Communism on Tumblr - aka, why I want to be edgy and anti-capitalist

[Melkor]

For those of you who frequent Tumblr--and I know some of you do--you may have come across a blog or two that says in their description, 'communist', or some variant of it.

This shit has become rampant on Tumblr, and people feel the need to shove anti-capitalist rhetoric into their daily, terrible text posts.

Don't get me wrong, capitalism has it's faults. It sucks. But these people take it to a whole new level. A good example of this is tumblr user post-teenager, who has a thread of his own already, so he's only going to be mentioned.

So, laughing at wannabe commies goes here. Go nuts.

EDIT: Tumblr's recent April Fool's Day prank has brought up some political discourse, and some people are chimping out/shitposting in the communism tag.

Spoiler: Long

 

[norrington]

Not a bad idea, do you have any examples on hand to put in your OP + get the thread rolling?

 

[Melkor]

Not a bad idea, do you have any examples on hand to put in your OP + get the thread rolling?

Added a few screencaps. The recent April Fool's joke made some commies shit themselves.

 

[norrington]

Added a few screencaps. The recent April Fool's joke made some commies shit themselves.

That last one isn't even Mop, it's the one that wasn't Mop or Deborah or Wretched Tooth

 

[Piedmont]

Spoiler: Communist Magic

Spoiler: Christian, Communist, Single

Spoiler: Minecraft Communists

Why is that Tumblr communists are the same people who would probably be executed first in an actual communist country?

 

[DZ 305]

These fuckers have clearly never been blessed with the sight of Liberty Prime then

In true communist nations, we wouldn't have time to worry about your special snow-flake genders, your strong womanhood, and hokey attempts at sorcery.

 

[Cosmos]

I've said this in one or two communism cow threads, but basically the reason why these idiots are so gung-ho about communism is because in their minds, the government replaces Mom and Dad. Just like a parent who begrudgingly yet lovingly pays for their fuckup of a child, the government should pay to support citizens who aren't even attempting to get their lives together.

They don't seem to be aware of the fact that, traditionally, communist governments haven't looked kindly upon people who aren't contributing to society. The entire point is that communism is meant to be a system run by the people for the people, but it falls apart if the people aren't willing to put any work in. I remember reading something about how, during Chairman Mao's reign, people were shipped off to work camps (usually farms) if they weren't being "cooperative."

Also, communism is one of those ideas that looks great on paper but has literally never worked. Basically everyone has acknowledged that socialism is a much better and more realistic alternative but idiots keep insisting on how "it's just never been done right, this time will be different!!!!" But the thing is that communism is doomed to fail because it just puts way too much power in the government because it's just way too optimistically unrealistic about human nature. If you put an entire nation's resources, assets, and other valuables into the hands of a very small group of people, you're gonna have a bad time.

And I made this for Post-Teenager but it applies to everyone on Tumblr who's a communist but has a donate button:

https://kiwifarms.net/attachments/flag-jpg.40886/

 

[DZ 305]

I've said this in one or two communism cow threads, but basically the reason why these idiots are so gung-ho about communism is because in their minds, the government replaces Mom and Dad. Just like a parent who begrudgingly yet lovingly pays for their fuckup of a child, the government should pay to support citizens who aren't even attempting to get their lives together.

They don't seem to be aware of the fact that, traditionally, communist governments haven't looked kindly upon people who aren't contributing to society. The entire point is that communism is meant to be a system run by the people for the people, but it falls apart if the people aren't willing to put any work in. I remember reading something about how, during Chairman Mao's reign, people were shipped off to work camps (usually farms) if they weren't being "cooperative."

Also, communism is one of those ideas that looks great on paper but has literally never worked. Basically everyone has acknowledged that socialism is a much better and more realistic alternative but idiots keep insisting on how "it's just never been done right, this time will be different!!!!" But the thing is that communism is doomed to fail because it just puts way too much power in the government because it's just way too optimistically unrealistic about human nature. If you put an entire nation's resources, assets, and other valuables into the hands of a very small group of people, you're gonna have a bad time.

And I made this for Post-Teenager but it applies to everyone on Tumblr who's a communist but has a donate button:

https://kiwifarms.net/attachments/flag-jpg.40886/

Has too many whites, and CIS men. Somebody photoshop some stunning and brave womyn of color for diversity's sake!

