[Marxism] Target censors Soviet imagery on shirts

[Shane Brinton <shanebrinton@xxxxxxxxx>]

These people are so fucking reactionary that they can't even handle
something as innocent as a Soviet logos on tshirts! It's really just a
fashion! Something repackaged to make money!

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TARGET CENSORS SOVIET IMAGERY ON SHIRTS

From: People's Weekly World, 
Online Extra Edition,
http://www.pww.org
06/06/05
Author: Vic Tomas

Target Corporation, a nationwide chain of retail stores, carried,
until recently, several shirts by Roma Atletica featuring several
variations on Soviet logos. I purchased a black shirt emblazoned with
the letters CCCP on 14 May, and returned to the store on 15 May, to
purchase a red shirt featuring a hammer and sickle. However, I was
informed that it had been recalled and that the sale could not be
completed.

A worker assigned to the men's department told me that all material
with a Soviet logo was recalled. No other products from that
particular line were pulled and slated for destruction. The worker
additionally commented that no structural defect was identified in the
product.

An internet search revealed a letter by Fox News columnist Radley
Balko to the CEO of Tar get Corporation concerning these products. In
the letter, dated 9 May, Balko shames the retail giant for
"celebrating the brutal, oppressive, and murderous regime that was
Soviet communism" by selling the shirts.

Balko's site featured a means for like-minded individuals to send
their own letters to the company. Apparently the website's initiative
stirred up sufficient fracas to cause Target to recall its
Soviet-styled merchandise.

It is extremely ironic that Target, which sells shirts in its men's
department that feature racist humor, objectify women, insult the
mentally challenged, advertise alcohol products and abuse, and invoke
toilet humor and phallic imagery, removed a relatively innocuous
design from its shelves due to apparent political pressures.

Balko claims that selling shirts featuring Soviet and communist
imagery is tantamount to a glorification of "ruthlessness, brutality,
and threat to our own liberty wrought by Soviet-style communism" and
also says that "communism isn't and never has been a 'good idea in
theory' that 'went bad,' as it is sometimes described. It's an
anti-individual, anti-freedom philosophy that is immoral on its face."

He asserts that the communist policies of the Soviet Union threatened
free enterprise and stifled industrial growth, and that the regime of
Stalin, responsible for a number of unpleasantries, stands on par with
Hitler. Balko therefore concludes that any and all communist imagery
is morally wrong.

Using Balko's logic, by extension, all American imagery ought to be
viewed as morally corrupt. In its self-righteous march to the Pacific
Ocean, the United States Government, spearheaded by its military,
authorized and encouraged the slaying of countless millions of Native
Americans, the destruction of nearly all indigenous language and
culture, and the systematic rape of the countryside. The United States
has also engaged in wars of o utright imperialism such as the Mexican
War and Spanish-American War. Moreover, industrial capitalism, so
ardently defended by the government of this nation, has maintained the
working class of the world in a state of perpetual slavery which is,
in many ways, worse than the serfdom of feudal Europe.

Inquiries by the curious into trends in capitalism will show that for
the past five centuries the capitalist system has undeniably benefited
the rare few in whose possession lie the means of production, while
the workers of the world remain in a state of de facto slavery.

As the United States is the self-proclaimed defender of this way of
life, its imagery ought to be tied as much to the gross failings of
capitalism as images of Soviet Russia are bound to negative
interpretations of communism.

In the case of Target, the speed with which these items were cleared
from store shelves and slated for destruction is alarming. It
indicates a profound anticommunist vein of thought still pulsing in
the fiber of this country – an intolerant, defensive manner of
thinking that finds no offense in toilet humor, the objectification of
women, or making fun of the mentally retarded, but which will
viciously root out and destroy a challenge to its political status
quo. Big money still operates in this country from a position of rabid
defensiveness in the face of even the casual proliferation of
communist imagery.

Balko concludes his letter to Target by stating that "there would have
been no place for Target in the old Soviet Union." From this worker's
perspective, a world without Target sounds like a damn fine place to
be.
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