• Adkml [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Lmao the entire liberal media establishment has literally spent the last week defending a waffen ss volunteer.

      • Gorilladrums@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        North Korea isn’t Marxist. It stopped being Marxist after the Soviet Union fell. They officially adopted a new ideology, that’s more or less in line with what is traditionally considered Fascist. The North Korean regime is similar in function and ideology to other Fascist regimes like Belarus, Azerbaijan, or Turkmenistan.

        • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          What books have you read on the economy of fascism and on the economy of the DPRK? Are you uninformed and wrong or misinformed and wrong?

          • Gorilladrums@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Fascism doesn’t emphasize economics, it’s a minor point in the ideology. Most Fascist governments allowed a private sector to run, but they also nationalized any industry they wanted on a whim. There were also a lot of nonsensical regulations, but as long corporations didn’t question the state then they were fine. North Korea doesn’t really have a private sector or an economy, but again the focus of Fascism is mostly political and social. North Korea functions similarly to other Fascist regimes. North Korea is authoritarian, ultranationalist, ultra militaristic, it’s run by a dictatorial leader, it is centralized autocracy, the government does forcibly suppress opposition, the government does pump out propaganda telling its citizens that subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation is a must, and so on. It’s a Fascist state.

            • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              Fascism doesn’t emphasize economics, it’s a minor point in the ideology.

              Their rhetoric maybe. I’ve studied fascism, in depth. Fascism absolutely is primarily class warfare waged by the petite bourgeoisie and precarious haut bourgeoisie and has common economic characteristics. A good primer on this would be “Economy and Class structure of German Fascism” It is a quick read, <200 pages.

              North Korea is authoritarian, ultranationalist, ultra militaristic, it’s run by a dictatorial leader, it is centralized autocracy, the government does forcibly suppress opposition, the government does pump out propaganda telling its citizens that subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation is a must, and so on.

              Are we just uncritically repeating the talking points of a country that killed 20 percent of Koreans in order to protect the puppet dictatorship riddled with former colonial Japanese oppressors they installed in the South? That claims the North invaded while their puppet dictatorship was busy slaughtering 10s of thousands of pro democracy protestors?

              The DPRK literally has had workplace management elected by the workers since 1961 and you’re accusing them of being undemocratic. Imagine how different your life would be if you chose your own management, and there was no owner to leech off of you.

              • Gorilladrums@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                Fascism absolutely is primarily class warfare waged by the petite bourgeoisie and precarious haut bourgeoisie and has common economic characteristics

                I think you’re missing the point. Fascism is neither capitalist or socialist. They just use whatever policies is convenient for the state at the time. If they deem a private sector is useful, they will allow a private sector. If they deem an industry is of national security, they will nationalize it. If they want to add or remove regulations on a whim, they will do so. There’s no economic vision, there’s no ideal economy that they work for. Class warfare is also used as a tool for power, it’s not a defining part of the ideology. Fascism believes in social hierarchies, and this was just another way to enforce this idea. While Fascism’s cousin ideology, Marxism, has class warfare as a definitive ideological enemy, this isn’t the case for Fascism. When we look at North Korea, the country used to be mostly Marxist while the Soviet Union was still around, but they switched over to Fascism quickly afterwards. It doesn’t seem like a lot changed because both ideologies are authoritarian, but Fascism is the more accurate term to describe how the country runs now.

                Are we just uncritically repeating the talking points of a country that killed 20 percent of Koreans in order to protect the puppet dictatorship riddled with former colonial Japanese oppressors they installed in the South? That claims the North invaded while their puppet dictatorship was busy slaughtering 10s of thousands of pro democracy protestors?

                And this is when you stop being a reasonable critic and start becoming a coping tankie clown. Just a few points here:

                1. Everything that I said about how North Korea is unequivocally true and this is does not disprove or take away from that in any way, shape, or form.
                2. America did not start the Korean war. The Korean war was officially started when the Soviet backed Marxist North launched a surprise invasion on the South on the 25th of June, 1950. This is basic history. Before that, most of the conflict was just political and there were a few minor clashes around the 39th parallel.
                3. US helping the South defend itself from the North is beyond justified. It was the right call. On top of the North invading and slaughtering civilians in the South, the North also had other problems. After the war, both countries were relatively equal in population, size, and economy. However, there was one stark difference, North Korea was heavily dependent on the Soviet Union for its existence. They barely developed a plan B for when the Soviet Union cuts support. When that finally happened in the 1990s with the failure of Marxism in Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea was left with nothing and ended having a famine that killed 3.5 million North Koreans. The entire Korean war killed an estimated 2-3 million civilians on both sides just to put things in perspective. Even if South Korea didn’t democratize in the 90s and remained under a dictatorship, they were still better off sovereign as that led them to escape the fate of the North. If the famine was spread to the South, the death toll could’ve been as high as 7 million. From that point on North Korea became a chronically malnourished, despite having the better geography.
                4. North Korea was not and is not pro democracy, that’s some low tier propaganda which even the most ignorant of people don’t fall for. North Korea was a puppet propped by the Soviet Union, and the Soviets were very explicitly critical of democracy and saw it as a threat to their power, therefore North Korea was built with the same mindset.

