Archive for the ‘Communism’ Category

Biden Reinvigorates Captive Nations Week By Listing Russia And Other Non-Communist Countries As Most Oppressive States OpEd – Eurasia Review

When the US Congress passed the resolution in 1959 requiring the president to issue a proclamation on Captive Nations Week every July, this measure was viewed both by its authors and those opposed to it as directed against the repression of nations by communist regimes.

Until the collapse of the Soviet bloc and then the USSR in 1989 and 1991, these messages served as an indicator of how the US government viewed these communist. In the years since, the messages have celebrated the freeing of nations in the former communist states and focused on nations who remain under communist rule.

That is appropriate because of how much progress in fact has been made, but it is incomplete for two reasons. On the one hand, it ignores the fact that the Captive Nations Week resolution focused not on communism as a doctrine but communism as a practice that involved repression not limited to communist states.

Victories over communism led to many victories, but many who proclaimed themselves as non-communists or even anti-communists have continued or revived the kind of ethno-national repression that the Soviet communists carried out in the past and that the few surviving communist regimes, China first among them, are carrying out to this day.

And on the other hand, focusing on progress alone not only overshadows just how much evil has been and is being carried out by nominally non-communist regimes and also how much work remains to be done in countries like the Russian Federation. There, for example, two of the nations the resolution spoke of, Idel-Ural and Cossackia, remain victims of repression.

In his proclamation of Captive Nations Week this year, US President Joe Biden has corrected this trend and returned to the principles underlying the original resolutions concerns about the victims of imperialist oppressionregardless of what those carrying it out call themselves(whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2022/07/15/a-proclamation-on-captive-nations-week-2022/).

Biden makes three key points: First, Captive Nations Week is not about anti-communism per se but rather against repression, regardless of what the states carrying it out do. Only three of the regimes he lists among the worlds most repressive are communist Cuba, North Korea and the Peoples Republic of China.

The other six are either former communist countries or have never been communist Russia, Iran, Belarus, Syria, Venezuela, and Nicaragua and it is no accident that the US president listed Russia first among all these countries, not because of its communist roots but because of its continuing imperialist behavior.

Second, Biden was explicit that governments which repress their peoples at home as all nine of these countries do seek to repress others abroad through various kinds of repression. Russias invasion of Ukraine is only the most obvious case of this; and it is no surprise in the current environment that the American president focuses on that.

And third, and this may be the most important aspect of the Captive Nations Week resolution this week, Biden makes clear that Americans cant remain unconcerned about such repressive be it within countries or between them and their neighbors. They must stand in solidarity with the brave human rights and pro-democracy advocates around the world.

The US leader concludes with the following words: May Captive Nations Week reinvigorate our efforts to live up to out ideals by championing justice, dignity and freedom for all, words that apply not only to communist countries, post-communist countries, countries that have never been communist and the US as well.

Biden does not say but his words clearly imply something that has often been forgotten: we are anti-communists not because people call themselves communists; we are anti-communists because of what communists have done. And we are equally against former communists or those who have never been communists who do the same things.

Those are words that the still enslaved peoples within the borders of post-Soviet Russia and within other countries communist or not will certainly welcome and hope that Bidens suggestion that Captive Nations Week can reinvigorate the American commitment to be on their side will take the form of concrete actions and support.

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Biden Reinvigorates Captive Nations Week By Listing Russia And Other Non-Communist Countries As Most Oppressive States OpEd - Eurasia Review

Creation of CBDC Are Communism in its Purest Form Says Robert Kiyosaki – Coinpedia Fintech News

The US along with several other nations are examining the viability of CBDC introduction. The author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki, has harsh criticism for the likelihood of their introduction as envisioned in the White House executive order.

The governments position on cryptocurrencies and the potential creation of CBDCs were outlined in President Joe Bidens Executive Order, which was signed in early March.

The move is harshly criticized by Kiyosaki who called this action the most treacherous move in US history.

Jim Rickards made his most important announcement today. Its about the most treasonous act in US history Bidens Executive Order 14067. Its communism in its purest form, the creation of CBDC Cental Bank Digital Curreny. Stay awake. Tune in to Rickards. Tune out Biden Take care

Also, Kiyosaki went so far as to call the development of CBDCs communism in its purest form.

