Eastern European millennials who grew up under the introduction of capitalism: “I experienced communism and it was awful.”
Eastern Europeans who have lived their entire lives in the US and whose grandparents fled the USSR in 1945: "I experienced communism and it was awful."
who have lived their entire lives in the US
those are americans
Unironically saw an Eastern European person in the thread saying they were born in 1996 and 'experienced the horrors of communism'
These "eastern europeans" are always Gen Z migrants to the USA
they go back home (to Poland/Romania/Wherever) and see the poverty of their native country, blame nebulous communism and return to the USA where their parents were probably liberal counter-revolutionaries that managed to liquidate assets of their socialist country and turn them into USD
I one time had a goofy classmate in college who did a speech about the evils of communism blah blah, then at the end he revealed he grew up in a socialist country but narrowly escaped with his parents. He didn't say the country, but he had some kind of Latin accent so I thought he was probably Venezuelan or Nicaraguan based on the guy's age.
Then it turns out he's Brazilian? And he immigrated to the US in 2004? Also I learned his parents were some kind of very wealthy con-artist private doctors who peddled stuff like herbs and prayer as cures.
Communism is when my quack parents get arrested for selling fake medicine.
If communism is so good then how do you explain this one Latvian fascist I know saying it was bad? He tells me all "real Latvians" think like him, a claim that I do not find suspicious at all.
That to me is the worst thing about Gambo. It makes a point of showing the brutality and injustice of the world, and then you have someone who's experienced that and wants to change it, but the fiction decides thats wrong for no logical reason, other than the author's cynicism and lack of imagination (although he's very imaginative when it comes to SA and underage girls bodies, and medieval dining). Therefore there's no way to redeem it. The brutality ultimately serves no point other than for its own sake.
To be fair, we don't have any idea where the story's going apart from that it won't be what the show did (there's an author statement that the "big five" - Jon, Arya, Daenerys, Bran, and Tyrion - all survive). We don't even know where the Meereen arc specifically is going, except that where the show clutched pearls over anti-slaver violence the books kept showing and then explicitly saying that tepid reformism and collaboration with the erstwhile slaver aristocracy was a catastrophic mistake.
GRRM's a brainwormed lib, but not as bad as the absolute hack libs the showrunners were. He's at least got the cynicism to know the world he's writing about is bad instead of getting swept up in the epic romantic fantasy of it all like they did, and takes the time to explicitly point out how completely fucked every aspect of feudal society is.
He is, however, permanently stuck in a place that I can only articulate as "somewhat better than most of his contemporaries were in the 80s and 90s" in terms of problematic content. If he'd finished the series in the 90s we'd be looking at it and thinking "wow, it's got its creepy moments but it's not as bad as most old fantasy like that is."
Edit: I just came across this comment on r/asoiaf about, well, literally this topic, that lays out some other details
For what it's worth, Daenerys's 'show ending' is one of the elements we can conclude doesn't come from GRRM's 'ending notes':
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D&D have said outright that Jon killing Daenerys was their idea - and that they had it around the time of S3, which is two full years before GRRM actually sat down with them to tell them his own ending plans.
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The original shooting script does NOT have Dany go 'mad' and torch all of King's Landing. She does go somewhat ruthless and ceases to care about civilian casualties when going after fleeing Lannister troops (who are trying to use civvies as human shields), but that's as far as it goes. The systematic burning of King's Landing - the actual 'Dany goes insane' element - was created in post production.
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Another thing to take into consideration is that she can't actually do what she did in the show - her dragons are still basically babies in the books. Even Drogon, who is the biggest, is barely large enough for a 15 year old girl to actually ride at the end of ADWD. He's decades away from becoming the Balerion-sized living nuke he became in the show. It'd take book-Drogon weeks to torch king's landing on his own. Dany's dragons are 'potential future nukes', but unless there's a VERY long time skip before the end, they're just not going to be as big of a 'military advantage' for Dany as they were depicted to be in the show - not only are they too young to burn entire armies/fleets on their own, they're small enough that they can be hurt by 'conventional weapons' - they're only 3 years old. We know during the Dance of Dragons that Stormcloud - a 8-9 year old dragon - was still vulnerable to 'regular' arrows.
