What do people even like about the “values” represented by “The West”? I was never disillusioned by this, even long before being interested in communism. The US is the pinnacle of hypocrisy and violence and it’s obvious for anyone who tries to learn from anything more than pro-US media.
Of course, I’ve heard that even though there is false propaganda in the US/Europe, the Russian, Chinese and other propaganda is much worse, that there is only violence and lies - but what is it if not racism? There are countless examples of violence at home, you have to be blind to not see it.
I mean mostly the US that I’m not a citizen of, but there is similar mentality in my country, too.
Why assume the whole world is wrong and only WE have anything that resembles democracy, that only WE have the right to decide what is good and what is bad, that only WE are advanced culture and all others are barbarians, willing to jump on us if we don’t keep the whole world in check? The imperialism mentality is truly horrible.
Eh…
Your second paragraph is how it works on so many people. The western media/propaganda apparatus takes the angle of “We aren’t perfect, but they are worse than we are.” and then leave it mostly up to their audience’s imagination. Surveillance increasing and human rights decreasing in the west, that’s bad, but the enemy countries are automatically worse in those regards. US has literally the largest prison population in human history? That’s bad, but have you considered: China is just lying about their prison population! Because they are worse.
It’s fascinating in a way, the whole system is set up to encourage this sort of thinking, things like movies and tv shows always having a villain worse than the hero, and the west paint themselves as the “good guys” so they let their people fill in the gaps with the fiction they’re constantly bombarded with.
Let’s not forget that major North American movies get funding from the military only if they paint the US in somewhat positive light.
It’s a powerful state propaganda that works on exporting their “values” into the outside world - this cultural imperialism gets ingrained in our imagination and most people never get to truly understand that. To this day I can’t fully shake off some positive associations with the US that were put in my brain since
choldhiodchildhood with the help of US media. It’s disgusting, really.There’s a Soviet documentary “The Target Is Your Brain” that talks about this, about how different the image America projects abroad is from their actual circumstances. I think it is free on youtube. It’s scary how literally every problem the documentary talks about has only gotten far, far worse in the 30 years since.
Thanks for the recommendation, I will watch it this week.
It’s scary how literally every problem the documentary talks about has only gotten far, far worse in the 30 years since.
That was also my feeling when I was reading Lenin for the first time…
Yeah, it’s always nice when I can get someone to read Lenin, because 90% of the time, they’ve had similar ideas to him, he was just good at articulating ideas all of the working class feels.
Amerika is a settler-apartheid abomination, that frankly? I wish the country’s ‘ideological enemies’ didn’t have a ‘we’re not going to meddle’ stance. I get why they do, but… Goddamn, do these crackers deserve some comeuppance. Comeuppance for their exceptionalism. Comeuppance for their fraud and lies. Comeuppance for what they do to their subjects-of-empire day in, and day out. Genuinely at a point where my Marxism is saved for the New Afrikans, and the Amerikan Indigenous. I’m not even considering trying to put settlers on our wagon when the shit hits the fan, 'cause where I stand right now, they do not deserve that hand.
Absolutely same to all of this. ✊🏿
Moral superiority is precisely what’s used to justify all the interventions the west does around the world. The notion that western society is the most enlightened society means that it’s just to eradicate any deviation from western ideals, by force if necessary. It’s for other people’s own good in the end.
