Something to make people think about it while they try to solve the cognitive dissonance, or to Atleast make them view it more than a simple totalitarian state where everything was bad and even the grass was white

  • LaBellaLotta [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    14·
    13 days ago

    Ask them about the # of u.s. casualties from WW2 and the comparative # of Soviet casualties. Guarantee they won’t have any idea that it’s like a 1 to 20 ratio.

    If they do know but don’t care then you can probably just write them off because they probably have some weird racist ideas about the Slavic brain pan.

    If they don’t know and are taken aback that opens the door to you to assert some authority in the discussion. You can gently suggest that MAYBE they have been fed a bunch of warmed over Cold War bullshit their whole life.

    The only way you can get around having to be overly didactic is to assert early that you know more about this shit than they do. Because you probably do.

    If they don’t know about the difference in casualty #’s but being made aware has zero effect on them than they are also probably not worth trying to educate. In that case they either; don’t think Soviet lives carry the same weight, or, they just don’t value human life at all. Or some Nazi thing, but I repeat myself. Either way you can probably write them off.

    Americans are full of bluster (assuming that’s where you are) and love to act well informed about shit they have a very cursory knowledge of. If you make them self aware of this right off the rip, they may not like you more, but they are more likely to be listen to you. Besides it’s all about delivery.

    Remember, above all, be normal. Not an easy line to walk when talking Stalin, especially not in the U.S.

    Godspeed comrade o7

    • Krono@lemmy.todayEnglish
      8·
      13 days ago

      Yea and it’s significaly worse than 1:20 depending on what stats you look at.

      Estimated US dead in WWII: 407,000 Estimated Soviet dead in WWII: 26-27 million

      • LaBellaLotta [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
        10·
        13 days ago

        Yeah I think most Americans are blissfully unaware of the facts about who actually shed most of the blood to grind down the Nazi war machine.

        Those figures SHOULD have an effect on any thinking person who goes around believing it was the U.S. that beat the Nazis.

        If that doesn’t have any effect on them there’s probably some underlying shit they believe that you aren’t gonna unpack if they’ve already been able to delude themselves to the level of “the soviets paid most of the human toll to end the Nazi war machine BUT ACTUALLY they are moral equivalents when you think about it”

        Can’t change every mind!

        • Sickos [they/them, it/its]@hexbear.netEnglish
          10·
          13 days ago

          The American propaganda response to that is that it’s because the Soviets were completely untrained conscripts and just threw bodies into a meat grinder instead of training or arming or protecting or industrializing or innovating or strategizing and that those deaths were meaningless. It’s just another non-falsifiable orthodoxy.

          Parenti quote + Woody Guthrie time.

          In the United States, for over a hundred years, the ruling interests tirelessly propagated anticommunism among the populace, until it became more like a religious orthodoxy than a political analysis. During the Cold War, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.