Is it just me, or does Trump remind you of Kim Jong?

[Fred Hampton]

Trump is a fascist/capitalist.  Kim Jong Un is a Communist.  So no, I don't see any resemblance in the two.

[bold mine]

Is he really though?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-344796060

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That assertion of private action is happening in lots of ways. After the famine in the 90s, the economy started to change. Starving people found ways of growing their own food and then trading it - private markets helped relieve a problem of life and death. Once invented, these markets have refused to disappear. They are now tacitly acknowledged by the authorities. On top of that, some enterprises behave like capitalist organisations, offering managers the ability to keep profits - they get a private cut and the state gets its public cut.

A kind of creeping capitalism is occurring in North Korea.
That means there is money there - some money for some people. As well as a changing way of doing business internally, a porous border with China to the north means all kinds of goods are entering. In the department stores of Pyongyang, products are available for those who can afford them (the crucial caveat).

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Not very "communist" of them. They use a system called Juche, which is allegedly inspired by socialist ideas, but the reality is a lot different. Private enterprise and smuggling is tolerated and the assholes at the top are rich while the poor suffer.

Please don't tell me you're an apologist for North Korea.

Where was Kim Jong Un educated?  If you dont know that w/o Googling it, how can you know much about the DPRK?  What was KJU's grandfather's role in creating the DPRK?  Does the US frequently have multiple family members run for office?

I pretty much reject across the board any Western critique of the DPRK as they have a proven track record of zero objectivity.  The West is severely anti DPRK or anything resembling socialism/communism.

Ok, the DPRK is not purely communist, there hasn't been any purely communist industrial society, although some of the Maoist communes achieved Marxist style communism, egalitarian, no use of $, etc.  The DPRK is socialist, it has a State and like all socialists states, USSR, etc, does have a certain level of small more or less private enterprise.  About all of the major industry and banks are State run.

But ideologically, Un is a Marxist/Maoist.  Trump is not a Marxist.  Trump is ideologically fascist/capitalist. Trump likes Hitler. Trump hired Steve Bannon as his "main man".

And dont worry, the DPRK is not attacking the US or anybody anytime soon.  Thats all US propaganda.  A few years ago Iran was going to attack US--oh wait, they were developing nuclear science.  Now the DPRK tests a few missiles, is exploring more nuclear to defend itself against the overt threats from the US and so obviously they too "are going to attack the US", right?  So goes the story. See, the UFSA does not like any country that does not agree to it's IMF, World Bank extortion racket, so it attacks them, systematically, in a variety of ways.

The DPRK has zero bases outside its borders.  The US has ~115 bases/installations within a stone's throw in Japan, ~83 on the S Korean border, and a number in N Australia.  I.e., they have the DPRK redundantly surrounded.

The DPRK was a colony of fascist Japan for nearly half of the 20th century, dont know if you realize that.  Thats what the north/south thing stems from.

Any sovereign country, as per international law, has the right and duty to self defense and the development of nuclear science thereof.  The entire non Western world is afraid of the USA, for obvious reasons.

And if you want to bow down and worship the UFSA millionaire/billionaire capitalist oligarchy--"inverted totalitarianism"--you are free to do so.  I dont.

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I don't find the Trump Kim connection very compelling beyond Trump's similarity in character to any other megalomaniac out there. But slapping the label "Communist" on Kim to dismiss any comparison just out of principle, seems very simplistic. We all know that fascism and communism can become pretty much the same thing dressed up differently.

Fascism and communism are 100% antithetic, that is why the fascists are always fighting the communists and vice versa.  Words mean things, hopefully.

[brewer]

OP: Nope.

[Alex K]

Beautiful. Using North Korea as a litmus test is so crass that it really shouldn't work, but it does. Fascinating.

[Anomalocaris]

I don't find the Trump Kim connection very compelling beyond Trump's similarity in character to any other megalomaniac out there. But slapping the label "Communist" on Kim to dismiss any comparison just out of principle, seems very simplistic. We all know that fascism and communism can become pretty much the same thing dressed up differently.

Kim is actually not really communist, not even just a self described one.  The Kim family moved away from othrodox Marxist communism, the Marxist Leninist variatiom of the cold war soviet communist block, as well as the Maoist agrarian variation of Marxism, in the late 1970s.    In fact, North Korea has explicitly removed references to communism and Marxism from its constitution.   It's constitution now explicitly exhort a Kim derived, explicitly anti-Marxist ideology called Juche, which calls for a form of autarchic, ethnonationalistic, militaristic national defense state.  In this sense, the ideology pursued by North Korea is actually close than usual to many of the minor fascist regimes of 1930s.

[NuclearEnergy]

Well kim is actually committing atrocities right now. If any country actually need a internal revolution right now it's North Korea. At least here we're allowed to insult Trump if we want to.

I'm referring to their behavior

[Pat Mustard]

Trump is a fascist/capitalist.  Kim Jong Un is a Communist.  So no, I don't see any resemblance in the two.

North Korea is a mixture of medieval feudalism and autocratic absolutism. None of the characteristics of that state should be present in any form of socialist society.