I was just thinking about this and the incredible damage Red Scare propaganda has done to us all after trying to have a convo with "a progressive" who was very puzzled about why a fascict would get so many votes in a presidential election here. The discussion was a no go because we have no common understanding of what got us here.

My country had close ties to the Soviet and is a place where all history has now been rewritten, it has kind of gone full circle and it is depressing to listen to all the misinformed or hollow analysis of current events that fully lack context of the one big lever that was there until the 90s. The lever has been demonized. I could not mention it in conversation without envoking lib anxiety.

Looking at everything from the PoV of Soviet existing and then falling it all makes sense, but this is completely left out. Instead we get apathy because the lever that was there is fully discredited or tabooed from all conversation and analysis. The capitalist framing and terms used about the Soviet union are mainstream and they are truly all there is for average folks, I got hit with "finlandization" several times during the convo which is now taken as common knowledge. It is a right wing talking point that is now a fact. People use these terms to refer to the Soviet with zero understanding of where the terms are coming from and let that define their entire worldview. How can they not if that is all there is.

You can't even mention the name of Lenin here without sounding somehow "extreme". It has happened fast too, in just a few decades. Not that the effort to achieve this wasn't always there, but they won. We have our populist politicians gaining traction to prove they did. And people feel helpless againts that as there is no historical understanding of why we got here.