23 replies to this topic

[Simba49]

Since the Soviet Union's spread of Communism beginning in the 1930's when China became Communist along with many neighbouring European countries followed by Vietnam and Cuba the U.S government have bred fear of Communism into U.S citizens. Today American's are recognized for hating the Communist regime & still object to Communist sympathizers, why? It is quite clear the U.S will never become Communism since the Cold War so why do they still breed hatred among the community?

How does communism effect the U.S.A today?
Why must they be bred to hate Communism?
Does hating Communism achieve anything?

Discuss!

[miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG]

Good topic.. no responses yet???

[saint-michael]

You have to remember Communisim is built on the fact that the government controls everything, including the vegetables your grow in your garden that you sell in a local shop. However, there is more to it then that especially on the political side, because most communist governments have adopted single party rule. Meaning that no other political party can be formed or run for office; China and Vietnam are the only countries that I am away of that use that wonderful rule. Of course their area few communist groups such as the one in the Philippines that conduct terrorists attacks as well and so another factor is added to the fact as to why people hated Communism.

But the biggest facotr as to why people hate Communism is the lack of human rights and freedom's a person has under communist rule; look at what google did when they brought their search engine to China, they set it up so China could block access to anything related to Tiananmen and anything that would bad mouth the Chinese government. Also look at North Korea everyone knows how screw ed up their economy is but no one will saying because they will either be put in jail or disappear, while government officials get rich off the suffering and so that shows the corruption factor to Communism.

So their is much to hate or dislike about it of course those who can make it go away are to scared to say anything because of what could happen to them.

[foolakadugie]

I think that the attitude toward communism has changed a little for the better since the cold war, but it's still feared and looked down upon by Americans.
Not everyone here in the US is against it, but there are still lasting impressions from the cold war. The US had so much propaganda demonizing communist
ideas and I think that resulted in a distorted view of what communism is. Many people fear things that they are not familiar with, or things that contradict
things that they see as the right way, even if it is no threat at all; Furthermore, the US government/economy/culture is supposed to be based on ideas of
freedom, individuality, capitalism, etc. The idea of "the American Dream" is based on being able to make a successful future for yourself in a your own way
and distinguishing ones self from the rest. People come from all over the place to live in "the Land of the Free". I suppose anything that contradicts that
"freedom" could be seen as anti-american.

I think that communism is a beautiful ideal, but I it has it's flaws, just like any other social structure. Ideally I would think that communism strives to make everyone
equal and that is great, but it seems in reality, many time it ends up with a few very wealthy people and a very large amount of lower class people. I think that one of
the problems is that there is less personal responsibility involved. Correct me if I am wrong, because I will admit that I am not extremely knowledgeable in this subject.
It seems though that there is not much incentive to work harder because it doesn't benefit the individual directly. If many people took that attitude it could bring down
the success of the community.

Capitalism makes people work harder, because if they do, their is a better chance that they will succeed or be rewarded. The downside is that people are not quite as equal and
you have some very poor people, some very rich people, and many middle class.

[Lydubs]

I live in America, and while we were studying the Cold War this year, I was wondering why America was interfering so much with other governments... And honestly I thought it wouldn't have been a problem to leave the other countries alone. We kind of had a few unnecessary wars (by the way, we're only 400 years old and we've probably gotten into more wars than a lot of older countries combined!!!) because we wanted everywhere to be like America. There would be no culture then!

These are the views of a 14 year old that probably doesn't fully understand whatever we're talking about!! Please don't yell at her if she doesn't completely understand!!

[toby]

Interlising means that whatever the good role models in a child's life believe in, the child will believe in. Nurture, not nature, to hate/like/etc.

Lydubs is right, though with current standing who won't take a jab at Bush.

[Quatrux]

In fact, Communism, the real Communism, should have been an Utopia government, where everyone are equal and live a wonderful life, it means everyone has food, has a job, a house, a wife, kids and there is no murder, no bad things, everything is kept secret, but as it's Utopia and people can't really all be equal even if they will feel so, and it never worked, people knew that bad things are happening, people can't be fooled to much.. China or Vietnam aren't really as Communistic as you can call them, especially China, they have Communism, but they have a really strong market economy and sometimes it really is funny to me how China wants to hid everything from their people by banning most of Internet, even google can't show a lot of results Some day and that day will come it will disappear somehow or another way..

