[ARCHIVED] Shit Liberals Say

Concession Blacklist and Tarrifs [sic] against Germany - 1935

This is very misleading, and I wasted a couple dozen minutes of my time trying to research it. This doesn’t refer to a unique law designed to limit trade with the Third Reich specifically, but rather with all of the belligerent powers in Europe, including (until 1939) Britain and France. They didn’t enact this on grounds of antifascism either, but to avoid involvement in another major war.

The Neutrality Act was basically a failure. Not only did corporations like Chase and Ford repeatedly bypass it with great success, but, as Gaetano Salvemini noted:

As if Mussolini's mill needed more water to work it, the isolationist Congress of the United States passed a “Neutrality Act” (August 23-24) which made it mandatory for the President until February 29, 1936, in case of war between foreign countries, to place an embargo on the export of arms and munitions to all belligerents without discrimination. It was obvious that the Act could not affect Italy, which manufactured guns and shells but had to import cotton for explosives, steel, and copper for military equipment, coal and oil for her navy. Putting an embargo on arms alone meant leaving Italy undisturbed.

While this passage is referring to Fascist Italy, it applies to the Third Reich as well. Now, it may be true that American–German trade (or at least the legal kind) fell by 50% from 1929 to 1939, but that had more to do with the Great Depression than moral objections (which few U.S. businesses had) to the German Reich; an overall decrease in trade was already probable, with some important exceptions:

And it is important to consider the size of [Yankee] investments in [Fascist] Germany at the time of Pearl Harbor. These amounted to an estimated total of $475 million. Standard Oil of New Jersey had $120 million invested there; General Motors had $35 million; ITT had $30 million; and Ford had $17.5 million.

[…]

Why did even the loyal figures of the [Yankee] government allow these transactions to continue after Pearl Harbor? A logical deduction would be that not to have done so would have involved public disclosure: the procedure of legally disconnecting these alliances under the antitrust laws would have resulted in a public scandal that would have drastically affected public morale, caused widespread strikes, and perhaps provoked mutinies in the armed services. Moreover, as some corporate executives were never tired of reminding the government, their trial and imprisonment would have made it impossible for the corporate boards to help the [Yankee] war effort. Therefore, the government was powerless to intervene.

(Emphasis added.)

Thus the Neutrality Act’s effects must have been marginal at best.

Cash and Carry - 1939

Yes, the White House created a loophole in its Neutrality Act in order to provide France and the United Kingdom with some (sorely needed) rearmament. That is true. The complete loss of France and the United Kingdom, however, would have placed them under unstable régimes under attack from partisans, at serious risk for eventual liberation by the U.S.S.R., and finally transformed from anticommunist régimes into people’s republics, as the pattern became in most of Eastern Europe:

Britain and France did not appease Germany because they expected to be defeated by the Wehrmacht, but because, in the words of France’s right-wing Prime Minister Daladier, another European war would mean the ‘utter destruction of European civilization’, creating a vacuum that could only be filled by ‘Cossack and Mongol hordes’ and their ‘culture’ of Soviet Communism.

So the suddenly increased trading with France and the U.K. had more to do with reinforcing Western capital and less to do with antifascism. Nothing surprising here.

Lend Least Act - 1941

See here.

German Soviet Credit Agreement - 1939
Ribbenntrop [sic] Pact - 1939
German Soviet Commercial Agreement - 1940

I have already replied to all of these here.

What I find most frustrating about this meme, though, is that it leaves a lot unsaid. The U.S. press’s reactions in 1933, the tolerance for the Fascists at Madison Square, the tolerance for them in Hollywood, the benevolent treatment of Fascist POWs, the CIA’s recruitment of Axis personnel and their collaborators? All omitted. Most obviously, the massive anticommunist invasion of the U.S.S.R. is omitted, as if it were unimportant.

While it would be an exaggeration to say that Imperial America and the Third Reich were ever ‘best buds’, they were not natural born enemies either, which is why Western forces invaded the R.S.F.S.R. almost immediately but left both Fascist Italy and the Third Reich in peace as they safely accumulated power in the 1930s—in many cases with the help of U.S. capitalists.

Judging by how so many anticommunist dissidents ignorantly equate communism with fascism, they would probably seriously agree that their experiences were comparable to the lives of the prisoners at (say) Auschwitz too, but even Shoah survivors—with some exceptions of course—do not have advanced knowledge of the atrocity, which is partly why their opponents often have a surprisingly easy time frustrating them (as seen in the motion picture Denial). Now certainly, we don’t have to ‘just get over’ our traumatic experiences, but if we must insist on arguing with people over serious and complex matters, we could all take a lesson from this, surely.

As for the denial that U.S. neoimperialism had anything to do with this, that is easily falsifiable. We know, for example, that in the ’00s alone the U.S. ruling class funded opposition groups in the BRV, imposed an arms embargo on it, decertified it for failing to comply effectively with the ‘war on drugs’, listed it for human trafficking, and blocked multilateral loans to it through the IMF and World Bank. In 2011, the U.S. State Department imposed sanctions on the BRV’s state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) for trading with Iran, and perhaps most importantly, in 2014 the U.S. ruling class imposed sanctions specifically on the BRV’s oil industry and its bank.

So perhaps focussing on the 2017 sanctions is not the best strategy for anticommunism apologists to apply here.

If you love the Venezuelan regime so much then fucking get your ass here to live in this misery.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that travel is absurdly cheap and accessible: so what? Why should travelling there be such a horrible idea? While I would prefer that we try to improve the conditions where we live first, there is nothing ignoble or ‘stupid’ about travelling to a besieged victim of neoimperialism, such as Afghanistan or the Syrian Arab Republic, and offering whatever assistance that you can to the locals. Would it be easy and perfectly safe? Hell no. But if you value solidarity and self‐sacrifice, it doesn’t have to be a horrible thing at all. Personally, I would have traded all of the time that I wasted on Twitter for time spent contributing to a Venezulean commune. My disability would have limited the work that I could do, but at least that way I would know for sure that I did something and helped somebody.

People (especially on Twitter) tend to have a binary-absolute way of thinking. So I'm stating this for my new followers, just in case: I am Venezuelan, hence I'm against communism and I don't believe in a socialist ideology. I'm against all dictatorships and alt-right scum...

Ordinary people can and often do either support the government’s politics or simply remain neutral towards them, no matter the government. Even if I were an anticommunist again (and I am thankful that I’m not), I wouldn’t endorse this line of thinking: that would be ignoring a serious problem. Governments with opposition from more than 99% of the population don’t stay in power for years.

You'll say fascism is terrible (duh!) and in the same breath say communism is paradise.

Anticommunism is terrible for the lower classes, yes, but nobody (other than anticommunists) claimed that communism is ‘paradise’. How could it be, when it’s trying to survive in a capitalist world?

There hasn't been one coup attempt by the US in this country...

There's no US intervention here. Don't you get it? The sanctions are for the government.

We don't care about sanctions because they only affect the corrupt people in government who have been stealing this country's money for decades

If you're not Venezuelan or know Venezuelan people and their situation, just shut the fuck up about Venezuela.

No comments necessary here.