Also fuck, the context that the showrunners came up with that ending while still malding over Emilia Clarke renegotiating her contract so she wouldn't have to do nude scenes anymore just adds to what absolute pieces of shit they were.
I remember a story from what it was first coming out that Jason Momoa yelled at people on set and got her a robe because no one gave her anything to cover up between takes for the nude scenes.
The systematic burning of King's Landing - the actual 'Dany goes insane' element - was created in post production.
Holy shit, they made that change in post?! No wonder the show sucked after they had to start writing it themselves.
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underage girls bodies
I've only read the first and a half book but I really don't remember this. People say it all the time. But I think they're just put off that Martin has underage characters that are in sexual situations, which is like... completely reasonable for the setting and themes (and mostly portrayed as bad rather than titillating?). It strikes me as a really misguided "dont write about bad things happening" mindset. From what I remember, he doesn't creepily dwell on it like people describe. Willing to be proved wrong though.
I'm not saying there's no weird male fantasy author creepiness in ASOIAF, but I am saying that its overblown.
You're projecting opinions on me I don't hold because this is one of your personal bugaboos that you're quiet frankly a little too obsessive over. (Also you have made me never want to see that combination of three emotes again because you overuse it so much but I cant tell if thats a me problem or not. Not to make this personal I just see you post that so many times that it really starting to put me off.)
But regardless, I find that stuff you put on spoiler to be a huge exaggeration of whats in the text. Its not like there's NOTHING for you to base that on but there's just not as much there as you seem to think. Like I said, I haven't read the whole series (yet) but I don't remember a single "Detailed description of children's bodies". Like, the scene with Dany and Drago in the first book, which I did read, I dont remember that. I remember sexual violence towards children, but I dont remember it being played for titillation.
I also object to reducing ASOIAF to "hog feed" because there's like... so much more there than that. I think you're reducing a really complex work into a few things that bother you that make up like 3% of the text at most. Just throwing out all the detailed characterization and stuff.
I'm not going to defend when Martin is genuinely creepy, and I know there's SOME stuff where its there. But I am going to request moderation when I feel someone is going way too far with the criticism. And I just think you've taken this on as one of your bugaboo obsessions (you have a few) and aren't really reading it rationally anymore.
I also disagree that you aren't supposed to feel sympathy for the victims of the SV. I feel like Martin just kind of assumes anyone reading about sexual violence towards children is going to sympathize with the children and doesn't feel the need to spell it out for you? And I think that should be a fair assumption to make? Like as a writer I don't think I need to tell my audience things like that (I also have no plans to put SV towards children, or SV at all really, in my work, but if I did I wouldn't think I needed to spell out "SV is bad and you should feel sympathy for the victim). Like maybe Martin just has more respect for the reader than that lol? I dont get this complaint. Maybe I'm not understanding the substance of it.
Re: Your edit, If a single person reads ASOIAF because they enjoy reading about SV, I would be shocked. Thats certainly not what people talk about when I talk to them about ASOIAF.
"Shame" I can see (it also happened after I stopped enjoying the show) because of how the audience was meant to enjoy the brutal shaming of a female villain who is overhated due to misogyny. But can you explain how the Red Wedding has anything to do with the core discussion here? Its violent, and tragic, but its not SV or anything. One could argue its gratuitous I guess but I would argue it serves a narrative purpose within the story. This seems like the pinnacle of "dont write about bad things" to say the red wedding is bad. MAYBE the show went too far in portraying the violence but idk, that happened in what I think was the good part of the show and I think the episode was well handled. I would definitly push back against the idea of the Red Wedding being merely a gimmick.
Ah ok, I can understand that. Ignore my other reply then if you want. I see what you mean now.
Did the Game of Thrones show really need to add more sexual violence than the books actually had in it? Did so many characters have to be forcibly changed on the directors' whims into more misogynistic versions of themselves?
