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Growing up, I always associated communism with being a bad thing and capitalism as being great. Sometimes in life, we just accept what were told if enough people are saying the same thing until we dig a bit deeper to find out for ourselves why we believe it.Today I question if the definitions are mixed up, not my thinking. I spoke to a few Cuban natives who helped put things in perspective for me when I asked them if they had the opportunity to come to the U.S. tomorrow, would they? The response was the same amongst all; an emphatic NO!

One lady explained to me that her health condition is one main reason why she wouldnt go. She went on to say that in Cuba, the government provides free healthcare and free education. She even spoke about how once her roof was leaking, the rain was coming in, and the government stepped in to take care of it.

She told me how freedom for her was having her family and friends around her; this was all she needed in life.

I spoke to a gentleman who was sipping on his rum and enjoying a cigarette when we walked up. I asked him the same questions about feeling free in Cuba and whether he would want to come to the states. He chuckled and said they have their problems in Cuba but he is content and he loves his life. He stated that hes fine with following the path that life has taken him. I equated this statement to one of my favorite poets, Mark Nepo, who speaks about not swimming upstream but to go with the current.

These people may not be able to pull their BMWs or Teslas into the nearest Shell or Chevron to fill up but instead, have to trek for kilometers to get the gas and bring it back in what feels like triple-digit weather. The richness they seem to have that we lack is peace. The only question I have for today is the little boy in I took a photo of with his arms crossed. I wonder if he will grow up to be Tesla or the guy trekking to get gas.

Perhaps while theyre looking through a 1950s television screen, they are seeing a much bigger picture than the latest and future inventions Silicon Valley has to offer.

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Communism, bad for whom? - The Pioneer

Insisting there is a spooky-bad innate authoritarianism within a leftwing opposition is not so much a bold new direction for the Liberals as it is an act of projection. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

A spectre is haunting Australian politics the spectre of communism. All the powers of old conservatism have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre. By which I mean Mathias Cormann and Eric Abetz, responsible for the two legit funniest political pronouncements this week.

Cormanns announcement to the Sydney Institute Wednesday night claimed that the policies of Bill Shorten were akin to communist East Germany. The issue is not that Shortens asking the electorate to vote into existence an Australian Stasi, because he isnt, or planning to seize all private property, because he wont, nor building a wall to separate leafy, lefty Melbourne from the rest of the country. Please as if anyone would want to be trapped in with all those Greens.

Its that Bill Shorten wants to reform the Australian tax system so Coalition style $65bn tax exonerations arent given to a corporate community whose profits are already up 40% on last year. Its a situation with which East Germany was, conspicuously, unencumbered.

This is no liquidation of the kulaks. Its a basic platform of redistributive egalitarianism. And its one that the majority of Australian kulaks, proletarians and rational economic agents can get behind. At least, thats what the polls have been saying for 18 straight weeks in a row.

Its those polls that are informing the relentless and personal attacks on Shorten like Cormanns on Wednesday. The Labor leaders lacklustre preferred PM polling is all a Coalition beset by missteps, mistakes, mismanagement and majority-threatening fifth-columnist sleeper agents from New Zealand New Zealand! has left to seize upon.

But in the established tradition of this government, the strategy seems somewhat clandestine, and unwisely so. The Coalition has spent four years attacking Shortens willingness to work with employers when he was a union leader. Turnbull engages in outright mockery of his upstart temerity to maintain relations with the big end of town. Their new initiative of red baiting Comrade Bill the Workers Friend is an effective remedy to the effects of their own propaganda. As much, certainly, as Malcolm Turnbull himself spending the week making political appeals to the same people he condemned Shorten for even knowing.

Turnbull and his benches of blue-tie bunyip bourgeoisie, of course, have never met a mistake they couldnt make at least twice. Just ask Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash. Or Bronwyn Bishop and Sussan Ley.

Ive heard somewhere that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Eric Abetz has heard it, too, for, with the precision of a professional clown, Tasmanias favourite entertainer doubled down on Cormanns comments. I shit you not, Bill Shorten surely knew of GetUp! Soviet funding: Eric Abetz was an actual headline that appeared in the actual Australian actual newspaper on Thursday. Uncle Erics concern is the donation of $10,000 made to activist group GetUp! by an organisation called The USSR Australia Friendship Society.

