Ask Lemmy

You should check out Willam Blum's "Killing Hope" (pdf link), and/or "America's Deadliest Export", by same (pdf link).

“During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime's atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn't go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.

If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.”

― Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

.. Dude, I don't know if you've heard about this thing, but it was pretty big. They called it "the cold war".

They didn't sprout from nothing. Even from the beginning, they were being interfered with by capitalist and anti-revolutionary forces who started out with all the money and resources, like the white army or the black hundreds, not to mention being neighbors with reactionary imperialist countries, like Germany, and coming from authoritarian countries, like Tsarist Russia, where those ruling elements (old regime nobles, business interests, rich landowners, generals, etc) still existed and were in power or at least a place to sabotage the effort.

I agree with all of that but China is literally trying to bully everyone else out of the South East Asia Ocean area and is working hard to build up a Navy that can project force. They aren't Cuba.