Valbrandur

In the United States, for over a hundred years, the ruling interests tirelessly propagated anticommunism among the populace, until it became more like a religious orthodoxy than a political analysis. During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.

• Michael Parenti

I am completely sure that China is indeed spending god knows how many millions in building more solar farms in a year than the US has built in their entire history so people like Jake from Minnesota can be convinced that China is actually a pretty cool place.

Do you people ever listen to yourselves?

When challenged

The challenge in question:

Seriously. How much do you get paid for shilling China so hard? And where do I sign up?

An excellent display of the western liberal’s attempts of initiating a “good faith discussion”, for everyone to see.

Seriously. How much do you get paid for shilling China so hard?

Dude, you endlessly post about how awesome China is.

When a communist with a politically-oriented account who posts on communist communities of communist instances makes primarily posts in support of communism and communist countries (any explanation for his motives is beyond the comprehension of the limited and finite human mind, he must have been paid by someone to post that comment):

Oh also- try harder because your current amount of effort is pathetic.

You think you deserve an effort? It’s been a while since I stopped caring and began to just pull your leg. If you want a serious debate I am afraid you will have to ask Vladislav, the Russian spy hiding under your bed. Have a very wholesum chungus day my good sir.

Wife, girlfriend, non-binary partner or anime bodypillow, as if it was any important. You claim people are propagandists for having a political bias and then you go and bring up your partner of all people as a source. Talk about equal standards.

Try harder.

Sorry le kind stranger, would it be trying hard enough if I gave you some wholesum reddit gold?

plus have a Russian speaking partner to back me.up

PFFFFTTHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Dude, you cannot go around searching people’s comments trying to find evil foreign propagandists and denouncing news outlets as unreliable propaganda and then pull out a “source: my wife” as a defense.

So maybe try harder next time?

It smells like sweat and doritos in here. Redditor, I presume?

Le bad faitherino!!1!

Why does it matter the “faith” it has? The video is there, and it is not edited. You can think the post has one or another goal but the truth is that this what the news portray has happened. You on the other side keep insisting on the “russian propaganda” meme and saying that what has been said is not what it has been translated as while failing to even provide an alternate translation, so either you do it or you can keep schizo-ranting about the “russian propagandists” that are crawling inside your walls.

The fact that any opinion that dissents from the mainstream western political discourse is branded as “propaganda” by people the likes of you demonstrates the virulently xenophobic paranoia that plagues the west (and always has). You are too daft to understand that the person you are talking about is a communist, and his posts reflect his ideas, not the paid interests of a foreign power, the same way it would be idiotic to call you a Ukrainian propagandist for excusing the unapologetic racism of its government officials.

Everyone I don’t like is a paid foreigner: The western liberal’s guide to political discussion

The famously anti-soviet country of Belarus, unlike the extremely pro-soviet regimes of Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania.

A country goes far beyond one’s own surname.

Meanwhile, Eastern Europeans:

Thank you.

I know this all sounds like Mandarin to most of the userbase of this place (which I suppose to be mainly from the US and alien to the politics of places where big regional languages exist in the same space than even larger national languages), but it’s not only the attitude of some regular people but also of some major political forces. Just a few months ago, a far-right party in Spain vowed to shut down the Academy of Valencian Language if they ever reached power (something I suppose a linguist like you would never approve), under the excuse of its existence being “a threat to national unity”.

Nationalism: not even once.

I think you misunderstand what I am referring to. I am not talking about a wish to learn a language, but to consider languages as useful or useless in regards to their entire existence.

This is unfortunately not very uncommon in people of European countries who look down upon regional languages, stating that their existence or that learning them is useless (not for them only, but for anyone) just because you can already do the task of communicating with others through the national language (per example, considering the existance of the Occitan language useless because the people of everywhere where it is spoken can already understand French). This is done by people who not understand (or even worse, who don’t care about) the value that exists in language from a cultural perspective.

Thinking about different languages in the terms of “useful” or “useless” according to the number of speakers they have.

Edit: What I mean specifically is not for someone to want or not to personally learn a language, but if the existance in itself of a language is more or less valuable according to how many people speak it (per example and as I explained below, believing that Occitan’s existance is useless because there’s already French to talk to Occitan people with, who already understand it). Yes, this happens.

You are getting a lot of advice on which books to read and strategies on how to read them, but one thing that I feel is often very overlooked, despite how important it is, is to search a proper ambient for a reading session.

Get yourself a comfy seat and a nice light. Turn off your phone’s notifications (except for calls and other important matters) and put your phone away, same with your computer. You can have soft background music (no lyrics, of course) if that is your cup of tea, just make it so you cannot see the screen. Get a cup of coffee or tea if you like that, and put an alarm on your clock: until the alarm sounds, there are no obligations or anything else for you to do other than reading at your own pace.