Once when I worked in retail a customer called me comrade, to be fair, it was because I fumbled over my words and accidentally told them "have a wonderful rest of our day"
Ah, yes, German genders everything doesn't it. I did not know it was military. The word exists in Dutch as kameraad, which is just friend. It's mostly used with with children, for example as speelkameraad. The friend you play games with.
By the political right? Comrad and other variations thereof is in many countries something used by socialists/communists, to show that everyone is on the same level whether they be simple worker or party leader. It's very similar as post revolution France where everyone was addressed as citoyen (citizen) because they had done away with the serfs and nobles from the times that came before.
Nah man if I were called "citizen" I would feel creeped out, feels like something you hear the authortarian police say in some sci-fi dystopia when you accidentally drop a can on the floor.
The combine police guys in the game Half Life 2 say it to the humans they have enslaved, the NPCs are refered to in-game as "citizens".
Communism is to socialism like libertarianism is to capitalism. Beautiful, perfect society in theory, but, ya know, human nature and all that.
Let's eschew the things that have never worked and are the wet dream of political nerds who wanna recreate society from the ground up... and just all be like the Scandinavians who have it all pretty much figured out. Democratic Socialism FTW.
This is the masterpiece of surface level communism slander. I mean I think you could've fit in a few more canned arguments but this is a pretty solid 9/10
This is too big of a discussion for us to have here on reddit, and your thought process seems to show you have a lot of misconceptions and anti-communist propaganda baked into your baseline thinking.
I am very accepting of being critical of communism, but I think you should learn what marxists-leninist actually believe in and think like before approaching these kinds of conversations.
If you're interested I can tell you some resources that explain our POV, at the very least your arguments against communism will be a lot stronger.
The things you are "invoking" (sorry for the previous mistake, I'm not a native english speaker) are very classic and tired anti communist points, on which many videos/books etc have been written going in depth on how at the very least, things are much more nuanced than how you present them.
Even you have said it before, communism is "utopian". If it's such a beautiful idea with a lot of theoritical backing to it, isn't it worth at least exploring and understanding the foundations of? Btw I'm saying this as a former "Social Democracy" advocate, I was a big EU shill for a while
I was a political science major. I'm not unfamiliar with the arguments for communism. It's also weak sauce to essentially say "you'd agree with me if you were better informed."
I find them to be intellectual naval gazing at best, ignoring reality at worst. Such arguments don't apply to the real world in any way that can actual work.
It isn't a tired talking point, it's literal reality. Every attempt at a communist government has devolved into authoritarianism. Plenty of social democracies are actively flourishing. A perfect libertarian government is also utopian. It also ain't ever gonna happen, and horrible shit does when people try.
You get this. If you could create a communist government from scratch and make it work, yes, the ideal communist government might be even better than the ideal social democracy. But you don't get to do that.
To be shilling for communism in 2026 is to have wildly missed where the fight is, and where progress can actually happen.
TBH you're actively hurting any chance at real progress by advocating communism and scoffing at social democracies.
And you really just completely ignored the (not talking point... actual point) of communism never working and social democracies CURRENTLY WORKING.
I didn't at any point say "you'd agree with me if you were better informed", and that's not what I meant.
I said I'm very fine with being critical of communism, but you need to have a better understanding of it, if your main arguments against communism fall into the very surface level typical arguments that any apolitical person would raise up then I think you haven't really engaged with the ideology.
But fine, if you're a political science major and a social democrat I'm interested in your perspective on a few things.
How do you battle imperialism? How do exploited countries build social democracies with government intervention if their resources and wealth are consistently funneled away to the imperial core? Do you believe a world where every country is a social democracy would be a better world?
I believe any capitalistic country can evolve into a social democracy. We've seen it happen.
You still ignore the reality-based criticism that it has never worked, whereas, what I'm advocating for, is actively working.
I'm not engaging with you if you keep ignoring the fundamental issue I'm bringing up repeatedly, because not doing so is the playbook of a bad faith actor.
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u/General-Sloth Aug 28 '26
Thats why I adress everyone with "Comrade". Gender neutral, 100% inclusive and leaves a confused yet memorable impression.