If there's already been discussion on this at length that someone knows of, feel free to link me.
I've been thinking this over because it's one of those recurring talking points that comes up. I may have even talked about it here before in passing, but I don't remember for sure.
But I wanted to talk about the core of how BS it is and the main way I see it get used. Which is that of someone saying "my [relative] lived in [socialist state] and fled it", or they will leave out the first part and just say "people lived in [socialist state] and fled it." And then the implication or outright stated, "Why aren't you taking this as proof that communism bad? Clearly communism bad!"
The primary way I've seen people counter this is pointing out that those who were fleeing were sometimes, well... members of the former exploiting class. Which is true.
But I'm not sure the talking point is even worth entertaining to that degree. Because like:
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As far as I've seen, nobody provides actual hard numbers on people "fleeing communism" relative to other situations where people flee a conflict or just leave a country to go to another one in general. In fact, it's often an anecdotal claim about a single person: "My relative."
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Is there even such a thing as a major conflict/upheaval in a country at scale where it was possible for people to flee and nobody fled? Like big change can be scary and it's always going to be somewhat disruptive of status quo, even if it's an overall benefit going forward. Not to mention major changing of hands of power usually involves some violence.
So this leads me to: what is supposed to be different about communism that makes people "fleeing it" special? I've yet to see any explanation on that and so it makes me think that may be a point to push back on with people. That rather than even talking about the nature of why, first ask how it is supposed to be a special kind of "fleeing".
And also, when it's purely anecdotal, asking why they are supposed to be taken seriously over the opinions of the millions (or more) of people who make up X socialist state. In that regard, it sounds a lot like the "one of my closest friends is [racial minority] trope" in that they are sort of implying the people are monolithic and one or a few can speak for all of them.
Thoughts?
Tbh not everyone who left was a reactionary shithead. Many who did were (and also actual criminals), however, a decent number of East Germans, for example, who chose to immigrate to the West due to thinking they’d be living in a lavish lifestyle tried to go back to the East due to being disillusioned by Capitalism.
I’m on my phone rn so providing a source for this is a bit hard (sorry), but if you look this up on lemmygrad I’m sure you’ll easily find them. I will also update this comment later to provide them.
Think about it. You’re a German citizen, grew up with anti communist indoctrination everywhere, then all of a sudden the Soviets come to your country (thank god they did) and “shortly” (4 years later) after socialism is established [Yes, I know Stalin wanted a neutral, non-aligned Germany]. The whole Jewish-bolshevik conspiracy bs probably played a role.
There’s also the factor that ALL the countries in the Eastern Bloc had been ravaged by WW2, unlike most capitalist countries, didn’t receive the Marshall Plan and had to pay reparations to the Soviet Union (West Germany refused) and didn’t benefit or profit from Imperialism, placing it in a very, very unfair position against the Western Bloc. In the case of the GDR, not only had its territory always been historically poorer than its Western counterpart, but also didn’t have access to the Ruhr valley.
Also, people might accuse you of whataboutism if you say this (who cares lol), but there were also many people who fled — under the same definition — capitalism for the Eastern Bloc, namely western communists, minorities and 3rd world peoples.
Lastly, there was inefficiency, corruption, infiltration and many other issues in the Eastern Bloc, which unfortunately weren’t addressed correctly, but that’s another story that deserves its own book (blackshirts and reds and socialism betrayed explain these pretty well imo)