Your CdM's China Warmongering Thread du Jour

[Neil]

The exhaustion of the conquered Germans and Japanese probably helped, as did the proven inferiority of their way of life.

[garbon]

The common folk DOES believe that their troops will help the countries they invade, that they WON'T harm the locals; they DO believe privatization and liberalization is the best economic answer for everything; they REALLY believe that the mockery of 'Democracy' that they have is the most wonderful system EVAH. They DO think that there is very little corruption in Liberal Democratic regimes, and that systems like the Chinese are full of it.

In short, they are just like someone that read your Nazi textbook and bought all the crap in it, hook, line and sinker. Brainwashed and unthinking.

I don't see how you could continue to hold that true (as in we think we do nothing wrong). My text books in school (90s - which mean the texts I was reading came from the 80s ) - had lots about horrible things done by all sorts of regimes including America.  If anything I'd suggest our textbooks/instruction from teachers was slanted to convince us that our country was pretty terrible.

[Berkut]

The current liberal democratic system of politics and government is the best system EVAH though.

That isn't brainwashing - it is a perfectly supportable claim made on the basis of measuring the things that humans generally value.

You can make counter arguments, certainly - but the blanket claim that the only reason someone might think such a thing is the result of brainwashing is almost stunning in its basic ignorance.

The rest if just - well, crazy. The portrayal of western soldiers engaging in warcrimes is not some new revelation brought about by pioneering Hollywood visionaries intent on shedding new light on western history. Quite  the opposite - it is portrayed in film because western society actually does in fact find such portrayal shocking because it does in fact fly in the face of our national myths about "just war", which is what makes it powerful storytelling. Not because nobody knew before Ton Hanks decided we ought to know.

This is just sophomoric equivalency - the fascists and communists engaged in rampant "pravda" and organized distortion of history, it has happened to some greater or lesser degree in the West, therefore the West is really no different. When in fact any kind of objective and detailed analysis shows that in fact the West *is* different. Same exact thing with the claim that there is no real difference between the LAH Waffen-SS and American soldiers, or there is no difference between Dachau and Bad Nenndorf. It is the worst kind of lazy thinking to justify a per-conceived notion you want to be true.

The fact that Martim is willing to climb into bed with Nazi apologists in order to indulge his anti-American screed really ought to give him pause. The fact that it does not says everything that probably needs to be said about his intellectual rigor.

[Syt]

I have a textbook for German history teachers, dated 1942. Shockingly, it also has a different take on, well, many things, really.

Indeed, different ideologies present the world in different ways. But in the West (mostly the US, Canada, Australia, Britain and France), people do BUY what they're told without critical thinking.

The common folk DOES believe that their troops will help the countries they invade, that they WON'T harm the locals; they DO believe privatization and liberalization is the best economic answer for everything; they REALLY believe that the mockery of 'Democracy' that they have is the most wonderful system EVAH. They DO think that there is very little corruption in Liberal Democratic regimes, and that systems like the Chinese are full of it.

In short, they are just like someone that read your Nazi textbook and bought all the crap in it, hook, line and sinker. Brainwashed and unthinking.

I don't see how that makes the narrative of Communist historians more valid than those of the West. Also, I doubt that critical thinking was more prevalent than in the West, or South, or North.

I'm all for challenging set notions lest we become mired in doctrine, but I still prefer it happens through the free exchange of thoughts and ideas in the liberal democracies and not in an environment of state ordained truths.

It's nice that you now have access to both Western and Ex-Communist treatments of the subject - in the Communist block the choice wasn't quite as large.

[Jacob]

Did you ever ponder the possibility that Americans (and other allied nations, in particular Britain and its former Dominions) may also have an idiosyncratic view of themselves?

Yes, many times. They do. But that's not really relevant to your retarded Nazi-apologia comparing the death of two people in an incident that was thoroughly investigated and documented with the industrialized mass murder carried out by the Nazis.

Certainly, America has any number of myths and comforting illusions; and it's certainly worthwhile to subject them to critical scrutiny. However, your attempt to do so seems as accurate and informed as CdM and Ed Anger having a debate about the nuances of Chinese domestic politics. You have a picture that's at least 30 years out of date that no one shares and that has no semblance to reality.

It does recall the US idea that it is a "nation-builder", without pondering that the results it got in Western Germany and Japan just might have had more to do with the fact that these were disciplined peoples who worked hard, and that thus any effort in the Middle East will result in failure, as those populations lack those characteristics. Yet Americans went into Iraq and Afghanistan fully believing they would "build" those contries into prosperity.

That's an interesting hypothesis, and it may even be somewhat accurate. I don't see what that has to do with anything you've posted  previously, unless your objective is to just splooge incoherent "America sucks" at everything?

I don't know weather to laugh or to cry.

How about trying to make sense?

[Jacob]

The common folk DOES believe that their troops will help the countries they invade, that they WON'T harm the locals; they DO believe privatization and liberalization is the best economic answer for everything; they REALLY believe that the mockery of 'Democracy' that they have is the most wonderful system EVAH. They DO think that there is very little corruption in Liberal Democratic regimes, and that systems like the Chinese are full of it.

