North Korean propaganda translator - Page 3

I agree the article was a good read, and I disagree with his political opinion too. But the bulk of this post will be addressing the tangential debate about Western media skew.

This is not to say that communists have not launched major and unjust offensives, but that we have too, and our media blames the communists for many things that are indeed our fault, even today.
To be fair, look a little bit closer into each war mentioned above. Which ones are actually invasions by communism, and which ones are wars that people in the West always allege as an invasion by communism to mask the true fault of the West?

Let’s take a closer look:
1) The Soviet War in Afghanistan happened as a direct result of a request from the Afghan parliamentary government for intervention by the Soviet Union (a measure the Soviet Union delayed for years), as the USSR’s relationship with Afghanistan stems back from their close economic ties in the 20's when the Soviets supported the Afghan insurrection against the Western imperialist powers following WWI (the Soviet Union provided many times more economic assistance in the latter years to the government of Afghanistan than the nascent World Bank ever would). The US and Western allies instead, opted to support the radical extremist Mudhajadeen (spelling?), who had an opportunity to participate in the Parliamentary government but chose not to. Now look where the West is, fighting the same government that we helped to topple the parliament of Afghanistan in favor of fundamentalist theocracy. And yet, the “Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan” is almost synonymous for aggressive communist expansion, when in fact the parliamentary government actively sought Soviet aid, the same Soviet Union that helped build the parliamentary government in Afghanistan that, thanks to us, is now dead today.

2) The war in Vietnam was hardly a communist expansion (though Western media would portray it this way, feeding back to the point of the post at the beginning of this quote ziggurat). Rather, it was primarily a Civil War; Ho Chi Minh himself, the leader of the Vietnamese war for independence (a popular non-firebrand/demagogue), was one of the primary backbones in the war effort against Japan during the Second World War. Yes he was a “communist”, as he was a founder of the French communist party in the 1920’s, but he in no way was a Stalinist or Soviet. Similar to George Washington, in a way, though the French exploiters of the raw resources and laborers of Vietnam were far more oppressive than the British ever were to the American colonies. And yet, in common Western perception, we aren’t the aggressors, communism is!

At this point, the US funds over 70 percent of the French expenses for suppression of Vietnamese independence, allegedly to keep France economically strong and thereby stifle internal communist movements.

So basically what happens is that the Geneva Accords get signed, slating for reunification elections to be held in 1956. Truman gives this a middle finger, sets up a puppet in Noh Zinh Diem (he specifically mentions in his memoirs that he supports the containment of “communism” over national self-determination, in favor of keeping the territorial divisions permanent), and then later decides to give Diem the middle finger and supports a corrupted military junta. The US Navy works with the military junta to launch unprovoked attacks on North Vietnamese settlements. Then when they fire back, we essentially declare war with the Tonkin gulf resolution. We ravage the Cambodian and Vietnamese countryside, spray Agent Orange all over the place, etc. But the communists are the aggressors! We just tried defending a military junta that we generated against international mandates to support Western spheres of influence!
And yet, in this light, the war is still viewed in the West as communist expansion, and not as a Western imperialist effort? The West instead skews the conflict like hell, as evidenced by the above-quoted post.

3) Spanish Civil War- the Communists won the 1936 elections. Who was essentially the only supporter of the Republic of Spain over the fascist Franco and various other anarchist factions? The Soviet Union. The West (the United States’ involvement in the conflict was zero, and Britain and France sent very limited aid to the republic) remained neutral and let the republic fall against the direct military support of Mussolini and Hitler. Of *course* the Soviet Union was the aggressor here. So the West sit back and watch as the Soviet Union funds the republic in an effort to prevent continental Europe from falling under Fascist orbit, doing absolutely nothing. And then Franco wins, we don’t blame ourselves, and Spain plunges into the dark until 1975. But look! Today this war is painted as an example of communist invasion (ok, it sortof was part of Stalin’s aim, but supporting the Republic still beats doing nothing any day).


Not much else to say. Everything else in the above quote is a pretty prime example of Communist belligerence (although most of them stem from Stalinism and not necessarily, Communism). But keep in mind, via either soft or hard influence (that is, media and cultural/social influence of ideologies vs actual banning of opposing materials), the Western governments still do swing public opinion with 'propaganda'.

The key difference though between the West and whatevercountrieswithcensorship is that if those living in the West aren’t lazy, they can seek the opposite viewpoints, whereas the peoplelivingundercensorship can't.