• emizeko [they/them]
    ·
    10 months ago

    there's a moment on the journey out of liberalism where you finally read Stalin's words and go, "wait, this is the guy they're saying all that wild shit about?"

    https://redsails.org/stalin-and-ludwig/
    https://redsails.org/stalin-and-wells/

    • Awoo [she/her]
      ·
      10 months ago

      There's a reason they do everything in their power to convince people to avoid reading anything he actually wrote and forming their own opinion.

      It's become even more imperative that they try and get people not to do that the longer their propaganda has gone on, because the moment a person does engage with him in a proper academic and mature way is the moment that it becomes clear how much is pure propaganda. This is deeply damaging to liberalism because it sets in light just how much should be questioned, it highlights the scale of it all.

    • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      10 months ago

      Stalin: You exaggerate. We have no especially high esteem for everything American, but we do respect the efficiency that the Americans display in everything in industry, in technology, in literature and in life. We never forget that the U.S.A. is a capitalist country. But among the Americans there are many people who are mentally and physically healthy who are healthy in their whole approach to work, to the job on hand. That efficiency, that simplicity, strikes a responsive chord in our hearts. Despite the fact that America is a highly developed capitalist country, the habits prevailing in its industry, the practices existing in productive processes, have an element of democracy about them, which cannot be said of the old European capitalist countries, where the haughty spirit of the feudal aristocracy is still alive.

      ...

      That cannot be said of America, which is a country of “free colonists,” without landlords and without aristocrats. Hence the sound and comparatively simple habits in American productive life. Our business executives of working-class origin who have visited America at once noted this trait. They relate, not without a certain agreeable surprise, that on a production job in America it is difficult to distinguish an engineer from a worker by outward appearance. That pleases them, of course.

      snipes-hesitation

    • MaoTheLawn [any, any]
      ·
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      H.G Wells is an OG one true leftist hexbearite:

      "It seems to me that I am more to the Left than you, Mr. Stalin; I think the old system is nearer to its end than you think."

      Aside from that, Stalin is such a great orator... However, his skill in speaking can't be put only down to an ability to speak plainly and clearly - rather it is the solidness of his theories and robust historical knowledge that makes it easy for him to speak with such authority and precision.

      That is why liberal politicians fail so horribly in their seethrough speeches. They are not backed by actual facts or historically materialist theory. By nature of their juxtaposition as defenders of capital AND supposed servants of the people, they can be nothing other than duplicitous.

      I wager that there is not a mainstream politician in the U.S or the U.K that could survive even 20 minutes questioning by Stalin without being made to look a bludgeoned fool. Biden would last about 14 seconds before keeling over and dying.