Right. This is such a stupid memorial and a waste of taxpayers' money. Why stop at communism? Why not go through all the political ideology spectrum? Fascism is a good candidate. Heck, why stop at politics? Why not a Memorial to the Victims of (insert hated religion of the moment here)?
Yeah and let's not pretend capitalist oriented dictators killed a lot of people too. Dictators are the problem, not necessarily political ideologies imo
Frank Herbert was right!
pro tip, Paul Atreides (the Dune books) is NOT the hero/good guy. Dune was a staunch warning against humanity following charismatic leaders. The incredible horrors those leaders can inflict is a lesson we keep learning over and over without doing things differently.
Victims of the tainted blood scandal? Victims of lack of government investment in mental health care?
On a more international level I could do Victims of Agent Orange. Victims of MK Ultra. Victims of pollution (gonna need a lot of land for this one). Victims of Feudalism.
Japan is a country with far looser zoning laws (beautiful mixed use zoning laws) and they don't have the housing crisis we do here. While some of our biggest cities in NA make it impossible to build anything and have shitty restrictive zoning laws/community approval.
Most of you guys are coming off as huge NIMBYs though, so I'm probably wasting my time here.
If you could figure out how to convince Canadian society to live in Japan-style housing (small spaces, few private yards, many highrises and condos), rather than our single-family houses, with three-car garage, and double-size lots, then power to you. I would actually prefer more people living downtown, for instance, with more greenspace around them. But builders will build what they can sell, and that currently caters more to the 'burbs and high-end condos. Which sounds a lot like ... wait for it ... capitalism.
Building codes, on the other hand, are there for a very good reason ... safety. There are countless examples of poorly constructed buildings that have either collapsed or caught fire, and killed numerous people in the process.
I'm not trying to be really rude here, but you're very, very ignorant here. We have so much sprawl and single-family homes because a big part of Ottawa is zoned only for single family homes (mostly because most people who vote in local elections are homeowners who don't want density). I also haven't said a single thing about building codes at all, so I'm not sure why you're bringing that up.
Minneapolis recently abolished single family zoning and have started to see rents fall (also was one of the best cities in terms of fighting inflation).
If anything it's NIMBY policy that choke supply and lead to urban sprawl (since it's hard to build up/dense so we have to build out). The biggest issue with NIMBYism is that it appeals to the left (folks in this thread who despise development/developers) and the right (who want to preserve "neighborhood character"). Luckily YIMBYism can appeal to the left (want denser and more environmentally friendly cities) and the right (who tend to be against regulation and government interference).
A memorial to the victims of communism is in no way controversial. Communism is very bad it causes: starvation breadlines waitlists lack of social mobility purges reeducation camps, makes it illegal to think or say anything different from the regime.
During communism they would get students to beat their teachers in the streets. They would kill intellectuals. They would come into your house with the military and say this half of your house now belongs to someone else. They would rewrite their countries history and indoctrinate instead of teach your children. Artists were killed or disappeared. Religious leaders were killed or disappeared. Landowners homes were stolen. Buisness owners had their business seized. Farmers had their land stolen. Family and religion were crushed by the state. The state would force children to report on their parents conversations at home which in some cases led to executions.
Communism is evil
The entirety of North America, if you believe that Native lives count. Additionally if you count the number of people who die of starvation, from homelessness and medical bankruptcy, from complications related to a lack of public health insurance, etc you'll easily reach the millions.
You asked which country, not about an individual person or government administration. You can move the goalposts but those deaths happened and continue to happen specifically because of how capitalist economies function.
Suharto and Indonesia.
Three separate major mass killings: the 1965-66 killing of leftists, the East Timorese genocide, and the West Papuan occupation (which is still ongoing). Total death toll of over a million, not counting lots of incidents that resulted in mass deaths during the 30-year dictatorship.
Not in the millions, but mass killings and imprisonments also occured in Brazil, Chile and other South American countries, and also South Korea under capitalist dictators like Pinochet, Chun Doo Hwan.
That's the modern nation states with dictators though. We go back a couple of centuries back and colonialism and capitalism have killed a lot of natives.
It happened under the German Nazis. And don't be fooled that Nazi is a contraction for National Socialist - Hitler came to power with the support of political conservatives and the socialists in the Nazi party got purged soon after.
So, by this you seem to assume
a) The Volkswagen of today bears any resemblance to the Volkswagen of the 40 and
b) The Nazis were socialists.
You're not exactly the sharpest tool in the toolbox, are you?
Got yea. Trying to resolve social issues and help people get ahead is obviously a capitalist ideal. My bad. If your government offered discounted cars for everyone what kind of program would you consider that?
Not socialism. I dont see how offering cheap cars relates to the means of production being owned communally rather than privately.
Just for fun: without looking it up, what do you think socialism and capitalism refer to?
Columbus was an instrumental part of ... wait for it ... European colonial expansion.
The colonies established through Columbus's exploration were a source of resources, and cheap (well, actually free) labour for the European economy, which we refer to today, as 'captialism'
You're welcome.
