I’ve spent the last few years devouring Soviet history. Books, papers, blog posts, podcasts, all of it. I can’t get enough. Not to brag, but I do feel as though I’ve achieved a certain level of understanding about the USSR, its history, and eventual collapse. But I’ve also put the work in.
And yet, whenever I engage people I know IRL or online, I’m amazed by how doggedly people will defend what they just inherently “know”: that the Soviet Union was an evil totalitarian authority dictatorship that killed 100 million of its own people and eventually collapsed because communism never works. None of these people (at least the people I know IRL) have learned anything about Soviet history beyond maybe a couple days of lectures and a textbook chapter in high school history classes. Like, I get that this is the narrative that nearly every American holds in their heads. The fact that people believe this isn’t surprising. But what is a little surprising to me is that, when confronted with a challenge to that narrative from someone they know has always loved history and has bothered to learn more, they dig their heels in and insist they are right and I am wrong.
This isn’t about me, I’m just sharing my experience with this. I’m just amazed at how Americans will be completely ignorant about a topic (not just the USSR) but will be utterly convinced their views on that topic are correct, despite their own lack of investigation into that topic. This is the same country where tens of millions of people think dinosaurs and humans walked around together and will not listen to what any “scientist” has to say about it, after all.
The tank man image is the perfect demonstration of this anticommunist conditioning. If you show an American the tank man image and ask what happened, they’ll tell you he was run over by the tank. If you show them the full video where he walks away unharmed, they’ll say “they probably killed him later”.
By the end of high school when Tank man is shown to you, you’re already trained to extrapolate bad information about [state dept. designated enemy nation], even with zero context or proof.
There’s an old episode of Best of the Worst where the gang watches a videotape intended to teach Chinese speakers how to log onto AOL, and they immediately begin joking that the narrator of the video has a soldier pushing the barrel of an AK into his back the entire time
Of course, the video was in Cantonese (not that our Wisconsinites could tell the difference)
As much as I love RLM, it’s pretty clear they’re all Gen X turbo Libs. Actually Mike gives off mild CHUDs vibes, Jack and Jay seem like chill dudes but I doubt they’re comrades, Rich is just Rich.
Rich used to be kind of an edgy dick but 2023 Rich might be the nicest guy out of all three. Mike sometimes seems like a closet conservative- apparently he grew up in a conservative Catholic family and I don’t think he’s ever fully shaken off those brain worms.
Jay strikes me as a good dude, he’s talked very genuinely about films that represent the plight of marginalized groups and how it helped him empathize with their position in the world. Mike I think does have some old-schlubby-man brainworms but probably nothing as bad as your average weird uncle.