something that puzzles me about reactionaries speaking about north korea or any communist country, is the idea that they have a dictatorship so powerful that people aren’t able to fight against it, movies and spectacles accused as “staged” or “if he/she fails he/she will die with his/her family”. the typical idea of enemies “being weak and uberstrong at the same time”, like damn…if people in dprk were under a dictatorship so brutal as they say, you would hear more about uprisings and strikes more frequently than in USA, are you trying to tell me that the only “efficient dictatorships” are the communist ones? that capitalism isn’t able to keep people like pinochet or hitler more than a couple of decades and with constant revolts and a huge media industry? ok…

    • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
      5·
      1 year ago

      Brigading. r/communism is basically just r/socdem, so those folks come here expecting they can be just as ignorant and American as they are on reddit.

        • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
          1·
          1 year ago

          I might be using the term wrong. It is probably just redditors finding communities that they assume are exactly like reddit, then being mad they aren’t and trying to turn lemmy into reddit. Probably not actually any organised thing going on here.

  • exbot@lemmy.world
    1412·
    1 year ago

    It seems like you assume there is a direct relationship between how brutal a dictatorship is and how often people revolt, but I don’t see why that would be the case.

    An important factor in how people resist their government is the risk/reward of doing so. Do they understand that revolt can create change? Do they fear for their lives?

    My understanding is that in North Korea, it is very likely that speaking out against the government will result in years or decades of jail time. Information there is also tightly controlled, so people do not believe such action would be productive anyway. I think a person would not want to revolt given those conditions, even if they are not happy with their government.

    Simply put, they do not know things can be better, and they wouldn’t know how to make them better if they did.

    • big_spoon@lemmygrad.mlOP
      112·
      1 year ago

      An important factor in how people resist their government is the risk/reward of doing so. Do they understand that revolt can create change? Do they fear for their lives?

      well…maybe we should ask the russians in 1917, or people under pinochet, cubans under batista et al

      • exbot@lemmy.world
        48·
        1 year ago

        I would argue the people in every case you just listed were far more aware of the reward of revolt, which is half the equation. All of those dictatorships had existed for less than 15 years before another revolution or similar event had taken place. The people remembered a better life.

        North Korea has some of the most effective information control seen this century, and their government has held uninterrupted power spanning 50 years. They are arguably the single most extreme case in modern history of a population that is ill-equipped to revolt.

        • big_spoon@lemmygrad.mlOP
          41·
          1 year ago

          “All of those dictatorships had existed for less than 15 years before another revolution or similar event had taken place. The people remembered a better life” oh c’mon now…what about french revolution? what about the change into capitalism from feudalism? “North Korea has some of the most effective information control seen this century” yeah, because north koreans are too stupid to know about the world under the eye-that-sees-everything of sauron kim family

    • lntl@lemmy.sdf.org
      103·
      1 year ago

      Simply put, they do not know things can be better, and they wouldn’t know how to make them better if they did.

      This sounds like the White Man’s Burden. The people who live in DPRK are well-equipped to know what makes a happy and healthy life. They’re not any more brainwashed/blindly obedient to “the party” than people in the West are.

      • exbot@lemmy.world
        38·
        1 year ago

        The people who live in DPRK are well-equipped to know what makes a happy and healthy life.

        What a strangely intentional choice of words. I was talking about their awareness of how their government could/does treat them. You’ve changed the subject to their awareness of…happiness and health?

        Part of living a happy life is not living in fear of your government. To deny that North Koreans live in fear of their government is to basically ignore all of the information we have from the people who lived there.

        • lntl@lemmy.sdf.org
          4·
          1 year ago

          The only standard that applies is the happiness and health of the people. Saying that they “don’t know” or “wouldn’t know how” dehumanizes the people who live there.

          There’s disgrace in describing people this way. Do better.

  • STUPIDVIPGUY@lemmy.world
    712·
    1 year ago

    lmao I really don’t think the DPRK reports honestly about the amount of uprisings they squash. And their citizens are scared to fight back because they know better than anyone of their government’s ruthless nature. Protests are a symbol that one has freedom to protest.

    • big_spoon@lemmygrad.mlOP
      91·
      1 year ago

      so…DPRK army is BETTER than the US army? it sounds kinda embarrasing that an army fueled by imperialism and “civilized first world” is shadowed by an army of a “poor communist s**thole” in the ability to squash their own rebels

      • STUPIDVIPGUY@lemmy.world
        610·
        1 year ago

        You missed the last part about freedom to protest. Protest in DPRK and you get injured or imprisoned. Protest in the USA and you get made fun of.