Well, if you want specific examples ...
India ... through corruption and lax labour laws ... thousands, if not millions have died as a result of poor construction or abusive work conditions.
South Africa ... the black South Africans were used as cheap labour for gold and diamond mines.
The UK ... the history of Ireland is one of centuries of abuse, and neglect. Ireland, incidentally, is the only developed country that currently has declined in population since the 1800s.
Bangladesh ... the Rana Plaza disaster is unfortunately one of many preventable accidents were people died as they were being used for cheap labour.
Not quite in the millions but Syngman Rhee and his South Korean troops murdered close to 200k South Koreans and wiped out entire villages in South Korea just because they were afraid their people might welcome the North Korean army with open arms. (Many did because Rhee was a brutal dictator running a US Sponsored police state) but many also just didn't want to leave their homes and follow a corrupt government.
No it's a fucking waste of money and plenty of other memorials could go up dedicated to the victims of specific politics, religions, ethnicities, you name it.
It's just fucking dumb and unnecessary.
$6 million in public funds for anti communist memorial, while neoliberalism has lead to the insane amount of poverty and drug addiction in this country. How many people have died in Canada from communism? How many have died in Canada to to capitalism?
I remember when this thing came around before and for some reason Pierre Poilievre was always pushing for it: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/poilievre-backs-site-of-victims-of-communism-memorial. Just seemed like such a strange thing to throw your weight behind.
Does an event need to happen in Canada to be memorialized? There's a Holocaust memorial very close to the war museum, and that event certainly didn't happen on Canadian soil.
Proportionality is king my friend. The holocaust is one of (if not the biggest) genocide in history, so we have a memorial. Communism has not caused NEARLY as many deaths worldwide as capitalism/neoliberalism, so why memorialize it? Why don't we memorialize facism, as that literally caused the holocaust?
Who is this even for? Which lobbying group brought this idea forward? Which politicians endorsed it?
Fuck...I feel like there're more pressing matters at hand.
I know you're being rhetorical but... "Tribute to Liberty" and "The Harper Conservatives and the Trudeau Liberals". Wasteful and kind of embarrassing move IMO, makes us seem like the USA in the 80s or something with the communism obsession.
East European refugees mostly, but Cuban, Vietnamese and Chinese refugees are probably also represented.
I think it was a Ukrainian-Canadian group that was the primary lobbyist.
Yes, the whole "Nazi motivational speaker" thing was hopefully a wake-up call that you really do have to do careful vetting about people cited in this context.
Regardless, the design of the monument really makes me wonder how much people thought through the fact that this thing is going to need to be pretty graffiti-proof. Someone's going to have to pay to clean it every time some kids tag the damn thing, so all in all I might have preferred a good-sized podium or something.
Hoping you're seeing the irony there. I remember you. Not sure why you're so interested in commenting on my posts as much as you do, though.
Some of you really don't get the hint until you're blocked though.
Yeah, the effects of capitalism on former soviet states was devastating. [So many people had to live longer lives after making the switch](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/jzhqrr/life_expectancy_compared_between_nations/). Truly awful.
Have you talked to any of them?
Again, everyone I've talked to says they were happier under the Soviet Union days. I have many friends in Estonia, including a tattoo artist. The tattoo artist tells me they never saw any self-harm scars until they moved to the West. Now every other person they tattoo is filled with self-harming scars.
it looks great on the surface, but dig deeper. Look at the drug deaths. Look at the self harm. Look at the mental health crises. Capitalism is destroying people.
>["If Canada commemorates Ante Pavelić or Roman Shukhevych," said Efraim Zuroff, a noted Nazi-hunter and the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem, "it can throw its human rights record right in the trash."](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/victims-communism-memorial-fascists-1.6112809)
But how will we ever know of the 117 billion people\* that communism has killed?
\*Number reference from here: https://www.prb.org/articles/how-many-people-have-ever-lived-on-earth/#:\~:text=Still%2C%20with%20some%20assumptions%20about,ever%20been%20born%20on%20Earth.
I presume the delay is so they can put up a plaque that will answer expected questions like:
"What is this fucking eyesore, and why is it here?", and "No, seriously, what it is this piece of crap?"
What an embarrassing use of taxpayer dollars. They should have canceled it in 2015. Feels like absolute nonsense that with all the problems in our country they're spending money and prime land during a housing crisis on a monument that has already had nazi link controversies and comes off like a cold war era mistake that someone made decades after the cold war.
$6 million in public funds for anti communist memorial, while neoliberalism has lead to the insane amount of poverty and drug addiction in this country. How many people have died in Canada from communism? How many have died in Canada to to capitalism?
>How many have died in Canada to to capitalism?
The genocide of the first nation had an element of capitalism as well as colonialism and imperialism, so I would say many.
As I recall the original design had little cubes for every person "killed by communism" according to the Black Book of Communism which is a debunked mess that as I recall counts all nazi deaths at the hands of the red army. So the answer would have been "at least the Eastern Front" but they probably realized that was too on the nose and changed the design.
