The problem with this attitude is that it is often the fear of crypto-communists that bring them about. Ultimately, if you play out the consequences this kind of suspicion brings about the harms it seeks to prevent.
We saw just this dynamic happen with racism in US politics recently. People start fearing people are secret racists -- and no doubt a few are -- but to suss them out you start demanding more and more extreme rhetorical denouncements of that view. After all, whoever is least willing to distance themselves from communism/racism is most under suspicion.
The problem is that as the demands get more and more absurd at some point people start refusing to comply and they get evicerated as a racist or communist by one side and pushed into the open arms of the actual racists and communists.
So sure, it is true that conditional on someone having lefty views they are more likely to be a communist and conditional on them having right leaning views they are more likely to be a racist. But it is both good manners and good tactics to presume most people are what they say they are until they show otherwise. Yes, go ahead and accuse them of being inclined to implement X bad policy (including ones with bad racial or communist type effects) but throwing around the identity style accusations (you are secretly one of them) isn't a good idea.
"The problem with this attitude is that it is often the fear of crypto-communists that bring them about."
Uhhhhh ... are you saying that communists did not exist until people feared them? Or are you saying that communists were not dangerous until fear of them forced them underground?
Statists are always dangerous. Collectivists are more dangerous. Wannabe dictators are the most dangerous, especially when combined with graspy collectivists.
I find it far easier to believe Communists' actions made them feared, and they reacted by downplaying their dangerous beliefs; than believing they were harmless until they started hiding their worst beliefs.
How does “the fear of crypto-communists that bring about” more crypto-communists? The only way that makes sense is if it incentivizes true communists to lie.
Why would someone who is truly against communism be driven to communist (secretly or otherwise) because of a fear of crypto-communists?
Because what happens is that we start accusing the people with the farthest left views of being crypto-communists. Initially what happens is everyone goes "I'm absolutely not a communist ...I condemn X, Y and Z" but there are always people furthest to the left who get accused of being crypto-communists. Over time you have to jump through more and more hoops to avoid being labeled a crypto-communists. Eventually people stop jumping through hoops to avoid the accusations and when that happens you lose the negative associations of being a communist and you no longer have any pressure not to be an actual communist.
This is literally what happened in the US. It used to be that there was a fair bit of stigma associated with being a communist -- mao and Stalin did lots of bad things. But the right kept using that label to describe more and more people who weren't explicitly communists and eventually the norm against being a communist breaks and no one bats an eye anymore at professors expressing openly stalinist views.
To be clear the 'fear' itself doesn't bring it about but the willingness to use that fear in public debate does. It is the open use of the inference: you believe things that on the farthest edge of the overton window toward communism so you are suspect as a possible crypto-communist -- that causes the problem.
I know quite a few people who openly identify as communists. Anyone in blue america would worry less about introducing their friends to their communist significant other than their republican significant other.
Sure some people think it is bad but I don't think there is any more stigma to it anymore than being a democrat or republican. And the question isn't whether there is 0 stigma but less than otherwise would have been.
For a supposed logician, you make very convoluted arguments.
You knowing a few people is not evidence. Nor are republican significant others relevant.
And you seriously believe that there is “no more stigma being a communist than being a democrat or republican???”
There is absolutely no evidence that fear of crypto-communists (or the open use of inference) in the past actually created more open communists or crypto-communists than there otherwise would have been.
Nor is there evidence that fear of racism created more racists.
We all make arguments based on our experience and priors. I don't see you citing polling. But in the circles I move in someone saying they are a communist is just a shrug attracting more notice than being a vegan -- less actually because it doesn't cause issues at dinner.
While I don't disagree with most of this, downplaying the threat of crypto-fascism at the current moment in U.S. history strikes me as odd. Is the author naive, or is there some other explanation?
Downplaying the Marxist threat for the last 100 years has done more damage to the US than any current downplaying of the minuscule crypto-fascist threat.
I respectfully disagree. There has never been a threat of a full-blown communist takeover in the U.S., just creeping socialist economic policy (which I agree is bad). We currently have crypto-fascists who have already staged an aborted coup and who openly claim that any election they lose was necessarily stolen, giving themselves justification for extra-legal means of trying to maintain or take power.
