Current Events > There are people who are NK truthers

(+) Yeah! (+)

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You know what, let's go back to pointing out the obvious that the Russians defeated the Nazis. Something literally everyone on the planet knows. And something that clearly needs to be mentioned whenever someone is shitting on Stalin, for some reason.

/s for the last sentence.

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shockthemonkey using his favorite word again

Tyranthraxus posted...

Stalin killed more than 5 times as many people as Hitler.

Okay, and my post never disputed that. Are you saying that literal Hitler wasn't the worst combatant in WWII? The problem with my post is I echoed andel's that Stalin helped defeat the Nazis, and it's actually bad that it happened that way?

Like is that really where this shit has to lead? The only way to avow to each other that we're not Stalinists is to say that relatively, *Hitler* wasn't all that bad? Come on. I hope that's not what you meant.

Doe posted...

Okay, and my post never disputed that. Are you saying that literal Hitler wasn't the worst combatant in WWII? The problem with my post is I echoed andel's that Stalin helped defeat the Nazis, and it's actually bad that it happened that way?

Like is that really where this shit has to lead? The only way to avow to each other that we're not Stalinists is to say that relatively, *Hitler* wasn't all that bad? Come on. I hope that's not what you meant.

I guess all I'm trying to say is why bother volunteering favorable arguments to one of the world's worst despots? What are you trying to accomplish by doing that?

I mean my point is that (I hope) nobody would try to argue "Hitler probably wasn't as bad as our propaganda said" so why give Stalin that benefit?

CryoForceOmelet posted...

So it's not that there's a 'global conspiracy' so much as the difficulty of obtaining information out from NK has led many news publishers to adopt arguably over-lenient standards of reporting on the country, such as republishing anything printed by some SK tabloids

South Korea's news media is surprisingly trashy and runs a lot of unverifiable tabloid-level stories with no sources. Pretty much every night the leading story on the national news is some horrible crime supposedly committed by foreigners (often English teachers) which turns out to be completely fabricated or exaggerated.

Tyranthraxus posted...

I guess all I'm trying to say is why bother volunteering favorable arguments to one of the world's worst despots? What are you trying to accomplish by doing that?

I agree in hindsight there was no value to the post, the topic itself was basically 'well technically he did something good'. But surely all this is quite a leap from calling me a NK truther

CryoForceOmelet posted...

There's an area between "NK is a great place to live" (lol) and "everything I read about NK is true"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_North_Korea

Unfortunately a lot of stories published and shared about NK are just false. Like a really popular one a while back was that everyone was forced to get Kim's haircut. Almost certainly false. There are frequently stories that Kim has had one of his family members executed, or some government official, only for them to make a public appearance sometime later.

So it's not that there's a 'global conspiracy' so much as the difficulty of obtaining information out from NK has led many news publishers to adopt arguably over-lenient standards of reporting on the country, such as republishing anything printed by some SK tabloids. IMO it is worthwhile to take a skeptical stance on some of the more absurd claims published about the country, and that does not conflict that recognizing that, obviously, a dictatorship is bad and there are human rights abuses. I feel like I really need to emphasize this because there are people who will call you a sympathizer or tankie or whatever just for displaying recognition of the complexity of the media coverage of the country.

Agreed. Yeonmi Park has been caught making up complete lies about North Korea for her own selfish purpose of increasing personal book sales and speaking engagements. No surprise shes a right winger grifter now.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2023/07/16/yeonmi-park-conservative-defector-stories-questioned/

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Pretty sure he gets paid to defend countries like North Korea and China whenever the subjects come up. Hence first active post.

Tyranthraxus posted...

"Hitler probably wasn't as bad as our propaganda said"

Hitler is way worse than what our propaganda says because our propaganda is specifically designed to understate Germany's crimes in World War II.

SayHeyyShohei posted...

I believe Hitler defeated the Nazis when he killed himself.

Lmao. The Russian army was blocks away when Hitler let the air out of his own tires, and what was left were literally the last of his regular army, and any Hitler youth he could conscript. One of his last acts before he took the coward's way out was inspecting a group of said Hitler youth.

The Nazis were beaten loooong before that fuckstain did the world a favor and ventilated his own noggin.

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chaos_knight posted...

Pretty sure he gets paid to defend countries like North Korea and China whenever the subjects come up. Hence first active post.

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Are you denying that there are right wing grifters who are being paid to fabricate stories about North Korea? Because that Washington Post article completely exposes that fraud.

Here's another article from the New York times that also confirms it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/us/politics/yeonmi-park-north-korea-republicans.html

Ms. Parks transformation from celebrity defector to loud critic of liberal identity politics is extraordinarily rare. Very few of the tens of thousands of people who have fled North Korea wade into domestic politics in the countries where they have taken refuge.

But in an American political climate that rewards hyperbole and alarm, Ms. Park, who became a U.S. citizen in 2021, has found a lucrative niche.

Her second book, While Time Remains, a self-described warning for Americans published in February, has already outpaced the hardcover sales of her best-selling 2015 memoir. She is a regular guest on popular right-leaning TV networks and podcasts, and speaker at conservative universities and think tanks.

She now earns $6,600 a month from Turning Point USA, she said, and maintains a busy itinerary of talks before other conservative audiences who are more eager to hear her warnings about cancel culture and woke identity politics. After a recent talk in Brookfield, Wis., a suburb of Milwaukee, a local school board member, Sam Hughes, posted on Facebook about the power of Ms. Parks presentation.

Anyone who denies this probably only gets their geopolitical news from Fox News.

Life for the average citizen in the USSR was not as bad as people claim it to be, most people did what they do in any country. Obviously intellectuals and people who spoke out against the party were going to have a bad time, but most people aren't politically motivated and wouldn't really ever come under the radar of any party officials. The way we think of life in the USSR is largely propaganda.

That's entirely different than claiming Stalin wasn't that bad and propaganda made him seem worse. He had a complete disregard for human life and no problem killing and silencing people to keep power. There's no disputing that his policies directly led to the deaths of millions. Hundred of thousands of people were purged and either murdered, exiled, or sentenced to forced labor just on the suspicion of having anti-party sentiments. These are well documented events.

IShall_Run_Amok posted...

Hitler is way worse than what our propaganda says because our propaganda is specifically designed to understate Germany's crimes in World War II.

The propaganda seems to have only gotten worse. Holocaust denial seems way more popular than it was 30 years ago.

Tyranthraxus posted...

The propaganda seems to have only gotten worse. Holocaust denial seems way more popular than it was 30 years ago.

I learn more and more about how a lot of leaders were given amnesty for the information they gathered through terrible ways.
A lot of German scientists were brought to America after the war.

ArchNemo posted...

Life for the average citizen in the USSR was not as bad as people claim it to be, most people did what they do in any country. Obviously intellectuals and people who spoke out against the party were going to have a bad time, but most people aren't politically motivated and wouldn't really ever come under the radar of any party officials. The way we think of life in the USSR is largely propaganda.

I wonder how well the "everyone over there is starving under communism while we're all thriving under capitalism!" Cold War propaganda would work nowadays.

... It turns out, surprisingly well.