The answer is probably not, because I doubt I’m going to have any response that deflates a lifetime of American culture and propaganda, but I’d like to know if y’all have made any success.
I ask because earlier today a person I know came to me, asking if I knew about what’s going on in Cuba. I answered there’s a kind of small anti-government protest alongside much larger pro-government demonstrations. This was immediately flipped as proof of Cuba’s tyranny, since a large pro-government demonstration means everyone’s afraid of being jailed or executed. I tried mentioning Cuba has a pretty popular government, the vote on the constitution seems proof of that, but that also just gets flipped as proof of tyranny.
I don’t know, it was frustrating and I otherwise respect this person. Have y’all been having trouble?
You can’t, because you can’t understand Cuba in a vacuum. To actually understand reality there, you also have to understand Xinjiang and Iraq and Nicaragua and Iran and Grenada and Haiti and Chile and Vietnam and Korea and Gladio and Paperclip etc etc.
The reality is simple: US foreign policy serves the interests of capital, and always has. But Americans are the most deeply propagandized people in history, so literally everyone other than the left (and even then…) believes very strongly in unreality. This unreality is that US foreign policy - despite the occasional oopsie-doopsie - is generally good and well-intentioned because the USA is a good country. And because we’re a good country, when wer’e told by the government and media that someone else is bad, we believe them. And if America is good, then on some level that makes me good too.
So you’re not going to convince someone of the truth about Cuba unless you get them understand the broader strokes of US foreign policy. Unless someone is shaken from their belief that the US is generally good and the government and media is trustworthy, nothing you say about Cuba (or China for that matter) will stick.
“No luck finding them WMDs?” is my go-to for people repeating state department propaganda. There’s a lot of evidence of that lie you can easily point to. Hopefully once you demonstrate how the government and journalists lied to get us into one war it knocks something loose in his head but probably not.
If they’re interpreting everything as evidence of tyranny, call that out directly.
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.
:parenti-hands:
of all the people who are always correct, Parenti is the always correct-est
Been having similar difficulties communicating my views on the Xinjiang/China “discourse.” If you figure something out let me know
imo Cuba is much easier to talk about. Focus on the embargo, libs can easily figure out that it’s cruel and immoral.
Yeah I agree, it’s a lot more clear cut and straightforward. China’s harder talk about because there’s a lot of context, historical specificity and nuance that has to break through decades of propaganda and chauvinism.
Off topic, but I listened to this lecture about China’s programs in Africa at work today. I feel like she did a good job explaining the nuances and historical context and she clearly knows what she’s talking about.
Oh, I do know the answer to that one. I ask them about what the USA has been doing in Afghanistan for the past 20 years and how they felt about it. That’s usually where to start.
I’m sorry, I don’t want to get into a China struggle sesh or get banned but I will never go bat for China like I will forCuba.
