That and kompromat lmao

Considering where the money is going, I wouldn't feel bad about not ratting out a German for committing tax fraud.

I sympathise with the sentiment, but please don't shame people with disabilities/continence issues. It's embarrassing enough as it is.

These fucks are so stupid. No one knows that denazification was a purely formal procedure and not a method of cleansing Germany of reactionism, it was never meant as such. The purpose of denazification was to tie Western Germany to the US and UK. These people can't even argue correctly.

This has been blatantly obvious since the 90s

You need to realise that Marx is just a guy. Marx wrote things that can be interpreted as being in support of reformism and things that can be interpreted as being against reformism. He was very racist at times and at others he was woker than 95% of BLM protesters. Marx isn't a god or a hero, nor is he someone who had a dream per-se. He went actively against dreamers and utopians because he saw it as a real danger to make promises that might not conform to reality, while of course opposing naive realism or bargain bin political realism. He was in the truest sense a scientist, a critic, someone who was much closer to a nihilist than a naive activist. He revised his views multiple times throughout his life, as he went from being a romantic to something closer to a systems theorist. To put him into diametrical opposition to Lenin tells me that you understand neither beyond a Wikipedia level reading and that is being charitable.

To say that Lenin personally created the VChK without crediting the chaos and antagonisms is absolute insanity. It's even crazier to say that he was a power hungry monster, as if it were a property that came out of a vacuum. There was a war going on. The stone you sat on while taking a break was a power hungry monster, this isn't even a discussion, nor is it telling us much.

The provisional government failed, and not by some "evil" Leninist influence but because of the PG did not want to drop out of WWI partly because they were banking on being good with capitalist nations, which is a big big big deal. The SR had been in a cul-de-sac and the Bolsheviks yanked the movement out of it. The persecution of the SR needs to be questioned, no freaking doubt. Dismissing the Leninist vanguard however, the success of the Soviet Revolution, is deeply disrespectful to the proletarians who were at the base of the movement.

I have to repeat that I am not even a Leninist. I really do not believe that he should be worshipped and there were certainly questions of organisation that could have been handled differently. You are misrepresenting things egregiously.

First of all, supposing you are not posting under your government name, how are the Chinese supposed to know who is making posts if they are not made on sites controlled by Chinese firms? Secondly, do you not think that they know that a lot of Americans and Europeans flying into China have less-than-positive views? At this point the top officials who design policy are expecting it to some extent. It would be unsustainable to be repressive in that way.

I sense you would also moralise about Napoleon being a "fucking monster". Lenin was a historical figure and he found himself guided by forces of the time. Aside from his rhetorical skill he wasn't particularly special, nor was he a super nice person. It wouldn't matter all that much in the grand scheme of things if he was.

I am not saying this to dismiss your qualms. Mistakes were definitely made. Revolutions need to be learned from and its conducive to revolutions that violence is kept at a minimum. But let's not fool ourselves into believing that we can all hold hands and dance socialism/communism into existence. This sort of change has a lot of potential to be messy. I don't need to tell you this, but the Russian revolution was deeply troubled by a strong counter-revolution.

Let's get to your point about going to China. Libertarian professors are employed at Chinese universities, there are regular expressions of protest that don't land the protester in jail, think of nail houses, and social media figures as well as journalists who have criticised China in the past have travelled there without too much trouble. I don't think the state cares all that much about your dislike, they have bigger fish to fry. The populace is also quite content, so your agitating, if you were to commit to it, would attract confusion more than anything else. Sure, you might have the cops called on you. What happens then though? At worst you'll be sent back to whence you came as China doesn't want to get into diplomatic rows. You are unlikely to become an O. Warmbier.

I didn't say anything about the authoritarian personality and I don't really care that some people have figured out something they view as being integral to comprehending society. Honestly, I find life under the systems people like Fromm consider least authoritarian, think Sweden in the 70s, to still be be very brutal towards the masses.

But you know what, I believe your conclusion is also party correct. People with an "authoritarian" streak can be used to guard a worker's movement.

Look, I said that I can travel to China without getting arrested. That is a fact. I can't say the same about the USA. If they knew I was coming to the states they would also know what I've posted and liked with 90% certainty, and believe me, they don't want someone who's been this deep into "anti-capitalism" as me entering the country. The United States government has more than enough reasons to go full stick instead of carrot when we consider its failing economy and the rebirth of social movements.

I know what I can expect in China, I know that they won't arrest someone because they once posted a picture of a yellow umbrella or liked a John Oliver video. That is too much of a hassle and China is currently liberalising, just like Kuwait and Qatar. Plans about opening the great firewall up have been floated again and again, and authorities are seriously considering doing that.

Plus you're are completely, and I hope I don't sound too much like a stereotypical ML – which I am not despite being on this instance – ignoring the CIA and DHS. Two, as it were, secret federal agencies with powers that go well beyond what the FBI or ATF can do. These have existed for decades. States simply have secret polices.

Not a China fan, but at least I can travel to China without getting arrested.

Authoritarianism means very little, it's such a broad term that doesn't localise the origin of repression. Instead of considering the root of the problem here, which is capitalism/private property, you look at a feature or a phenomenon.