this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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I’ve spent the last few years devouring Soviet history. Books, papers, blog posts, podcasts, all of it. I can’t get enough. Not to brag, but I do feel as though I’ve achieved a certain level of understanding about the USSR, its history, and eventual collapse. But I’ve also put the work in.

And yet, whenever I engage people I know IRL or online, I’m amazed by how doggedly people will defend what they just inherently “know”: that the Soviet Union was an evil totalitarian authority dictatorship that killed 100 million of its own people and eventually collapsed because communism never works. None of these people (at least the people I know IRL) have learned anything about Soviet history beyond maybe a couple days of lectures and a textbook chapter in high school history classes. Like, I get that this is the narrative that nearly every American holds in their heads. The fact that people believe this isn’t surprising. But what is a little surprising to me is that, when confronted with a challenge to that narrative from someone they know has always loved history and has bothered to learn more, they dig their heels in and insist they are right and I am wrong.

This isn’t about me, I’m just sharing my experience with this. I’m just amazed at how Americans will be completely ignorant about a topic (not just the USSR) but will be utterly convinced their views on that topic are correct, despite their own lack of investigation into that topic. This is the same country where tens of millions of people think dinosaurs and humans walked around together and will not listen to what any “scientist” has to say about it, after all.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

up-yours-woke-moralists energy. He "studied communism" for 20 years by being really mad at the USSR, collecting memorabilia of the USSR, naming his daughter after Gorbachev, and reading nothing about communism except maybe the manifesto.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Jordan Peepeeson scim-read the manifesto before the Zizek debate, and I say scim-read (mind you, this is a pamphlet) because JP here tried to be picky about Marx not taking into consideration certain things as if the manifesto is the only work of Marx where all communist thought is summed up. JP also wrote "A Conservative Manifesto" thinking he's the Anti-Marx or some shit, which... he probably is to be honest because Marx was incredibly well read compared to this grifter.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Let us look at a specific example. A claim like “There’s cultural genocide of Uyghurs in Xinjiang” is simply unreal to most Westerners, close to pure gibberish. The words really refer to existing entities and geographies, but Westerners aren’t familiar with them. The actual content of the utterance as it spills out is no more complex or nuanced than “China Bad,” and the elementary mistakes people make when they write out statements of “solidarity” make that much clear. This is not a complaint that these people have not studied China enough — there’s no reason to expect them to study China, and retrospectively I think to some extent it was a mistake to personally have spent so much time trying to teach them. It’s instead an acknowledgment that they are eagerly wielding the accusation like a club, that they are in reality unconcerned with its truth-content, because it serves a social purpose.

What is this social purpose? Westerners want to believe that other places are worse off, exactly how Americans and Canadians perennially flatter themselves by attacking each others’ decaying health-care systems, or how a divorcee might fantasize that their ex-lover’s blooming love-life is secretly miserable. This kind of “crab mentality” is actually a sophisticated coping mechanism suitable for an environment in which no other course of action seems viable. Cognitive dissonance, the kind that eventually spurs one into becoming intolerant of the status quo and into action, is initially unpleasant and scary for everybody. In this way, we can begin to understand the benefit that “victims” of propaganda derive from carelessly “spreading awareness.” Their efforts feed an ambient propaganda haze of controversy and scandal and wariness that suffocates any painful optimism (or jealousy) and ensuing sense of duty one might otherwise feel from a casual glance at the amazing things happening elsewhere. People aren’t “falling” for atrocity propaganda; they’re eagerly seeking it out, like a soothing balm.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In 1981, Americans thought the Soviet Union was an Evil Empire that would battle the US for eternity.

In 1991, Americans thought the USSR's collapse was inevitable and obvious while questioning only why it didn't happen sooner.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

"Before a revolution happens, it is perceived as impossible; after it happens, it is seen as having been inevitable."

well, counterrevolution in this case