Our greatest defenses at the moment are simply the age of Trump and the unlikeability of Vance.
Aborted coup my ass! If you're referring to Jan 6 2021, they were unarmed, there are security videos showing doors being opened by security guards, and security guards leading them around on peaceful tours. If you think that's an aborted coup, you are out of your idiotic mind.
Meanwhile, in the previous 2020 summer, the Marxist Burn Loot Murder squad was fomenting armed riots, arson, looting, and actual destruction, with two cities turning sections of their cities over to Marxist control, withdrawing the police and letting the Marxists control the areas, resulting in outright murders by the Marxists and deaths because they wouldn't let ambulances in. Yet you ignore that.
"Full-blown communist takeover"? What does that even mean to you, when you can't acknowledge that Marxists have taken over academia? Are you seriously worried about invasion? You surely aren't worried about armed rebellion, since you don't think the coordinated 2020 summer riots, arson, murder, and destruction were as dangerous as the Jan 6 unarmed rioters being led around on tours by security guards.
Good God. You are too blinded by TDS to make any sense. You can shove your Marxist admiration where the sun don't shine to keep your head company.
Your pathetic excuses for Marxism are the real tell. I never said the Jan 6 riots weren’t violent. I called them riots and said they were unarmed, as compared to the Burn Loot Murder riots which did involve arms brick and bottle throwing, arson, and looting, and which you so conveniently pretend never happened.
Get your own Marxist house in order before you start looking under your bed for Nazis.
An indication of your unseriousness is your pretense that I have defended either Marxism or the various riots that took place across the country, when any honest person can see I've done neither.
It's curious to me that you - and apparently many other people, given how often I see comments like yours - think that style of argument is legitimate or intelligent. It seems to be the style people learned from the rise of talk radio. It certainly identifies those who are highly ideologically motivated by not committed to intellectual integrity with great reliability.
Getting overly worried about anything is what hurts us the most. See McCarthyism, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. If we were a bit more chill we could have saved a fortune in lives and resources.
In this day and age "Crypto" also has an implied other meaning. Though how it does\does not fit in with Marxist social\economic theories is up for grabs.
"When historians cover the Cold War, they routinely discuss cases where the U.S. supported the overthrow of a democratically elected leader who, in hindsight, definitely wasn’t a Communist. Iran’s Mossadegh, Guatemala’s Árbenz, Chile’s Allende, Congo’s Lumumba, and Indonesia’s Sukarno are the textbook examples."
For Allende and Arbenz, it is not true they "definitely" weren't Communist allies. See Kyle Orton on both:
I do think this needs to consider the difference between there being a state-funded international organizing center (the KGB during the Cold War) and when there isn't (as now).
i wonder if the USA helping to get rid of mosadeh (since you say he could have been a communist) was a good idea. i tend to side with secessionism, countries know what is best for themselves not outsiders. so i am leaning towards it was a bad idea.
I think there are two better reasons why Communism isn't considered nearly as despicable as Fascism/Nazism.
1a. Lenin and Stalin took over a secretive backwards country. They had an alphabet which no one could even try to pronounce, and had a complicated grammar. The country's culture was limited to a few dreary authors, a few composers, and ballet. They still had serfs! And Japan sank their entire Navy and beat their Army in 1905, barely 50 years after being forced to come out of their own self-isolation. Nothing Lenin and Stalin did could be any worse than what the Tsars did, and Duranty's lies in the New York Times proved that Stalin was wise and kind. Never mind that Stalin's secrecy made any contrary reports impossible; who are you going to believe, lying dissidents or the New York Times and their Pulitzer Prize-winning reports?
1b. Whereas Hitler took over a nation which had famous composers, authors, all the culture you could want, who used a real alphabet that could at least be pronounced, who had all the tourism anyone could want, open to the world, a free press, worldwide reports ... and Hitler destroyed them, murdered Jews (Stalin? Never!), extorted Britain into betraying Czechoslovaka, then broke his promise about leaving it alone, invaded Poland, conquered France -- France! -- Denmark, and Norway. A beast, destroying European culture, all with the whole world watching and crying and wailing until kindly Uncle Joe took on the world's enemy, single-handedly.