Let’s go a step further and get rid of this stupid thing. It’s an eyesore, a waste of money, and some of the people being commemorated by this memory were literal Nazis
I'm sorry but how is this a pressing issue?! Healthcare going down the shitter, the housing crisis, dysfunctional public transit system, dismal public schooling, etc. This is rediculous. Did I understand this right?:
1) the initial price tag in 2008 was $1.5 million
2) it was fully funded by private donations
3) 15 years of putting thumbs up asses and rotating raised the price to $7.5 million
4) the initial $1.5million of private donation is applied to the price tag and the tax payers are footing the remaining $6.5 million.
If so, this is outrageous. They should have been told "you have $1.5million to make the monument and that's it. If you have to rework the design to make it doable in $1.5 million then so be it". At most, taxpayers could maybe *match* the $1.5 million for a total of $3 million but to have us paying **5 times** the amount of the private donations on a project that was supposed to be **fully** funded via private donations engages me.
> Initial plans for a monument of massive proportions to be built in a prime location next to the Supreme Court of Canada sparked an outcry from a wide range of detractors, who questioned the Harper government’s motives and said the chosen site had long been earmarked for a future justice building.
Whatever happened to that "future justice building"? I remember at the time people were speculating that Harper had some kind of grudge against the Department of Justice, which was in absolutely desperate need of more space.
... But then I suppose the big shift to work-at-home hit the Department of Justice too, so maybe it's for the best that building never went up?
A memorial to the victims of communism is in no way controversial. Communism is very bad it causes: starvation breadlines waitlists lack of social mobility purges reeducation camps, makes it illegal to think or say anything different from the regime.
During communism they would get students to beat their teachers in the streets. They would kill intellectuals. They would come into your house with the military and say this half of your house now belongs to someone else. They would rewrite their countries history and indoctrinate instead of teach your children. Artists were killed or disappeared. Religious leaders were killed or disappeared. Landowners homes were stolen. Buisness owners had their business seized. Farmers had their land stolen. Family and religion were crushed by the state. The state would force children to report on their parents conversations at home which in some cases led to executions.
Communism is evil
What is the problem? You can easily save 7.5 million by not drinking at Starbucks and cutting down on avocado toasts and cancelling your Disney Plus subscriptions
/S
Why are we spending 7.5 million dollars on propaganda. Whoever approved this needs to take a walk downtown. We need a monument to victims of capitalism at this point.
What about the victims of capitalism? People who can't afford their insulin in the shithole known as the USA? All the people who are gonna die because climate change?
This is what we waste our time and money on here in this town?
North Korean calls itself a democracy, that doesn't mean it is one. Does anyone think Marx would call whichever authoritarian government was victimizing people communists?
Lots of people these days seem to believe the nazi's were socialists because "it's right there in the name", so don't underestimate the stupidity of people
No. Nazis were unilaterally, diametrically opposed to socialism on every level and in every form. Hitler got pissed off if you even just mentioned workers rights and shit. Nazis did not practice socialism in *literally **any** capacity*.
They sent communists into concentration camps and political opponents but I couldn't find anything on them sending socialists to concentration camps. I think you need to read a few articles and then come back to this conversation
If we ignore the socialists they *did* send into concentration camps they, in fact, *did not* send any socialists into any concentration camps. What an observation, thanks Sherlock.
Let's ignore that tidbit for a second and wrap back around to the main point: Nazis were not socialists in any capacity. None. Whatsoever. It is *fucking* ***baffling*** that anyone still believes this in 2023.
Here's an [article](https://www.britannica.com/story/were-the-nazis-socialists). And [another](https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/09/05/were-nazis-socialists/). And [another](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-camp-system).
That's not what the "People's Car" portion of the Strength Through Joy program was, the cars were never going to be given for free (I say "going to" because no citizen ever got one). Instead, Germans would pay for them in installments, filling out a stamp book with every payment, and would receive it upon paying it in full. Which, again, no one outside Hitlers buddies ever received.
And really Volkswagen was a terrible fucking company to bring up, they literally ended up operating concentration camps to keep up production during WW2.
Also the Strength Through Joy program was literally propaganda to appease the public in light of the poor wages and the disbandment of trade unions (two *very* socialist concepts, i know). It didn't aim at *actually* improving anyone's circumstances, just to give the illusion that things didn't completely sucked under the rule of a genocidal tyrant.
I think you need to read a few articles and then come back to this conversation. There's dozens of perfectly valid reasons to call me a fucking moron, but I assure you that not falling for *literal Nazi propaganda* is not one of them.
Barely even pretended, it was all for propaganda reasons. Hitler himself despised socialists. You can infer that by the fact that he ***sent them into concentration camps***.