No, definitely not. There's some debate to be had about the former regarding "the show made explicit what was always there in the text" but regardless that wasn't their motive, their motive was to put shocking things on television for views. I won't deny that. Even though I like the first four seasons of the show overall, the flaws were there from the start and D&D are assholes.
This is why I took issue with your apparent claim that no one enjoyed the sexual violence presented as entertainment for entertainment purposes,
I was talking about fans of the books here, just to clear up the confusion. I find it difficult to believe that fans of the book are in it for the SV. Some fans of the show were probably pulled in by that.
Yeah, I read online when I was looking for examples myself about how
(cw sexualizaiton of minors)
spoiler
::: Young teen Dany describes her own breasts in a very male gazey way.
:::
and I agree with that criticism. Its not necessary and doesn't serve a narrative purpose. My objection was that there's not enough of it there for it to be a core engagement for the fans of the books. When I read discussions about it on /r/asoiaf, they're most people there seem to regret that its there and see it as a flaw in the text.
I think the show's popularity can be partially ascribed to its use of gratuitous nudity, not necessarily SV though. The books? I can't say my experience with ASOIAF fans falls in line with your perception that they are hogs gobbling it up because there's SV in it. Mostly because while it is there, there's just not enough to justify reading entire books for it. And I'm not even talking about people in my life (I dont have that many, and even less I can talk about ASOIAF with). I also read the ASOIAF subreddit and they seem more interested in tinfoil hat theories about whats going to happen in the next few books than the SV. They might defend it as "Historically accurate" (and I agree that that excuse doesn't excuse unnecessary gratuity in description) when you bring it up, but its not why they read it. They're just defending their treats which is bad, but its still not the main engagement. Its just a reaction when people bring it up as a criticism. So I'm not even talking about people in my life, but the fandom broadly here. I really don't think SV is the main engagement.
ETA: "because of what it focuses on portraying, over and over again, " unless we're broadening the discussion past SV into human misery generally or something, I stand by thinking this is an exageration of how much of the content in ASOIAF is about what you're complaining about. I might not have finished the series, but I have read the first book. Ie, the thing that would get someone into the series (unless they were a show first person), and there just... isn't that much SV in it. There is... so much else going on for a fan to get into.
I guess is an exageration to say NOONE is reading the books for that. But there's two things I think about 1. I find it really odd that they would choose ASOIAF when reading entire books for what is a fairly small part of the text is pretty illogical. 2. My observations of the fandom show me that its a tiny minority at best.
Yeah D&D are pigs and even the fandom doesnt respect them anymore. Fuck those guys.
But I'm sorry you were hit by hype aversion. The only thing I still don't get is putting the Red Wedding on the same level as the SV but I guess for you the Red Wedding is just an edgy gimmick? I strongly disagree with that but I dont expect to convince you. Also if I were to suggest Gambo to a freind I wouldn't say "oh you'll love the red wedding" (partially because this would be inherently a spoiler lol), I would talk about the characters and their arcs moreso.
I will admit, I can see how a people hyping up the red wedding might have been essentially gore enjoyers enjoying it because of the violence and human misery. And that sucks. I do agree thats a dark part of the fandom., But my enjoyment of the moment has little to do with that. Also I was spoiled that it was happening because I had read up on the books already so it wasnt the shock factor either.
Just to contextualize specifically the show vs book Red Wedding: in the show it's just another sHoCkiNg tWisT spectacle, albeit one that ends up defining its season; in the book it hits right when the story's narratively been building tension between several distinct arcs and is moving towards resolving that tension, only instead to just cut those strings, metaphorically speaking, obliterating one arc entirely, ending a PoV perspective permanently (although the character ends up still being around, sort of - that got cut from the show entirely), and sending all the other story threads that were being pulled in tension flying.
It's a sickening gut punch rather than a spectacle, made all the stronger by just how the third person limited perspective PoV character chapters drag out and build tension by dividing story progression between them, versus the rapid fire way the show flits back and forth throughout the world with a third person dramatic perspective (not to mention how the show just stops bothering with taking distances into account and effectively has characters start teleporting around the world to where the showrunners wanted them).
