drag does realize that the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries were working with literal Nazis, and were marking the doors of Jews and Communists, right? They were lynching people, and even freed Nazis from jail to help with the lynching. The “political parties” they wanted to be able to participate were not worker parties, but fascist ones.
This is genuinely what liberals often accuse “tankies” of doing: uncritically supporting movements based on nominally being progressive, despite in reality being highly reactionary. Further, Hungary wanted to get out of paying reparations for World War II, that was one of the biggest cruxes of the situation. Who did Hungary fight alongside in WWII, does drag remember?
Overall, when it comes to geopolitical enemies of the United States in particular, it would not be a bad idea to treat drag’s current understanding with extreme skepticism until you’ve investigated counter-sources as well. That doesn’t mean the US always lies, in fact it frequently tells mostly the truth, but will distory either the quality or quantity of an event.
If they were capitalists, why didn’t the demands of the student protesters say anything about capitalism? If the USSR allowed workers the right to strike, why were the students demanding it?
Read the sources drag asked for. What this was was a bourgeois supported counter-revolution that armed fascists that were doing pograms. The legitimacy of the demands immediately comes into question when drag understands that these were Nazi sympathizers. They wanted to allow fascist and Capitalist parties to dominate Hungary and wanted to get out of paying reparations for the damage they did as Nazis during World War II.
As for striking, it happened sometimes in the Soviet Union. Worker rights were much better there than in Western countries so it wasn’t as common.
drag does realize that the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries were working with literal Nazis, and were marking the doors of Jews and Communists, right? They were lynching people, and even freed Nazis from jail to help with the lynching. The “political parties” they wanted to be able to participate were not worker parties, but fascist ones.
This is genuinely what liberals often accuse “tankies” of doing: uncritically supporting movements based on nominally being progressive, despite in reality being highly reactionary. Further, Hungary wanted to get out of paying reparations for World War II, that was one of the biggest cruxes of the situation. Who did Hungary fight alongside in WWII, does drag remember?
Spoiler: the Nazis.
Source?
This is a decent overview of the background that led up to the events of 1956, and this is a decent overview of the darker side, where the lynchings happened. Content Warning: lynched corpses. Here is a source on MI6 training and arming the counterrevolutionaries. Those 3 articles give only the briefest overview of the events, but don’t do the real buildup to them, their complexities, what the people actually supported, or the real character in any depth. If drag wants to actually take a deep dive, these are additional sources:
The History of the Working Class Movement in Hungary
1956 Counter-Revolution in Hungary
Others can offer more sources.
Overall, when it comes to geopolitical enemies of the United States in particular, it would not be a bad idea to treat drag’s current understanding with extreme skepticism until you’ve investigated counter-sources as well. That doesn’t mean the US always lies, in fact it frequently tells mostly the truth, but will distory either the quality or quantity of an event.
If they were capitalists, why didn’t the demands of the student protesters say anything about capitalism? If the USSR allowed workers the right to strike, why were the students demanding it?
Read the sources drag asked for. What this was was a bourgeois supported counter-revolution that armed fascists that were doing pograms. The legitimacy of the demands immediately comes into question when drag understands that these were Nazi sympathizers. They wanted to allow fascist and Capitalist parties to dominate Hungary and wanted to get out of paying reparations for the damage they did as Nazis during World War II.
As for striking, it happened sometimes in the Soviet Union. Worker rights were much better there than in Western countries so it wasn’t as common.