Americans are absolutely convinced their narratives about Soviet history are correct despite never actually learning anything about Soviet history
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.
it's even worse with the descendants of euro-immigrants. I know a polish guy, gay, super liberal, who is absolutely convinced of the most bloodthirsty and reactionary narratives about the USSR because he's from a polish family, and his polish grandma would never lie. If I'm talking about any kind of effort to improve society somewhat he will go full and say "socialism is a good idea in theory, but never in practice, I should know, I'm polish, and both hitler and stalin genocided my people." He's generally a kind and friendly person who has been helpful on numerous occasions in the decade I've known him, but the second we start talking politics the gloves come off. He has a STEM background and gets paid fairly good, so I especially don't care for the way he talks about working class people like they're all ignorant trumpers who just need to learn to code.
Shouldn’t a techbro know that personal anecdotes are not evidence?
We need to write a doctoral thesis and even then it’s not enough.
But when they’re talking about how USSR bad it’s all “my grandma told me her dentist told her his ex girlfriend told him her husband told her a cab driver told him another passenger told them that they once saw Stalin strangle a Polish child to death with his bare hands”
Did they not do it? I was under the impression that Katyn massacre was carried out by the Soviets and could be considered a war crime but that doesn't merit any comparison with what the Germans did and that drawing a false equivalence between them is basically Nazi apologia.
it's literally central dogma. You cannot find, nowhere, absolutely nowhere in polish media and publication, any doubt about that or even information that such doubts exist elswhere. Expressing such will probably meant civil death of a person, though nobody dared yet.
Someone already posted the brainwashing vs moral licensing essay so I just wanna add that if an American takes an anti-imperialist stance on their history, then they are grievously implicating themselves and everyone they know.
Because if the US hasn't been fighting for freedom all this time, then what does that say about Americans? What does that say about you?
Most Americans prefer to avoid the question and the associated introspection because their lives are distant enough and comfortable enough that they can. Also, everyone understands what resisting the US entails, whether they'll admit it or not, and know to keep their head down or else.
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.
Nationalism. Their nationalist mindset forces them to have an automatic negative reaction to anything that challenges it. Because they believe that their nation are the good guys and anything else that their nation labels "the enemy" is the bad guys. When you challenge the state's narrative on the bad guys, which they have accepted as correct and good, you are also challenging their decades of nationalism and by extension their support for their nation makes it feel like a challenge against them as a good or bad person (for supporting the good or bad guys).
The method to successfully make people question these things is to first create massive negative feelings about the state, this opens them up to questioning their nationalism and leads them to a crossroads between two choices. One is the reactionary RETVRN ideology in which a person doubles down on the idea that nationalism is good but not for the current state, it must be removed and replaced with a state that will RETVRN it to greatness. The other is internationalist ideology, in which people reject nationalism and start viewing states from a larger distance as citizens of the world instead of citizens of their nation.
I'm a stuck record on this but time and time again it comes down to this.
The kitten-burners seem to fulfill some urgent need. They give us someone
we can clearly and correctly say we’re better than. Their extravagant
cruelty makes us feel better about ourselves because we know that we
would never do what they have done. They thus function as signposts of
depravity, reassuring the rest of us that we’re Not As Bad As them, and
thus letting us tell ourselves that this is the same thing as us being
good.
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.
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.