have you listened to Kill James Bond?

Cover to Cover. One of the few podcasts I actually pay for, even through the Winter of Content.

The hosts there, including Alice, are open about how they uphold the legacy of the USSR and the GDR in both joking and unironic terms.

I got an earful of coverage about the GDR during "The Lives of Others" episode and if you think they "upheld" its "legacy", you're deeply mistaken. As to the USSR, Alice is deeply ambivalent on it in pretty much every podcast setting. WTYP - the Supersonic aircraft and Nedelin Catastrophe eps - have her utterly torn between their ambitions and failures. The Nicolae Ceausescu episode might as well have been about the fuck-ups of Eastern European central planning. While she's happy to slam "The Internationale" button to egg on Liam, she's no Stalinist by any stretch.

This is in stark contrast to her feelings on, say, Cuba, Vietnam, or China, which either aren’t mentioned, or are spoken of the same way the BBC would, uncritical restatement of propaganda

Which episode trashes Cuba or Vietnam? Again, I keep hearing these vague insinuations and unsourced allegations. I'm still waiting for a thing she actually said that justifies the criticism. The worst thing I've heard her say about Cuba is that it is a poor country. And she's hardly shy about saying why the blockade is to blame.

The only criticisms I've heard on China are the exact same criticisms you hear from every other Western Leftist - namely, that Xi's not hitting the Full Communism button fast or hard enough, that even Chinese cops fall under ACAB, that Taiwan is a lost cause, etc. Even then, it tends to be couched in the "I'm no expert on China" and "Hardly worse than what Americans are up to" caveats.

I fucking wish the BBC anchors had that attitude towards the AES states.