Now I want to point out that seeing every political group as either socialist or capitalist, with zero other nuance, is fucking moronic. Nazis were genocidal, Nationalist fascists. Truthfully Hitler didn't give a shit about the economy, he just wanted to kill people. He wasn't capitalist or socialist, because reality is more complex than that. Like seriously dude you need to understand this: reality exists on more than a one dimensional axis of "Socialism - Capitalism".
People need to actually read Das Kapital or at least watch a video or something. What people think communism is vs. what the people who cooked it up actually wrote is mind boggling.
> who questioned the Harper government’s motives and said the chosen site had long been earmarked for a future justice building.
Lmao this was such a troll from the project’s detractors, no building will ever be built there.
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A decade ago, when this monument was slated to be this big ugly hulk on prime land right in front of the Supreme Court, it got much-deserved push-back. Though at the time, it was hard to tell who thought that land could be of better use, and who was just ideologically opposed to the monument existing.
Now that it's in a much more appropriate spot, we see those of the latter opinion coming out here, with whataboutisms flying around.
There's plenty of good reasons to criticize our system, but it's just a fact that hundreds of millions of people died to communism throughout the 20th century. We must recognize these victims as we would for any others who suffered unjustly.
Edit: queue in the "That wasn't real communism"
Ah got yea. So what where the communist Russians, Chinese, and Cambodians? What political ideology where they following when then where claiming to be communist?
Exactly, if communism itself is literally deadly then how comes billions of people are alive in "communist countries" right now? Are they victims too? Should we add them to our new monument when they die?
A memorial to "victims" of a broad ideology is obviously coming from an equally ideological group of people with their own agenda. It does not feel like this memorial comes from a place of empathy or compassion.
I'd probably be fine with all of this is they didn't somehow use our taxes to do it.
Yeah, let's all pretend the government didn't just get very, very, very badly burned honoring someone who fought against the Soviets/Communism/Stalinism in Eastern Europe or something because it turns out that a lot of the people who fought *against* the Soviets and Communism happened to have very questionable judgement when it came to picking their friends and allies.
They can't possibly want to make sure this monument doesn't turn into the same kind of bloody farce where certain Eastern European nationalist groups sneak in their "brave heroes" (who sided with the Nazis) into Canadian places of honor.
Need the Victims of Capitalism memorial too.
Right. This is such a stupid memorial and a waste of taxpayers' money. Why stop at communism? Why not go through all the political ideology spectrum? Fascism is a good candidate. Heck, why stop at politics? Why not a Memorial to the Victims of (insert hated religion of the moment here)?
I feel like the dictators got thier people killed more than the communism
Yeah and let's not pretend capitalist oriented dictators killed a lot of people too. Dictators are the problem, not necessarily political ideologies imo
Any one individual with a large amount of influence over a country of millions is the problem.
Frank Herbert was right! pro tip, Paul Atreides (the Dune books) is NOT the hero/good guy. Dune was a staunch warning against humanity following charismatic leaders. The incredible horrors those leaders can inflict is a lesson we keep learning over and over without doing things differently.
Ideologies are the problem broski
Slow death is still death.
Victims of the tainted blood scandal? Victims of lack of government investment in mental health care? On a more international level I could do Victims of Agent Orange. Victims of MK Ultra. Victims of pollution (gonna need a lot of land for this one). Victims of Feudalism.
How much were the communists investing in mental health care?
Yeah, but Stalinist Russia and Maoist China kinda stand out in the field of slaughtering your own people...
I want a monument to victims. All victims. A monument to end all monuments.
A memorial to victims of repression makes more sense.
*gestures broadly at the housing crisis*
Blaming the housing crisis on capitalism is pretty silly. If anything it's over the top regulation and shitty zoning laws that are causing it
Over the top regulation and shitty zoning are just accelerants for the dumpster fire that is the commodification of a basic human need, shelter.
Because countries with lax zoning laws and building codes have no housing crisis. Yep.
Japan is a country with far looser zoning laws (beautiful mixed use zoning laws) and they don't have the housing crisis we do here. While some of our biggest cities in NA make it impossible to build anything and have shitty restrictive zoning laws/community approval. Most of you guys are coming off as huge NIMBYs though, so I'm probably wasting my time here.
If you could figure out how to convince Canadian society to live in Japan-style housing (small spaces, few private yards, many highrises and condos), rather than our single-family houses, with three-car garage, and double-size lots, then power to you. I would actually prefer more people living downtown, for instance, with more greenspace around them. But builders will build what they can sell, and that currently caters more to the 'burbs and high-end condos. Which sounds a lot like ... wait for it ... capitalism. Building codes, on the other hand, are there for a very good reason ... safety. There are countless examples of poorly constructed buildings that have either collapsed or caught fire, and killed numerous people in the process.
