I feel like talking about Stalin is like walking on eggshells… You don’t want to go, “Stalin’s death toll is overexaggerated, in my opinion he didn’t kill enough people!!!” because that will make the average person instantly stop hearing you

What’s the best way to talk about Stalin in a sensitive way that doesn’t trigger a fight or flight response?

  • wooferTwo
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    5 days ago

    ~10 000 people in my tiny country alone is totally anecdotal and surely just some sort of fluke… Probably just American propaganda and all those still living are just having a mass hallucination… Yeah old people stuff…

    Anyways I am not against socialism… I think equality is important and the western system sure is not the good that it says it is.

    That aside USSR sure wasn’t good either. Taking over independent countries who are doing their thing the way they want and then forcefully suppressing their culture and way of life is not good in my books. It is totally fine to defend socialism, but defending a de facto murderous dictator is not. And of course I can’t ask about their crimes from my aged people… They didn’t live then you know… My grandmother did, she was a farmer until guys with guns came in the night… What nice fellas am I right? Definitely not a red flag… There is a common saying among the oldies here that would roughly translate to “nazis sucked, but russians were literal monsters”.

    Which seems a longer telephone line to you - me listening to people who lived through it or me listening to you who seemingly has never set a foot in the eastern block?

    • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
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      5 days ago

      There is a common saying among the oldies here that would roughly translate to “nazis sucked, but russians were literal monsters”.

      Sounds made up lol. Like something a Cold War NATO type would come up with:

      • Compares Nazis and Russians (not even communists)
      • Implies the USSR was just Russia
      • Dehumanizes Russians
      • Implies a group that is heavily documented for doing very intentional genocide of millions (Nazis) is actually less bad than a farmer being deported from a country

      Shit propaganda. GTFO of here.

      • wooferTwo
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        5 days ago

        Yeah!! Lets forcefully take over all the small countries, import all their natural resources to the mainland so we, the cultured, can live in paradise!!!

        Hooray for slavery!

        Message approved by the the council

        • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
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          5 days ago

          Fun fact, if you claim to support socialism, but then join in with the empire’s talking points in demonizing efforts to actually do it, you are indistinguishable from an imperialist. No amount of saying “I’m actually really on its side” changes that. Being an ally of an abstraction doesn’t mean anything.

          • wooferTwo
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            5 days ago

            But these “talking points” really happened… USSR was NOT a good thing… Communism ≠ USSR… All that industry they built was built on the blood of the conquered. Maybe you should not do that?

            Fun fact you can do communism without slavery. Why do you insist that an atrocious attempt in the past is the only way?

            You can’t make people equal and society classless when you shove tens of thousands into backcountry to do the work.

            • How is that classless?
            • How is that equal?
            • How is militarily conquering small countries not imperial?
            • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
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              5 days ago

              I can make stuff up too. My great grandfather actually warned me about you. He said that someday a deceiver called wooferTwo would come into my life. This was after his dog was stolen by the original wooferOne. He knew what was up. RIP grandpa.

              • wooferTwo
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                5 days ago

                Not answering my questions though… You can google the deportations, you can’t google why in the fuck you would think that slavery is a sign of great communism

                • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
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                  5 days ago

                  You could also read what I directly linked you earlier and evidently didn’t read a word of it. But yeah, if I googled “anti-communism”, I’m sure I could find plenty of sources alleging a lot of terrible things about it, like ones written by the western empire and by fascists and their intelligentsia. It’s almost like in power struggle, if you don’t defeat the exploiting classes, they will slander and fight you instead of just giving in to a better world. Did you know the USSR was invaded by western powers very early in its life? Far before it had time to do most of the atrocities that anti-communists claimed it did. Meanwhile, Nazi Germany was largely left alone by some of those same powers until late in WWII (or even had connections between). Why do you think that is, hmm?