fancy some communism?

try food rations for everyone. try having one, at the very maximum two brands of every product imaginable. try being detained for being unemployed. try waking up in the middle of the night to police officers arresting you for crimes you didn't even commit.

try having a single television channel that airs only propaganda or programs imbued with cloaked propaganda. try show trials that result in the murder of thousands of innocent people. try gulags and labour camps effectively killing millions of - again, innocent - people.

try having your life's work and your possessions confiscated because you're considered a threat to the state based on your heritage or status. try state-controlled arts and culture where most artists are banned and silenced, unable to publish or perform.

try not getting access to barely anything from the west. try being detained for years as a political prisoner for crimes you - yet again - didn't do. try abortion committees and illegal abortion. try literal state-sanctioned torture.

this is just a short and very incomplete summary of what communism entailed in Hungary - a minuscule model state under the Soviet Union, where it was a million times worse.

these things weren't isolated. this was the everyday norm.

fancy some communism?
i don't think so.

addendum: the gulag and show trial numbers are of course global.

i might put some effort into compiling a 'communism reader', that is, shorter but well written sources about what this thread touched upon, if there's interest.

the lack of education and awareness is terrifying.