2. Stalin single-handedly beat the Nazis. Never mind that Stalin started WW II with Hitler, dividing Poland in half. Never mind that Stalin was Hitler's ally for the first two years, and whined like a little baby when Britain, fighting all by itself for those same two years, didn't send enough military aid to Stalin once Hitler stabbed him in the back. Never mind that Stalin could not have won without FDR's Lend Lease (almost all Russia's explosives and aviation gas came from the US, plus 300,000 trucks and a whole lot more). Stalin, Steel Man himself, kindly Uncle Joe, single-handedly beat Hitler!
I can't blame so many suckers in the 1920s and 1930s flocking to Communism and despising Nazism. The news the world got from Germany was a lot closer to the truth than what kindly Uncle Joe let out. And after WW II, after kindly Uncle Joe had stomped the world's arch villain, of course they stayed with Communism. And after kindly Uncle Joe's death, all they had was a shoe-pounding peasant and a bunch of geriatric fossils, until brave Mr Gorbachev started them back to The One True Path, until that actor cowboy Reagan pulled the rug out from under them. He couldn't even make good movies; only drooling rednecks could have voted for him.
Tsardom was not a backward country. In 19c, it was an important player in Europe and Prussia and Austria took care to be in its good books. In 1848, Tsardom rescued Habsburg empire by military intervention to suppress Hungarian revolt.
I was comparing Russia and Germany as an explanation of why Hitler got the crap reputation and Stalin became a hero. In that respect, yes, Russia was a backward country.
The problem with this attitude is that it is often the fear of crypto-communists that bring them about. Ultimately, if you play out the consequences this kind of suspicion brings about the harms it seeks to prevent.
We saw just this dynamic happen with racism in US politics recently. People start fearing people are secret racists -- and no doubt a few are -- but to suss them out you start demanding more and more extreme rhetorical denouncements of that view. After all, whoever is least willing to distance themselves from communism/racism is most under suspicion.
The problem is that as the demands get more and more absurd at some point people start refusing to comply and they get evicerated as a racist or communist by one side and pushed into the open arms of the actual racists and communists.
So sure, it is true that conditional on someone having lefty views they are more likely to be a communist and conditional on them having right leaning views they are more likely to be a racist. But it is both good manners and good tactics to presume most people are what they say they are until they show otherwise. Yes, go ahead and accuse them of being inclined to implement X bad policy (including ones with bad racial or communist type effects) but throwing around the identity style accusations (you are secretly one of them) isn't a good idea.
"The problem with this attitude is that it is often the fear of crypto-communists that bring them about."
Uhhhhh ... are you saying that communists did not exist until people feared them? Or are you saying that communists were not dangerous until fear of them forced them underground?
Statists are always dangerous. Collectivists are more dangerous. Wannabe dictators are the most dangerous, especially when combined with graspy collectivists.
I find it far easier to believe Communists' actions made them feared, and they reacted by downplaying their dangerous beliefs; than believing they were harmless until they started hiding their worst beliefs.
I don’t follow the logic of your argument.
How does “the fear of crypto-communists that bring about” more crypto-communists? The only way that makes sense is if it incentivizes true communists to lie.
Why would someone who is truly against communism be driven to communist (secretly or otherwise) because of a fear of crypto-communists?
Because what happens is that we start accusing the people with the farthest left views of being crypto-communists. Initially what happens is everyone goes "I'm absolutely not a communist ...I condemn X, Y and Z" but there are always people furthest to the left who get accused of being crypto-communists. Over time you have to jump through more and more hoops to avoid being labeled a crypto-communists. Eventually people stop jumping through hoops to avoid the accusations and when that happens you lose the negative associations of being a communist and you no longer have any pressure not to be an actual communist.
This is literally what happened in the US. It used to be that there was a fair bit of stigma associated with being a communist -- mao and Stalin did lots of bad things. But the right kept using that label to describe more and more people who weren't explicitly communists and eventually the norm against being a communist breaks and no one bats an eye anymore at professors expressing openly stalinist views.
To be clear the 'fear' itself doesn't bring it about but the willingness to use that fear in public debate does. It is the open use of the inference: you believe things that on the farthest edge of the overton window toward communism so you are suspect as a possible crypto-communist -- that causes the problem.