 

[wheat pasta]

Has too many whites, and CIS men. Somebody photoshop some stunning and brave womyn of color for diversity's sake!

I'm not very good with MS paint, but I know what tumblr likes so I think my representation of diversity in communism is pretty good!

Spoiler: womyn of color uwu

 

[norrington]

I've said this in one or two communism cow threads, but basically the reason why these idiots are so gung-ho about communism is because in their minds, the government replaces Mom and Dad. Just like a parent who begrudgingly yet lovingly pays for their fuckup of a child, the government should pay to support citizens who aren't even attempting to get their lives together.

They don't seem to be aware of the fact that, traditionally, communist governments haven't looked kindly upon people who aren't contributing to society. The entire point is that communism is meant to be a system run by the people for the people, but it falls apart if the people aren't willing to put any work in. I remember reading something about how, during Chairman Mao's reign, people were shipped off to work camps (usually farms) if they weren't being "cooperative."

I'd say it's more a straight up form of edgy teenage rebellion. Mom and Dad were raised on Cold War fear mongering and nuclear bomb drills where you hide under the desk and get told not to look at the mushroom cloud through the window, think communism is the devil, so the kids go hard in the other direction. I'd base this on the prominent phenomenon of tumblr leftists who call themselves 'third worldists' and defend dictatorial regimes like the DPRK because somehow Kim Jong Un's propaganda is more trustworthy than the West's simply through virtue of the fact that it isn't Western.

I don't know that I'd assume they're all just looking for handouts, a lot of them are socially oriented and pissed at capitalism, and assuming that 'our current system is capitalist+our current system is bad and oppressive=capitalists are bad and oppressive; capitalists hate communists=capitalists must be lying about the bad shit communists did or about why it doesn't work.' They read the Manifesto because it's quick and relatively easy to grit your teeth and bear through, maybe some of Lenin's shit if they want to be really edgy, and spout off the same empty rhetoric that's in them.

There are actually sizable tumblr flame wars between anarchists and Soviet-apologist communists, the former being commonly labeled "Trots" (in reference to Trotskyites, which was the go-to label for leftist resistance in the USSR (or in Spain during the Civil War) regardless of their origins, after Stalin made Trotsky a non-person and exiled him), the latter being referred to as "tankies" (in reference to the Soviet tanks sent in to crush leftist resistance in Eastern Europe (e.g. Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Prague Spring)).

I can probably dig up some major blog names and/or discourse after a while if people are interested.

 

[DZ 305]

I'd say it's more a straight up form of edgy teenage rebellion. Mom and Dad were raised on Cold War fear mongering and nuclear bomb drills where you hide under the desk and get told not to look at the mushroom cloud through the window, think communism is the devil, so the kids go hard in the other direction. I'd base this on the prominent phenomenon of tumblr leftists who call themselves 'third worldists' and defend dictatorial regimes like the DPRK because somehow Kim Jong Un's propaganda is more trustworthy than the West's simply through virtue of the fact that it isn't Western.

I don't know that I'd assume they're all just looking for handouts, a lot of them are socially oriented and pissed at capitalism, and assuming that 'our current system is capitalist+our current system is bad and oppressive=capitalists are bad and oppressive; capitalists hate communists=capitalists must be lying about the bad shit communists did or about why it doesn't work.' They read the Manifesto because it's quick and relatively easy to grit your teeth and bear through, maybe some of Lenin's shit if they want to be really edgy, and spout off the same empty rhetoric that's in them.

There are actually sizable tumblr flame wars between anarchists and Soviet-apologist communists, the former being commonly labeled "Trots" (in reference to Trotskyites, which was the go-to label for leftist resistance in the USSR (or in Spain during the Civil War) regardless of their origins, after Stalin made Trotsky a non-person and exiled him), the latter being referred to as "tankies" (in reference to the Soviet tanks sent in to crush leftist resistance in Eastern Europe (e.g. Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Prague Spring)).

I can probably dig up some major blog names and/or discourse after a while if people are interested.

Do it, this thread will be the New House Un-American Activities Committeehttps://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...nYJuzGXVSDAL2eFTA&sig2=4nXtY2w0MF9-AZ76pxrwCQ

 

[SP 199]

People pretending to be communists for edge points to what have you isn't all that new, what sets this out from the rest of the psuedo-communist bullshit on the rest of the net?

