The Cultivation Of Ideas   -   René  Magritte  1927

National Geographic, May  1972

Leo Piron (Belgian, 1899-1962), Paysage hivernal avec moulin [Winter landscape with windmill]. Canvas, 41 x 50 cm.

"Let’s just call it a ghost cat, Walter Mitty."

Tsang Chui Mei（Chinese, b.1972）

The Death of Strawberry  士多啤梨之死  2011  Acrylic on canvas 122 x 61cm  via

https://xkcd.com/1704/

Marriage of decay and awakening.

untitled by nadya ka on Flickr.

The thing is, I have nothing against socialism or communism as a political ideology; trust me, I'm as anti-capitalist as they come. The leftism is really not the problem here.

The problem is when in their leftism, people – Americans, really, and western Europeans – use the ussr as this sort of goal, this complete antithesis to the modern capitalist society, this almost-utopian place to live. They use hammer and sickle symbol, the ussr anthem; sometimes, as a joke, sometimes, not so much.

Not only that clearly shows that they know absolutely nothing about the ussr – it's also spreading russian propaganda, whether it's on purpose or not, which is especially insidious now, when russia is literally committing a genocide.

The ussr wasn't a socialist utopia where everyone is equal. It was a totalitarian dictatorship, responsible for colonisation and genocide of multiple people and cultures. Just like the russian Empire before it. Just like modern russia continues to do now.

For many Eastern European and Central Asian people, hammer and sickle is not just a symbol of a political ideology. It's the symbol, under which people were starved to death, imprisoned or executed for daring to write in their own language; in which cultures were erased, people – forcefully assimilated, stripped of their own national identity.

It's the propaganda of being "the same people, the same nation" that russians love to use; that westerners love to believe, for the sole reason of the oppressed daring to look similar to the oppressor; for the sole reason of Americans being unable to look past their own history and realize oppression comes in many shapes and forms.

By using the ussr symbols in your political movement, you're denying the atrocities commited under that symbol and spreading russian propaganda, whether it's on purpose or not.

It's not "progressive" to wave around a hate symbol.

Do your research.