Comradeship // Freechat

In a situation characterized by a permanent state of emergency, and a lack of clear ideas about the concrete shape of the new political and social order, communist parties in power and their leaders ended up establishing a relationship with the proletariat and popular masses that recalls the one established with the bourgeoisie by Louis Bonaparte. That is, paraphrasing Marx, ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat by the sabre’ turned into the ‘dictatorship of the sabre over civil society’ and over the proletariat itself. However, albeit slender and twisted, a thread continued to connect Louis Napoleon with the bourgeoisie behind the counter-revolution, just as a thread continues to connect communist leaders in power with the proletariat and popular masses who were the protagonists of the revolution. Bonapartism or Caesarism is one of the ways that the process of autonomiziation of ideological, political, and military castes occurs. Gramsci’s distinction between regressive Caesarism and progressive Caesarism remains valid; and it also remains the case that in different historical situations the progressive or regressive character of Cesarism proves more or less pronounced. - Domenico Losurdo in Class Struggle, Chapter After revolution, the ambiguities of class struggle

Yes, there was a period of great repression in the newly formed USSR but it was not out of Lenins whim, but to the extreme instability the nation was found itself in. There are some similarities but the bonapartism under the bolsheviks is for a completely different end goal than the bonapartism rising in the US, hence why one is progressive and the other reactionary, if the influencer wasn't disingenuous she would talk about more recent examples of bonapartism like in Peru where 50 people were killed by the coup junta that imprisoned the democratically elected Castillo. She brought the Lenin story to paint the bolsheviks as evil redfash authoritarians, oppressing the good utopian socialists etc...