Thinking about it a little more, it reminds me of the old line about how "you can't make an anti-war movie" because of how cinema inherently creates a sort of romanticized spectacle: when you see something like that happen in a movie or TV show it's exciting and shocking, while in text it ends up more just sort of sad and nauseating.
Yeah, the showrunners are absolute hacks who leaned as hard into the spectacle as they could, and "you can't make an anti-war movie" is less a fundamental law and more a stark reminder that even a grotesque and tragic spectacle is still a spectacle, and that making the audience feel pain and sorrow is still making them feel.
Which led to me thinking how the scene could have been adapted to film, and while I think a part of it would be fixing the pacing of the show itself to be less frenetic it would also need to slice away at the spectacle, so you just see enough of the edges to know that it's happening but after that you just don't have a pair of the PoV arcs anymore and you only get fragmentary scraps of what happened to them from things other PoV characters hear - it makes it tragic and unjust and awful instead of a thrilling spectacle.
I get where you're coming from. I just think we have very different experiences with the fandom that colors our perceptions.
I also enjoyed Rome quiet a lot.
Interestingly enough, the revolutionary character gets vindicated in a way that is just as convoluted as the setup to make her look bad:
Upon Elizabeth's return to Columbia, she witnesses a meeting between Fitzroy and the Lutece twins just minutes before the revolutionary's death. At this point, Fitzroy has captured Fink and his son. The Luteces explain to Fitzroy that it's crucial for Elizabeth to become a woman and gain the strength to kill Comstock. In order for this to happen, Fitzroy needs to force Elizabeth into the proper mindset. At first Fitzroy refuses to harm Fink's son, saying that, although she wants to see Fink and Comstock fall, the sins of the father should not be taken out on the boy. The Luteces hint that she doesn't have to kill him, but to just threaten him enough so that Elizabeth will have no choice but to "mature" into a killer. Fitzroy is saddened that she will not be able to survive the revolution, but she accepts that she must die if it means that it will lead to Comstock's death as well. This turns Elizabeth's opinion of her from a psychopath who is just as bad as Comstock to a martyr willing to give the ultimate sacrifice to her cause.
as an eastern european, I love how my country was destroyed by neoliberal shock therapy
The posts don't help them in my opinion. They provide good opportunities for communists to drop truth and the current population of lemmy genuinely considers and respects well worded and cited stuff.
I wouldn't have the opportunity to post things like the polls in that thread without the attempt at anticommunism so I kinda welcome it to be honest.
2 neoliberals called jeremy corbyn an antisemite and a tankie to me yesterday in another thread which I thought was deeply embarrassing lmao. Here it is
"Defending the USSR is tankie shit"
But they don't have a unique word to scold people who say anything positive about the US and UK, do they? It's fine to do that.
Braindead hypocrite liberals like this are so easy to spot lol. They have zero moral high ground above the conservatives and fascists they claim are stupid.
I have a Latvian acquaintance and everytime we spoke about politics she would rib me. At the time I did not know much about the Latvian fascist movement at the time or the class struggle in the Baltic nations (or even the apartheid system of hundreds of thousands of ethnic russians who essentially nonpeoples in todays Baltic states without the ability to vote or hold office)
Non-citizens in Latvia: Is it a Real Problem? Following the restoration of independence in 1991, Latvia has introduced restrictive citizenship strategy involving citizenship only to those who had it before the Soviet occupation, and to their descendants. As a result, about one-third of the population in Latvia – the former citizens of the Soviet Union who had immigrated to Latvia during the Soviet period—received the status of ‘non-citizen’. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321938488_Non-citizens_in_Latvia_Is_it_a_Real_Problem
Incidentally Phillip Farr wrote a good short book on this struggle in 1944 and what we see instead is an immense class struggle of fascists liquidating leftists in the inter-war period, Communists liquidating fascists with Soviet annexation, Nazi occupation liquidating leftists, and then communists liquidating holocaust collaborators when they came under protection of Soviet Union. The final image here is one of immense and bitter class struggle
https://archive.org/details/SovietRussiaAndTheBalticRepublics
But anyway back to my point. After years of ribbing me about how free market economics is a beauitful thing, communism was worse than anything etc. etc. I find out her grandfather fought for the Werhmacht in ww2
Balt-tard
Please do not use this term. It's based on a slur.
