This is a response to a YouTube Video from the Casual Historian called Arguing Like a Communist, which presents an alleged 'absurdity" of Nazis doing the same thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtaAwaSED0w
The problem is it's built on several strawmen.
His argument is that "you can't say a regime wasn't a real follower of an ideology just because it didn't achieve the goals of that ideology". And at face value that seems like a valid argument. But there are several problems.
Number 1, Nazism and Italian Fascism didn't "fail" they were defeated militarily. And most people who despise their ideology don't argue they did or would have failed, quite the contrary they are terrified they would have succeeded if they were left alone which is why so many progressives contradict their usual anti-war stance on that particular war. They are opposed because what their stated goal was is considered morally repugnant. Or at the very least their methods are inherently immoral whether they would "work" or not.
With Communism on the other hand many people, even people who tend to vote Republican, are willing to say that in theory the intended end result of Communism is nice, they just don't think it's at all realistically possible. Though I suspect many of those people aren't as okay with it as they say they are, they are attached to Meritocracy the same way the Pharisees were.
But the real reason it's not credible to claim the Regimes of Mussolini and Hitler are not valid implementations of Fascist and Nazi ideology is because Mussolini and Hitler were the authors of those ideologies, and anyone else who could be considered a co-author was also part of the regime. You could argue they descended from earlier 19th and even late 18th century philosophies, but they are still ultimately distinct, (and plenty of those possible ancestors are considered valid philosophies today in-spite of their association with Fascism and Nazism). So it's absurd to suggest they were not true believers or merely following a corrupted form.
Karl Marx died while Lenin was still a child and the two did not speak the same language. And even then Marx was not the actual birth of Socialist or Communist Ideas and many contemporary with him disagreed with his "dictatorship of the proletariat" idea. Forms of those ideologies go back centuries which I've talked about before and will talk about more.
Meanwhile so many people saying Socialism always fails and dismissing the "excuses" Socialists make do make excuses for the problems of Capitalism, trying to call it "Crony Capitalism" as if Cronyism isn't an innate part of Capitalism. Including myself back when I was still a conservative on this very blog making a post claiming America isn't truly Capitalist.
But let's return to the issue of being defeated militarily not being an ideology failing. There are plenty of Anarchist/Libertarian Communist Experiments in history that were doing well before a militarily stronger force shut them down. I created this YouTube Playlist for videos discussing them, feel free to suggest more if you come across any. But those aren't Marxists.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4CWxmx4wephLu1aaSzTfy78-3kS_H6vb
Of "Communist" countries said to not be true Communism the most absurd one to me is China. China isn't just failing to achieve the stated goal of Communism/Socialism, it is 100% absurd to me to allege they are even trying, at all. In fact I think they are the MOST Capitalist nation on earth.
Just because some attempts at Socialism fail doesn't mean the entire idea is bad. If you do truly agree the goal of Communism is a good one, then in my opinion the moral thing to do is to keep trying till we succeed and not simply give up.
Now that said, with both the USSR and Kastro's Cuba there are plenty of arguments online that they haven't "failed" the way many allege. Now you're not gonna convince me Stalin wasn't a brutal dictator, but frankly that's irrelevant to if the Economic policy he claimed to espouse was good or not. Here is one video I like that presents some context for the supposed "failure" of the USSR.
https://youtu.be/iABuriFcKTM
But it's mainly Cuba that the Capitalist Media is definitely lying about. The massive Poverty Cuba has is because of the Embargo not because of it's Socialism. But in-spite of Cuba's problems the poorest in the country are much better off then they were under Batista, many places have local Hospitals they didn't have before. YouTuber azureScapegoat has done a number of videos on Cuba, and other subjects.
I'll leave you now with this Peter Coffin video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZnHwc6TfB0
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