This old canard of “USA (bad thing) vs USSR (good thing)” is so flat and devoid of meaning, it is qualitatively no different from blanket statements that the USSR is all bad or USA is all good.
And I understand the methodology here, trying to use “cognitive dissonance” in order to stimulate reflection within a subject (the subject being a thinking person). Stimulating reflection and critical thought in people is the aim of socialist education, it is a precondition to unlearning views we have been “propagandized” to accept. These same tactics of flattening and abstracting a history in order to lead people to certain conclusions is exactly how we have been propagandized. But to just do it in reverse is wrongheaded. It shows that the propagandist hasn’t developed a method of education beyond the bourgeois propaganda they are trying to unlearn. Using the same method of propaganda as an enemy with roles reversed isn’t liberating, it is replacing one set of illusions for another set. Engels called it “unity of opposites” and it is shocking to hear people cite “Dialectical Materialism” still miss this.
Practically, this method of propaganda has mixed results. If the individual is moved to take action, and somehow resists falling into sectarianism, then the propaganda could have actually shaken loose the subject from their illusions. Through discussion and personal development they might overcome the propaganda and become critical thinkers rather than simple followers of an ideology. Unfortunately sects are usually pretty good at managing critical thought through social acceptance. Since people abandoning the status quo often find difficulty sharing their ideas in most places, the sect becomes the only place where a person can feel accepted, which if you’ve ever engaged in recruiting or onboarding into resistance actions, you know this feeling can be extremely powerful. Its always amazing to me how sectarians can be so close to myself in principle and imperative, but practically seethe with disdain if I mention where my own socialist education came from, or if they hear me frame an issue a certain way, or principally acriticize the bureaucracy of a country that receives uncritical support from the sect.
The most effective sectarian propaganda is always half-true. It sorts people into camps, there becomes a camp that stresses the truth in the propaganda, and a camp that stresses the lie. Both camps engage only in opposition to one another, deepening their differences, both moving further away from real conditions in the here and now as they dig in deeper to this or that idealist version of history.
A meme about gun control and education might stimulate discussion about how the USSR educated people from a young age how to handle arms and conceive of gun rights (I’m not an expert on this part of Soviet history, just extrapolating from what little meaning is actually contained in the meme); whereas in the USA, the discourse around 2A is so poisoned, practically no one can come to any agreement except the people who are 100% for and 100% against, even though both groups when surveyed, often show individual support for common sense reforms and especially education. Rather than provide even a glancing analysis of real conditions, or dig into any actual phenomenon, two distorted abstractions are placed next to each other so the viewer is sorted into their camp.
Fortunately for my point, this meme is clunky AF, and the dynamics within the discourse are easier to suss out because of it.
Ideas only exist in practice, and the presentation of these ideas have only led to catastrophe and disaster. Not to say, USSR bad or good or whatever, only that getting people to agree with you isnt revolutionary. Only the self aware, critical subject is capable of revolutionary praxis. Turning people or movements into objects to be “educated” or struggled against is just bourgeois idealism flying a socialist flag, which is no kind of socialism at all.
Yeah, yeah. They also didn’t have any gay people in the USSR.
Compared to the western world’s welcoming and tolerance for homosexuality in the same time period?
We had those classes in elementary school, in 7th grade (about 14 y.o.), Yugoslavia…
0 publicized shootings. all my homies hate tankies.
Look.
I also don’t like tankies.
But wtf are you talking about?
Please, go, find any evidence of mass shootings carried out by basically random, deranged individuals in the USSR, with their own firearms,.or firearms that they somehow obtained in a personal capacity, for private use.
Genuinely, if you can find anything about that, I’d love to hear about it.
But you can’t just imply/assert something happened with literally 0 evidence, and flip the burden of proof into an assbackwards state.
Yes, the USSR definitely did use the mass armed power of the state in many ways that were very bad.
But… thats not the same thing as broad individual access to firearms leading to rogue actors going on mass shooting sprees.
The USSR had massive gun control for private citizens… as best I can tell, you could pretty much only own something like a smoothbore, single or double barrel, break action hunting shotgun, as a private citizen in the USSR.
I’m don’t even think most average people were allowed to privately own a pistol, you’d have to hold some kind of position in either the military or state to be able to do that, again, as best I can tell.
Anything beyond that would be highly restricted, criminalized.
So… yeah. It would seem to follow that if private access to firearms is heavily restricted, you don’t get a bunch of private individuals having a uh, terminal ballistically enchanced public crashout.