Democracy isn't perfect too, just look how much evil is happening, evil and bad and stupid, it's due to people and the way they are, money in democracy world means a lot and for money people do stupid things, most of them are egoistic, so how a really good order exist!

[mitchellmckain]

Since the Soviet Union's spread of Communism beginning in the 1930's when China became Communist along with many neighbouring European countries followed by Vietnam and Cuba the U.S government have bred fear of Communism into U.S citizens. Today American's are recognized for hating the Communist regime & still object to Communist sympathizers, why? It is quite clear the U.S will never become Communism since the Cold War so why do they still breed hatred among the community?

How does communism effect the U.S.A today?
Why must they be bred to hate Communism?
Does hating Communism achieve anything?

Discuss!

This is unbearably dumb. The only thing that breeds hatred of Communism is Communism itself. I certainly was not bred to fear Communism. I was raised walking in peace marches and visiting Black Panther headquarters because my father was a communist - a Maoist to be precise. Then I read Marx's Communist Manifesto and Lenin's What is to be done and what I found was the pure evil of a rigid and irrational ideology built from hatred and deception. This was the creation of ignorance and hatred very much like that of Nazism to tear down and destroy leaving devastation, misery and poverty in its wake, turning whole countries into killing grounds and prison camps. Where Nazism was built from one kind of irrational hatred found in racism, Communism was build from another kind - the hatred of relgion and capitalism. Theirs was the imbecility of the gunman that thinks that problems can be solved with a gun when the truth is that this will only bring self-destruction. This is what the great Communist experiment has proven to the world -- that the tremendous destruction of human life that it perpetrated was no sacrifice for a better world but just murder plain and simple.

[LegallyHigh]

I don't think that people in the United States are as harsh on the idea of communism as they have been in the past, however, it is still, for the most part unaccepted, or looked down on. My United States History teacher told me, Quatrux said, was supposed to be the perfect form of governent, or atleast it looked like it should be whle written on paper. However, when communism is performed is is usually unsuccessful. The same teacher gave me a good example of one reason it could fail. This example was that people doing much harder jobs would be getting payed the same as people doing little tedious tasks, and that would be quite unfair. However, I think other reasons, besides communist countries being the enemies of America in times of war, is the general media view on communism, where you can hear "Damn commies" in many television shows such as cartoons.

[vujsa]

I think that it is important to note that there has never been a truly communist society! A communist society is one where all citizens are truly equal and share equally in the labors, prosperity, and decisions of that society.

The countries mentioned above are all socialist societies! This is where the government rules everything and has absolutely nothing to do with communism! Communism is a Utopian concept but socialism is usually just an extension of a dictatorship as seen in North Korea or Cuba! These people do not share in the prosperity or decisions of their labors! The government tells them what to think and do and if the resist, they are either publicly executed to keep others from disobeying or secretly executed (disappeared) to avoid explaining why their opinion was unacceptable.

The reason that Americans are so resistant to the idea of "Communism" is because the whole reason this country was formed was to allow the people of this land to escape the type of society that allows others to oppress people the ways that communist countries do. Furthermore, all of our laws and structure of government were specifically designed to prevent a dictatorship or government controlled society as seen in North Korea.

Do you honestly believe that the people of North Korea are better off with the sick SOB that is running that country? Should it be allowable for the ruler or family member of a ruler of any country to walk into a school and select girls to serve him sexually against their will? Is it okay for a ruler to kill an entire village of people just because he wants to?

These are the kinds of things that happen in countries. The people rarely know any better so they are easy to brainwash but just because they don't know that they are the only ones starving and being treated so brutally doesn't mean that it is right for them to live that way.

