This is the fucking issue with people joking about how communism getting shit is rich.

To Americans, communism is the boogeyman. It's laughable how badly that word gets butchered in US politics.

The older I get the more I realize that, with capitalists holding so much power all over the world, it's extremely difficult for a socialist/communist state to exist without it being pushed to become an authoritarian state.

I can see how the absolute onslaught of pressure from those capitalist powers on all sides - propaganda, sanctions, trade wars, blockades, posturing, funding opposition parties, funding rebel groups, sabotage, proxy wars, etc. - could turn any well-intentioned leaders to paranoia and state violence.

That's not to say existing and/or historic communist/socialist states have/had pure, innocent leaders, or that I blindly give any of them a pass. It's just an extremely difficult environment in which to demonstrate the potential of such governments.

The Michael Parenti version of what you are saying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uThpIDlfcBQ

A good discussion on the subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhHf4eHFfc8

the world gets crazier once you realize that they write down that absolute onslaught of pressure -- saying that they're doing it for exactly that reason -- and then make it available in things like the freedom of information act, but people ignore it and believe the bullshit anyways.

it makes me identify with the climate scientists to believe that making the data freely available to everyone will automatically convince people that climate change is real, but it doesn't. lol

It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you

I've never known that there were terms already in use - like "capitalist encirclement" and "siege socialism" - for these concepts I'd had. It is interesting to explore the need for what works in the environment we're stuck in vs. what should theoretically be possible were our efforts not constantly being sabotaged and undermined in every possible way by forces vastly larger than our own.

I also hadn't thought as much about the starting point for all of these movements in the global South - severely handicapped by their history of being exploited and suppressed by colonialism. Add to that the fact that those powers looking to sabotage socialist efforts are directly empowered by the cheap labor and precious resources they are extracting via that same colonialism.

Thanks for the link.

Al so soft and clean

No problem, reading Parenti really helped me understand the need for socialist societies to become militant in order to defend themselves. Once you realize these societies are developing under an existential threat, it all of a sudden becomes clear that they have to organize in a way that can resist it effectively.