Not a very convincing argument. The idea that there isn’t significant stigma against being a Communist in the USA is preposterous.
I know quite a few people who openly identify as communists. Anyone in blue america would worry less about introducing their friends to their communist significant other than their republican significant other.
Sure some people think it is bad but I don't think there is any more stigma to it anymore than being a democrat or republican. And the question isn't whether there is 0 stigma but less than otherwise would have been.
For a supposed logician, you make very convoluted arguments.
You knowing a few people is not evidence. Nor are republican significant others relevant.
And you seriously believe that there is “no more stigma being a communist than being a democrat or republican???”
There is absolutely no evidence that fear of crypto-communists (or the open use of inference) in the past actually created more open communists or crypto-communists than there otherwise would have been.
Nor is there evidence that fear of racism created more racists.
We all make arguments based on our experience and priors. I don't see you citing polling. But in the circles I move in someone saying they are a communist is just a shrug attracting more notice than being a vegan -- less actually because it doesn't cause issues at dinner.
Backlash.
Would Deng Xiaoping be considered a crypto-capitalist?
Okay, I’ll admit I did not have “crypto-communist game theory” on my Monday morning Bryan Caplan bingo card.
Imagine worrying about 15% chance crypto-communists while the current leadership is pushing to murder and deport citizens.
Yes, you have plenty of imaginary worries to fret about. I don't know how you survived Obama and Biden.
While I don't disagree with most of this, downplaying the threat of crypto-fascism at the current moment in U.S. history strikes me as odd. Is the author naive, or is there some other explanation?
Downplaying the Marxist threat for the last 100 years has done more damage to the US than any current downplaying of the minuscule crypto-fascist threat.
Chartertopia,
I respectfully disagree. There has never been a threat of a full-blown communist takeover in the U.S., just creeping socialist economic policy (which I agree is bad). We currently have crypto-fascists who have already staged an aborted coup and who openly claim that any election they lose was necessarily stolen, giving themselves justification for extra-legal means of trying to maintain or take power.
Our greatest defenses at the moment are simply the age of Trump and the unlikeability of Vance.
Aborted coup my ass! If you're referring to Jan 6 2021, they were unarmed, there are security videos showing doors being opened by security guards, and security guards leading them around on peaceful tours. If you think that's an aborted coup, you are out of your idiotic mind.
Meanwhile, in the previous 2020 summer, the Marxist Burn Loot Murder squad was fomenting armed riots, arson, looting, and actual destruction, with two cities turning sections of their cities over to Marxist control, withdrawing the police and letting the Marxists control the areas, resulting in outright murders by the Marxists and deaths because they wouldn't let ambulances in. Yet you ignore that.
"Full-blown communist takeover"? What does that even mean to you, when you can't acknowledge that Marxists have taken over academia? Are you seriously worried about invasion? You surely aren't worried about armed rebellion, since you don't think the coordinated 2020 summer riots, arson, murder, and destruction were as dangerous as the Jan 6 unarmed rioters being led around on tours by security guards.
Good God. You are too blinded by TDS to make any sense. You can shove your Marxist admiration where the sun don't shine to keep your head company.
Chartertopia,
You can readily find videos and photos of the January 6 violence if you choose to be honest.
But your use of "TDS" is a reliable indicator that you will not be honest. So I'll not waste any more time on you.
Your pathetic excuses for Marxism are the real tell. I never said the Jan 6 riots weren’t violent. I called them riots and said they were unarmed, as compared to the Burn Loot Murder riots which did involve arms brick and bottle throwing, arson, and looting, and which you so conveniently pretend never happened.
Get your own Marxist house in order before you start looking under your bed for Nazis.
An indication of your unseriousness is your pretense that I have defended either Marxism or the various riots that took place across the country, when any honest person can see I've done neither.
It's curious to me that you - and apparently many other people, given how often I see comments like yours - think that style of argument is legitimate or intelligent. It seems to be the style people learned from the rise of talk radio. It certainly identifies those who are highly ideologically motivated by not committed to intellectual integrity with great reliability.