The communism idea is a nice one but would never work as all men desire power and in a communist society everyone is supposed to share the power equally.

vujsa

[Quatrux]

I totally agree with, it's something what I tried to tell, but just in a different way.

[the little philosopher]

People also need to remember that capitalism is a political ideal, just like communism, and just like comuunism it has it's flaws. In the case of capitalism, the ideal is that people can achieve satisfaction but the flaw is that not everyone is able to gain this satisfactionas as there are people living below the breadline. Another flaw of capitialism is that (in a true capitalist society) people can charge however much they want for a product, no matter how un-ethical it might be, for example, if there is a particularly unpleasant disease going round and only one person has a cure, then by the capitalist idea that person is legally allowed to charge absolutely any price they name for the cure.
Communism as an idea is perfect and capitalism as an idea is perfect, it is in the application where these systems fall down. A utopian society is going to be a very difficult thing to achieve as humans are greedy creatures always wanting more than they have.

But as to why american's hate communism? They don't understand it. Communist society cannot be understood by those who have not experienced it. Communists are raised in a society where the state provides for each indivdual equally (be it food, healthcare etc.) and as such it is the duty of the individual to help advance the state to the best of their abilities. Capitalist will then ask the question; if everyone is treated as equal and everyone recieves the same payment no matter what work is done, then what is the incentive to take on jobs that require a higher degree of learning or skill e.g. a doctor? Well, in communist society there is a more spiritual reward than simple material possesions, the people who do become doctors in a communist society recieve a sort of hero-worship which gives them a sense of satisfaction on a higher level than that of someone in a capitalist would get for the same thing. In the end it is the fault of pop culture for latching onto the stereotype of the evil communist and repeating it over the years with cartoons, tv shows and films e.g. the latest indiana jones film with bad guys as evil communists.

Americans are raised to believe to beleive that their society alone has absolute freedom, and that americans have been given a national identity that they are the allies of justice, given duty to save the world from any idea or society that is percieved as "anti-freedom", and as any ally of justice needs an enemy to fight, so does america, and their particular enemy just so happens to be communism, the fact that the more prominent wars that america has fought have been against communist countries probably hasn't helped.

Edited by the little philosopher, 28 August 2009 - 05:24 AM.

[The_Fury]

The reason that Americans are so resistant to the idea of "Communism" is because the whole reason this country was formed was to allow the people of this land to escape the type of society that allows others to oppress people the ways that communist countries do. Furthermore, all of our laws and structure of government were specifically designed to prevent a dictatorship or government controlled society as seen in North Korea.

While america might have been formed with the notion of equality for all, it is also a racist and repressive society, which has been responsible for the genocide of Native Indians, slavery, racism against blacks, hispanics, asians to name but a few things. The notion of a bill of rights or human rights is an honerable thing to have, but the question then is, what things do we consider to be of intrinsic value such that they need protecting.

1. Freedom of speech: gives every crackpot the right to express their views, even racist child raping anti Semitic Hitler worshipers.
2. Freedom of religion: as above, it gives The Church of the racist child raping anti Semitic Hitler worshipers a right to exist.
3. Freedom of petition: allows corporations to lobby the government to push their views which may be opposite to the will of the people and against the greater communal good.
4. The right to bear arms: This might have been needed in 1600's when bears were a problem, but in a modern society guns really have no place, all they do is breed crime and violence. Ever wondered why there are so many gun murders in the USA, take a look at your bill of rights. here in Australia, we have fairly tight gun control and because of this, we have much less gun related violence.

5. Prohibition of excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment: Gitmo and waterboarding anyone? The death penalty?

Liberalism, Socialism, Communism, Fascism, insert your ism here, all have good points and bad points, Democracy (Liberalism) is not the necessarily the best political system, it has many failings the least of which, the very idea of voting puts people into a prisoners delema situation. Which is why you find in places like the USA, very few people bother to vote. Which is kind of ironic considering the very few people participate in the freedoms the US they consider to be important.

So getting to the OP's question. Why does the US try and educate its citizens to hate communism. 2 things, fear of things that are different to them and also because it takes power away from the people who posses it, US CORPORATIONS.