blobjim [he/him]

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Joined 6 years ago
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Cake day: July 29th, 2020

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  • The GDR still had tons of reactionaries that the communists had to live with.

    Some top Google search results. Various amounts of liberalism and I’m not sure how much to trust that these articles are not trying to use a negative light, but they seem okay:

    https://newlinesmag.com/essays/african-experiences-in-east-germany-are-erased-but-not-forgotten/

    Pugach has illustrated how these romantic entanglements were often at the root of anti-Black violence toward African men in social situations. More surprising was the social ostracization of East German women romantically involved with African men. These women were often portrayed as loose and immoral.

    The East German state’s behavior contrasts with the West German treatment of mixed-race children, many of whom were sent to the U.S. to find homes with Black families or were adopted out to white German families rather than being allowed to remain with their white West German mothers.

    Despite the reports of racism against African students and workers, East Germany maintained its facade of anti-racism until the East German state dissolved, leading to the reunification of Germany by 1991. However, in the two years during which the status of East Germany was in flux, there was an explosion of racist violence against foreigners, particularly former contract workers from Africa and Southeast Asia.

    I think calling it a “facade” is their snobby liberal propaganda showing itself, but at least the rest of it seems meaningful.

    The most infamous example of this violence is the attack on the housing for contract workers and refugees in Hoyerswerda. On Sept. 17, 1991, groups of neo-Nazis began to throw bricks, Molotov cocktails and other objects at the residential center. Over 200 foreign workers and their families were trapped in the residential tower as they were called racial slurs, their homes were vandalized and the center was set ablaze. Worse, the local police stood aside and watched the destruction occur. Racist chants of “Auslaender raus!” (“Foreigners out!”) and “Germany for Germans” rang out in the streets for the seven days of the riot.

    I think communists in Germany were dealt a horrible hand in having to lead a society full of these kinds of people. Maybe more they could have done, but idk. 😢

    https://migrantknowledge.org/2022/08/05/violence-against-migrants-in-the-gdr/


  • What a NEEEEERRRRRRRRRRD.

    But the “consultative democracy” stuff is really good to bring up. There really should be a lot more “propaganda” publicizing the election systems in socialist countries, showing how much more vibrant political participation is in so many non-Western countries.

    Even just that little series of clips of people voting in China would break a bunch of Americans’ brains.

    Just compare the process of putting a ballot in a box next to a bunch of other people in a room to elections in the US where vote-rigging electronic voting machines and other nonsense turn the whole process into a joke. I like doing mail-in voting in Seattle but it is definitely so far removed from anything I’d call democracy. The place where they count ballots has camera feeds on it and stuff but that doesn’t really matter, it’s completely divorced from actual transparency just because of how it’s all “taken care of” for us (yes you can become an elections worker).

    Elections that have more than a hundred voters are absurd.