French town unveils monument equating Nazism and Communism, fueling protests
French Riviera town unveils monument equating Nazism and Communism, fueling protests
Listen, people from the former Soviet bloc, we get it, you were traumatized. But you can't just blanketly force your bad experience on the rest of us. In much of the world, the polarity of your experience was reversed. Communists were (and are) the people arguing for democracy for human rights and for liberty. And they were the people persecuted and jailed and tortured for this. Joke all you like, but it's just simply historical fact in places ranging from Spain and Greece to like Indonesia and Nepal. And in those places, the conflation of communism and Nazism as "totalitarianism" is just obscene.
In France in particular, I mean look at the tricolour: socialist ideas are part of what being French is. And this fascist mayor is doing something obscene, essentially lumping the collaborationists and the pétainistes together with the people who fought against them for a free french people.
Yes, your experiences are valid, but they are not the only ones that are valid.
Listen, people from the former Soviet bloc,
I'm confused who you're addressing your comment to. The article is about a French town. That's not the former soviet bloc.
That's entirely where the perspective comes from, even if it's second-hand, since most other people don't have direct experience living in a communist society.
Or Nazi society for that matter, but got the most part we have consensus on that one being universally awful.
The most rabid anticommunists online tend to be people from eastern Europe or immigrants (or their descendents) from there
You got kicked in a head by a horse? Your "argument" is equal to saying "Nazis werent all bad, they build highways." Shame on you.
No it's not the same. I'm not saying communists built stuff. I'm saying communists fought and got persecuted for democracy and human rights. This is actually historically true in places like the ones I mention in my post, places like Greece, Chile, Indonesia, etc. Show me one fucking place in the world where Nazis/fascists fought for democracy and human rights. I'll wait.
That's just a flat lie. Communists have never championed Democracy and human rights. PRC, North Korea, Vietnam, the Soviet Union, none promoting either democracy or human rights in practice. What possible state falls into your arguments here, I struggle to think of a single one.
I mean Cambodia under Pol Pot!? Human rights, what a joke.
Communists never championed democracy and rights?
What do you know of modern Greek history?
Here is what I wrote:
Communists were (and are) the people arguing for democracy for human rights and for liberty. And they were the people persecuted and jailed and tortured for this.
Do you want me to list names of Greek communists who did exactly that and suffered exactly thar? I even have a great-uncle who did several years hard time.
You say what state falls under this description? I dunno, Chile under Allende? Kerala under several decades of communist government? Uruguay under Mujica? Burkina under Sankara? Or do you want a recent European example, like Cyprus under Christofias? Or do you want examples of countless communist mayors from around the world? I could expand to Chiapas under the Zapatistas or Republican Spain or even Rojava under the SDF but let's keep revolutionary governments out of the picture.
Cuba seems to be pretty good with respect to human rights (especially considering their situation). Don't they have like the best (and most per capita maybe?) doctors in the world?
There was never one Communism, but many different ones.
Communism in Italy, for example, was only slightly related to the experience in the CCCP.
Who stopped Pol Pot?
For that matter, who colonized Cambodia and Vietnam?
Where are the memorials for the victims of French imperialism?
Despite strong opposition from left-wing representatives, Frédéric Masquelier, the mayor of Saint-Raphaël on the French Riviera, unveiled France's first monument to the "victims of communism" on Saturday, August 23. Masquelier, a member of the right-wing party Les Républicains, said, "Nazism and communism (...) are two sides of the same tragic coin." The monument depicts a man pushing back two massive blocks and was placed next to a memorial dedicated to the martyrs of the Resistance, many of whom were communists.
Other than the obvious "mayor is a fascist" part, why the fuck does a French town need a monument for "victims of communism"? Communist Russia and China were very brutal, but what exactly did they do that directly affected France? Surely the monument is not for the handful of French communists who lived in the USSR and were victims of various purges.
Knowing these types, there's more than a few Nazis on that monument.
So they should not stand up against Israel (for example)?
Empathy. That's why.
Big difference between standing up against oppression and erecting monuments. I guarantee that this town doesn't have a growing collection of monuments dedicated to victims of oppression around the world and doesn't plan to, either.
I disagree with the monument itself, but to also remember the victims of the socialist dictatorships (Holodomor, big leap forward, red Khmer, and many others) is not a bad thing. And why there? Because the places where it happened might not want to remember them, e.g. look at Russia and how it handles it Soviet Union past.
While it's on the fascist side instead of the socialist, Berlin for example has a monument to the forced prostitution during Japanese colonialism. And Germany was not involved there either, but it's still worthwhile to remember it, since Japan tries to hide it.
Berlin is like 50 times larger than that French town, though - it's not completely absurd for Berlin to have an entire collection of such monuments, and on top of that Germany was allied with Japan during WW2 and thus had at least some involvement in it.
That downvote wasn't me, BTW.
if communism = facism then facism = communism. Does that sound even remotely sane? Dumb monument. Though frankly i cant even understand how anyone would get something like that from a wireframe guy telling about huge fish it almost caught.
For most morons in the world, the fact that the English translation of the Nazi’s name has “socialist” in it was proof enough for them.
