one example of this is the study book for my current course. we were given this assignment from the book. i've translated it, of course

"take a stance on the following statement: stalin's USSR was a totalitarian state." here are the example answers given by the book:

"stances in favor of the statement:

  • the country had a single-party system and a communist party dictatorship
  • Stalin had consolidated power by the end of the 1920s
  • Stalin's cult of personality
  • the great purge of the 1930s: stalin's political enemies were liquidated or taken to prison camps
  • independent peasants, a.k.a. kulaks, were forcibly migrated
  • sources of information were controlled and art was subjugated to emphasize the power of the country's ideology"

next up is the best part and the reason I'm making this post. some more of the book's example answers:

"stances against the statement:

  • can anything even be said against the statement?
  • the communists thought the country's workers had the power, but that was just propaganda talk."

i love how even when they attempt to criticize red scare rhetoric, they just give up before they even try.

  • emizeko [they/them]
    1·
    4 years ago
    • the country had two bourgeois parties and being a communist was outlawed or heavily suppressed
    • the bourgeois had consolidated power before the country was even formed, and the polity consisted of landowning men
    • the cult of the "free" market
    • the first and second Red Scares, the Lavender Scare, McCarthyism
    • Japanese internment, COINTELPRO, the war on drugs specifically to politically target blacks and hippies
    • sources of information were controlled and art was subjugated to emphasize the power of the country’s ideology
    • Coolkidbozzy [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      stances against the statement:

      • can anything even be said against the statement?

      • the capitalists thought the country’s shareholders had the power, but that was just propaganda talk."