2006. A full fifteen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Is this like the time the banned anarchist society at Macquarie Uni named itself The Bert Newtown Club, but in reverse? Are they the same guys? Theres a certain kind of former campus radical who maintains both left wing politics and a wacky sense of humour into their productive relations in later life ahem! I cant help but wonder if The USSR Australian Friendship Society of 2006 might be it. The alternative is a political movement whose moment has past, whose activist opportunities have shuttered and whose last grasp at relevancy was a handout of cash to their last remaining allies.

You know, sort of like the Coalition and the business community.

Insisting there is a spooky-bad innate authoritarianism within a leftwing opposition is not so much a bold new direction for the Liberals as it is an act of projection. Its the Coalitions George Brandis whos building the Australian surveillance state. Its Peter Dutton whos leading the Security Super Mega McMinistry. The building of walls is a current fetish on the right side of politics, not the left.

Not to mention that judging the intimate lives of others, allowing different laws to govern minority groups and giving license to propaganda hate campaigns that demonise sections of the community sounds a lot more like well, Eric-Abetz-and-friends personal achievement in enforcing the loathsome marriage equality postal survey debacle.

Wherever Turnbulls people may individually sit on this specific issue, the brand portrayed is now so poisonously illiberal, theyve enabled Shorten to stake a claim on Australias centre even as leftward zeitgeist that flowed behind Corbyn and Sanders is allowing Labor to articulate in its own words not the totalitarianism of East Germany, but the best traditions of its own democratic and inclusive leftwing heritage.

And this is the problem even Cormann admits he has. The Berlin Wall came down 28 years ago, which means roughly 18% of Australians enrolled to vote were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he said Wednesday night. Cold War propaganda doesnt work on diverse-media Australian generations who can see the inequality increasing around them and with sober senses just arent satisfied with the politics of more-of-the-same.

Dont Labor know it, too. Bill Shortens acting as if hes already won the next election! Cormann wailed to his comrades. Jesus, if sabre-rattling at the invisible armies of a dead empire is all youve got left, Mr Cormann why wouldnt he?

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Is sabre-rattling at the spectre of communism all you've got left, Mathias Cormann? - The Guardian

During the past few months, many in the media, as well as a number of political figures, have pushed the idea that Americans have a binary choice between communism and white nationalism. In Charlottesville, Virginia, some outlets portray Antifa and other communists as some sort of protector and savior against evil white nationalists. Other figures argue that even though white nationalist ideology is despicable, that people should side with them in the situation. However, ultimately, there isnt a good side with either of them. In essence, they are two sides of the same coin, desiring basically the same thing. And by giving such an enormous amount of attention to one another, they both gain what they really want- attention to both sides that then accomplishes their primary goal of just burning everything to the ground to start over. As long as they both clash, they create a choose your side scenario for a good many people.

At their core, fascism and communism have the same basic goal to eliminate the idea of the individual and focus instead on the collective. Fascists have an idea of a protected class of people in mind that can be based on race or national identity. Communists have a protected group of people in mind based upon economic station. Both, in search of protecting their chosen class of people, desire to eliminate individual identity in favor of a group identity. If you do not belong to their chosen protectorate group, then you must be driven down to a subjugate status, driven away from the national borders, or in an extreme case, eliminated entirely. The end result of both is a ruling authoritarian regime that includes favoritism for their chosen class of people, viewed through the lens of a group identity where everyone else is an enemy.

Collective thinking is a dangerous game. Once people are deemed to be identified as groups of people rather than as individuals, it becomes easier to see them as less human. People wonder how Hitler could have so callously murdered millions for the sole reason of their perceived race, or how Stalin could have purposefully starved millions to death in the name of the greater good. Its because once people no longer have their individual identity, the group to which they belong becomes a faceless mass that portrays more animal than human. It becomes far easier to ignore an individuals humanity in favor of serving the protected class. The thinking becomes, Either we survive as a group identity or this other group of people will overtake us. So, the murders and death camps begin.

