No mention of why Romania was in such a bad state. Turns out it was the same playbook as today with the Global South. Romania gets IMF loans mid 70s. And just like John Perkins discusses in his book ‘confessions of an Economic Hitman’, the IMF made the terms of the loan contingent on austerity. Then due to global macroeconomic conditions and interest rate hikes, Romania can’t repay the debts and starts to implode. This of course by design as per IMF/World bank strategy.

The people rise up against AUSTERITY but libs scream about ‘communist dictatorship’.

Zero historical context. Just ‘Communism bad, mmmkay?’. Like the Ukraine proxy war, nothing happened before Russia invaded. No it was ‘totally unprovoked’.

Here’s the background of this lemmy.world propaganda:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romania_and_the_International_Monetary_Fund

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    Key Events in the timeline of X Bad Communist Country:

    • Previous government which had some issues but could have been worked out through dialogue, debate, and reforms, is brutally overthrown by violent ideological communist terrorists
    • Those terrorists evilly steal and pillage the institutions of that previous government and brutally loot the businesses of hard-working citizens, giving them to the lazy, inferior, unwashed masses
    • As a consequence of this, the country falls into abject poverty, with breadlines and freedom of speech brutally repressed for decades.
    • We put sanctions on them AFTER this. ABSOLUTELY 100% AFTER. I cannot stress enough that the sanctions did NOT cause the former thing to happen, it was only AFTERWARDS. But it’s also fine if they did cause suffering because those people are bad and inferior anyway.
    • Protests from people yearning for freedom in this brutal communist regime occur and are brutally crushed, brutally. Thousan-- tens of tho-- HUNDREDS of thousands of people are murdered by state forces and their bodies washed into sewers so there’s no evidence of this happening, but it did definitely occur. Five million people are killed in this genocide, which claimed twenty million lives over a 20 year period; this truly awful crime of humanity killed fifty million people, and-- ah, this just in, that genocide actually killed seventy million, more than previous estimates from seven seconds ago, and-- did I hear eighty million from the gentleman in the back? 85 mil-- 90 million! Going, going-- a HUNDRED MILLION, to the fine person in row 5, going, going, and… SOLD!
    • Eventually, the communist regime collapses due to corruption, mismanagement, and a lack of respect for basic human nature. We help them institute democracy in the aftermath and restore those hard-working businessowners to their rightful position above the masses who destroyed their country out of lack of work ethic / This communist country is a mere 5 days from complete collapse because none of the people in charge have any knowledge of even Economics 101, and are too stupid to figure out how to save their economies via privatization.
  • FuckyWucky [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    hmmm i wonder why Romania’s population went from 23mil to 19 mil since 1990. could it be that despite all the issues Romania had, it still managed okay living standards?

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    When I bring up context like this the person I’m in conversation with often rolls their eyes and says something like “it doesn’t matter why things were bad under communism, people had a traumatic time and you have to respect that.”

    Anyway has anyone got more sources on Romania and the Imperialist Monetary Fund profiteering?

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      That’s their way of saying, “I don’t give a shit as long as it confirms my anti-communist bias. Say the same thing about a capitalist country and I’ll demand sources for every point you’ve made”

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    It might just be my lack of knowledge of the smaller European countries, but this is such a niche thing on a community that is technically not supposed to be an explicit anticommunist thing, that I feel this might be fedposting.

    It’s a neat trick, post something that confirms previously enforced biases, but not interesting or topical enough that many people will know about it and push back, or actually bother to research it.

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      Romanian revolutionaries

      brutal [capital-C] Communist dictator

      popular uprising

      I’m glad I’m not the only one that caught a whiff of that Langley, Virginia air. It is too manicured, too evocative, too… Western news media.

      Let me try and fix it.

      Western-backed fascist paramilitary group

      General Secretary of the ruling Romanian Communist Party

      illegal U.S. sanctioned coup d’etat that deposed a ruling party consisting of 4 million people and replaced it with bourgeois minority rule wherein only a fraction of a percent of Romanians were allowed political power.

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      Could be. Could be just a conservative/fascist cold war history goon, lots of people who casually enjoy history quickly gobble anticommunism. But whether its a civilian or a spook, functionally they do they same thing.

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      All the history subreddits get taken over by the feds, or by nazis (but I repeat myself)

      Even small ones, that explicitly try to call out false ideas about history get taken over by them. r/badhistory used to be really good, then they got flooded with posts talking about how Chinese people’s research on China is automatically “untrustworthy”, and westerners, even RFA, are automatically “trustworthy” regardless of the quality of evidence. The sort of western chauvinism that the subreddit had previously explicitly rejected was now being celebrated because it was talking about China. Long story short, I complained, got banned. This was a couple of years ago now, I imagine most of their posts these days would just be “Look at this bad history take where they say Stalin didn’t kill a million billion people, tankies hate history, slobber zucchini!”

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    Tangentially related, but I recall watching this Vice documentary about the “witch” mafia currently pulling more than a few Romanian politicians’ strings.

    To indicate at how horribly anti-religious totalitarian Romania was, they reference a story of the eldest witch being confronted by Romanian authorities about scamming people with magic hexes and shit. They claim she beat the shit out of one of the officers with a broom, had to pay a fine and spent a night or two in jail.

    Are you fucking serious? What do you think would happen if you beat an Amerikkkan police officer with a broom? Muhforitarian Romania! Gommunist atheism has gone too far!

    https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/witchcraft-in-romania/57b2e3701c1fcfa454047341

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        CW racism

        Literally saw a video of a black student on a US university campus picking litter. Cop shows up and starts shouting at him to drop his weapon (a litter picker). Student tells cop that he lives and studies there and is just cleaning up outside. Luckily other people see what’s happening and intervene to vouch for the guy but the cop is still a bastard and doesn’t relent. Can’t remember exactly what happened but you get the distinct feeling that if they’d been alone, the cop would’ve ended up killing the student for ‘wielding’ a litter picker in an otherwise empty car park.

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    Ceaucescu was faaaar from a perfect leader, but that’s not what caused the uprising lol he was in office for so much longer that that one event, make that make sense libs😂please humor me about the “tipping point”🤣

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    offtopic but I just came back to this site after years, what are some alive subs or whatever you call them over here?