Getting overly worried about anything is what hurts us the most. See McCarthyism, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. If we were a bit more chill we could have saved a fortune in lives and resources.
This earlier post from yours is relevant:
https://www.econlib.org/archives/2008/11/when_do_you_dis.html
In this day and age "Crypto" also has an implied other meaning. Though how it does\does not fit in with Marxist social\economic theories is up for grabs.
Heuristic 1b.) Be somewhat familiar with the works of popular communist authors and listen for rhetoric obviously inspired by them.
"When historians cover the Cold War, they routinely discuss cases where the U.S. supported the overthrow of a democratically elected leader who, in hindsight, definitely wasn’t a Communist. Iran’s Mossadegh, Guatemala’s Árbenz, Chile’s Allende, Congo’s Lumumba, and Indonesia’s Sukarno are the textbook examples."
For Allende and Arbenz, it is not true they "definitely" weren't Communist allies. See Kyle Orton on both:
https://www.kyleorton.com/p/myths-1954-coup-in-guatemala-united-fruit-cia
https://www.kyleorton.com/p/the-downfall-of-salvador-allende-evidence-sources-fragments
I do think this needs to consider the difference between there being a state-funded international organizing center (the KGB during the Cold War) and when there isn't (as now).
i wonder if the USA helping to get rid of mosadeh (since you say he could have been a communist) was a good idea. i tend to side with secessionism, countries know what is best for themselves not outsiders. so i am leaning towards it was a bad idea.
I think there are two better reasons why Communism isn't considered nearly as despicable as Fascism/Nazism.
1a. Lenin and Stalin took over a secretive backwards country. They had an alphabet which no one could even try to pronounce, and had a complicated grammar. The country's culture was limited to a few dreary authors, a few composers, and ballet. They still had serfs! And Japan sank their entire Navy and beat their Army in 1905, barely 50 years after being forced to come out of their own self-isolation. Nothing Lenin and Stalin did could be any worse than what the Tsars did, and Duranty's lies in the New York Times proved that Stalin was wise and kind. Never mind that Stalin's secrecy made any contrary reports impossible; who are you going to believe, lying dissidents or the New York Times and their Pulitzer Prize-winning reports?
1b. Whereas Hitler took over a nation which had famous composers, authors, all the culture you could want, who used a real alphabet that could at least be pronounced, who had all the tourism anyone could want, open to the world, a free press, worldwide reports ... and Hitler destroyed them, murdered Jews (Stalin? Never!), extorted Britain into betraying Czechoslovaka, then broke his promise about leaving it alone, invaded Poland, conquered France -- France! -- Denmark, and Norway. A beast, destroying European culture, all with the whole world watching and crying and wailing until kindly Uncle Joe took on the world's enemy, single-handedly.
2. Stalin single-handedly beat the Nazis. Never mind that Stalin started WW II with Hitler, dividing Poland in half. Never mind that Stalin was Hitler's ally for the first two years, and whined like a little baby when Britain, fighting all by itself for those same two years, didn't send enough military aid to Stalin once Hitler stabbed him in the back. Never mind that Stalin could not have won without FDR's Lend Lease (almost all Russia's explosives and aviation gas came from the US, plus 300,000 trucks and a whole lot more). Stalin, Steel Man himself, kindly Uncle Joe, single-handedly beat Hitler!
I can't blame so many suckers in the 1920s and 1930s flocking to Communism and despising Nazism. The news the world got from Germany was a lot closer to the truth than what kindly Uncle Joe let out. And after WW II, after kindly Uncle Joe had stomped the world's arch villain, of course they stayed with Communism. And after kindly Uncle Joe's death, all they had was a shoe-pounding peasant and a bunch of geriatric fossils, until brave Mr Gorbachev started them back to The One True Path, until that actor cowboy Reagan pulled the rug out from under them. He couldn't even make good movies; only drooling rednecks could have voted for him.
Bah.
Tsardom was not a backward country. In 19c, it was an important player in Europe and Prussia and Austria took care to be in its good books. In 1848, Tsardom rescued Habsburg empire by military intervention to suppress Hungarian revolt.
I was comparing Russia and Germany as an explanation of why Hitler got the crap reputation and Stalin became a hero. In that respect, yes, Russia was a backward country.