I swear we have a bunch of :baltics-burning: emojis that you could use instead but I can't remember what they're called. : (
Better, but the -oid language is still based on a slur, is extremely online, and fails the "be normal" test.
I know they have gambo and anti-communists in the east but I feel in my bones this was not made by an eastern European
The only eastern Europeans that talk like this are techbro level radlibs of decades past that abandoned their countries for the west the moment they could leap the border like plague rats from a ship, or shithead kids who weren't even done shitting their diapers when the great collapse happened and remember the capitalist deluge that destroyed their families lives and livelihoods as "evil communism"
remember the capitalist deluge that destroyed their families lives and livelihoods as "evil communism"
Probably the most damning indictment of Soviet Era communism was that it produced a new generation that learned none of the lessons of history prior to their birth. The fact that Eastern Europeans rolled over for fascists in the 90s faster than they did for fascists in the 30s... Stalinism's biggest failure was its failure to socially reproduce.
By and large old former Soviet citizens long for being governed by the Soviets or note that the last time their countries didn't suck was under the Reds.
And insofar as "Stalinism" is concerned, ignoring how historically reductive it is to flatly call the entire history of the Soviet Union "Stalinism", I've already written about how the great patriotic war saw tens of thousands of the future of the CPSU massacred in the defense of the motherland, brutally stunting the in-flow of ideologically dedicated and educated new blood of the into the party for a few generations - corresponding to the stunting of population growth in the Soviet Union. Can you even imagine trying to grow a new generation of leadership when both the teachers and the students died due to war?
historically reductive it is to flatly call the entire history of the Soviet Union "Stalinism",
I certainly didn't intend that.
But there was a period of Stalinist theory present in the USSR that sharply diminished after his death. The revolutionary fervor and commitment to the project of Communism gave way to lifestylism and a simple yearning for consumerist luxury.
Khrushchev and Brezhnev got into the rat race of capitalist excess. And by the time Gorby got into office, the only way they knew how to measure progress was in capitalist terms.
Can you even imagine trying to grow a new generation of leadership when both the teachers and the students died due to war?
Lenin managed it, in the wake of WW1 and Stalin managed it in the wake of the Russian Civil War.
You would think a period devoid of major military conflicts would be a time for Soviet Communism to spread like wildfire.
But in the end, it seems like Maoism was what endured. The Russian Soviets won the right to rule for a generation, but could not convince their children and grandchildren to carry on what they started.
They collapsed into base ethnic nationalism and gave us United Russia, a hideous shadow of American Neoliberalism, in place of an enduring Soviet philosophy of governance.
present in the USSR that sharply diminished after his death. The revolutionary fervor and commitment to the project of Communism gave way to lifestylism and a simple yearning for consumerist luxury.
Khrushchev and Brezhnev got into the rat race of capitalist excess. And by the time Gorby got into office, the only way they knew how to measure progress was in capitalist terms.
Lenin managed it, in the wake of WW1 and Stalin managed it in the wake of the Russian Civil War.
You would think a period devoid of major military conflicts would be a time for Soviet Communism to spread like wildfire.
Both combined conflicts - the civil war and the great patriotic war - costed the Soviet peoples an excess of thirty million lives, with only eighteen years between the end of the civil war and the start of the anti-fascist war and eight short years between the end of the anti-fascist war and Stalin's death. This was a most grevious loss of life for both the people and the party. The best and brightest of the people's future were cut down then cut down again twofold leaving a great wound between the oldest and the youngest. The time required to cultivate a new generation of ideologically educated and dedicated cadre for the future leadership in the wake of the anti-fascist war did not match the demands of reality as requirements were loosened temporarily to fill important positions but were loosened permanently before Stalin could reimpliment chiskas as he had died and Soviet democracy was subverted by Khrushchev and Zhukov.
