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Sneaky
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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"Brainwashing" isn't gravity. I didn't think I had to explain this, but the decades of research failed to materialize any proof of "brainwashing." This is extremely stupid. Propaganda exists, and works by appealing to already felt material realities.
As for the DPRK, they do have free healthcare and education, and the period of starvation was largely in the 90s during the dissolution of the USSR, their largest trading partner. The DPRK isn't a paradise, but most of its issues are due to US sanctions, similar to Cuba. It wasn't until the mid-80s that the ROK managed to surpass the DPRK in terms of economic growth, and the DPRK lost 20% of their population and 80% of their buildings in the Korean War thanks to the US Empire's genocidal campaign. Northern Koreans support their system largely because despite the absolutely brutal conditions they find themselves in, they still manage to maintain better metrics than peer capitalist countries.
Further, my point was that brainwashing was levied at all socialist systems with popular support, from Cuba to the USSR to Vietnam to the PRC to Laos, etc. Most of these have managed better metrics than the DPRK, in fact it was originally the Chinese communists and American POWs that defected that were accused of being brainwashed.
And no, me knowing the major members of the Kim family doesn't make me an expert, at all. In fact, my point is that it's the bare minimum requirement, and you failed to meet even that. I have a lot of studying to do on Korean history, the fact that you thought it was the Un family was proof of your own failure to meet the minimum understanding necessary to have a conversation.
Imperialism is a system of economic extraction. Millitary interventionism can aid imperialism or hinder it depending on the conditions at play. It was not imperialist for the Union to invade the Confederacy. Again, the majority of people who lived in the Soviet Union want it back.
You aren't being intellectually consistent. You cling to "brainwashing" as a valid theory despite nobody believing it in the modern scientific community. You claim your own incredible lack of knowledge on the DPRK is somehow indicative of my intellectual failings. You've brought no sources, no proof, no logic, all rhetoric and no substance. If not even liberal sources like Wikipedia believe in brainwashing, and the Leftists discount it entirely, it's only the far-right that clings to it.
I absolutely love that you're recommending me the Gulag Archipelago, a work of fiction, as a valid counter to the history, facts, and statistics I've provided. You should read Russian Justice, an actual work of non-fiction. Wikipedia is not a "niche tankie PDF." Neither is the Ash Center for research, nor the New York Times. I have spoken to people that lived and live in socialism. I'm a communist, and an anti-imperialist, and you're proving the meme absolutely correct.
Ah yes, cherry-picked pdfs from 1917 like the Wikipedia page for Brainwashing, a NYT article from Solzhenitsyn's ex-Wife showing that the Gulag Archipelago is folklore, a book by Dr. Michael Parenti written in the 1990s, and a mid-2010s study from the Ash Center. Incredible cognitive dissonance on display on your part.
"Brainwashing" doesn't exist. People license themselves to believe that the systems that they believe materially benefit them are good. This is how propaganda works. It isn't possible for a truly brutal system that is horribly repressive to the majority of society to truly trick them into believing its good, it requires that there be a base level of truth to the system being materially beneficial. Capitalists in the US are more likely to believe it to be morally good, same with labor aristocrats bribed with the spoils from imperialism.
As for the DPRK, you have already proven that you have no idea what you're talking about and have no sources. There's nothing to discuss, here. Their rates of starvation are lower now than peer capitalist countries, the Arduous March was in the 90s when starvation was prevalent and the US magnified it by preventing them from trading goods they produced for foodstuffs in the global economy in a time of natural disaster.
Again, you go back to claims of "brainwashing," which isn't accepted by anyone anymore. Read North Korea: Another Country by Bruce Cummings, a liberal historian that is largely anti-DPRK yet still manages to provide an objective view of the real conditions and systems in the DPRK.
There were not "millions crushed under tanks," unless you mean the millions of German Nazis killed by the Soviets when liberating the world from Hitler and the Nazis. The British Empire absolutely falls under the definition of imperialism, it used vast extractions from countries like India that ended up causing mass famines that killed millions of people, like the Bengal Famine of 1943.
People miss socialism, read the article. The safety nets provided by the socialist system worked far better than the system of rampant plunder that replaced it. 7 million excess deaths occured around the world thanks to the fall of the USSR. Poverty, sex work, wealth disparity, starvation, all skyrocketed while literacy and life expectancy fell.
Yes, I indeed used a right-wing, liberal source to debunk another right-wing work of fiction. Would you rather I use a communist source? Are only far-right sources that agree with your far-right views acceptable to you? Solzhenitsyn's own ex-wife outed it as folklore, there was no historical evidence provided, just a large memoir written by a right-winger. This is what I mean by licensing, despite no historical backing, you defend a right-wing work of fiction because it conforms to your beliefs.
I'm an anti-imperialist. You still haven't come up with a definition of imperialism that both includes the USSR while excluding the US's Union invading the Confederacy as imperialist. You just rely on sloganeering and doublespeak, again proving the meme correct.