I’m not gonna pretend I’m an expert on the history of this subject, in the USSR… but you shouldn’t either.
‘People I don’t like are bad, so that gives me free reign to make up baseless claims about them’…
… thats a significant reason why people who don’t like tankies… don’t like tankies.
Its because they make disingenous arguments and argue via implications that can’t be proved or disproved.
You’re doing the rhetorical equivalent of ‘just asking questions’.
Please provide either some actual evidence, or at least a logically compelling argument that what you are asserting/implying … actually happened.
literally just https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_Soviet_Union My criticism is not about just schools, it’s about the opaque way authoritarianism works. And either way anything positive about the USSR is undermined by the millions killed by it, just like anything positive done by the US is undermined by its imperialism and capitalism, which also killed millions. At the end of the day, it’s really just simple as “don’t support mass murderers and people who associate with their power”. I really don’t get how people can just… ignore all the deaths.
Oh ok, so there’s considerably less than one a year.
You know, due to gun control.
Compared to the modern US with over one a day.
Saying… anything positive about X is undermined by negative things about X is just completely missing the point… well, any potentially productive point.
The USSR did bad things, authoritarianism is bad.
Uh huh. Yep.
Apply that logic to any other society, ever.
Ok, I guess we don’t have any societies where the state acts as a functional monopoly on the legitimate use of violence that are worth discussing as examples of anything good.
Thus apparently there are no examples of nearly any societies, ever, worth further investigation or comparison or potential, at least partial, emulation.
… Am I misunderstanding you, or is that your actual position?
Or are you just nonsenically picking on the USSR for a problem it did not really have in comparison to many other societies?
If your point is ‘mass violence enabled by the state is bad’… almost no one on lemmy is going to broadly disagree with that, no one is going to ignore all the deaths, other than I guess tankies and fascists.
Its a moot point (in the US legal system sense of moot point), its a pointless point to make, amongst people with functioning consciences.
But if you’re trying to have, I dunno, a conversation or commentary on …
… what would be an ideal way for modern society to handle the nearly completely unavoidable fact that firearms exist in a modern society? who should have them, or be able to have them, under what circumstances, under which conditions? …
… then the framing of your original comment is completely unproductive and banal.
It asserts a laughably false equivalence with no evidence.
And yes, it is still a laughably false equivalence to point at evidence of something like a 1000 degree of magnitude difference in number of yearly mass shootings… as … evidence of equivalence.
It is not as simple as ‘Don’t support mass murderers.’
One person’s murderer is another person’s justified hero, dutiful soldier, person just doing their job, justified revolutionary, despicable terrorist, etc.
Sorry mate, I had to call in the reff
You are quoted as saying
Please, go, find any evidence of mass shootings carried out by basically random, deranged individuals in the USSR, with their own firearms,.or firearms that they somehow obtained in a personal capacity, for private use.
Genuinely, if you can find anything about that, I’d love to hear about it.
But you can’t just imply/assert something happened with literally 0 evidence, and flip the burden of proof into an assbackwards state.
Your opponent did then provide the evidence you asked for and then you dismissed it. A proper play would’ve meant admitting that these events did happen after being presented evidence. You could’ve carried your point afterwards and talked about the difference in scale, but you undermined your own argument by dismissing theirs.
I think that’s like a ten yard penalty and a time out, take a breather and come back working together on finding a good point through dialog instead of fighting, seems like you could reach each other if you wanted.
I did admit the evidence existed.
In the first couple of sentences.
Did you miss those, ref?
I then did the thing, went forward with the rest of the discussion, considering the evidence they presented, referring to it, and making comparisons with it.
How could I discuss and make quantitative comparisons of that set of events to others… without implicitly, obviously, accepting it as existing and valid?
Was I supposed to stop and profusely congratulate them for linking a wiki page?
You’ve essentially penalized me for not ‘admitting those events did happen’ in an undefined yet apparently specific manner you find appropriate.
I acknowledged its existence by contending with it.
Further… they said 0 publicized shootings.
Go look at the references for the shootings … many of them are contemporaneous coverage in some kind publicized media, at least one had public a memorial service occur to commemerate the victims, not long after the shootings.
So… no. They did actually prove their claim. They in fact explicitly disproved it.
All that is required to disprove a claim of 0 publicized shootings is… a single publicized shooting, contemporaneously published if we assume that as a reasonable contextual specificied definition.
And… they… provided that evidence, themselves.
