Title, I'm a leftist but after reading some things on lemmygrad and here it seems I might have been lied to all my life. I have talked with some people from Cuba and Venezuela (expats) that support the west narrative about poverty and mismanagement. I "believe" that Russia is attacking Ukraine for selfish reasons and that China censors access to foreign information using the Great Firewall, please prove me wrong. Furthermore, it ultimately depends who do you want to believe or there are hard facts from reputable sources that are simply a hidden by the mass media?

EDIT: Thanks everyone for your very civil responses. I'll answer as many as I can!

  • GarbageShoot [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    You've gotten pretty consistent feedback on Russia and it's not what you propose as a counterfactual there. The Putin and the party that backs him are rhetorically rightwing on a range of issues and in practice seem impressively unideological in favor of cold pragmatism, but because of their position in the world order, with the US continuing to menace Russia with NATO even after the dissolution of the USSR and the gutting of every member state's economy and welfare infrastructure, Putin has found himself in a place where what benefits him the most is to oppose western hegemony, and the best strategy for that is pursuing multipolarity. At the core, that's all it is, but the US can never say that, so it just lazily paints him as another Hitler to rally the west against him.

    I think he's a mafioso and, if one of us was in a room with him and he thought it beneficial to kill us (unlikely but whatever), he would not even blink as he signals to his secret service that we are to be stabbed with a ricin pin or whatever. But that is not so, and he is just as ready to help other states that the US has also made an enemy out of, including socialist states.

    • DiltoGeggins [none/use name]
      ·
      1 year ago

      You’ve gotten pretty consistent feedback on Russia and it’s not what you propose as a counterfactual there.

      Sorry I don't understand.

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        No worries. You said:

        for example with Russia. I would love to be shown that the country is a pillar of human and worker rights, and that the stories I’ve heard are all media lies. So far though, even as I search, I haven’t found that.

        So I was simply saying that no one here claims Russia is a pillar of any kind of rights (beyond, arguably, local self-determination). The government doesn't intrinsically give a shit about any of that, so it maintains basic protections for members of the majority population as long as you don't go out of your way to get on its bad side. It is at best unremarkable in this regard afaik.