The reason people fall prey to collectivism is because it is so seemingly enticing in the beginning. A group of people is shown to be downtrodden and victims of a larger group or class of people. Instances of a larger, almost conspiratorial, movement against them are demonstrated in the rhetoric of either fascists or communists and the roots take hold. Its easy to blame a faceless mass for your problems, because without focusing on individuals, there isnt a way to tie things directly to any one person. If you come to believe you are a victim of a group of people rather than situations or specific individuals, then collectivism easily sets in. The progression from the idea that you are a part of a group suppressed by another group (or groups) easily leads to a path of wanting to either separate from, subjugate, or destroy the other group. Collectivism is easy individualism is difficult, but far more rewarding.

Americans, as well as much of the world, are being pulled into a sham debate. One that pits fascists against communists and asks which is the lesser evil. The sham is that both are evil and that there is a very attractive alternative. The binary option is not fascism vs. communism. It is individualism vs. collectivism. Most people like neither fascists nor communists and cannot conceive of aligning themselves with either one. So, ignore the rhetoric being spouted by the main stream of media and political discussion. Dont allow fringe groups to burn our system to the ground. By giving them the attention and platform to spread their hatred, their groups grow in number. Avoid the group think of the collective. Focus on what is best for individuals as individuals. The most minor, underserved, and unrecognized class of people in the world is the individual. When you find yourself not siding with either evil, then side with the people who support individualism.

This post was written by Danny Chabino.

The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.

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Red Dirt Liberty Report: Communists vs. Nazis - Being Libertarian

Victims of communism and Nazism remembered on Black Ribbon Day, 77 years after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Aug. 23.

"At a time when the fundamental values of the European Union are openly questioned by the rise of far-right movements and neo-Nazi parties across Europe, the above-mentioned initiative is very unfortunate,"Kontonis said in his letter to the organizers of the conference, which was also quoted in the Greek media.

"The initiative to organize a conference with this specific content and title sends a wrong and dangerous political message that is the result of the agreements that followed the Second World War, revives the Cold War climate that brought so much suffering to Europe, runs contrary to the values of the EU, and certainly does not reflect the view of the Greek government and the Greek people, which is that Nazism and Communism could never exist as the two parts of the same equation," the minister said.

"The horror we lived through Nazism had a single version, the one we described above," Kontonis continued. "Communism, on the contrary, gave birth to dozens of ideological trends, one of which was Euro-communism, born in a communist regime during the Prague Spring period, in order to combine socialism with democracy and freedom."

The European Parliament in 2009 declared Aug. 23 as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Communist and Nazi Regimes, 70 years after the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact on that day in 1939.

Estonia has invited representatives of EU member states and Eastern Partnership countries to participate in the conference to be held in Tallinn on Wednesday.

Greek Minister of Justice Stavros Kontonis is a member of the prime minister's party Coalition of the Radical Left, popularly known by its syllabic abbreviation Syriza.

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Greek minister turns down invitation to conference on crimes of communism - ERR News

It was this promise of a creative solidarity unhindered by racial segregation that propelled Thompson, Hughes and the cast to invest their hopes in Black and White. When production the fell through, tempers flared. Some of the cast accused the Soviet Union of betraying the African-American cause to curry favor with Washington, from which the Soviet Union was hoping to receive official recognition. Hughes, perhaps the most seasoned artist of the group, attributed the failure to creative differences (too many people with opinions). Reflecting on the project years later, he wrote: O, Movies. Temperaments. Artists. Ambitions. Scenarios. Directors, producers, advisers, actors, censors, changes, revisions, conferences. Its a complicated art the cinema. Im glad I write poems.

After the production of Black and White fell apart, many members of the cast stayed in the Soviet Union, believing it was their best place for their artistic careers. The actor Wayland Rudd was hired by one of Moscows experimental theater companies. The writer Loren Miller stayed to edit a Soviet anthology of African-American poetry. Lloyd Patterson, a recent college graduate who had signed on to the project merely looking for adventure, became a designer for film sets. His son Jimmy, still a baby, appeared in a famous 1936 Soviet film Circus in which a young white American woman with a black child flees the United States for racial sanctuary in Soviet Russia. Hughes stayed for several months in Soviet Central Asia, particularly Uzbekistan, reporting on Soviet reforms for various American publications, including the NAACP journal The Crisis. He was reportedly the first American poet whose work was translated into Uzbek.

