Let us look at a specific example. A claim like “There’s cultural genocide of Uyghurs in Xinjiang” is simply unreal to most Westerners, close to pure gibberish. The words really refer to existing entities and geographies, but Westerners aren’t familiar with them. The actual content of the utterance as it spills out is no more complex or nuanced than “China Bad,” and the elementary mistakes people make when they write out statements of “solidarity” make that much clear. This is not a complaint that these people have not studied China enough — there’s no reason to expect them to study China, and retrospectively I think to some extent it was a mistake to personally have spent so much time trying to teach them. It’s instead an acknowledgment that they are eagerly wielding the accusation like a club, that they are in reality unconcerned with its truth-content, because it serves a social purpose.

What is this social purpose? Westerners want to believe that other places are worse off, exactly how Americans and Canadians perennially flatter themselves by attacking each others’ decaying health-care systems, or how a divorcee might fantasize that their ex-lover’s blooming love-life is secretly miserable. This kind of “crab mentality” is actually a sophisticated coping mechanism suitable for an environment in which no other course of action seems viable. Cognitive dissonance, the kind that eventually spurs one into becoming intolerant of the status quo and into action, is initially unpleasant and scary for everybody. In this way, we can begin to understand the benefit that “victims” of propaganda derive from carelessly “spreading awareness.” Their efforts feed an ambient propaganda haze of controversy and scandal and wariness that suffocates any painful optimism (or jealousy) and ensuing sense of duty one might otherwise feel from a casual glance at the amazing things happening elsewhere. People aren’t “falling” for atrocity propaganda; they’re eagerly seeking it out, like a soothing balm.

americans are some of the only people in the world who genuinely believe their country's founding myths

Americans with literally any topic. And in their minds the fact that it’s like the default opinion just reinforces that it must be true. Not even a moment of hesitation that maybe it’s the default opinion because we utterly despise teaching anything besides business and trades.

Most of us come out of college with barely any deep understanding of anything in history. Just a Wikipedia glossary full of stubs.

usians are the most propagandized people on earth

Someone already posted the brainwashing vs moral licensing essay so I just wanna add that if an American takes an anti-imperialist stance on their history, then they are grievously implicating themselves and everyone they know.

Because if the US hasn't been fighting for freedom all this time, then what does that say about Americans? What does that say about you?

Most Americans prefer to avoid the question and the associated introspection because their lives are distant enough and comfortable enough that they can. Also, everyone understands what resisting the US entails, whether they'll admit it or not, and know to keep their head down or else.

Want to hear something embarrassing? I never even knew who Lenin was until I was 17...and I had to Google it myself. And I was actually well above average in school. The American education system is a fuck and there's so much I had to learn on my own.

It's funny, the education system was engineered to make us workers, but employers don't even want to hire us anymore and would rather stick to piling on more work to the people already hired, leaving a generation stuck with dead end minimum wage jobs at best even if they have master's degrees.

energy. He "studied communism" for 20 years by being really mad at the USSR, collecting memorabilia of the USSR, naming his daughter after Gorbachev, and reading nothing about communism except maybe the manifesto.

In 1981, Americans thought the Soviet Union was an Evil Empire that would battle the US for eternity.

In 1991, Americans thought the USSR's collapse was inevitable and obvious while questioning only why it didn't happen sooner.

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.

Nationalism. Their nationalist mindset forces them to have an automatic negative reaction to anything that challenges it. Because they believe that their nation are the good guys and anything else that their nation labels "the enemy" is the bad guys. When you challenge the state's narrative on the bad guys, which they have accepted as correct and good, you are also challenging their decades of nationalism and by extension their support for their nation makes it feel like a challenge against them as a good or bad person (for supporting the good or bad guys).

The method to successfully make people question these things is to first create massive negative feelings about the state, this opens them up to questioning their nationalism and leads them to a crossroads between two choices. One is the reactionary RETVRN ideology in which a person doubles down on the idea that nationalism is good but not for the current state, it must be removed and replaced with a state that will RETVRN it to greatness. The other is internationalist ideology, in which people reject nationalism and start viewing states from a larger distance as citizens of the world instead of citizens of their nation.

I'm a stuck record on this but time and time again it comes down to this.

it's even worse with the descendants of euro-immigrants. I know a polish guy, gay, super liberal, who is absolutely convinced of the most bloodthirsty and reactionary narratives about the USSR because he's from a polish family, and his polish grandma would never lie. If I'm talking about any kind of effort to improve society somewhat he will go full and say "socialism is a good idea in theory, but never in practice, I should know, I'm polish, and both hitler and stalin genocided my people." He's generally a kind and friendly person who has been helpful on numerous occasions in the decade I've known him, but the second we start talking politics the gloves come off. He has a STEM background and gets paid fairly good, so I especially don't care for the way he talks about working class people like they're all ignorant trumpers who just need to learn to code.

Mass media has huge influence on people, it is unbelievable in what they can convince ordinary citizens.

It is not only US or it's stance on USSR, it is still happening all over the world. You can study this effect in real time right now.

My own parents don't believe me anything until they hear it on TV. And will never believe me if TV is claiming opposite.

I just dropped idea of truth, there are just some (probably corporate) interests and easy to manipulate sheeple.

Most Americans can't fuckin read. Low comprehension and ability to understand what they read. Half the country can't read above a 6th grade level so they just parrot what the government and mass media has been telling them for years. Also, dunning kruger effect is part of it.

Next you'll be telling us that there's more to the DDR than what's contained in The Lives of Others!

Which books do you particularly recommend?

Im simultaneously understanding of it (as I’m sure many of us here are in general, since many are Amerikkkans and used to be libs) while also baffled by how much gaslighting there is. People will legit look at you like you’ve grown an extra head if you don’t automatically take for granted that the USSR was a famine-riddled nightmare state and Stalin personally executed a hundred people himself daily for sport.

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.