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My guess is that most of the people who profess to believe that everything in the DPRK is hunky dory are on the extreme political left. The right does not have
by lisper 5y ago
My guess is that most of the people who profess to believe that everything in the DPRK is hunky dory are on the extreme political left. The right does not have a monopoly on crazy people.
- madeofpalk 5y agoI can't imagine these people are on a left-right scale. They seem to be perpendicular.
- lisper 5y agoI've never met a DPRK supporter, but I have met Cuba supporters. They were white, non-Cuban, and leaning so far left I was surprised they could remain upright. (And I'm pretty far left myself by contemporary U.S. standards.)
- MiroF 5y agoI'm not a Cuba "supporter" but I do think that the quality of life in Cuba is not terrible, Western sources are not to be particularly trusted when it comes to Cuba, and that if we were serious about our opposition to authoritarianism internationally - Cuba would not be towards the top of our list compared to autocracies like Saudi Arabia. This is very different from the DPRK.
- lisper 5y agoI did not mean to draw a parallel between Cuba and NK with respect to the facts on the ground, merely with respect to the arguments that are advanced for them, which in both cases are based on the premise that the conventional wisdom is wrong. Everyone I have ever met who advanced that argument with respect to Cuba was on the political left. The political right has their own version of this argument, except that they focus their skepticism on "the mainstream media" rather than "Western sources" (but IMHO both of these phrases are clearly dog whistles without an actual referent other than, "any source that disagrees with my position.")
- MiroF 5y agoI feel like the "West" [0] is a pretty clear referent and is not synonymous with "any source that disagrees with my position." What is it a dog whistle for? > conventional wisdom Talk about unclear referents! I question the existence of a universal "conventional wisdom" on political issues like these. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world
- lisper 5y agoYes, I don't disagree with that. But I will point out that the literature of the groups that advocate these positions could objectively be called "Western sources" since they originate in the West, but obviously those are not what the people who produce those sources mean when they say that e.g. "Western sources are not to be particularly trusted when it comes to Cuba." It is actually very hard to characterize a reliable source in a way that does not exhibit any sort of cultural or political bias.
- sudosysgen 5y agoThere are massive amounts of Cuba supporters outside of the Western world. From our point of view Cuba sucks, but for a lot of people the basic guarantees that Cuba gives and the lifestyle is actually not so bad at all. Their government also isn't much more corrupt than in the rest of the world. I'm sure that, unsurprisingly, if you live in a majority white country, most Cuban supporters would be white and left-leaning. If you were a Cuban that supported the Cuban regime and were happy, why would you leave, taking on so much risk and expense?
- bernawil 5y ago> If you were a Cuban that supported the Cuban regime and were happy, why would you leave, taking on so much risk and expense? I met a Cuban like that. Simply put, to make more money. He knew the nuances of their system and was thankful for the good parts and the opportunities he had, but at the end of the day knew that for him individually it was more convenient to leave when he had the chance. It's just something that doesn't work for everybody by necessity. I think he had a relative abroad that sponsored some sort of student visa, and he just never went back.
- simplestats 5y agoIn South Korea, the most pro-north political parties are on the left. With the most extremely-pro-north being the extreme left.
- Clubber 5y agoI have a 10% rule. ~10-20% of any group is gonna be a little nutty about something. 10-20% of the population doesn't believe in the moon landing. Similar with the flat earth. They've always existed, just have microphones now.
- trasz 5y agoHow is North Korea left? It's an absolute monarchy, pretty much exactly the other side of the political compass.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- decafninja 5y agoThey declare themselves to be a socialist utopia. If you believe what they say at face value, and also believe that anything negative said about the DPRK by the Western media, etc. to be total lies like some of these people being discussed here do, then I guess you could think North Korea is a leftist paradise.
- lisper 5y agoThat is, empirically, where forms of government commonly labelled as "left" ends up when taken to extremes. North Korea is just the most extreme example.
- sudosysgen 5y agoYeah, bullshit. What other "left" government ended up with a hereditary monarchy?
- lisper 5y agoYou're right, left-wing dictatorships tend not to be hereditary. NK is unique in this regard.
- bernawil 5y agoNK is really the odd one there with the hereditary thing and all. Almost all other communist "dictatorships" are really not that different from US style corporations. Basically, organizations staffed by common people jockeying for position. Sometimes climbing the ladder on merit, sometimes politicking but you get the point. Being family with the CEO helps proably as much as being family with the head of the politburo. And if you think about it, how much of American culture in the 20th century was a result of things that came out of corporate boards?