In this tweet from July 18, 2022, Kiyosaki was referring to Jim Rickards, a former CIA insider who is also an economist and investment banker with 40 years of Wall Street experience. Rickards had broken the most important news on the presidential order and CBDCs.

As a refresher, President Bidens Executive Order 14067, to which Kiyosaki was alluding, instructs agencies to investigate the potential risks and rewards of establishing the United States own CBDC with the greatest urgency.

Despite his criticism of CBDCs, Kiyosaki is a supporter of Bitcoin (BTC) and the decentralization it offers. In a recent statement, he advised investors to get ready for the biggest sale on Earth after the anticipated bubble breaks.

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Communists banned one of the greatest Slovak films due to ugly people – The Slovak Spectator

18. Jul 2022 at 16:34 IPremium content

In 1972, director Duan Hank made Pictures of the Old World with old people living in the Slovak countryside.

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The communist regime did not discourage Duan Hank from portraying reality, though he paid the price.

In the 1969 movie 322, the Slovak directors feature debut, he captures real life under communism through the story of a common man who regrets his past and tries to rediscover the actual meaning of life. Abundant in symbols, including the films title comparing communism to cancer, the regime banned the psychological drama in the late sixties. This year, it was named the best Slovak picture of the century.

Three years later, in 1972, Hank created Pictures of the Old World, a documentary that he wrote and directed. The stories of old, lonely and poor people, who were not actors at all and lived in the countryside of northern Slovakia under communism, were recounted through Slovak photographer Martin Martineks black-and-white pictures, film shots and interviews.

These are the stories of people who have been themselves, the film claims right at the start about the people living on the edge of society.

One photo captures an old woman rolling over a fence. A film sequence portrays a man who built a house and keeps on living, though he had lost both of his legs. There is a man living in the mountains who knows a lot about the universe and the widower who speaks several foreign languages. Another man drinks from a bottle of alcohol, the reason his wife left him.

The films budget was almost 1.6 million Czechoslovak crowns.

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Communists banned one of the greatest Slovak films due to ugly people - The Slovak Spectator

Chinese Researchers Develop New AI Tech to Screen ‘Loyalty’ of Communist Party Members – The Epoch Times

Millions of Chinese officials were investigated in the past 10 years amid Beijing's anti-corruption campaign

News Analysis

Chinese researchers recently developed artificial intelligence technology that can gauge Chinese officials loyalty to the ruling Communist Party. The technology could be a tool for Beijings anti-corruption campaign to monitor further and purge corrupt Party members, indicating the regimes growing fear oflosing its legitimacy and power.

More than 4.7 million officials at all levels were investigated, subjected to various forms of disciplinary punishment, or prosecuted in the past 10 years, according to data released by Chinas top watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), on June 20.

Beijings anti-corruption campaign was initialed in November 2012, when Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping first came to power.

Political corruption is the biggest corruption. Some corrupt elements have formed interest groups in the hope of stealing power from the party and the state, according to state-run mediaXinhua.

TheInstitute of Artificial Intelligence at Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center in eastern Chinas Anhui Province published a post, claiming that it developed technology that could directly support the CCP. A wonderfulconnection between AI and construction of the CCP, it touted onits official WeChat account on July 1, the 101st anniversary of the founding of the CCP.

The post included a video showinga man walking into an equipment room labeled Smart Political Thinking Bar, then sitting in front of a computer with a touch screen to take a test. After completing the test, his test score and analysis chart appeared on the screen.

The test, catered to Communist Party members, covers content taught in Party schools, including political indoctrination such as Xi Jinping Thought, communism, socialism, CCP history, and current policies and regulations.

The video introduced a device that could use AI technology to extract the biometric features of CCP members, including facial expressions, electroencephalography, and dermatological features, among others.

After integrating and analyzing personal data, it would evaluate how a person was able to understand the content he/she studied, such as gauging the level of concentration, recognition, and mastery of the various subjects.

The device can successfully integrate AI technology into the organizational life of CCP members, said the researchers in the short film. The organizational life refers tobehaviors the CCP imposes on its members, such as proving ones loyalty to the Party.

The research team said it designed the AI device for building up the CCPahead of the 20th Communist Party Congress. The Partys most important political meeting is expected to be held at the end of this year, which will determine whether Xi can secure a third term.

At the time of writing, the WeChat post was taken down.