God forbid we want to prevent the Elon musks and the Peter Thiels and even the John D Rockefellers of the world from just wrenching control from the rest of us entirely using their massively outsized wealth. You can still get a good wage and live in your bigger house running your hvac installer company or whatever, it doesn’t mean being paid in bread rations and it doesn’t mean putting people in camps, assholes.’it means The Koch brothers have no incentive to fight off solar energy so they can keep seeking you poison sludge that gives you cancer
Wdym "in english" even in german their name was national-sozialisten lol
On a historical aspect, it does sound a bit sane. Both were used to justify similar regimes that strangled the people.
Communism can be seen as fascism by lucky liberals who dont understand we share this earth and have responsibilities to our neighbor. Communism 'removes' autonomy by making it a group effort and reducing the power of money which lets people have a degree of separation from the work and people.
Not that I agree, but people see communism as the real world attempts and not the philosophy. This is very apparent when you realize those anti communism in America tend to be Christian.
Jesus being a dude who provided free health care, food, and assistance to his neighbor. Just communist philosophy to the max. However they prefer the philosophy that he died so that we can keep sinning and would rather kill their brother than share the bread.
Authoritarian gouvernements that claim to be for a certain group of people but then only enrich themselves while terrorizing the enemies of the state as well as those that they claim to represent.
The difference lies in the economic systems, the political ones are eerily similar for two ideologies supposed to be on opposite ends of the spectrum.
I'll always prefer ideologies that aim to do well but end up misused for power over ideologies that directly aim to do evil.
Nazism aims to end the "oppression" of the straight Aryan man by destroying Jews, queers and so on.
Communism aims to end the oppression of the worker by ending private property and seizing the means of production.
Even if many or all communist systems end up in violent autocratic tyranny, I'll never equate the two ideologies or their followers.
Exactly. Striving for egalitarianism is objectively more ethical than whatever fascism is.
russian propoganda is widespread in France it seems
What do you mean? Russian propaganda clearly positions Soviet Communism as a superior ideology to Nazism.
"...two sides of the same tragic coin."
Well that's just a bad metaphor. Now I dislike this mayor for two reasons.
This thread feels like i just sat down for some coffee and a cigarette at a corner cafe on a cool April morning in Paris, 1871...
Never would have thought there are so many supporters of oppressive regimes here on lemmy.
Really?
Whole .ml botniks?
Oh, silly French. Everybody knows communism was better... at killing and oppressing people.
Communisme has not cause death in France like it did in the Soviet Union. Communist movement after World War II has largely contributed to improve the working conditions with reforms that are still fundamental workers rights in France today: minimum 2 weeks of paid holidays per year, 40 and then 35 hours per week standard work time, minimum wage, workers unions, and more. Nazis and the Vichy regim, on the other hand, are directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of death, deportation to the elimination camps, some of these camps on the French territory. Equating both is factually wrong and a revision of history as a political stunt.
They're obviously not equal in their ideology and what kinds of shit they promote... but they are both harmful to civilization.
As a detail, Les Républicains is France's "liberal conservatist"[0] center-right party. Not a Russian psyop party like Le Pen's Rassemblement national.
Calling les Républicains centre-right is simply incorrect, when their president publicly said "the rule of law is not sacred" and jokingly that he is "waiting to get absolute power". Half of them have already rallied to RN directly and the remaining are just pushing for the same brutal policies and systemic racism. They are extrem-right if not fascists.
RPR and UDF could be called somewhat center-right party. Since UMP, and Sarkozy and his outlaw crew, republicans have been closer and closer to far-right (and, on the bright side, jail)
The two most murderous political movements of the twentieth century? Yeah they can both burn in hell.
Capitalism: hold my beer, I’ll wipe em all out!
That's for the 21 century!
Nazism and communism are completely different concepts.
... different totalitarian concepts.
Wrong. While a large number of communist labelled regimes were in fact totalitarian regimes (whether they actually were communist is another debate), totalitarianism is not inherent to communism (and it can be argued that a democratic foundation is necessary for communism or that communism is the democratisation of labour). However, fascism is characterised by (among others) an extreme form of authoritarianism (i.e. totalitarianism) that is structured after the Führerprinzip.
You're doing the same both sides shit as the fascist mayor.
Total control by the working class is not the same as total control by the bourgeois we live under or the total control by fascist weirdos the bourgeois settle for when their system is in crisis.
Is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea a democracy then by your logic?
There are plenty of systems under the umbrella term of "communism," not all of which are totalitarian. If you're specifically talking about Marxist-Leninism (the Soviet and Chinese implementation) then yeah fair that sucks, but when you just say "communists" you're also including folks like council communists.
Here's another dumbass. Capitalism IS an extension of totalitarianism.
In theory only, you are right.
But Fascism and Communism share a lot in practice though. Both use absolute rule and an authoritarian state as a mean to control populace. No democracy, rule of law, human rights.
Communism is not, by definition, authoritarian rule. Sure, a lot of examples exist where that's the case, but that's only because anything less couldn't withstand the CIA starting a coup. It isn't required, but you need something strong to resist anti-leftist governments doing everything they can to overthrow you.
Communism, by definition, cannot have a state.