                The DPRK literally has had workplace management elected by the workers since 1961 and you’re accusing them of being undemocratic. Imagine how different your life would be if you chose your own management, and there was no owner to leech off of you.

                What’s next, you’re going to tell me that Kim Jung Un, his father, and grandfather all got 100% of the vote 100% of the time in free and fair elections? Listen, I understand you’re a tankie and I commend your efforts to try and defend North Korea of all places, but this is not an argument you can win. North Korea is one of the world’s most authoritarian and undemocratic countries in the world, and anybody can tell that this is objectively the case based on the information that North Korea itself publishes. North Korea isn’t a communist utopia, it’s the polar opposite.

                • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  You’re super uneducated on what fascism is.

                  Please, share with me one nonfiction book or academic text you’ve read seriously analyzing fascism.

                  While Fascism’s cousin ideology, Marxism, has class warfare as a definitive ideological enemy, this isn’t the case for Fascism.

                  Bwahaha. If they’re cousins then fascism and bourgeois democracy are inbred twins. Facism exists to defend capitalism.

                  Everything that I said about how North Korea is unequivocally true and this is does not disprove or take away from that in any way, shape, or form.

                  Claiming your claims are true doesn’t make your claims true.

                  America did not start the Korean war. The Korean war was officially started when the Soviet backed Marxist North launched a surprise invasion on the South on the 25th of June, 1950. This is basic history. Before that, most of the conflict was just political and there were a few minor clashes around the 39th parallel.

                  To liberate the south, where the US had installed a far right puppet government which was slaughtering 10s of thousands of pro democracy protestors and generally repressing the population. Thats a war to liberate their country. Next you’ll tell me that the US Civil War was an unprovoked invasion by the North.

                  US helping the South defend itself from the North is beyond justified. It was the right call. On top of the North invading and slaughtering civilians in the South, the North also had other problems. After the war, both countries were relatively equal in population, size, and economy. However, there was one stark difference, North Korea was heavily dependent on the Soviet Union for its existence. They barely developed a plan B for when the Soviet Union cuts support. When that finally happened in the 1990s with the failure of Marxism in Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea was left with nothing and ended having a famine that killed 3.5 million North Koreans. The entire Korean war killed an estimated 2-3 million civilians on both sides just to put things in perspective. Even if South Korea didn’t democratize in the 90s and remained under a dictatorship, they were still better off sovereign as that led them to escape the fate of the North. If the famine was spread to the South, the death toll could’ve been as high as 7 million. From that point on North Korea became a chronically malnourished, despite having the better geography.

                  The US literally mass murdered civilians and indiscriminately bombed civilian infrastructure. MacArthur had to have his nuclear command secretly taken away because the president thought he would nuke Korea.

                  The DPRK was literally doing better economically until the US massively subsidized the south in the 80s. You are right to criticize their uneven economic development though, though to be fair the sudden undemocratic dissolution of the USSR is only obvious in hindsight.

                  What’s next, you’re going to tell me that Kim Jung Un, his father, and grandfather all got 100% of the vote 100% of the time in free and fair elections?

                  You do understand that it isnt 100 percent, is is like 99 percent right? Which is reasonable in a country with process democracy where the final vote is confirmation that concensus has been reached.

                  Has it occurred to you that you’re uneducated on alternate forms of democracy, and you’ve been shown something that is more democratic outside of its context within other democratic mechanisms and told that it is proof theyre a dictatorship?

                  Also, each Kim has had less and less positions within the executive branch, and Kim jung Un wouldn’t have been elected if the guy before him didn’t try to do a coup to take the country in a far right direction.

                  What’s next, you’re going to tell me that Kim Jung Un, his father, and grandfather all got 100% of the vote 100% of the time in free and fair elections?

                  You’re literally claiming a campaign of genocide was justified because after the 80s the country it was in defense of stopped being an overt dictatorship, why should anyone value your analysis?