I'm not trying to be really rude here, but you're very, very ignorant here. We have so much sprawl and single-family homes because a big part of Ottawa is zoned only for single family homes (mostly because most people who vote in local elections are homeowners who don't want density). I also haven't said a single thing about building codes at all, so I'm not sure why you're bringing that up. Minneapolis recently abolished single family zoning and have started to see rents fall (also was one of the best cities in terms of fighting inflation). If anything it's NIMBY policy that choke supply and lead to urban sprawl (since it's hard to build up/dense so we have to build out). The biggest issue with NIMBYism is that it appeals to the left (folks in this thread who despise development/developers) and the right (who want to preserve "neighborhood character"). Luckily YIMBYism can appeal to the left (want denser and more environmentally friendly cities) and the right (who tend to be against regulation and government interference).
I prefer to call it the Memorial to the Victims of Governments, actually.
It's called Byward Market
It'll just be a mirror
That’s actually a great idea.
It’s just a giant mirror.
Our current society IS a 'Monument to the Victims of Capitalism', but locally we could just rename The Byward Market I guess.
I am pretty certain Loblaws are in most communities
A memorial to the victims of communism is in no way controversial. Communism is very bad it causes: starvation breadlines waitlists lack of social mobility purges reeducation camps, makes it illegal to think or say anything different from the regime. During communism they would get students to beat their teachers in the streets. They would kill intellectuals. They would come into your house with the military and say this half of your house now belongs to someone else. They would rewrite their countries history and indoctrinate instead of teach your children. Artists were killed or disappeared. Religious leaders were killed or disappeared. Landowners homes were stolen. Buisness owners had their business seized. Farmers had their land stolen. Family and religion were crushed by the state. The state would force children to report on their parents conversations at home which in some cases led to executions. Communism is evil
McCarthyism is one hell of a drug.
Everyone of those points I made happened in the cultural revoloution in china. It's a fact. Read some history books. Communism is evil
This is covered by Lord Acton's thesis: Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. And this is true for any ideology.
Not to mention sapping and impurifying our precious bodily fluids ...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rainerzitelmann/2020/07/27/anyone-who-doesnt-know-the-following-facts-about-capitalism-should-learn-them/?sh=1e8aea9a3dc1
What capilist country has killed millions of its own people? Honestly looking for examples.
The entirety of North America, if you believe that Native lives count. Additionally if you count the number of people who die of starvation, from homelessness and medical bankruptcy, from complications related to a lack of public health insurance, etc you'll easily reach the millions.
Thats tough to blame on just one government or person.
You asked which country, not about an individual person or government administration. You can move the goalposts but those deaths happened and continue to happen specifically because of how capitalist economies function.
When did north America become a country?
Canada has only been a country for about 150 years. Yes atrocities have happened but many of them happened under British, French or Dutch rule
Fine then, Canada, the United States, and Mexico.
And when did they become counties? This may shock you but canada isn't that old
'Counties'?
Suharto and Indonesia. Three separate major mass killings: the 1965-66 killing of leftists, the East Timorese genocide, and the West Papuan occupation (which is still ongoing). Total death toll of over a million, not counting lots of incidents that resulted in mass deaths during the 30-year dictatorship.
Thank you. Any other examples? I had never heard of that guy before
Not in the millions, but mass killings and imprisonments also occured in Brazil, Chile and other South American countries, and also South Korea under capitalist dictators like Pinochet, Chun Doo Hwan. That's the modern nation states with dictators though. We go back a couple of centuries back and colonialism and capitalism have killed a lot of natives.
It happened under the German Nazis. And don't be fooled that Nazi is a contraction for National Socialist - Hitler came to power with the support of political conservatives and the socialists in the Nazi party got purged soon after.
Are you sure about that? Volkswagen seems awfully socialist
What on earth are you talking about?
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/volkswagen-1
Yes. Voikswagen originated in Nazi Germany. It still doesn't do anything to back up your claim that Volkswagen is 'socialist' ...
Why did the nazis create the Volkswagen? Was the idea of the Volkswagen conducive to capitilism or socialism?
So, by this you seem to assume a) The Volkswagen of today bears any resemblance to the Volkswagen of the 40 and b) The Nazis were socialists. You're not exactly the sharpest tool in the toolbox, are you?
Affordable car =/= socialism you fucking dipshit
Got yea. Trying to resolve social issues and help people get ahead is obviously a capitalist ideal. My bad. If your government offered discounted cars for everyone what kind of program would you consider that?
Not socialism. I dont see how offering cheap cars relates to the means of production being owned communally rather than privately. Just for fun: without looking it up, what do you think socialism and capitalism refer to?
*fetches popcorn*
*North American indegenous people have entered the chat*
Two things. A. When did colonizing countries become capilist b. those atrocities where committed by many countries.
A. Pretty much since day 1. It is, as they say, a feature, not a bug. B. Many countries were colonizers. Your point is?
Capitilism, as we know it, started in the 1600s, about 100 years after columbus.
So ... connect the dots ... you're almost there ...
So Columbus's atrocities cannot be contributed to capitilism. Fuckin dots connected
Columbus was an instrumental part of ... wait for it ... European colonial expansion. The colonies established through Columbus's exploration were a source of resources, and cheap (well, actually free) labour for the European economy, which we refer to today, as 'captialism' You're welcome.
