Equating communism and fascism.

I mean we seen that a billion times in various versions in mainstream and got used to this but still it's the stupidest fucking thing ever.

"Yeah the consequences of the USSR collapse led to 200 million people not doing too well, but at least we saved all those people from the gulags!"

I'm sure I've heard a lot but one that stuck with me is "gunboat diplomacy and imperialism is good actually." From the same mouth a minute later: "the only reason the KMT lost [the fucking Chinese civil war] was because the US stopped giving them weapons. Communists are fundamentally incapable of accomplishing anything on their own."

Someone I know went to India recently and was telling me about their experience. First they said that they 'flew over the SOVIET UNION to get there', I guess they went back in time lol. They told me that India 'modeled their government after the Soviet Union and Stalin'. That free market capitalism is now coming to 'save the day for their poor backwards country'.

I honestly don't know what to say to people that are that delusional lol. People really do just be saying whatever comes out of their ass.

Some frat bro looked me dead the eye and was like "We should nuke the Middle East. All of it. How many of them are good people, really?"

This was within 5 minutes of meeting him

hmmm, the nuclear genocidal bloodthirst by Europeans and Americans? There's so many average people that think the only way of dealing with Russians, Chinese, Koreans is by nuking them to extinction. Ironically they don't see themselves as the problem.

Destroying the 3 Gorges Dam is both easy to accomplish and desirable.

I was discussing with a hardcore neo-liberal, almost to the degree of ancap about government and he pointed out, that when centralizing power thr rights of minorities are often overlooked, he said: "Suddenly 3% of the popultation just becomes a meaningless number that can just be sent to their death". The next day, we were discussing about covid restrictions, where my point was simply, that individual freedoms don't count anymore, when there is harm to other. He simply responded with. "oh the 3% that are actually in danger when getting covid, can just stay inside, as if it was worth it restricting myself for them."

Antideutsche (Anti-Germans) claiming that Israel and the US are inherently antifascist and that almost any kind of anti-capitalism is antisemitic.

So my state, Washington, is expected to grow by 2 million people by the 2030s and our airport (SeaTac) is expected to grow too crowded to have as many one way destinations as it has right now.

A major Republican just put out an op ed saying that we need to build another airport, but nobody wants to live next to it. So to solve this, we need to plan a new 250k+ city and give it an airport. The level of NIMBYism we are entertaining is a planned economy to keep the landed folks rich.

"Every civilization that has allowed gay.marriage has collapsed"

Apropos of nothing, in the middle of a hangout

A combination of

1. Don't tell people to read theory, you have to explain things in simple terms.

2. Marxist-Leninist ideas of revolution won't work with today's technology and economy.

How to tell someone you haven't even tried to read theory, and then criticise theory based on what you think the theory is, and encourage everyone around you to adopt the same choice of ignorance.

Idk if this counts as a hot take but one of my coworkers got drunk as shit at the airbnb our group was staying at and he started ranting about how Jews and Spaniards mixed with Central Africans to create "high yellows" or some shit then complained about his elementary school having too many black people even though it was still majority white in a ritzy part of Atlanta. He also talked about how women are only good for fucking while being married and crying about his cheating wife. Dude clearly drove his first wife away right into the arms of a black guy

Off the top of my head, the craziest thing I ever heard was a liberal on Twitter saying the US should call Russia’s bluff on the nukes and join in militarily with Ukraine. They were saying it’s better to not have an Eastern Europe or possibly world if it means Putin and Xi will be controlling it. It got a lot of attention and not as much hate as it deserved (obv people were calling them idiots but far fewer than any sane person would hope for)

Someone on the world of warships forums once advocated for the nuclear destruction of Northern China because he was malding about taiwan computer chips or something. Absolutely deranged.

Restoring British/French colonialism in the Middle East.

Dollarize the Argentinian economy.

I was at a prison abolition talk, and a kid I organize with was super argumentative with the speakers and just way out of line. He went so far as to use the term (likely in some kind of Freudian slip) "you people" to a panel of mostly black women. Just super weird and off putting.

So I talked to him after the panel event and I was telling him about what the abolition movement is and what it isn't. Like he gets cops are bad, how the state uses prisons for slave labor, all that. I was encouraging him to actually engage with the topic and consider these big concepts, but his take at the end was "prisons will be here to stay until every banker is behind bars".

I think a multitude of hot takes fit, but I really dislike when liberals go after socialists for completely unrelated perceived flaws. Y'know, "Che was a homophobe", "~~literally every 19th century European~~ Stalin was anti-semitic", "Gaddafi was misogynistic". Even if those accusations were completely true and not based on astroturfed rumours or ridiculously over-blown or taken out of context, what does that have to do with their views on capitalism? If it turned out that Karl Marx really fucking hated the Irish for no reason, would that make all his writing useless all of a sudden?

Cheating a bit, but I also had an acquaintance describe their near "Westminster MP" level salary for a remote job as "barely making it into the middle class", and that has been haunting me for months.

It is a simple one really: that imperialism brought civilization, technology, and relative prosperity to the natives (some youtube channel that "debunked" communism said this)