    • culpritus [any]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      wonder-who-thats-for

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_North_Korea

      During the campaign, conventional weapons such as explosives, incendiary bombs, and napalm destroyed nearly all of the country’s cities and towns, including an estimated 85% of its buildings.

      A total of 635,000 tons of bombs, including 32,557 tons of napalm, were dropped on Korea. By comparison, the U.S. dropped 1.6 million tons in the European theater and 500,000 tons in the Pacific theater during all of World War II (including 160,000 on Japan). North Korea ranks alongside Cambodia (500,000 tons), Laos (2 million tons), and South Vietnam (4 million tons) as among the most heavily-bombed countries in history.

      In an interview with U.S. Air Force historians in 1988, USAF General Curtis LeMay, who was also head of the U.S. Strategic Air Command, commented on efforts to win the war as a whole, including the strategic bombing campaign, saying “Right at the start of the war, unofficially, I slipped a message in “under the carpet” in the Pentagon that we ought to turn SAC lose with some incendiaries on some North Korean towns. The answer came back, under the carpet again, that there would be too many civilian casualties; we couldn’t do anything like that. We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another, and some in South Korea, too…Over a period of three years or so we killed off, what, 20 percent of the population of Korea, as direct casualties of war or from starvation and exposure? Over a period of three years, this seemed to be acceptable to everybody, but to kill a few people at the start right away, no, we can’t seem to stomach that.”

      Sahr-Conway Lanz, who holds a Ph.D. in the history of American foreign relations, has written extensively about the legacy and impact on American discourse on the international norm of noncombatant immunity. He states:

      “During the war, American military and civilian officials stretched the term “military target” to include virtually all human-made structures, capitalizing on the vague distinction between the military and civilian segments of an enemy society. They came to apply the logic of total war to the destruction of the civil infrastructure in North Korea. Because almost any building could serve a military purpose, even if a minor one, nearly the entire physical infrastructure behind enemy lines was deemed a military target and open to attack. This expansive definition, along with the optimism about sparing civilians that is reinforced, worked to obscure in American awareness the suffering of Korean civilians in which U.S. firebombing was contributing.”

      The song was inspired by Korean war veteran that John McCrea met in a bar.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Rgsihd6WM

        • autismdragon [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Won’t realize anything. When I showed this article to my liberal friend he doubled down and said that while civilian deaths were unfortunate, it was a proportional response to Kim invading the South and compared it to Hitler invading Poland. Its veryt rare that shit like this gets through.

          • Evilsandwichman [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Hey I too know a lib I can’t get through to; this guy however doesn’t know nearly enough about history to try and sound informed; he instead spouts whatever comes to mind, for example: when I told him about what had been going on in Donbas until the war, and that Ukraine wanted the land but not the people, he argued for ethnic cleansing in the form of forcing all the Russians there to leave, and it was enough that the Ukrainian government wanted them gone for him to say that. When I brought up that the US is causing major issues with Taiwan, his response was “Do you believe that China does bad things?”, and then wanted to start talking about the Uyghurs even though…it has literally no relation to the situation with Taiwan. He pretends that countries not being democracies is the reason he supports the US intervening or invading many nations, and when I point out that Ukraine has shut down many left wing parties, he then pivots and says Putin does it too with a face as though he’s said something really clever.

            I’ve spent hours trying to educate him about what’s going on in many countries the US intervenes in but the truth is this guy just inherently supports US empire.

            Your friend may be different, but I suspect he’s using what little historical info he has to try and lend legitimacy to his claims but the truth is he already knows who he supports (just not why).

      • Evilsandwichman [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        “During the war, American military and civilian officials stretched the term “military target” to include virtually all human-made structures, capitalizing on the vague distinction between the military and civilian segments of an enemy society. They came to apply the logic of total war to the destruction of the civil infrastructure in North Korea. Because almost any building could serve a military purpose, even if a minor one, nearly the entire physical infrastructure behind enemy lines was deemed a military target and open to attack. This expansive definition, along with the optimism about sparing civilians that is reinforced, worked to obscure in American awareness the suffering of Korean civilians in which U.S. firebombing was contributing.”

        One of the things I never understood is why Western countries (as we’re not the only ones who do this) bother coming up with these laws and rules of engagement and such if they’re just going to basically be interpreted in the most liberal sense to allow one to do whatever they want. Take that adviser to Trump who suggested sending out a drone to ‘deal’ with migrants before they crossed the US border or entered American waters because they wouldn’t be protected by the US constitution at that point. What even is the point of these laws if the intent is ignored and people simply find a way to play the system?