 

[TowinKarz]

@norrington

I think it's more a desire to not have to leave mom and dad's cushy home and work for their stuff that drives the modern edgy commie teen. If you were born after about 1980, then the Soviet Union was defunct by the time you got old enough to mortify your parents by picking an opposing ideology and wearing it on a T-shirt and for parents of the 90's the big bad was moral decay, violent media and for the right-wingers, their OWN government that clearly was in bed with Jews/Space Lizards/Whatever, communism was seen as a joke and the few politicians who didn't recognize that by 1998 became laughingstocks as well.

As @ Bones points out, what these kids are bitching about is the same pseudo-social crap that kids have gravitated to for years when they realize that they'll soon have to start paying their own bills.

Todays kid socialist is an edgy tumblerette, but underneath the trappings, he's just the kid of the 60's who did the same thing and shouted the same screeds, except that one did it on a street corner in a tie-dye shirt and not on the internet while wearing designer clothes.

 

[Bluewafflez]

Don't they know that communism and "ancom" are the ideologies for whiny left-wing upper middle class kids who do not have an education outside of liberal arts (excluding critical rationalist philosophy)? There are dozens of alternatives and it seems the dumbest people either become neocon or communist.

 

[wet_butt]

The best part is watching the anime communists get into it with bloggers who have actually lived under communist rule.

 

[Lackadaisy]

The best part is watching the anime communists get into it with bloggers who have actually lived under communist rule.

I love it when that happens. :powerlevel: We had a guest speaker come to our campus who had lived under Soviet rule in Hungary explicitly call out our college's 'Young Communists' club as 'children of intellectual isolation.' :powerlevel:

 

[Cosmos]

The best part is watching the anime communists get into it with bloggers who have actually lived under communist rule.

It genuinely angers me to see these morons disregard and gloss over the pain and suffering experienced by those who lived in communist hellholes. Say what you will about capitalism, but at least at the height of the Cold War people weren't running through minefields to escape the United States. I don't recall the United States ever being unable to feed its citizens, either (remember, food banks and soup kitchens are things that exist). Say what you will about capitalism, it allowed the United States to become an advanced industrial superpower.

I read memoirs all the time, and I've read several by people who lived through communist regimes. They're heartbreaking. The one that's left the longest lasting impression on me is Red Scarf Girl, a memoir written by Ji-li Jiang about her experiences during the Cultural Revolution of China. Originally a devout believer in communism, Ji-li's world falls apart after Mao Ze-dong launches the Cultural Revolution. Because her grandfather was once a landlord, Ji-li and her family were subjected to intense scrutiny and suspicion, with all of their friends and neighbors turning on them. She describes how she witnessed neighbors being beaten to death, endless public humiliations and beatings of people even suspected of being "bourgeois", ransacking by the Red Guard, and the systematic degradation of her family.

I really recommend reading Red Scarf Girl, because it gives a vivid portrayal of what daily life in a communist country is like. Nobody trusts anyone because one minor slip up can result in Big Brother knocking on your door. There's a constant atmosphere of intense paranoia, distrust, and fear because everyone is expected to blindly parrot the communist dogma and never criticize anything the government does.

And people actually want this.

 

[nobody2590]

The sad fact is these kids will never read those things either because they don't find it interesting or the teachers in schools are former revolutionaries themselves (people like Ward Churchill and Bill Ayers come to mind). This just creates an echo chamber of "America bad, destroy capitalism, Soviet Union wasn't so terrible etc etc." What really scares me is that these are the future leaders of America, and they have been taught from college and now even in grade school that the true evil in the world is the international Jewish bourgeois conspiracy led by the United States.

Perhaps the ultimate irony of these wannabe revolutionaries is things like the internet and tumblr would not have grown in a communist society. Only by the open business environment created by the free market. Of course, none of that means anything as long as they have a platform to rail against those dirty corporations and greedy bankers.

I weep for the future.

 

[wagglyplacebo]

How about we post funny things instead of giant screeds that belong in off topic.

 

[TowinKarz]

The best part is watching the anime communists get into it with bloggers who have actually lived under communist rule.

With the bloggers saying "Well, you didn't live under a REAL communist state like I'm proposing...."