Communists and their sympathizers are not the best advocates of democracy and free speech

I am not going to conduct an in-depth analysis of Communism in this post. This is off the top of my mind.

Name me a Communist country which is a democracy, or a former Communist country which was a democracy.

The answer is there is no such Communist country.

When you tell this to Communists or their sympathisers (most of whom live in market-friendly democracies), they will tell you that Stalinism was not “real” Communism, or that Maoism was not “real Communism”, or that the USSR was (or China is) “sort of” a democracy, or some such other nonsense.

Or they will talk about how modern multiparty democracy isn’t actually democracy because of the control of MNCs.

The truth is that there has never been a semblance of democracy in Communist countries. There has also been no freedom of expression. Communist governments have been the most repressive, brutal and most opaque governments in the world. Many Communist policies (such as collectivization of land) have been dismal failures.

There is also no alternative form of Communism which can succeed today. The Communists don’t have a political philosophy or method which can compete with the revolutionary nature of the market economy.

Those holding on to Communism in 2018 are deluded. Those who seek to fight right-wing fascist regimes by invoking Marx and Lenin and free speech in the same breath, are deluded.

Those who still admire Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot are not humanists or democrats. Either that, or they have no clue what it is to live under Communist rule, because they live in multiparty democracies, however flawed.

We really need advocates of democracy, secularism and free speech in India, and the world today, which are going through a right-wing populist wave. But the Communists and their sympathizers living in free or semi-free societies are not the people worth admiring.

Where are the old-school liberals?