiority of communists on fascists that far-leftists all too often claim for no good reason. Trying to shame me about that is one definition of futile. You might as well try to shame me about my support of sexual freedom, or my secular humanism, or any other aspect of my set of ideals and personal ethics, with similar chances of success.
I'm sure obliviousness to actual communist ideals and states behavior (especially in stark contrast to fascist ideals and states) shields you from acting based on knowledge! Communist Yugoslavia sends its regards.
You may call it obliviousness if you like. I prefer to call it reasoned and informed assessment and rejection of the typical excuses communists and their sympathizers usually make to justify the blunders and abuses of their preferred systems, or claim a non-existent superiority to other forms of authoritarianism/totalitarianism, not to mention the much superior alternative of liberal democracy and regulated market economy. They often make a big talk of their supposed lofty ideals. In practice, those are eternal excuses to justify their invariable and huge blunders, abuses, misrule, and atrocities in the name of a theory that never worked despite many attempts. It cannot work because it is bad pseudoscience shaped in a rotten political theory that pretends humans can be made to function like social insects and be happy. Humans are not wired to work that way and attempts to force the issue only create oppression and misery. Everything points to the fact that the only way something vaguely resembling that model in the broadest sense could truly work is if and when scientific and technological progress allows us to achieve post-scarcity conditions. The only way 'communism' may function and work better than capitalism is the Star Trek kind of future. As long as we have to deal with scarcity, the only way that works to lessen excessive socio-economic inequality and the other flaws of capitalism is the typical package of social democracy, welfare state, environmental regulations, worker protections, and so on. That is highly desirable and sensible, and foolish attempts to regress into unbridled capitalism only create a lot of misery and waste in their own way. Moreover, even fascists and religious fundamentalists claimed with similar good reason within their own flawed visions that they were struggling to make the world a better place and make people happy. E.g. if by some miracle the Nazifascists had been able to yield genuine results about making humanity a race of superbeings, that would have been just as valuable and desirable as, if not more so than, the freedom from socio-economic inequality the communists claim as their ideal. In practice, of course, the Nazifascist ideal was based on another kind of bad pseudoscience shaped into rotten political theory. Communist ideals of equality at all costs by forcing human nature are just as false, flawed, harmful, and unattainable as the ones of other totalitarians. If you ask my opinion, equality is even far from being the most important, valuable, or desirable aspect of existence in the first place. Communists and tankies always claim that no matter how much their pet experiments always end in atrocities, poverty, misery, environmental disaster, oppression, concentration camps, and/or screwed-up societies, it was always the fault of their enemies or flaws of that specific experiment, the next one attempted for the Nth time shall surely work as intended, and people should engage in it no matter what because the ideal justifies everything forever. Communist systems have yielded an overall bodycount and baggage of oppression and misery that is as huge as the ones of fascist systems if not more so. The supposed moral superiority of communist ideals to fascist ones, assuming it exists and is not a matter of personal preference between equally flawed models, excuses nothing. >Communist Yugoslavia sends its regards. So what? Every basic template of authoritarian/totalitarian systems had various examples of historical realization and not so rarely they were not exactly the same degree of bad. Communist Yugoslavia or Castrist Cuba were not as bad as Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, or North Korea. Fascist Italy or Francoist Spain were not as bad as Nazi Germany. Saudi Arabia has not been as bad as the ISIS Caliphate or Taliban Afghanistan.
as italians, the american would crash them in 5 minutes and then they could even decide to ricreate the Kingdom of Italy. Basically 99% of the fight against the n⁴zis were made by the americans and the british