(09-25-2022, 11:43 AM)Ronster Wrote:

(09-25-2022, 09:45 AM)mikesez Wrote: Fascism has been a bit more dangerous in history.  In both Germany and Italy, most people voted against the fascists, but, because the fascists were unified and the opposition was not, the fascists were the largest party and were able to gain control of government even though they didn't have a majority.  But communists have never won this way.  Communists have only ever won with violence and ignoring elections.

That’s not true, Venezuela and other South American countries voted for it initially. But once you vote for it , they make sure they never lose another election

Venezuela is hard to explain.  Chavez in 1998 ran on ending corruption, and the 1999 constitution he passed is not, on its face, a communist document.   It has a guarantee of health care but nothing about economic equality or things like that.  Chavez inherited a country that was already very socialist, with so much of the economic output controlled by the federal government.  Chavez's big chance to really lock in power and destroy Venezuela's democracy and economy came in the oil strike of 2002.  He fired all the strikers and replaced them with party loyalists.  Prior to that moment, the government ownership of the economy was politically neutral.  After that moment, it became a tighter source of patronage than anything Venezuela had seen before.  Anyone who has a government job (which is a large proportion of Venezuelans) is fired if they are ever found to vote for or support the opposition.  It's obvious once you get to Maduro that Venezuelans have lost their right to meaningfully vote, but I would argue the end actually came in 2002.

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