• star_wraith [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    I irrationally hate Applebaum. Yes, because of all the bullshit red scare propaganda she spews, of course. But it's also because I cannot stand journalists with zero academic credentials who insist on being called a "historian" like she does. Note that whenever she writes an article or she goes on TV, it says "historian Anne Applebaum". So when the reader/viewer hears what she says about the Soviet Union, they think "well this is a pro, she must know what she's talking about."

    Except Applebaum is definitely not a historian. She doesn't have any degrees in history, she got hers in journalism. This is really important because folks who get PhDs in history learn really valuable tools for how to conduct historical research. If she had any of those tools, maybe she'd learn not to trust what Ukrainian Nazis and only Ukrainian Nazis have to say about a famine. But she swings around that "historian" title because she knows it buys her clout. It's fucking stolen valor except for history.

    At least someone like Dan Carlin, who is a good egg and honest person unlike Applebaum, insists on NOT being called a historian even though he does a super popular podcast about history. He'll insist that no, he's a journalist and his approach to history is entirely different.

    • Sealand_macronation [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      journalists with zero academic credentials who insist on being called a “historian”

      Applebaum is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.[65] She is on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy and Renew Democracy Initiative.[66][67] She was a member of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting's International Board of Directors.[68] She was a Senior Adjunct Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) where she co-led a major initiative aimed at countering Russian disinformation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).[69] She was on the editorial board for The American Interest[70] and the Journal of Democracy.[71]

      CIA reptiles mad

    • snackage [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I irrationally hate Applebaum

      I feel so seen. I just made the same comment

  • OgdenTO [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Yes, a society built on central planning and specifically existing to maintain that infrastructure is exactly as disorganized as the rich-first, lottery based, laissez faire US vaccine distribution.

    • CoralMarks [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      If they'd actually be honest and would really like to find out how a socialist country is/would be dealing with this she could have just looked a bit to the south from her office and compare the US to what Cuba has already done or has planned for its vaccine rollout, but I guess that would never be allowed to leave the editors office anyways.

      But no can't do that gotta manufacture some consent over here. Journalism my ass.

      • Chutt_Buggins [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        4 years ago

        what Cuba has already done or has planned for its vaccine rollout,

        I was reading about the Cuban vaccination development so far , and their main issue is finding people to test what is being developed, as the COVID incidence rate is too low in the country to ensure the best testing conditions lol... what a problem to have:

        MEDICC Review: Will Phase III trials be conducted in Cuba?

        Dagmar García: Phase III clinical trials involve thousands of people and while Cuba has a very willing population, anxious to volunteer, we probably don’t have the necessary COVID-19 incidence rate in our country to conduct trials of this scale.

        While it is still too early to define where, when and how we would conduct these trials since this depends on the evolution of current clinical research, I can say unequivocally that if we need to go to another country to conduct Phase III trials, we will. Cuba has options for where that might be and all regulatory requirements of that country or those countries will be met to conduct those trials—with SOBERANA 01 or any other vaccine candidate.

        :fidel-layup:

        • CoralMarks [he/him]
          hexagon
          ·
          4 years ago

          This reminds me, I have earlier today read an article on Cuba’s vaccination strategies and they said that for that exact reason:

          That’s why Sovereign II will be tested in Iran.

  • JoeySteel [comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    Anne Applebaum is a propagandist who wrote "Red Famine" - The Ukrainian nationalists/nazi collaborators attempt to turn the 1932 famine across Ukraine/Belarus and Russia into "Stalin was actually trying to murder Ukrainians to stop ukrainian nationalism"

    The Nazis would cite the "holodomor" as the 'human rights' pretext for the invasion of Soviet Union in 1941. The timing of the release of her anti-Soviet and anti-Russian books coincided with Nazis being installed in Kiev by the West

    Anyway, Mark Taugar (probably the most respected historian in famines and the Soviet famine in particular alongside Wheatcroft) dug through her footnotes and shows how she's a straight up liar that her footnotes don't say what she said they says, how they're either straight up falsifications or twisted

    It's a hilarious read but also a lesson in how bourgeois historians falsify history

    https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/169438

    • Spinoza [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      also, she whines that half of her anti-communist friends at her resistance party in poland before the dissolution of the USSR ended up on the wrong side of the current polish political divides around lgbtq rights and abortion, or straight-up nazis. like, what did you expect?

      • Mardoniush [she/her]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Sowing: "We must join with the face-eating leopards to stop the leopard-hunter threat!"

        Reaping: "No! Guys, stop eating everyone's faces!"

      • JoeySteel [comrade/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Nice you got a link fam?

        Real

        https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/13/trump-presidency-hong-kong-pro-democracy-movement

        Energy

        • Spinoza [any]
          ·
          4 years ago

          actually i think it was this episode of cbc ideas, which is a damn shame, because ideas has actually gotten a lot better under the new host: i swear every other episode in 2019 was platforming marx. haven't listened in a while though

    • star_wraith [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      IIRC Princeton professor and the person who wrote the definitive English-language biography on Stalin (Stephen Kotkin) also dunked on Applebaum as well.

    • rolly6cast [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Wheatcroft also solidly criticizes Applebaum for moralism and no consideration of the context or conditions in her work.

      "are largely ignored or misunderstood by Appelbaum and by many of the current generation of specialists, who see no role for economic history. But the idea that it was someone’s mentality that caused the problem is not a new idea"

      ArbyMakesFries had a good take about how center left historians could openly denounce these positions for being wrong in the 1980s/1990s, as Historikerstreit,

      Hence why you can pretty easily find longer-established historians like Wheatcroft or Getty reacting to the new Snyder/Applebaum soft Holocaust revisionists as if they have tentacles growing out of their face, but at the same time not protesting too loudly, because they're fully well aware that Western historiography on the USSR has always been a deeply politicized and ideological enterprise, and anyone who's too stubborn to bend with the changing political winds is liable to get blown overboard.

    • CoralMarks [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      I knew the name seemed familiar, thanks for refreshing my memory :fidel-salute:

  • GinkgoPete [comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    America fails at the most basic task. Failed wannabe journalists on online mags behind 7 paywalls : "But actually communism is the worst"

  • bark [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    lol, downgraded from bread lines now that the US has bread lines.

  • rolly6cast [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Applebaum sucks so much. Besides being historically dishonest, there was the funny time Felix did his insane liberal twitter bit for 3 days and got Anne Applebaum to follow him at that time thinking he was unironic.

  • ultraviolet [she/her]
    ·
    4 years ago

    The Soviets were pretty good with vaccines https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2589490/

    • CoralMarks [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      The communists genocided the poliovirus, Victims of Communism foundation will be adding another 3 trillion murders to the list shortly. Thank you for the input.

  • SoyViking [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Communism is when bad thing Capitalism is when good thing

  • TossedAccount [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    I wonder if any of these dumb motherfuckers were around condemning FDR's admin as "Bolshevist" for doing wartime rationing/planning to take the fight to the Nazis and Japanese imperialists. Or pissing and moaning that nobody got to profiteer from the distribution of polio vaccines.

  • snackage [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I fucking hate Applebaum so fucking much. I bet she knew Epstein.