        But yeah that doesn’t matter to you cause you’re obviously arguing in bad faith so go back to your little hole. And don’t quote people on things they didn’t say.

    • Cruxifux@lemmy.world
      3·
      1 year ago

      The US reports blatant lies constantly about DPRK, you think they wouldn’t be showing that shit EVERYWHERE every time one was squashed if it was happening all the time?

      Of course they would.

    • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
      101·
      1 year ago

      They’re evil baddies! We shouldn’t learn about them! Learning things is evil! Like them! Better to just trust everything we are told about the evil enemy. Life is much easier when someone else tells me who is bad and who is good and I don’t ever question why they tell me things, or what they aren’t telling me.

      • exbot@lemmy.world
        18·
        1 year ago

        So…I did learn about them. I learned pretty much everything I could. Watched documentaries from many sources, interviews with escaped citizens, documents/images describing conditions and infrastructure, etc. Very little information comes out of the country, but I consumed everything I could find.

        My conclusion? North Korea’s government really is pretty cartoonishly evil. I’ve followed the stories of many governments, and they seem to be just about the worst.

        So…why and how are you so convinced they’re not? Have you actually seen any evidence, even circumstantial? If you have, I’d love to see it. If North Korea was really actually fine and the west is just lying about it, that would be fascinating.

        • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
          10·
          1 year ago

          So here’s where we need to talk about “sources”

          When looking at a source, not only should you read the information within it, but also, you should question where the source comes from, and how they benefit from you believing what they have told you. There is no such thing as an “unbiased” source. We all have biases. Any source that claims to be “neutral” or “unbiased” is just trying to trick you into trusting them without question. Just look at Fox News, I’m sure you don’t think they are a reputable news source, but their slogan is “fair and balanced.” Does that make them actually “fair and balanced” or do they just say that to trick their audience into thinking that? All news sources have a bias, and you shouldn’t trust any that pretend they don’t.

          If you have “learned everything you could” but have only listened to sources from the west, I don’t think you really have learned much at all. Does very little information come out of the country, or is that just what you are told so you don’t bother looking for it? Could it be that there is actually plenty of information about the country, but you have been trained to dismiss it out of hand? Our media in the west tells us that North Korea’s government lies all the time after all. But what if that is actually the lie? What if that is just something designed to trick people into not actually listening to different points of view?

          If you honestly believe they are cartoonishly evil, shouldn’t you ask yourself “why” they are? And why would they go out of their way to be “evil” like well…a cartoon villain? In real life, people don’t do things just to be evil. That’s not how people are. I’m not saying people can’t do evil things, but people do evil things for reasons that benefit them, not just because they are cartoon villains. So when our media promotes stories of their government being so over the top evil it would make Voldemort and Skeletor tell them to chill out, we should probably question whether any of this is actually happened as described, or if it is just made up. This doesn’t just apply to North Korea, but any and all countries. We shouldn’t automatically accept something at face value just because we are told it, we should look for alternative opinions and explanations and see if those make sense or not. If one side is saying “North Korea is an authoritarian hellscape more like a cartoon than real life.” And the other is saying “North Korea is a poor country like many others, with a lot of issues.” which is more likely to exist in the real world? A cartoon?

          Here’s a documentary that interviews a few defectors. The ones that don’t get the spotlight. The ones that don’t get book deals and movie deals and interviews with Joe Rogan. I want you to keep in mind all the things you hear about North Korea’s draconian police force and surveillance state apparatus when they talk about their life in the south.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V4Hnl7J9H4

          Please watch it, I’m not telling you that you have to become some kind of North Korea worshiper or some nonsense, I’m just trying to spread media literacy, a skill we are not taught. And no one is good at a skill they’ve never practiced.

          • exbot@lemmy.world
            17·
            1 year ago

            You want to know why I believe sometimes things are like a cartoon? We live in a fucking cartoon world.

            For example, when I ask for evidence of North Korea actually being great and not a horrible dictatorship, and receive a cartoonishly biased YouTube video from someone who just spend two paragraphs giving the most patronizing speech imaginable about good sources 😂

  • RadButNotAChad@lemmy.world
    210·
    1 year ago

    Posts headline that says singer they thought was executed is actually still alive without links to any sort of article. When you go to find the article, you realize that a dozen musicians were rounded up and executed, it’s just that SHE wasn’t one of them as it was rumored. Who’s spreading propaganda?