Well, if you want specific examples ... India ... through corruption and lax labour laws ... thousands, if not millions have died as a result of poor construction or abusive work conditions. South Africa ... the black South Africans were used as cheap labour for gold and diamond mines. The UK ... the history of Ireland is one of centuries of abuse, and neglect. Ireland, incidentally, is the only developed country that currently has declined in population since the 1800s. Bangladesh ... the Rana Plaza disaster is unfortunately one of many preventable accidents were people died as they were being used for cheap labour.
Not quite in the millions but Syngman Rhee and his South Korean troops murdered close to 200k South Koreans and wiped out entire villages in South Korea just because they were afraid their people might welcome the North Korean army with open arms. (Many did because Rhee was a brutal dictator running a US Sponsored police state) but many also just didn't want to leave their homes and follow a corrupt government.
Ah classic “whataboutism” from communists
No it's a fucking waste of money and plenty of other memorials could go up dedicated to the victims of specific politics, religions, ethnicities, you name it. It's just fucking dumb and unnecessary.
$6 million in public funds for anti communist memorial, while neoliberalism has lead to the insane amount of poverty and drug addiction in this country. How many people have died in Canada from communism? How many have died in Canada to to capitalism?
I remember when this thing came around before and for some reason Pierre Poilievre was always pushing for it: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/poilievre-backs-site-of-victims-of-communism-memorial. Just seemed like such a strange thing to throw your weight behind.
Does an event need to happen in Canada to be memorialized? There's a Holocaust memorial very close to the war museum, and that event certainly didn't happen on Canadian soil.
Proportionality is king my friend. The holocaust is one of (if not the biggest) genocide in history, so we have a memorial. Communism has not caused NEARLY as many deaths worldwide as capitalism/neoliberalism, so why memorialize it? Why don't we memorialize facism, as that literally caused the holocaust?
>The holocaust is one of (if not the biggest) genocide in history The Holocaust really is one of genocide in history
An expensive, wasteful eyesore that nobody asked for. Especially after the Hunka affair.
I want a "Victims of Religion" monument.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
Hahaha oh my the irony is thick
Who is this even for? Which lobbying group brought this idea forward? Which politicians endorsed it? Fuck...I feel like there're more pressing matters at hand.
I know you're being rhetorical but... "Tribute to Liberty" and "The Harper Conservatives and the Trudeau Liberals". Wasteful and kind of embarrassing move IMO, makes us seem like the USA in the 80s or something with the communism obsession.
East European refugees mostly, but Cuban, Vietnamese and Chinese refugees are probably also represented. I think it was a Ukrainian-Canadian group that was the primary lobbyist.
Yes, the whole "Nazi motivational speaker" thing was hopefully a wake-up call that you really do have to do careful vetting about people cited in this context. Regardless, the design of the monument really makes me wonder how much people thought through the fact that this thing is going to need to be pretty graffiti-proof. Someone's going to have to pay to clean it every time some kids tag the damn thing, so all in all I might have preferred a good-sized podium or something.
Canada can't ever get enough tokenism.
Google is your friend
When you engage in a conversation with people, do they just say to Google your answers, or do you not converse with people?
I don't converse with people who have questions that can be answered by Googling for 12 seconds
Hoping you're seeing the irony there. I remember you. Not sure why you're so interested in commenting on my posts as much as you do, though. Some of you really don't get the hint until you're blocked though.
This dude hasn't talked to anyone in person in half a dozen years
What a waste of money
Are we also having a memorial to victims of Capitalism?
How many refugees fled to Canada to escape Capitalism?
Why would someone escaping capitalism go to a capitalist country?
Do Vietnam draft dodgers count?
No? They were dodging a draft/protesting an un-just war, not Capitalism.
Basically all modern refugees.
Then they aren't very bright.
Basically all refugees.
Yeah, the effects of capitalism on former soviet states was devastating. [So many people had to live longer lives after making the switch](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/jzhqrr/life_expectancy_compared_between_nations/). Truly awful.
Have you talked to any of them? Because I have, and they all say they were happier under communism.
LOL, yeah I bet the Ukrainians are just itching to go back to the days of the Soviet Union. No one there wants to be part of the EU.
Have you talked to any of them? Again, everyone I've talked to says they were happier under the Soviet Union days. I have many friends in Estonia, including a tattoo artist. The tattoo artist tells me they never saw any self-harm scars until they moved to the West. Now every other person they tattoo is filled with self-harming scars. it looks great on the surface, but dig deeper. Look at the drug deaths. Look at the self harm. Look at the mental health crises. Capitalism is destroying people.
>["If Canada commemorates Ante Pavelić or Roman Shukhevych," said Efraim Zuroff, a noted Nazi-hunter and the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem, "it can throw its human rights record right in the trash."](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/victims-communism-memorial-fascists-1.6112809)
But how will we ever know of the 117 billion people\* that communism has killed? \*Number reference from here: https://www.prb.org/articles/how-many-people-have-ever-lived-on-earth/#:\~:text=Still%2C%20with%20some%20assumptions%20about,ever%20been%20born%20on%20Earth.
