But as communism is purely related to socialism historically and philosophically and has been for years, they’d be wrong.

To your examples, comparisons can be drawn between democracies and feudalism as well. Such still doesn’t make communism not socialist, or Nazism, an anti-communist ideology, communist.

There are lots of people who say the communists aren’t real socialists, either.

But both the Nazis and the Soviets at least paid lip service to socialism. Not just in adopting the name but also in using the power of government to force socialist-like policies on the people: abolition of income not earned by work; confiscation or nationalization of industries and private property, to varying degrees; severe penalties (including death) for making too much money; and so on. They also both consolidated power into a strong centralized government that tried to run the country in a top-down fashion, exercising state control over even the small details of the people’s everyday lives.

I’ll admit, they did have some differences: for example, the Germans set up efficient, factory-like camps for mass murder while the Soviets found it easier to subdue ethnic groups by inducing famine (which killed far more people than the gas chambers did). The Soviet camp system was set up to house a slave-labor population instead of being death camps. Also, the Nazis contemptuously discarded the concept of democracy whereas the Soviets (for some reason) thought it was important to pretend to be democratic even though they weren’t. And the Nazis at least had enough understanding of economics to harness the power of business and turn it to State use, whereas the Soviets were less pragmatic and destroyed their businesses instead.

But look at all they had in common: a single-party state with little or no tolerance for dissent even on minute points of doctrine; a secretive government populated by kleptocrats who made heavy use of censorship, secret police, and informants; state-sponsored emphasis on sports; indoctrination of children in an effort to turn them against their parents; rewriting history and replacing the national culture with a non-christian one; disdain for traditional, Christian-based morality, replacing it with a morality based on “the ends justify the means”. I could go on and on.

And they both scapegoated Jews and persecuted other ethnic minorities, favoring their own race above all others — the Germans tried to eliminate other ethnic groups in favor of “Aryans”, the Soviets had policies to “Russify” regions that were populated by other ethnic groups. The Germans made it a capital offense to be Jewish, the Soviets made it a crime against the state to be Tatar or Cossack.

So, on the whole, the similarities are far more significant than the differences. Hitler is even credited with observing that “National Socialism is what Marxism might have been if [...]“. He might just have been right.

“But China had to back off of the ideals of communism in order to survive.”

Chinese communist history is a bit more complex than this presentation. Deng Xiaoping, along with Liu Bocheng, were the most visible leaders of the right within the CCP. Deng was a rival of Mao and had been kicked out of the CCP twice. Mao’s death and the strengthening of the right wing within the party were likely the most important events in Deng’s political life. China was not in a subsistence position in this period, thus survival wasn’t the issue.

“A problem that particularly afflicts the more tyrannical forms of socialism — such as Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, Nazism, and Progressivism”

Uh, National Socialism, as being anti-communist, isn’t socialist. Not sure how progressivism is equated with Maoism either.

Privileged people at the top while the rest sink into mediocrity… hmmmm… sounds familiar.

A: “One could argue China, as the world’s preeminent superpower currently, has been successful. One might also argue Cuba, with nearly 100 percent literacy, free health care and education, has seen successes too.”

But China had to back off of the ideals of communism in order to survive. Otherwise, they would almost certainly have either collapsed like the Soviet Union did, or wound up like North Korea which never had the benefit of a Deng Xioaping to start introducing capitalist-like reforms. And Cuba, a success? You have got to be kidding.

Lots of people have been trying socialism for over two centuries now, in different forms, in all different kinds of cultures on every inhabited continent and, as far as I can tell, the best outcome anybody has ever had is a failure to thrive. Most efforts to establish socialist utopias have either,

* Failed within a few years (like the socialist villages that were popular in the 19th century),
* Or turned violent, warlike, and/or genocidal (France after their revolution; Nazi Germany; Cambodia under Pol Pot; the Soviet Union),
* Or backed off of socialist ideals in order to survive (mainland China; the Israeli kibbutzim; the Pilgrims at Plymouth),
* Or gotten mired in corruption, repression, and poverty (North Korea; Cuba; and just about everybody else in the Third World who hasn’t already done one of the above).

Europe and North America have been trying socialist-like ideas (Medicare, Social Security, the British health service, etc.) since the early to middle 20th century. By and large, these socialistic programs are giving results that are less than satisfactory and some are predicted to collapse under demographic pressure.

Looks to me like socialism is one of those ideas that sounds nice on paper but that’s as good as it gets.

A problem that particularly afflicts the more tyrannical forms of socialism — such as Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, Nazism, and Progressivism — is that a few people use the power of government to try to force everybody else to live in a socialist fashion. Then, you end up with a repressive ruling class of privileged people at the top (the Party members) while the rest of the population (the People) sink into mediocrity at best, or death by famine and violence at worst. It’s haves vs. have-nots to a degree that we have rarely seen in the US, at least not since the days of slavery. Any time you hear someone talking favorably about the Vanguard of the Proletariat, or proclaiming themselves to be Progressives, don’t let them anywhere the reins of power — this is what they’re referring to.

He did advocate for the destruction of United States.

He says that communism is the only answer.

What exactly are you disagreeing with Glenn Beck on? You posted the actual video of Jed arguing for the communist destruction of America.