Beyond that, the initial claim itself is still just a reversal of how burden of proof works, a fallacious approach to discourse.
I’m beginning to think you’re not really a referee, in fact… you’re nothing but a corny shit poster.
=P
… but I actually can provide non self defeating evidence of that seemingly baseless assertion.
I’m just choosing not to, because that would seem to me to be excessively mean.
Well it’s clear you’re not here to reason so I’m just gonna let you be a tankie
it also really is that simple
just don’t support genocide
don’t support powers that genocide
don’t support Israel, Russia, the USA, the Reich, the USSR, or any genocide-friendly power
show me proof that any power has basis in genocide and I will shun it
because that’s what normal people should do
genocide is bad and we should avoid supporting it
this is literally the most justified take ever and you’re still arguing against it
Ok, so you don’t have a discussion about how guns should work in a society.
You just want to use a dubious rhetorical tactic to assert that genocide is bad.
Yes, we, we all agree that genocide is bad, amongst the vast majority of people with consciences.
This isn’t generally a point worth making, its virtue signalling.
Does… communal firearm training… necessarily result in genocide?
Is that what has happened in every society that has at least a temporary period of mandatory military service for broad swathes of society?
I’m trying to have a discussion, you just want to keep avoiding that discussion, and keep reasserting a point I have already accepted… because that point is so obvious it barely needs to be stated.
Again: I agree with you that genocide is bad. I don’t support or endorse any of the pogroms or purges or manufactured famines or gulag archipelagos of the USSR, those are all atrocities.
But, what do you mean you will shun any power that has a basis in genocide?
Like, you’ll never step foot in the USA? Or Canada? Or nearly any Western country? You’ll boycott all companies that currently, actively participate in genocide?
Or are you juat saying you think genocide is icky and bad?
Something in between?
Something else?
Also I think you’re the the first person on lemmy who’s called me a tankie, which is funny to me because I’ve been banned from large sections of ml and hexbear for pointing out that the Pooh Bear Xi Jinping meme actually originated in China, and is actually a homegrown symbol of mockery of and resistance against Xi and the PRC, not a racist meme used by Westerners to attack China and Chinese people…
…generally I’m the one getting into arguments with actual tankies, who will actually defend some of those genocides and other horrific acts done in the name of some vanguard party or what not.
But I guess to you, tankie is just anyone you perceive as being mean, when the topic of discussion is the USSR.
deleted by creator
Ok then if you can’t take things I’m good humor, I’ll say it directly. You’re acting like an ass and flying off the handle, whether you’re right or not, and maybe need to fucking chill.
I did take things in good humor, that’s why I made a joke at the end.
I’m sorry if you can’t handle having your ideas being directly interrogated amd critiqued, maybe you shouldn’t be a self appointed referee of debates, maybe you shouldn’t have inserted yourself into this situation for invalid reasons, maybe its not polite to do that, and you should chill out a bit?
RIP to those imaginary dead children you just made up
I haven’t mentionned any children. You’re putting words in my mouth.
This deflection doesn’t even work lmao.
Feel free to provide any sources related to mass shootings carried out by children in the USSR. The victims can be any age, so surely you’ll find something. Let me know when you figure all that out.
also https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_massacres_in_the_Soviet_Union it doesn’t really matter if the gun was fired from a young or old person in the end, people still die
it’s as simple as not supporting genocidal nations
just don’t support genocide in general
it’s crazy that I have to say this.
Zero sources of children mass shooting anybody. Just take the L my man lol.
Did you know wikipedia has sources ? That you can read ?
Removed by mod
Go ahead and show me proof that children massacred people with guns I’ll wait.
Removed by mod
… reading comprehension of a 12yo
I’m going to disagree on the mod’s comment over here.
I am yet to see a 12yo with such a bad reading comprehension and I was pretty stupid back when I was 12.
Wtf does this have to do with leftist memes?
Best case interpretation:
Community effort aimed at teaching useful skills, funded and safely managed by a state entity, for the benefit of the broad society.
It’s a pro-gun meme, and pretty much every successful iteration of socialism has been pro gun. Seem obvious if you’re not a baby-leftist or liberal.
It’s clearly not a “pro-gun” meme. The point it’s making is not “be pro-gun”. You’re being deliberately disingenuous
It’s definitely pro gun. It’s showing children in the USSR learning how to use them and then says “school shootings: zero” making a comparison to USA. It shows the distinction that guns themselves may not be the problem regarding Americas school shooting epidemic.
You gotta be pretty dense to not understand that lol.
