Journal of Other Forum Analysis

[benji]

For example, people from South America are going to look at US politics through a lens of neo-colonialism and distrust due to what we did down there as a nation. They might look at the former Soviet Union more positively, being the geopolitical rival of the US, as a result. However, someone from Eastern Europe is going to have the exact opposite lens and view the Soviet Union as the neo-imperialist power and the US as the positive influence. Neither of these are inherently wrong opinions, both nations did a lot of harm in those days and any good they did was a result of them trying to stick it to the other. The Cold War was very much just another race for empire, nations scrambling for power in the imperialist tradition.

I mean, a lot of those countries are still destabilized or not in great condition and tend to blame others for their systematic short comings (see how many in the BRICS thread blamed the US for Bolsonaro). That should make you question if their perspectives are entirely because past experiences or there is elements of deflection. The actual reality, is that the mod team cannot know everything about every topic and can just guide themselves seeing who is acting like a prick or not. But because “tone policing” is considered an offense and having guidelines is too hard to write in the rules, most mods limit attention to mass reporting for petty shit or stuff that they passionately about. You cannot eliminate the Cold War mentality by keeping the Cold of War mentality.

I'd note further that B-Dubs is going "BOTH SIDES" at the end there even as he plainly rejects the claim of the Soviet Bloc (and its defenders on his forum) that communism is the complete opposite of imperialism* and communist nations cannot be imperialist by definition making it impossible.

*Even as the nature of socialism demands it. (Which provides a defense to the U.S. position if one were to allow it, namely that the American Empire had no need for states to obey only merely to not join the communist bloc, which is why the U.S. could tolerate the U.K., France, Germany, Japan, etc. but the eventual Soviet-China split tore the communist bloc apart and the Soviets could not allow the Czech, Hungarian and Titoist variations.)