I have a friend who is by all accounts very socialist but was absolutely horrified when I claimed that the USSR was not “bad” and that many of the deaths it is blamed for have a much more complicated reason. They also called me a tankie, much to my despair as it really displayed to me how many brainworms they have. They also were fairly close to calling me a genocide denier 💀

This person is a freshman in college and I’d like to try and help them unlearn these ideas. They are queer and Canadian,and they also thought Vaush was great if that’s helpful at all. Does anyone have any accessible resources to help them unlearn what they’ve been taught about the USSR?

  • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Show them the infamous yellow parenti lecture, you gotta start by undermining the western narrative they have swallowed before you start giving them the counter-narrative

    • Blorbis83 [he/him,use name]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Ok so I looked it up- I didn’t realize it was named after the fact that it looked and sounded like it was filmed in a Gatorade bottle- I wasn’t sure why it was called the yellow parenti lecture but this wasn’t my first guess LMAO

      • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Here's the big bomb he drops, you might try sending your friend just this clip if you are worried they'd tune out listening to the entire lecture. Edit: It's only 1:05 in length

        https://youtu.be/eoxT1UwTM3I

        Your gatorade bottle line gave me a good laugh. And yeah somebody left the VHS tape out in a hot car or something lol, I'm just glad it somehow made it onto the internet. But that's why there's the meme of "yellow parenti" you might see get tossed around here.

    • Bobson_Dugnutt [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Also available as a podcast:

      https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-yellow-speech/id1548405028?i=1000581342121