May Day in the Ukraine before the American-fomented Maidan coup d’état… may such days return… and soon!
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The greatest achievement of socialism was in resisting morose, nihilistic, and sick western “culture”. Like all political systems formed on an ideological and not a pragmatic basis, Communism had flaws. For example, Liberalism shares many of the same flaws as Communism, in spite of the fact that it sets itself against Communism. Both share an unhealthy fanaticism that’s difficult to oppose successfully. However, on this International Workers Day, I’d like to celebrate the most important achievement of socialism and communism. This achievement happened as much by accident as by design.
Communist and socialist countries were and are generally opposed to the import of American hegemonic pop “culture”. American and broader Western culture in the 20th century became increasingly anti-Christian, anti-family, anti-male, ahistorical, and anti-traditional. Interestingly, in spite of the futurism and atheism implicit in Communism, Communist societies ended up opposing many of the same things that conservatives despise in Western “culture”. For most people living in former communist states, the legacy of former political systems doesn’t manifest itself in people fondly recalling chapters of Das Kapital nor is it about nostalgia over speeches made by Erich Honecker. People tend to look to this era and remember the music of The Aleksandrov Choir, films like Офицеры (Officers), and sweet cartoons like Ну, погоди! (Nu, Pogodi!: Just You Wait!).
Throughout the communist era, particularly in Warsaw Pact countries and in Yugoslavia, there was a general cultural consistency where film, music, and television content was wholesome, historically informed, patriotic, and comforting. Such societies were generous in funding classical orchestras. Performances of both traditional folk, modern, and classical music remained popular and recordings were widely and inexpensively available. Contrast this with the West that at the same time began to increasingly devalue classical music. Likewise, in the West, films became increasingly obscene. By the 1990s, the decade that communism ended in Europe and much of Eurasia, Western pop music, film, and television glorified violence, had a hatred of Christianity, and disseminated sectarianism, whoring, anarchism, and general sickness.
Whilst many think that Liberalism is less left-wing than Communism is, in terms of total cultural output, Communist states produced a culture that was monumentally more conservative than that of the Liberal West. President Putin’s popularity in Russia demonstrated that one could maintain a normal culture and a happy citizenry through maintaining a moderate conservative government. This is exactly what Russia became in the Putin era. Russia still has much work to do to purge itself from garish Western influences, but Russia is broadly heading in the right direction in this respect. In the 1920s and 1930s, many Christians fled the USSR due to religious persecution. However, what has become of the West where many fled to? It now exorcises Christian symbols from the public sphere and both the mainstream and counterculture excoriate Christian values.
Christianity has returned to Russia and the communitarian values of Communism rebounded after the anarchic 1990s.Other post-communist states haven’t been so lucky. A deluge of Western propaganda disguised as “culture” totally swamped many countries in Europe. Indeed, many adopted vulgar American “culture” as a way to enhance their anti-Russian credentials, as such states wrongly equated the Germanic philosophy of Communism with the long history of Russia, which for most of its existence was a conservative Orthodox country, as it’s once again today. For decades, Communism helped these countries resist the Western “cultural” onslaught. In most countries, nothing has replaced this rampart. Russia is an exception that proves the rule. Russia’s rich history and restored superpower status made this exceptional circumstance possible. On this International Workers Day, I long for a time when much of the world that has now gone “West” used to have protection from the social rot of Western Europe and America. In these countries, something much worse has replaced traditional Leninist-Marxism… Cultural Marxism. Many have regrets about this development, but many more remain oblivious. After all, the result of Cultural Marxism is neurosis and oblivion. After all, that’s the point… to conquer and numb simultaneously.
1 May 2017
Adam Garrie
The Duran
http://theduran.com/a-conservative-take-on-international-workers-day/
Editor:
American “conservatism” is Liberalism in ten-league boots. It’s Liberal to the core, with no conservatism in it at all. One need only look at phonies like Sean Hannity and Rod Dreher to realise this. I’m a leftie, and I’m more socially conservative than many “conservatives”. The most successful societies merge a communitarian social stance with a love of the traditions of the people and a love of their creativity. The moneygrubbing American “conservatives” have none of that in their makeup; ergo, they’re not conservative at all… they’re nothing but apologists for the One Percent and their Affluent Effluent lackeys. Money is their god… what did Christ say about those who try to serve two masters? It does comment on their “religiosity”, doesn’t it?
BMD
Voices from Russia 
20 October 2017. What “Conservatism” Brings in Its Wake… Why No Decent Person Can Espouse It
Tags: Affluent Effluent, american conservatism, Conservatism, extreme right, Far-right politics, Hypocrisy, oligarchs, political commentary, politics, Radical Right, rich, rightwing, rightwing politics, United States, USA
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American Conservatism is one of the more objectively evil and positively destructive ideologies on offer. Destruction hangs like a pall all over the Northeast. The Albany region is the last gasp of the prosperity that “trickles out” from the Boswash Corridor. To the west of us, starting with Amsterdam, it looks like a war took place. A war DID take place. It was a war of the rich against the rest of us. To maximise their personal gain, they closed down vibrant industries and killed numberless communities and brought pain and beggary into millions of homes. They moved industries to compliant Third World countries and to former slaver Southern states in the USA, where they run actual sweatshops. They don’t invest in much of the USA… for that’d mean that they’d have to pay real wages and follow real regulations (even with a weakened regimen, most American regulations aren’t the Oligarch’s Bonanza Paradise of Indonesia, Mexico, and the Cayman Islands or of the neo-Confederate Kleptocracies of Texas and South Carolina).
These people feed upon the people’s misery. They don’t give a good goddamn for their fellow-man. The Republicans amongst them congratulate themselves on their “Pro-Life” stance. Isn’t that satanic and diabolic? They bloat fat on profits earned by sweating American prisoners paid less than Chinese coolie wages (the USA is the world leader in imprisonment), but they bleat about “saving babies”… whilst smiling at drone attacks, proxy wars, the Gitmo Gulag, the DHS Gestapo, and violence from racist police (not all cops are racists… but the rightwing coddles the racists amongst them). None dare call it duplicitous and malevolent…
However, that war isn’t over yet… I repeat… a spectre DOES haunt Mar-a-Lago. Reality WILL take its due.
BMD