In short, they are just like someone that read your Nazi textbook and bought all the crap in it, hook, line and sinker. Brainwashed and unthinking.

But you... only YOU have torn the scales from your eyes and see the TRUTH!

If only the fools would listen 

[Ed Anger]

as CdM and Ed Anger having a debate about the nuances of Chinese domestic politics.

I say, fuck 'em

[Razgovory]

Thing is, Communist narratives of history were well known in the West during the Cold War.  There was no shortage of Marxist interpretations of war, the West or Marxists to print and publish them.  Even if there weren't native Marxists (which there were plenty in the West), the Soviet Union was not shy about trumpeting what it thought of the West.  You could acquire Marxist histories in the US, or Britain or Canada, or France at any time during the Cold War.  Now, I don't know if that was true in Portugal.  That country was a dictatorship for a significant period and so I don't know what you could get there.

Martim, you argued an untenable position and further posts haven't advanced your case.  You made absurd claims that have been easily proven incorrect, and then shifted to unprovable stuff about brainwashing and the like.  I think it's time to pack it in.

[Ed Anger]

You could acquire Marxist histories in the US, or Britain or Canada, or France at any time during the Cold War.

The Soviet embassy sent my bro a shitload of their little books when he wrote them for research help on some school paper. I wish they were kept.

They were a hoot.

[Razgovory]

You could acquire Marxist histories in the US, or Britain or Canada, or France at any time during the Cold War.

The Soviet embassy sent my bro a shitload of their little books when he wrote them for research help on some school paper. I wish they were kept.

They were a hoot.

My school had a bunch of thes olde magazines that were published by the Soviets to foster friendship between the US the SU and gloat about their power and greatness.  They were really proud of weird things like tractors and steel production.  That country must have been really boring to live in.  No wonder they were always drunk.

[Admiral Yi]

If Martim's thesis is that all Americans think our conduct in war is flawless that's obviously not true.  The "howling wilderness" atrocity in the Phillipines was widely reported at the time and familar to anyone who has read about that war.  Anyone with decent knowledge has heard of My Lai, and the deepest retard knows about Abu Ghraib.

If his thesis is that American movies tend to whitewash conduct more than movies from other countries, there's probably something to that.  WWII movies have tended not to be very dark, with a few exceptions like SPR, whereas in Europe dark movies about colonial wars seem not to be that rare.  And Europe for the most part went through their colonial wars before the US went through Vietnam, which is the counterpart.

If his thesis is that American history books sanitize the truth compared to other countries' history books, I'm not sure I see it.  Do American books about WWI, for example, sanitize the truth compared to Italian books about WWI?  Do French books about WWI routinely mention the killing of surrendered or surrendering enemy troops?

[Razgovory]

If Martim's thesis is that all Americans think our conduct in war is flawless that's obviously not true.  The "howling wilderness" atrocity in the Phillipines was widely reported at the time and familar to anyone who has read about that war.  Anyone with decent knowledge has heard of My Lai, and the deepest retard knows about Abu Ghraib.

If his thesis is that American movies tend to whitewash conduct more than movies from other countries, there's probably something to that.  WWII movies have tended not to be very dark, with a few exceptions like SPR, whereas in Europe dark movies about colonial wars seem not to be that rare.  And Europe for the most part went through their colonial wars before the US went through Vietnam, which is the counterpart.

If his thesis is that American history books sanitize the truth compared to other countries' history books, I'm not sure I see it.  Do American books about WWI, for example, sanitize the truth compared to Italian books about WWI?  Do French books about WWI routinely mention the killing of surrendered or surrendering enemy troops?

I don't know if our films whitewash any more then others.  I mean, France banned the film Battle of Algiers for several years.  I think the difference might be that European empires were collapsing and it's hard to be upbeat about defeat, while American films often recounted triumphs.  You do see a shift in tone after Vietnam, but that shift seems to have been temporary.  Saving Private Ryan did depict Americans shooting POWs, but it is still about triumph and heroism.  While most of the characters die, their side wins and the movie is about the fact that their struggle was worth it in the rather ham fisted bookends.  My point is I think the difference is one of optimism.  Now, we are only comparing films in the West.   I don't know enough about Soviet and Chinese films in the time period.  I suspect they were rather patriotic and optimistic.

[Siege]

I remember Sputnik, the magazine.
Before the Perestroika it was pure soviet propaganda.

[Siege]

By the way, there were a few soviet sci-fi novels I found quite interesting, if lacking in originality.

[Siege]

This is Alexei Tolstoy's "Aelita" (1923)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aelita_(novel)

This is Edgar Rice Burroughs' "A Princess of Mars" (1917)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Princess_of_Mars

As you can see, the plot is so similar, that I am convince that comrade Alexei read Burroughs work.
The first sci-fi work in the russian language is nothing but plagiarism.
And the soviets were sooooo proud of Alexeis' work.....