Comments by "L.W. Paradis" (@l.w.paradis2108) on "Ask Prof Wolff: Economic Growth in the USSR u0026 China" video.

  1. The United States had one 9/11; in WWII, the Soviets had 10,000. Yes they went bonkers, but look at us. The Soviets were both worse and far better than we were told. The important thing was to make us believe that nothing important was happening in the USSR. The precise opposite was true. (In fact, among so many other things, it was Arkhipov who saved the world.)
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  2. Today, Vietnam has 10,000,000 more people than Germany, after what we did to their land. And vastly less COVID.
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  3. Compare capitalist "shock doctrine" (Naomi Klein) with the collectively planned effort of communist societies -- albeit often inflexible to an irrational, even cruel, degree -- to recover from adversity, to benefit everyone.
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  4.  @frangershwing  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/27/vasili-arkhipov-stopped-nuclear-war
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  5.  @frangershwing  In case the link doesn't work or is shadowed, look up The Guardian, an article by a man by the name of Wilson. Arkhipov surely did stop a nuclear exchange, fully believing they themselves were about to perish. The vote to launch had to be unanimous. It was 2 to 1, thanks to him.
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  6.  @diehardcat  Not at all. It was both vastly better and worse, because the real betrayals of the working class and the tactical withdrawal of support from revolutions that could have succeeded were never counted as bad things. They were painted as the few times those crazy communist zealots bowed to "reality." Nor did the capitalist class actually care about the unacceptable curtailment of personal religious freedom, or rights of marginalized peoples; they just used such events as propaganda. Then they also falsified things like the "show trials," which linguistically sophisticated Russian speakers realized were mostly high irony and camp. In short, we were not supposed to see Soviets as people. We were not supposed to believe the world was being made there -- that, even less! We were the spectators. We believed our movies. Well . . . Here we are . . .
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  7.  @diehardcat  Or, in short, we were lied to in every respect. The whole shebang . . . the sole point being to dehumanize. (I like Stephen F. Cohen best on all this.)
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  8.  @diehardcat  Okay, have it your way. I explained what I meant.
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  9.  @diehardcat  Lack of courage, lack of agency, lack of real belief in themselves, inability to understand "freedom." Etc. All can be used to minimize what they did wrong, or responsibility for doing wrong.
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  10.  @diehardcat  Okay. I see your point. I don't think the agit-prop we got humanized the victims, either. All these non-Western peoples were depicted as robotic, just as Soviet casualties in WWII are minimized. The killing or oppression of non-Westerners was never treated as being equal to harming "us." Because "they" don't "understand our freedoms." Therefore, nor do their victims. We're just "lucky" to be here and not there.
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  11.  @diehardcat  Also, I'm thinking we saw different propaganda? :D Could be.
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