It’s typical campist shit. It’s not pro gun, it’s just “USSR good, America bad” propaganda as if we’re living in the fucking 60s. Which is par for the course for tankie rhetoric ofc.
It’s pretty clearly pro-gun. Crying about it being “tankie rhetoric”, a famously pro-gun movement doesn’t really support your conclusion either.
/disengage
I thought it was being sarcastic as obviously there have been many mass shootings in Russia
School shootings? I can’t find any sources to verify that.
List of school attacks in Russia - Wikipedia https://share.google/eBqt6wipbZq0iThiM
Only 4 of those happened in the USSR, which is what the post is talking about. The majority happened in the modern Russian federation, which isn’t what the post is talking about
Doesn’t seem to happen nearly as frequently as the US, but often enough for there to be a Wiki article cataloguing various instances of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_attacks_in_Russia
Edit: should clarify that there seem to be more knife attacks than anything else, too, but still a fair few shootings.
That list has 4 shootings that happened during USSR time, probably all done by psychos. Meanwhile, the USA will get 4 shootings in a week.
This one doesn’t land with me
It feels like “US mass shootings are caused by a kid showing off his dad’s ar when someone accidentally switched it to auto and bumped the trigger”
Especially for younger people, proper firearm training is as much about proper technical care as it is proper usage, but I think the key hidden element is, ironically, normalizing guns.
In the West, guns are fucking cool. You know what’s not cool? Anything you learned about in middle school.
Nah, its showing the difference between:
Anyone can buy and own and posses and carry a firearm, basically, with little to no required training.
and
Everyone is encouraged to be trained in the proper usage and maintenance of firearms, but also, you do not get to take them home with you, carry or posses them privately.
Gun control was huge in the USSR.
But… that does not mean that you cannot also train the population in the usage of firearms, and then just keep those firearms locked in the training facilities/range armories.
Sure, you’re allowed to have whatever takeaway vibe you want… but that doesn’t mean your takeaway vibe makes any sense at all.
Yeah, no way to connect these dots for me either.
Let’s call it anecdotal evidence if we must, but it seems to me that most school shooters seem to have been fairly knowledgeable in handling their weapons and aware of what happens when they pull the trigger.
My mum was fastest in her class at disassembling and (re-)assembling AK 74s 😼
My mum was fastest in her class at disassembling and (re-)assembling AK 74s 😼
It was 27 more gooder than the base model.
Edit: TIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-74
… You… didn’t know about the AK 74?
Lemme guess, you think the AR in AR 15 stands for Assault Rifle, right?
It’s a media regulation issue. Bowling for Columbine did a very good breakdown of the causes 20 years ago. Nothing is new or unlearned, just ignored.
Well, there is also 0 of soviet states currently, so another win!
For whom? The oligarchs? The ones perpetuating imperialist (proxy) wars between fraternal peoples?
I do not care about authoritarian regimes.
Well thats alarming.
Oh wow, so much smarter and more experienced and knowledgeable on that topic than the people who actually lived there 🧠🧠🧠
(Almost as if even flawed state socialism is an improvement over capitalism and exploitation, and a net positive for humanity at large 🤯🤯🤯🤯)
Definitely not in the case of the USSR. They force-fed socialism down everyone’s throats so hard that as soon as they loosened their grip the people rebelled and went as liberal as possible, with russia speed-running the liberalism->autocracy pipeline. The USSR was an imperialist nation that forced its view of the world down its population, attempting to drown out peoples’ culture by calling that culture capitalist or fascist, ensuring that people hated them and everything they stood for. (Sending entire families to siberia when they first arrived didn’t help)
Even now. FOUR decades after the collapse. There is no socialist movement. No calls to get communism unbanned. All you can do is participate in the capitalist politics. The fallout even extended to anarchism. The people are so thrilled to finally “be free” (read: have people who speak our language rule over us) that any real attempt to challenge the state is seen as weird, not even dangerous. The only reason I’m the way I’m an anarchist is because of the internet and my mother, who is anarchist-adjacent (she handed me the book that turned me anarchist (“On anarchism” by chomsky (we all gotta start somewhere)).
You wanted a more experienced take. Here you go. A first hand account of someone living in a former USSR country, hating it with every inch of my being due to how much it fucked up all leftist politics here.
but yes, they did house a lot of people (including me right now (through inheritance)), and through that improved the standards of living, but that’s just something a successful country in the 20th century did I wouldn’t consider it specific to the ideology of the country.
