• pingveno@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    socialist states are “authoritarian” against capitalist interests

    The problem with this claim is that the USSR was quite authoritarian towards everyone. The Gulags were a place merely of political repression. Political jokes that are part and parcel of American late night comedy shows would get people harsh labor sentences during certain periods. The claim that this had to happen to protect the working class seems thin.

    • Ashtear@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      One regime’s political-dissident-by-speech is another’s dissident-by-drug-addiction. America’s “War on Drugs” was purely political disenfranchisement along racial lines, and it’s a major reason why the US continues to have higher incarceration rates than the USSR had in many of the years the Gulag system was operational.

      By the way, prison rape jokes have long been a part of those late night comedy shows, to give you an idea of just how ingrained the American prison culture is.

    • squid_slime@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      read the resent news of Julian Assange or John Pilger there’d be a lot more if i could think to name them