        • culpritus [any]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          the mask of civility is the thin veneer that liberals use to hide their agenda

          it’s related to the difference between materialist and idealist perspectives

          if you claim to uphold lofty ideals, then you can just claim the material failure to live up to those ideals is an oversight, mistake, accident, victim-blame etc

          this is also why plausible deniability is a critical aspect of many operations, it was those few bad people that caused the bad things, not the institutional structure that is dedicated to lofty ideals

      • Gorilladrums@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        It’s a war, what do you expect to happen? Regardless, considering how North Korea turned out, defending South Korea, was without a doubt, the right decision.

        • jump@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Fuck you “the Korean War was the right decision”

          Fuck you, imperialist warmonger. Pray that the souls of millions of dead Koreans killed by American hands don’t haunt you tonight.

            • gayhitler420@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              I’m sorry, but you’re deeply misinformed. I’m saying this not to start a fight, but in the hope that seeing it from someone outside hexbear (I’m banned from that instance!) will be received better.

              What you’re saying is the us propaganda during and about the war after it ended. The consensus among even american historians stands in stark contrast to what youve posted.

              I’m on mobile at the moment, so I can’t make the biggest post, but if you wanna know something in particular lmk and I’ll get to it as soon as I can.

              • Gorilladrums@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                What I said isn’t propaganda, it’s the reality. If you want to make the case that the war was brutal then I would agree. If you want to make the case that South Korea was ran by dictators until recently then I would also agree. These are also facts, but they’re irrelevant to the point that I was trying to make. The idiot I was replying to really pretended that Korean war was started by the US and not the Soviet backed invasion of the North which is simply not true. Whether you think the war was justified or not is subjective. Just like the nukes on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, everybody has their moral opinions on it. In my view, the US involvement in Korea to help the South was the right decision. Even if South Korea didn’t democratize in the 1990s, they still would’ve been better off being sovereign then under the control of the North. The North after the war went through an economic collapse, a famine, and chronic food and supplies shortages that are still plaguing the country today. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, but the it was ultimately the right call.

                • gayhitler420@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  there’s a lot youre leaving out. I don’t think it’s on purpose, but one of the only ways that the korean war can be made to look like a soviet invasion is by conveniently leaving out everything that happened before the norths army crossed the 38th parallel.

                  korea was one nation and people before it was divided roughly along a line of latitude by two american officers with no input from those knowledgeable about korea or its history. one of those officers, dean rusk, has said that he would have done things differently if he knew that forty years before, the tsarist russians and japanese had discussed dividing korea along a very similar line.

                  They divided the peninsula because the idea among the allies was to reunify it five years or so after china’s civil war ended and it was clear weather koreas only land border would be with the communists or the koumintang.

                  as the japanese retreated south, the korean people formed their own governing committees. the soviet forces integrated those committees into the provisional government, the american side integrated the collaborators from the japanese occupation into theirs. the north had a democratic election, the south became a military dictatorship.

                  both sides claim to have held elections, but while a majority of the north wanted to vote for kim il sung, the fighter who was an ally of the liberators that empowered koreans to kick out collaborators and do land reform, the souths election that would put syngman rhee in power were boycotted by the souths political parties and accompanied by what was reported on in even western papers as brutal repression. it’s worth noting that one of the leaders of a prominent political party would be assassinated a little later.

                  there’s plenty i’m glossing over, but the north didn’t cross the 38th parallel out of the blue for no reason but to impose their evil communist brainwashing on the kindly people of the south. in the south, the repression of jeju island, the military uprising against the government in response to that repression and the bodo league massacre are the backdrop for the norths invasion.

                  now think about those circumstances and history for a second.

                  the americans divide your country along the same line the russians and occupiers wanted to use before. lets say youre in the north: maybe you don’t trust these soviets, but they respect the peoples committees and theyre doing that land reform youve been wanting for decades. they’re supportive of you expelling the japanese collaborators and things feel like they’re getting better. how about if youre in the south? the americans put the collaborators back in charge, broke up the peoples committees and are putting the ever growing number of collaborators to work beating everyone into shape for the election.

                  when 30,000 koreans die on jeju island, there’s a failed military uprising and a massacre of south korean communists, what would any right minded person do? of course the north crossed the made up line keeping them away from their countrymen in peril!

                  since i’ve written enough already i’ll just address what you said about the state of the north being so bad: when and why was it so bad? why did it take a carpet bombing campaign and international blockade to make it so bad?

    • autismdragon [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Fascism is when media tells me the country is evil bad country. What? Fascism has a definition and the DPRK doesn’t come even close to fitting it? Bah, impossible. Trustworthy Sources (social media echo chambers) told me that Kim is an evil bad dictator man.