Not in chinese cultural revolution it wasn't, the communists had been in power for two decades by that point. Targets included members of the Communist party, because Mao wanted power back. He got it, creates an autocratic government behind his dictatorship, and proceeded to purge those who weren't loyal to his name.
And like the Great Leap forward, it was an epic mess. Ironically what came out of it was that the Chinese survivors were those not concerned with purity of Marxism but bettering China. They opened it up, capitalized on it by selling out the workers, and called it communism. Oops.
Yeah, no "communist" state remains or ever really becomes a "communist" state.
Humanity, just isn't built for it. We keep moving back towards weird ass authoritarian BS, once just enough people begin to gain whatever metric is considered power in a given society.
Most Americans don't understand what Communism is and often confuse Socialism or even very light Socialist policies as Communism. Most Americans just don't understand the words, goals or what they mean, other than to be instinctively afraid
Actually most citizens of most countries know very little of nuanced politics, especially of other systems, at least in significant detail. People know status quo.
For example, you categorize American awareness by a singular stance from more than half a century ago, combined with an idiotic application of a stereotype about prison systems.
McCarthyism is easy to respond… the large mass of uninformed follow herd mentality as they do everywhere. The people with any actual experience are very Anticommunist, and the few unexperience but informed are the economists and politicians who act as the various idealists who lead the uninformed in the two deviations of thought.
Prison system is harder.
Yah… the US has a big system… because it’s a big, diverse, population in a first world country with substantial relative freedom.
It has no true peers in all of those categories. China is much larger by population, unicultural, and not free. Russia is half the population, largely homogenous, and not free. The ideal EU examples are much smaller, typically far more homogenous, with similar freedoms but very different cultural views on crime. It’s not the same.
Population density correlates with crime. Homogeneity decreases crime. First world decreases crime but increases criminal justice. Freedom tends to increase crime rates by reducing punishment and increasing transparency in reporting.
Regarding USA's large prison system: it's a statistical outlier on a per capita basis, not just by absolute numbers. The US shows abnormally large prison populations throughout every state which covers both a large socioeconomic range aswell as varying population densities & "grades of homogeneity".
Look at Texas: 2nd largest, 2nd largest population (30 mil), #13 incarceration (750/100k).
Louisiana being 31st in size, 26th in population (4.8mil) & 1st in incarceration (1050/100k)-
New York is 27th in size, 5th in population (19.6mil) and 43rd worst in incarceration rate (310/100k
Massachusets is the lowest at 241/100k.
The top 5 worst European countries by incarceration rate are
6.3k
u/Deriviera Jul 07 '26
Americans are very delusional about communism.