You start by saying you want to be ‘respectful’. You end up calling me ‘absolutely delusional’. It seems you can’t even be consistent in your own behavior. Do you think Einstein was delusional as well? (Source: Born-Einstein Letters)
Again, I recommend you read the book ‘Killing Hope’ by William Blum to properly contextualize the response of socialist states, including the ones you brought up that to be frank read like ChatGPT prompts, if you truly come here to talk in good faith.
Authority exists. It exists everywhere. That’s what states are. What doesn’t exist is this idea of a state that has more authority over its country than other states. Every state has a monopoly of power by definition. That’s what allows a state to define its own laws and values.
There is suppression of dissent because this is the sole purpose of a state. What distinguishes so called ‘authoritarian’ countries is the extent of brute force required to suppress it. In capitalist nations, this presents itself as fascism. In socialist nations this presents itself as Leninism.
I might add you have to at least acknowledge there must be some reason the only socialist states to have ever existed for longer than a year have been exclusively authoritarian. They didn’t outnumber anarchists, socdems or demsocs by any stretch. Leninism has been as succesful as it is because socialist states live in a capitalist world. A world that wants to eradicate communism root and stem with whatever magnitude of violence and cruelty necessary. Lenin and Stalin expressed this and reality has proven their thesis correct.
Now, you bring up examples, which you seem to be unaware are sourced primarily from CIA investigations. First, I would like to note that you call these actions disproportionate while admitting to being ignorant to the interference these countries faced. Second, I would note you trivialize the mass poverty in western states, disassociate it with its fascist sattelite states and ignore mass policing by the NSA on a GLOBAL scale. You also ignore the immensive devastation these states wrought upon their colonies, including recurring mass famines, only ever seeming to consider these deaths mass murder the moment managment falls into the hands of a collectivist meaning to eradicate it.
Of every single country you’ve mentioned, I would like to remind you the US and its allies have invaded extensively, used terrorism, had numerous assassination attempts and in China particularly used WMD.
Now I would like you to compare this response to the response of the west to the isolated 9/11 attack by Al Qaeda(an organization funded by the US to overthrow the socialist Afghan government), rendering entire cities level to the ground, murdering millions of men, women and children and letting whoever knows how many more to die of famine or drown at the European border.
Is it ‘ethical’ or ‘utopian’? Absolutely not (and you evidently don’t understand what communism is if you think it can be utopian while having a state at the same time).
But these measures undountedly are the grim reality of the way every state operates. It doesn’t matter if it’s socialist, capitalist, feudal or anything else. So the question isn’t if you support purges or no purges. They are the current reality of every state. The question is whether you support a movement for the transition away from the state towards communism or the continuation of the state.
Socialist states aren’t perfect, far from it. But mismanagement is not the same as malice that is pervasive in capitalist society.
