Czech President Petr Pavel on Thursday signed an amendment to the country’s criminal code that criminalises the promotion of communist ideology, placing it on the same footing as Nazi propaganda.
The revised legislation introduces prison sentences of up to five years for anyone who “establishes, supports or promotes Nazi, communist, or other movements which demonstrably aim to suppress human rights and freedoms or incite racial, ethnic, national, religious or class-based hatred.”
The change follows calls from Czech historical institutions, including the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, to correct what they viewed as a legal imbalance.
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@cows_are_underrated
I’ve heard this multiple times. In reality, communism became an enabler for authoritarian regimes. And especially in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union, it became as authoritarian as it could be.
Maybe the law could have been written in a way to allow “forms of communism that are not authoritarian” or something along the lines, but you don’t know how it could have ended up in practice. Maybe it would just provide some loopholes, maybe it could lead to the wrong people being prosecuted etc.
And people have been in contact for too long with the authoritarian form of communism to be able to figure any other form. For them, is the same as saying, “y’know, there are also some good fascists out there. Some kind racists, some great neo-Nazis etc”.