However, it had been widely shared on social media before it was removed, triggering public criticism of the use of AI to monitor ideological indoctrination, with some denouncing it as technological brainwashing and digital authoritarianism.

U.S.-based media China Digital Timesobtainedsome of the posts content and video and published a report earlier this month.

According to public information, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Anhui provincial government established the Hefei tech institute. The institute is managed by the University of Science and Technology of China.

Speaking at a press briefing held by the CCPs propaganda department on June 30, Wang Jianxin, director of the CCDIs publicity department, said that in 10 years, from the Partys 18thCongress to the end of April this year, around 4.3 million corruption probes were carried out and over 4.7 million officials received punishment.

Those CCP members were accused of various charges such as corruption, ties with criminal groups, abuse of power, and immoral lifestyle. An official report on the CCPs image crisis, released in 2012 by Tang Jun, director of the Crisis Management Research Center of Renmin University of China, said thatas many as 95 percent of corrupt officials investigated had a mistress, and more than 60 percent of corrupt cadres had a second wife.

Zhang Lei, a law professor at Beijing Normal University, toldXinhua on June 30 that there are four major problems among the CCP cadres: formalism, bureaucracy, hedonism, and extravagance.

Gao Wenqian, a scholar of CCP history, told VOA on Oct. 28, 2016, that the CCPs institutional approach can only treat the symptoms of corruption but not the root cause, citing that one partys monopoly of power is the root cause of corruption in the CCP officialdom.

If you [the CCP] dont fight corruption from the system, its like fighting flies around a manure pit. Youll never get to the end; the more you fight, the more you get stuck. The result would be flies are as big as tigers and tigers are as many as flies, Gao said.

The CCPs so-called anti-corruption campaign is the equivalent of a restaurantproudly announcing that in the past year it has managed to find 100,000 flies in its dishes, 10,000 rats in its soup, and 50,000 worms in its rice, wrote anetizen in the comment section of the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times.

I wonder if the customers still think this restaurant is clean. Corruption is an Achilles heel that the autocratic regime cannot solve itselfthat is, the same interest groups cannot govern themselves from inside.

The AI surveillance tech and anti-corruption campaign indicate that the CCP, fearing its downfall, will impose stricter controls on its members, especially high-level officials.

Official media Qiushi Magazine recentlypublisheda speech that Xi delivered at a seminar for provincial and ministerial-level officials on Jan. 11. Xi stressed the Party shouldstrive to resolve the impurity of ideological thoughts, lifestyles, and organizations within the Partyanythingthat could undermine the CCPs authority.

Last year, Xi warned CCP members about the consequences of stepping out of line. In a speech, he pointed out that some officials have morphed into the spokesmen for various interest groups, power units, and privileged classes. Xi stressed that no matter who has the problem, they should be investigated and punished decisively and without mercy.

Moreover, at a June 17 meeting of the CCPs Politburo, Xi said that anti-corruption is a major political campaign that cannot afford to fail.

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Chinese Researchers Develop New AI Tech to Screen 'Loyalty' of Communist Party Members - The Epoch Times

Communism | Holocaust Encyclopedia

Definition and Origins

Communism is a specific form of the broader philosophy of socialism. Communism is further left on the political spectrum than socialism. However, both communism and socialism share similar understandings of the relationships between economic structures and social conditions, and between the individual and the state. Although there are many versions of socialist philosophy, socialism generally retains private property ownership and calls for gradual political change. By contrast, communist theory holds that change will occur via a proletariat revolution that will abolish private property.

Communism originated with the German philosopher/intellectual Karl Marx (1818-1883). In 1848, he published The Communist Manifesto with Friedrich Engels (1820-1895). The Communist Manifesto argues that the story of history is the story of class struggle. Communism posits that industrial society is divided into two classes of people: the proletariat (workers) and the bourgeoisie (capitalists). The interests of the two classes are in conflict. The bourgeoisie, who own the factories and businesses, profit from the labor of the proletariatat the proletariats expense. Moreover, the problems of industrial society, such as the poverty Engels described in The Condition of the English Working Class (1844), are inherent in capitalism. The powerful elites could not be expected to voluntarily give up control. Therefore, communists predicted that the collective struggle of the working class would lead to the proletariat revolution and the elimination of capitalism in favor of a classless society based on the principle of From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.1

Soviet Union

Communist ideas spread rapidly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Communist political parties formed in every state across Europe, but they achieved the most success in Russia under Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924). Lenin was the leader of a faction of Russian communists known as the Bolsheviks. The term Bolshevism refers to Soviet-style communism. Bolshevism has significant departures from traditional Marxist communist theory.

