Who here identifies as a communist?

I’d rather be a tankie than a liberal

Why?

I think former USSR countries such as Russia, Hungary and Poland are happier and healthier societies than Countries in the ‘free’ west.

Well, only Russia was in the actual USSR, but now those societies are all capitalist.

but now those societies are all capitalist.

Post soviet Russia isn't exactly an advert for capitalism.

I think former USSR countries such as Russia, Hungary and Poland are happier and healthier societies than Countries in the ‘free’ west.

By what measures?

Why do you say 'free'?

Well for one thing, their governments are highly popular and do policies that their citizens actually want and benefit from. for instance, in Poland the government pays generous bursaries for each child a married family produces so that people can afford to have children rather than just import mass immigration to replace the existing population. This is why Putin and Orban have sky-high popularity ratings, compared that with abysmal ones of May, Merkel and Macron.

Because i'm a Realist (in an IR sense) i believe that all states essentially act the same way. the idea that western liberal democracies are really any different from the other kinds of states i don't believe is true and is essentially just propaganda.

Liberal democracies are just a lot more creative and effective when engaging in the sorts of crimes that non liberal democracies commit.

When your countries main parties are all bought and paid for by the same international clique you have a one party state.

The state may not censor you, but this becomes irrelevant when third party monopolies such as Facebook and google are more than happy to obliege

and so on and so forth.

Who thinks communism is great?

High government popularity doesn't necessarily mean that people are happy, at least not in comparison to more western countries. Approval ratings can reflect a whole number of things. For example, George Bush's approval rating skyrocketed after 9/11. This had nothing to do with happiness in day-to-day US life; it was his response to the terrorist attack and the action his government had taken thereafter.

When happiness comes to mind I would have thought that suicide rates are a good indicator. Poland, Hungary and Russia all have a much worse problem with suicide than France and Germany. The UK is doing the best out of the six. Other more western countries like Denmark, Netherlands, Italy, etc, all do better.

Europe has more suicides than other continents.