November 10, 2013

"Is Your Washroom Breeding Bolsheviks?"



From a great collection of anti-Communist posters and ads, some of which are far better graphically. I picked this one out to display here because it's an interesting mix of rational argument and emotional appeal... by a commercial advertiser.

13 comments:

Oso Negro said...

Interesting to compare the dates of the posters to the historical outcomes for the people who were being warned.

bearing said...

Because Communist countries are known as wonderlands of high-quality, absorbent, cushiony paper products.

Cedarford said...

Quite a lot of truth to it. Communist/socialist/union recruiting flourished in sectors of the Western proletariate that felt especially powerless, disaffected, and worked in poor conditions. Especially when the Ruling Elites they labored under had all the power, and harvested most the wealth from production.
And in sectors tangential to production but whose workers recognized that their contribution and service or product was indispensible to the wealthy elites survival - coal mining, transportation, critical city services.

Many a factory DID organize over issues as "small" as filthy worker's changing and restroom facilities...or workers limited to one timed and documented restroom call a workday, not to exceed 5 minutes or pay would be docked.
To the consternation of Owners, amazed that the dumb proles could get so upset over a lack of a trivial thing like toilet paper...when they could just bring some from their own home and their own pocket if they really needed it.

Sam L. said...

And...bolshevism did bring poverty and death to millions of people.

Clyde said...

I liked the spilled chalice of socialist poison. It could be ripped from today's headlines.

"Would you risk a little POISON?" Well, we sure did in 2008 and took another swig in 2012. Sadly, there's no known antidote.

Gahrie said...

Especially when the Ruling Elites they labored under had all the power, and harvested most the wealth from production.

Industrialization and capitalism have done more to improve the lives of humanity, and increase the standard of living for humanity in the last 150 years than every other economic or social system in all of human history.

William said...

Capitalist paranoia led to better paper towels for the workers. Stalin's paranoia led to death camps. After several attempts I finally finished Timothy Snyder's grim book, Bloodlands. Stalin felt that the Poles living in Russia were plotting with the Polish government to overthrow him. There were some three thousand Polish names in the Leningrad telephone directory. The male members of these families were rounded up and shot. Their families were told that the men had been sent to prison and did not have correspondence privileges......When you make fun of anti Communist paranoia, it would perhaps be just to mention that Stalinist paranoia was more hysterical and included actions more drastic than blacklisting.

rcocean said...

I'm sure the millions who died in the Gulags or from Stalin's planned famines found these posters equally hilarious.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

The Robert Tohm ones for Bohn are magnificent.

Anonymous said...

Please don't squeeze the kulaks.

Sam vfm #111 said...

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." – Winston Churchill

Mitch H. said...

I had a boss who had this poster in his office. Teutonic immigrant, made his money selling overpriced furniture to the drunkard-with-an-office-furniture-account loons at Penn State. Great guy, but the job was only so-so. Archaic business practices driven by the fact that we were like leeches hanging off the free-money spigot.

Gabriel Hanna said...

Some of those are Nazi propaganda in occupied countries.