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Yasha Levine's avatar

right on cue, bill maher has a communism rant for us:

https://twitter.com/billmaher/status/1621741159201800192

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scott's avatar

A museum exhibit on child labor would be a great place to start. Keep up the good work.

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jerometuckner's avatar

I’d love to help with that victims of capitalism rally

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Yasha Levine's avatar

yeah that would be great.

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jerometuckner's avatar

I meant to say tally, lol, but rally would be cool as well

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LMD's avatar

This museum/foundation seems to have been brought up by so many people I'd be surprised if someone hasn't already tried one, or if there's a counterpart in Beijing somewhere.

I hadn't heard anything about this stupid vote so thanks for sharing. Can't say I'd identify any government run entity as being socialism but it goes to show you the GOP is back on its old slash all government services bent again.

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Elsie H.'s avatar

Vietnam and North Korea both have museums devoted to war crimes committed by the United States. (I’m _slightly_ more inclined to trust Vietnam than North Korea, but my understanding is we weren’t _great_ in the Korean War, either.)

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Yasha Levine's avatar

yeah i know it comes up as a meme sometimes. lol. rofl. basically.

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norbert hornstein's avatar

Great idea on victims of capitalism museum. Just the predatations of the British Empire should get you into the high 9 figures. If we then throw in the adventures in the cleansing of the Americas, the famines in Ireland and India, the adventures in the middle east who knows how high we might go. So great idea. Let us know if this gets off the ground.

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Joshua Jamesy's avatar

If fully understood by willing minds this could be amazing.

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Todd's avatar

>chuckle!<

The planets must be in alignment: Moss Robeson's started up a "Victims of Communism" newsletter about "the infamous, but under-researched Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in the United States"

https://vocinfo.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

(He's even recommending you, Yasha! An excellent endorsement!)

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Rhyd Wildermuth's avatar

My favorite thing about the Victims of Communism group are the surveys the commission with results that increasingly become panicked alarms about how the "kids these days" aren't adequately vaccinated against socialism: https://victimsofcommunism.org/annual-poll/2019-annual-poll/

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Yasha Levine's avatar

I’m on their mailing list and they they always send out great stuff. Like just today I got an invite to the “Victims of Communism International Cultural & Food Fair.” Yum!

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dmitry's avatar

I would also like to contribute to this project in any way thats helpful. I think its a great idea.

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Yasha Levine's avatar

thanks!

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Axel Ztangi's avatar

See the https://www.museumofcapitalism.org/about

It was established in Oakland for a few months about five years ago.

Here's my review of it.

https://www.ztangi.org/should-capitalism-be-put-in-a-museum/

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Yasha Levine's avatar

Interesting. Will have to check it out. Does it have academic kind of approach to it?

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Axel Ztangi's avatar

Hmm? The two curators who pulled it off are sophisticated rebels. I believe they do not have secure academic positions. Hardly anyone their age does these days. Those who contributed material, certainly were mainly dissident artists. I believe that they had a recent show on the East Coast focusing on rental exploitation.

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Yasha Levine's avatar

Sounds great.

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Todd's avatar

"I’m serious about this."

It's been done:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Livre_noir_du_capitalisme

The fact that nobody else here's mentioned it suggests the impact it's had. Besides, what's the point of playing dueling body counts, especially when everyone who is working or has worked for a business is already a victim of capitalism by exploitation for profit? Another's death is easy to shrug off; it's harder for people to ignore how they're getting taken so the rich can get richer.

Why not try taking what you know now eg the pistachio stuff and the Internet and showing how those threads are related right now to people getting screwed over by business owners so the latter can get their profits?

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Yasha Levine's avatar

book looks pretty tame from what i can tell. also no mention of anything beyond human suffering? industrial capitalism has killed much more than just people. it’s killing off all life on earth.

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Todd's avatar

It's just a numbers book, like The Black Book of Communism it's replying to: small wonder it deals with little else.

Seriously though, you were considering doing the same thing, no? Sticking numbers in people's faces and expecting . . . what exactly?

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Yasha Levine's avatar

For them to clap, I guess.

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Todd's avatar

Well, you do live in California . . . .

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Elsie H.'s avatar

The Wikipedia article does not suggest that this book was ever published in English (the language of the book to which it was responding), and never being published in English probably played a role in the book’s lack of enduring impact in the Anglophone world…

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Todd's avatar

I found out about the book through a fairly internationally-oriented list-serve run by Left Business Observer when it first came out. It makes sense to me such information exchanges must have only multiplied on the left since then. And yet, crickets . . . .

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Feb 6, 2023
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Frederick Vondrasek's avatar

It's not a waste of time if you are one of the many Dems who voted for it, though. It's a continuing gesture in your efforts to stomp anything that could be remotely identified as "left" in your party.

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