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At the very least he was a totalitarian imperialist with an ethnic cleansing fetish. Whether he was directly responsible for all the other stuff or not he was still a big jerk.
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Mar 24, 2016 23:17
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G.C. Furr III posted:its not a gimick, I have just been convinced by evidence counter to the infantile *hurr durr stalin was an evil man who loooooved killing people for fun* narative that most of what is written about the Stalin for a western audience living under capitalism is *oh wow* anti-communist and would seek to portray communism in the worst possible light, going as far as to just make poo poo up, like in Snyder's Bloodlands. Now theres a suprise What Stalin was or wasn't has no bearing on communism as an ideology or even the USSR as a state. You could prove Stalin was the kindest person the have ever lived and the USSR would still have been a lovely totalitarian empire and communism will still have failed to produce viable long-lasting solutions on a national scale.
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Apr 1, 2016 22:43
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G.C. Furr III posted:they succeeded in producing viable and long-lasting solutions on a national scale. I really don't understand how you could see otherwise. have you even looked at the history of industrialisation in the USSR? I suppose it depends on your definition on long-lasting but in a historical context it didn't last very long. If your economic model can't survive 50 years before you go bankrupt you are doing something wrong. It was totalitarian and it was an empire and in my book that's pretty lovely..
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Apr 2, 2016 00:12
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Fojar38 posted:Something about the speed at which it industrialized proves the superiority of central planning, but history seems to suggest that sort of model sacrifices the long term for the short term. You can plan your way out of a known problem; the difficulty is planning for what you don't know. Good luck centrally planning what technology will do to industries and economic sectors in the future and finding people who will reliably respond to a changing environment.
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Apr 3, 2016 23:33
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Sorcery posted:ISIS was created by America and is currently being directed, armed, funded, and trained by America's as well as its "allies" Israel, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Britain and France to effect the destruction of Syria. They are doing this in order to isolate Iran, Hezbollah and the Palestinian national liberation movement - since Syria is an anti-zionist state. The destruction of Syria will also allow the construction of a gas pipeline from Qatar to Europe through Syria to commence which would further isolate Western Europe from Russia and Asia and make them further dependent on America for oil and gas (since Qatar is not even a real country. It's a puppet of America). If getting rid of the Syrian state was a priority it would be gone now. The opportunity was there but the US/EU was all like "eh". The incentives to get rid of the Syrian state exist but that doesn't mean people necessarily act on them if it's too difficult/expensive. Beyond that ISIS has primarily harmed the Kurds, rebels, the Iraqi state and Libya and not so much Assad.
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Apr 4, 2016 09:40
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Sorcery posted:It's funny how you people feign concern for the 10s of millions of people that Stalin supposedly killed - according to CIA "historians" like Conquest, Kotkin, Snyder, et al - and yet you don't give a poo poo at all for the millions of people dying - right now - as a result of western imperialism. Who gives a poo poo that a quarter of a million Syrians have been killed by US-backed death squads. After all, Assad is goofy looking. Same goes for Gaddafi. Who cares about the literally millions of Iraqis that have been murdered since Operation Desert Storm. Sadam was a "bad guy" and the price was worth it Milosevic was a bad guy too so let's drop the depleted uranium. NATO blew up a hospital in Afghanistan? Oh well, I'm sure they had their reasons. All those things are bad and most on this forum agrees on that. It's not strange to be opposed to Stalin killing people AND opposing the US doing it. What is strange is to not accept Stalin did it and thinking tu quoque deflections are useful. Either way the US is not backing Assads death squads.
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Apr 4, 2016 12:20
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OldMemes posted:Stalin had several painters shot because he didn't like how they painted him in offical portraits. And I don't think anyone is questioning the forced relocation of various ethnicities, an atrocity in its own right. It's pretty much all I need to know about Stalin - he was a totalitarian imperialist with a penchant for ethnic cleansing. Whether he deliberately orchestrated the holodomor or directly ordered Katyn... yeah it doesn't really affect my opinion that much.
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Apr 5, 2016 00:56
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swampman posted:I'm referring to the broader point that in America, historical consensus on certain issues is often a matter of unquestioned mantra. A lot of the terrible conditions in North Korea can be explained by the war America waged and continues to wage on them. You think it's weird and bad they don't have IV bags when they would have no way to import or manufacture them? Or, HVAC is something Americans take for granted, it causes enormous energy expenditure in the form of burning coal... I'm just saying that the narrative about North Korea is so tainted that there is no way to take most of the outrageous claims about them seriously. It's a good thing NK neighbor the worlds 2nd and 9th largest economies so they can get their IV bags there instead.
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Apr 6, 2016 23:24
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Brainiac Five posted:The US doesn't give food aid because the people in the State Department are bleeding hearts, it gives food aid to keep North Korea's leadership happy and willing to play along. If the DPRK disarmed, the reasons the US has for feeding North Korea disappear and I have never, ever encountered a single person involved in US foreign policy who wouldn't let all of North Korea starve to death if there wasn't a compelling reason to feed them. Thus, the DPRK will never disarm as things stand currently, because it's their best bet for feeding people. Planet Earth contains more nations than the US and NK. Neither China nor SK has any particular interest in people starving in NK.
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Apr 6, 2016 23:41
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Brainiac Five posted:Who loving cares? What matters is if they have a compelling interest in feeding North Korea, and China's main interest in North Korea seems to be it being a reliable buffer against American troops, which disarming would render impossible, and while it's possible South Korea could fund food and energy aid for the DPRK, there's also the basic problem that the North Korean leadership would probably see that as a first step towards South Korea absorbing the North. So the real problem is that North Korea doesn't want reunification and the US state department theoretically ignoring starvation in NK is irrelevant. Incidentally the buffer-zone theory makes no sense. Putting a base next to Syria, North Korea etc. is useful because those nations will be immediately dominated. Putting a base on China's border is not useful because it will be immediately vaporized. The US has only 30k troops in SK because SK can handle NK on its own and if a war with China were to happen those troops would be a liability, not a benefit.
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Apr 7, 2016 00:06
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Why the US would give a poo poo about South Korea having to feed some refugees is beyond me. They have yet to deploy at the Bosphorus to machinegun Syrians headed for Europe.
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Apr 7, 2016 00:51
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Brainiac Five posted:The US isn't actually sending food aid to North Korea at the moment, and I think it's really questionable to posit that humanitarian concerns are on the radar of the people responsible for developing and implementing policy. It isn't but South Korea feeding refugees is also not a particular concern or interest to anyone in the US.
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Apr 7, 2016 02:09
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Brainiac Five posted:The gently caress has this to do with anything? The US would kill "innocents for political purposes" but there is no purpose in killing refugees in South Korea, political or otherwise. Why do you think anyone in the US would give the tiniest poo poo that South Korea has to build refugee camps? The US doesn't give a poo poo about refugee camps anywhere else. Krazyface posted:A US ally collapsing under a colossal refugee crisis is of interest to the US government, even if we set aside humanitarian concerns. Yes but there is no reason to think it would collapse.
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Apr 7, 2016 02:13
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