Despite its demise, Black and White did not deter other black artists from taking a chance on the Soviet film industry. The singer and actor Paul Robeson arrived in Moscow in 1934 at the invitation of Sergei Eisenstein, the director behind such revolutionary classics as Battleship Potemkin, October and Strike. Inspired by the play Black Majesty, penned by C. L. R. James, an Afro-Trinidadian communist scholar and writer, Eisenstein had invited Robeson to potentially star in a film about the Haitian Revolution.

I feel like a human being for the first time, Robeson told reporters after he arrived in Russia. Of all the African-American artists and activists who traveled there, none developed as enduring a relationship with the Soviet Union as Robeson. Upon his arrival, he was received ecstatically by the Soviet theatrical establishment, which invited him to sing an aria onstage from Modest Mussorgskys opera Boris Godunov. Despite Soviet atheism, he was asked to sing Negro spirituals over the radio and at government parties. His song Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child became newly emblematic of his relationship to his home country; the Soviets had put his recording of the song over an animated short film about racism and labor exploitation in the American sugar industry.

But by the time Robeson was beginning his great romance with the Soviet project, McKay and many African-Americans (including the novelist Richard Wright) were moving away from it. McKay, like many of the Russian artists he collaborated with in Moscow, would have a falling out with communism. The instigating event, for him, was Soviet Russias failure to cease trade with Italy even after Mussolini had invaded Ethiopia, then ruled by Haile Selassie. The invasion was widely seen as an affront to the very idea of black sovereignty. McKay would turn his political disillusionment into Amiable With Big Teeth: A Novel of the Love Affair Between the Communists and the Poor Black Sheep of Harlem.

Wright would soon join McKay in his disillusionment. In 1944 he wrote an article for The Atlantic Monthly called I Tried to Be a Communist. Frustrated by the American Communist Partys tepid response to his novel Native Son, Wright wrote to a friend that the party encourage[s] the creation of types of writing that can be used for agitprop purposes, but had a tendency to sneer at more creative attempts.

Hughess overt involvement in communism also waned by this time, but perhaps more out of necessity. He was under intense scrutiny from the McCarthyite House Un-American Activities Committee, which accused him of being at one time or another part of 91 communist organizations. Hughes, though, like Wright, did sense that too close an affiliation with a political organization or ideology could prove to be artistically stifling. Explaining to a friend why he never officially joined the Communist Party, he said, It was based on strict discipline and the acceptance of directives that I, as a writer, did not wish to accept.

Robeson was one of the last black sojourners to see in the Soviet Union an alternative to the racist and exploitative culture of the West. Between the Nonaligned Movement and a resurgence of black nationalism, the brand of communism bred from the Global South seemed to many by the 1960s and 70s to be a sharper weapon against racism and colonialism. As the black feminist writer Audre Lorde wrote when she reflected on her 1976 trip to Moscow, Russia became a mythic representation of that socialism which does not yet exist anywhere I have been.

Russia has long served as a repository for different kinds of mythology, from the Third Rome to the Red Scare. The myth of Russia as a racial paradise was perhaps one of its best, both as a muse to black artists across the diaspora and as a strategic tool in the African-American fight for political recognition. But as an early adherent, Hughes implied that the Soviet Union was just part of a larger narrative of black creative and political revolution; as the refrain of his 1938 poem Ballad of Lenin reads:

Comrade Lenin of Russia,

High in a marble tomb,

Move over, Comrade Lenin,

And give me room.

An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to the House Un-American Activities Committee. It was a committee in the House of Representatives and a model for Senator Joseph McCarthys investigations into Communists in the government; it was not Senator McCarthys committee.

Jennifer Wilson (@jenlouisewilson) is a postdoctoral fellow in Russian literature at the University of Pennsylvania.

This is an essay in the series Red Century, about the history and legacy of Communism 100 years after the Russian Revolution.

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When the Harlem Renaissance Went to Communist Moscow - New York Times