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> Defectors are notoriously unreliable: they tell their host country whatever they want to hear This is almost word-for-word the same rationalization employed
by philwelch 4y ago
> Defectors are notoriously unreliable: they tell their host country whatever they want to hear
This is almost word-for-word the same rationalization employed by the people who denied the Cambodian genocide.
- the_af 4y agoMaybe, but unfortunately it cannot be used as a strike against it. The Cambodian genocide happened. Defectors are notoriously unreliable and many Soviet defectors told falsehoods their host country wanted to believe. (This doesn't mean every defector is unreliable, or even that everything an unreliable defector will say is false -- it just means what it means, that defectors are unreliable as a category.) Both things are true.
- philwelch 4y agoSometimes defectors are unreliable. Other times, defectors provide reliable information which people choose to dismiss or ignore because it doesn't fit with their presuppositions.