Russia had been ruled by the Romanov dynasty since the 17th century. By the late 19th century, Russia faced a series of challenges that culminated in World War I. For Russia, World War I was a disaster, causing widespread hunger and popular unrest. In 1917, the country collapsed into revolution. The Romanov dynasty was deposed. Following several months of disorder and civil war, Lenin seized control and established the Soviet Union.

After Lenins death, Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) assumed power. Stalin consolidated his power by removing or killing real or perceived political dissenters. He implemented a series of Five Year Plans for the economic growth of the Soviet Union. These plans distorted Marxist communist theory into violent totalitarianism. Under Stalins dictatorship, the Soviet government exercised near-complete control over citizens private and public lives through terror and repression.

Germany

Socialist parties in Germany grew out of the trade union movement and began achieving electoral success in the late 19th century. By 1912, the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany, SPD) was the largest party in the Reichstag (German parliament). In 1918, the left wing of the socialist movement split off to form the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Communist Party of Germany, KPD) under Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) and Karl Liebknecht (1871-1919). In the first election after the war, the Social Democrats won almost 40 percent of the vote. SPD leader Friedrich Ebert (1871-1925) became the first president of the Weimar Republic from 1919 to 1925. The Social Democrats remained the largest party in the Reichstag until the July 1932 elections.

The Communist Party was never as popular as the Social Democrats. It reached its electoral peak in November 1932 with 16.9% of the vote.2 Within six months of this election, however, Hitler had seized power. He banned political parties other than the Nazis and began imprisoning German communists at Dachau.

Anti-Communism

Socialist and communist philosophies had never been popular with Europes conservative elites. They considered these beliefs to be dangerous ideologies that threatened their traditional political and economic control. The Russian Revolution and emergence of the Soviet Union increased fears of violent revolution and a radical reordering of society. These fears played out both within Germany and across Europe. Within Germany, Hitler was able to become chancellor in 1933 in part due to President Paul von Hindenburgs (1847-1934) fears of communismthe Nazi party was reliably anti-communist.

Across Europe, a similar logic governed international reaction to Hitlers new Third Reich. By the 1930s, Stalin had initiated forced collectivization, or the replacement of private farms with state-run, collective farms. He had also established industrial production quotas. His efforts eliminated the free market. This also gave the rest of the world a glimpse of the type of communist revolution the Comintern, a Soviet-controlled, global communist organization, was encouraging internationally. If communism were to spread from the Soviet Union into Germany, it would reach into the heart of Europe. The fear of communism prompted several European leadersincluding British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlainto focus at first on Nazisms anti-communist credentials rather than its territorial ambitions or antisemitism.

Communism was antithetical to Nazism because communism prioritized class above nation and race. However, in the Nazi imagination, communism was recast as Judeo-Bolshevism. Judeo-Bolshevism claims that communism was a Jewish plot designed at German expense. Judeo-Bolshevisms threat was emphasized by Germanys proximity to the Soviet Union and competing Nazi-Soviet territorial ambitions in Eastern Europe. The existence of a communist state so close to Germany was not merely a political threat, but also an existential racial and ideological threat. For Nazis, both Jews and communists were made worse by their supposed identification with one another.

As soon as the Nazis rose to power, they began targeting communists, both inside and outside Germany. In 1933, the first concentration camp opened at Dachau to hold political prisoners. The first prisoners were all communists. Later in 1933 the Nazis banned all political parties. They intensified the targeting of Communists, Social Democrats, and trade unionists. As early as 1933before the Nazi regime had made any significant moves against Jews or the disabledGerman Communists were detained in mass arrests and tortured. Once the war began, the Commissar Order demonstrated the depth of Nazi fear and hatred of communism. Issued in June 1941, the Commissar Order directed German soldiers to shoot on principle all Soviet commissars (Soviet Communist Party officials) and POWs, in violation of international law.3

Last Edited: Jun 10, 2019

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Communism | Holocaust Encyclopedia