Trust me, that man is not based.

Imagine “child of the Cold War, broken by that culture of fear, convinced the USSR still exists, convinced communism is a Russian ethnoreligion not a political and economic stance and the USSR is/was its theocracy, that communists are all ontologically evil, but hey, at least he believes it’s impossible for someone born outside the historical Warsaw Pact to be a “genuine communist”… except that he doesn’t fully believe that and he treats Western communists the way a very proud anti-semite treats Jewish converts.” Now, whatever you’ve imagined, consider him if he was ten times worse and his only semi redeeming quality was being so rabidly pro capitalist that he thinks his asshole behaviour has a monetary value and buying his familial victims of it gifts and family experiences cancels out the poor behaviour, so at least his wife and kids get nice material things for surviving him and pretending to not mind his emotional and occasionally physical violence, and you might be getting close to a portrait of my dad.

I wasn’t called a Stalinist because I actually know what the hell I’m doing WRT being a principled Marxist-Leninist. I was called a Stalinist because he thinks calling me a commie isn’t a harsh enough insult and he doesn’t know the word “tankie”.