But in the end, it seems like Maoism was what endured. The Russian Soviets won the right to rule for a generation, but could not convince their children and grandchildren to carry on what they started.
Maoism was thrown out like used bathwater after Mao's death and the gang of four were thrown to the curb in favor of the Deng period's Bukharin-esque policies - which is a different topic alltogether. - Yet what is important to note between the Soviet experiment and the Sino experiment is that the Chinese have experienced a long and very uninterrupted era of peace after winning their wars. (This is to include the fact that the collective body of leadership of the CPC whom were united with Deng wisely chose to not throw Mao and his legacy under the bus to artificially solidify their legitimacy.) This period of peace was such an immense period of time you could visibly see the party's guiding policies change as their party congresses came and passed as an uninterrupted flow of new leaders were elected to the central committee whom themselves were experienced from decades of political work in the youth league and later on in the party proper when they aged out of their youth.
To compare and contrast, the Soviet Union faced two titanic struggles over the span of thirty-six years (from the start of the october revolution to the death of Stalin) where the work done after the first struggle was undone by the second, whereas the People's Republic faced a singular continuous and titanic struggle spanning a period of twenty-three years (from the start of the Northern Expedition to the proclamation of the People's Republic of China) and after attaining their victorious future had entered an era of long-lasting peace. - Yes I know the Korean War happened, those were heroic volunteers who payed back in blood for the blood of the heroes of the Korean volunteers that helped win the PRCs future. And we don't talk about the Sino-Vietnam war. Shhhhhh. 🤫
Yeah not for any real reason but I feel like this is a westerner appropriating the cool and authentic anti-communism of those people, personified by Arya gambo
LOL. I'm literally just chilling here with my two Yugoslavian friends and they're both like "we miss socialism". Apparently it's awful there now, with tons of massive chuddery, unemployment, social division, and reduction in services.
Same goes for Hungary. My Hungarian friend is basically who radicalized me, he takes it as completely obvious that things were better under socialism
When eastern europeans talk about how bad socialism is but they lease the newest Mercedes every year ive learned to just ignore them
They harmed my nazi dead relatives I never met and have no real attachment to waaaaaaaa!It's not fascism, it's PRIDE
Lots of nice pushback in the comments though
https://lemm.ee/comment/1428655
My favourite, it's really great because no one can refute the argument. Everyone knows that capitalism in the third world sucks ass
no one can refute the argument. Everyone knows that capitalism in the third world sucks ass
their only argument against this is called the Bell Curve. But most liberals these days would be too embarrassed to say it openly
You're really underestimating liberals. Liberals I know say that it's the fault of corrupt governments that the countries are poor and colonialism actually gave them more opportunities.
I guess you're right. "They are poor not because of their inferior genetics but because they haven't embraced our western liberal values and institutions". It's just one step above bell curve shit
Dude is constantly in the trenches, shout out to him, my mental wouldn’t be able to take it
Ahh thought that was going to be the Castro quote about "how's capitalism worked out for the Third World?"
Issue is without recognizing the achievements and success of socialist countries, people will never advocate or believe in actual socialism and stay in capitalist realism forever
Something of a joke that they use Arya - a girl who only briefly gets to taste the bygone era before being thrust into the poverty and chaos of the new world order.
An incredibly apt metaphor for Eastern Europe, all things considered.
if the channel is small, niche, and commie, and/or the uploader heavily polices their comments section to keep out the reactionaries (it's difficult but possible) you can sometimes get "good" comment sections on YT. very rare
Erik is finally getting some results from his etiquette lessons it seems.
communism is what happens when le great man hits the big red communism button and a perfectly formed socio-economic system falls out of the sky and blips away all the capitalism like in tetris
i blame bibeo bames for this, there is no other explanation
my map painting sims told me you can bring about communism in 40 hours by moving around animated chess pieces
<- me held in khrushchev's warm embrace