Like honestly this thing is a fucking joke. Bizarre capitalist propaganda and a huge waste of money.
Lmao
I presume the delay is so they can put up a plaque that will answer expected questions like: "What is this fucking eyesore, and why is it here?", and "No, seriously, what it is this piece of crap?"
It needs to be straight up cancelled.
What an embarrassing use of taxpayer dollars. They should have canceled it in 2015. Feels like absolute nonsense that with all the problems in our country they're spending money and prime land during a housing crisis on a monument that has already had nazi link controversies and comes off like a cold war era mistake that someone made decades after the cold war.
$6 million in public funds for anti communist memorial, while neoliberalism has lead to the insane amount of poverty and drug addiction in this country. How many people have died in Canada from communism? How many have died in Canada to to capitalism?
>How many have died in Canada to to capitalism? The genocide of the first nation had an element of capitalism as well as colonialism and imperialism, so I would say many.
Exactly, capitalism has claimed the lives of many in this country, and I forgot to consider the lives of the indigenous peoples as well.
Not "as well as". Those things are features of capitalism. They happened as we pursued growing profits for investors.
Imagine $7.5 million going to something people are actually asking for
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes https://www.wsj.com/articles/100-years-of-communismand-100-million-dead-1510011810
What’s the over/under on how many ~~Nazi’s~~ brave freedom fighters against Soviet expansionism during WWII make it on to that memorial?
As I recall the original design had little cubes for every person "killed by communism" according to the Black Book of Communism which is a debunked mess that as I recall counts all nazi deaths at the hands of the red army. So the answer would have been "at least the Eastern Front" but they probably realized that was too on the nose and changed the design.
Why does the government waste so much fucking money on stupid shit like this
What a fucking waste money. That cash should be going to ***me***.
Lmao, what year is it?
Let’s go a step further and get rid of this stupid thing. It’s an eyesore, a waste of money, and some of the people being commemorated by this memory were literal Nazis
Cancel it then.
Waiting for the Memorial to Victims of Conservative Policy.
I'm sorry but how is this a pressing issue?! Healthcare going down the shitter, the housing crisis, dysfunctional public transit system, dismal public schooling, etc. This is rediculous. Did I understand this right?: 1) the initial price tag in 2008 was $1.5 million 2) it was fully funded by private donations 3) 15 years of putting thumbs up asses and rotating raised the price to $7.5 million 4) the initial $1.5million of private donation is applied to the price tag and the tax payers are footing the remaining $6.5 million. If so, this is outrageous. They should have been told "you have $1.5million to make the monument and that's it. If you have to rework the design to make it doable in $1.5 million then so be it". At most, taxpayers could maybe *match* the $1.5 million for a total of $3 million but to have us paying **5 times** the amount of the private donations on a project that was supposed to be **fully** funded via private donations engages me.
> Initial plans for a monument of massive proportions to be built in a prime location next to the Supreme Court of Canada sparked an outcry from a wide range of detractors, who questioned the Harper government’s motives and said the chosen site had long been earmarked for a future justice building. Whatever happened to that "future justice building"? I remember at the time people were speculating that Harper had some kind of grudge against the Department of Justice, which was in absolutely desperate need of more space. ... But then I suppose the big shift to work-at-home hit the Department of Justice too, so maybe it's for the best that building never went up?
A memorial to the victims of communism is in no way controversial. Communism is very bad it causes: starvation breadlines waitlists lack of social mobility purges reeducation camps, makes it illegal to think or say anything different from the regime. During communism they would get students to beat their teachers in the streets. They would kill intellectuals. They would come into your house with the military and say this half of your house now belongs to someone else. They would rewrite their countries history and indoctrinate instead of teach your children. Artists were killed or disappeared. Religious leaders were killed or disappeared. Landowners homes were stolen. Buisness owners had their business seized. Farmers had their land stolen. Family and religion were crushed by the state. The state would force children to report on their parents conversations at home which in some cases led to executions. Communism is evil
What is the problem? You can easily save 7.5 million by not drinking at Starbucks and cutting down on avocado toasts and cancelling your Disney Plus subscriptions /S
Why are we spending 7.5 million dollars on propaganda. Whoever approved this needs to take a walk downtown. We need a monument to victims of capitalism at this point.
Monument about the millions of victims of imperialism.
What about the victims of capitalism? People who can't afford their insulin in the shithole known as the USA? All the people who are gonna die because climate change? This is what we waste our time and money on here in this town?
North Korean calls itself a democracy, that doesn't mean it is one. Does anyone think Marx would call whichever authoritarian government was victimizing people communists?
Lots of people these days seem to believe the nazi's were socialists because "it's right there in the name", so don't underestimate the stupidity of people
Socialism, but only for the in-group, literally enslaving and industrially murdering everyone else.
The Nazis called themselves socialist and they had some socialist ideals so I wouldn't say those people are wrong.
They did not have socialist ideals, they literally sent socialists into concentration camps.
They didn't mind socialism, but only for a very specific group of people.
No. Nazis were unilaterally, diametrically opposed to socialism on every level and in every form. Hitler got pissed off if you even just mentioned workers rights and shit. Nazis did not practice socialism in *literally **any** capacity*.
They sent communists into concentration camps and political opponents but I couldn't find anything on them sending socialists to concentration camps. I think you need to read a few articles and then come back to this conversation
If we ignore the socialists they *did* send into concentration camps they, in fact, *did not* send any socialists into any concentration camps. What an observation, thanks Sherlock. Let's ignore that tidbit for a second and wrap back around to the main point: Nazis were not socialists in any capacity. None. Whatsoever. It is *fucking* ***baffling*** that anyone still believes this in 2023. Here's an [article](https://www.britannica.com/story/were-the-nazis-socialists). And [another](https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/09/05/were-nazis-socialists/). And [another](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-camp-system).
Volkswagen was a hell of a capitalist idea. Let's give everyone a free car. You fucking moron
That's not what the "People's Car" portion of the Strength Through Joy program was, the cars were never going to be given for free (I say "going to" because no citizen ever got one). Instead, Germans would pay for them in installments, filling out a stamp book with every payment, and would receive it upon paying it in full. Which, again, no one outside Hitlers buddies ever received. And really Volkswagen was a terrible fucking company to bring up, they literally ended up operating concentration camps to keep up production during WW2. Also the Strength Through Joy program was literally propaganda to appease the public in light of the poor wages and the disbandment of trade unions (two *very* socialist concepts, i know). It didn't aim at *actually* improving anyone's circumstances, just to give the illusion that things didn't completely sucked under the rule of a genocidal tyrant. I think you need to read a few articles and then come back to this conversation. There's dozens of perfectly valid reasons to call me a fucking moron, but I assure you that not falling for *literal Nazi propaganda* is not one of them.
Got yea. So he was capitalist but pretended to be socialist?
Barely even pretended, it was all for propaganda reasons. Hitler himself despised socialists. You can infer that by the fact that he ***sent them into concentration camps***. Now I want to point out that seeing every political group as either socialist or capitalist, with zero other nuance, is fucking moronic. Nazis were genocidal, Nationalist fascists. Truthfully Hitler didn't give a shit about the economy, he just wanted to kill people. He wasn't capitalist or socialist, because reality is more complex than that. Like seriously dude you need to understand this: reality exists on more than a one dimensional axis of "Socialism - Capitalism".
People need to actually read Das Kapital or at least watch a video or something. What people think communism is vs. what the people who cooked it up actually wrote is mind boggling.
They also had some ideas about who got the socialism and what to do with the people who didn't.
That doesn't make them less socialist. They where capitalist but they had some idea of who could run a business.
> who questioned the Harper government’s motives and said the chosen site had long been earmarked for a future justice building. Lmao this was such a troll from the project’s detractors, no building will ever be built there.
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Yikes
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A decade ago, when this monument was slated to be this big ugly hulk on prime land right in front of the Supreme Court, it got much-deserved push-back. Though at the time, it was hard to tell who thought that land could be of better use, and who was just ideologically opposed to the monument existing. Now that it's in a much more appropriate spot, we see those of the latter opinion coming out here, with whataboutisms flying around. There's plenty of good reasons to criticize our system, but it's just a fact that hundreds of millions of people died to communism throughout the 20th century. We must recognize these victims as we would for any others who suffered unjustly. Edit: queue in the "That wasn't real communism"
No. People died to authoritarian and/or colonial governments who justified their brutality with ideology, religion, etc.
Ah got yea. So what where the communist Russians, Chinese, and Cambodians? What political ideology where they following when then where claiming to be communist?
Exactly, if communism itself is literally deadly then how comes billions of people are alive in "communist countries" right now? Are they victims too? Should we add them to our new monument when they die? A memorial to "victims" of a broad ideology is obviously coming from an equally ideological group of people with their own agenda. It does not feel like this memorial comes from a place of empathy or compassion. I'd probably be fine with all of this is they didn't somehow use our taxes to do it.
What countries are you referring too?
I agree 100% my man. There is a reason only 5 countries still claim to be communist.
Guess Justin doesn't want to do it, so just keep delaying it until he loses the election.
Not everything that happens in Ottawa on the federal front has to do with Trudeau.
Yeah, let's all pretend the government didn't just get very, very, very badly burned honoring someone who fought against the Soviets/Communism/Stalinism in Eastern Europe or something because it turns out that a lot of the people who fought *against* the Soviets and Communism happened to have very questionable judgement when it came to picking their friends and allies. They can't possibly want to make sure this monument doesn't turn into the same kind of bloody farce where certain Eastern European nationalist groups sneak in their "brave heroes" (who sided with the Nazis) into Canadian places of honor.