The propaganda wars

A leftist friend came out to visit me while I was teaching in China. As we looked at Buddhist statues desecrated by the Red Guard, their faces clumsily hacked off either because they represented China’s past or a “foreign influence,” I told him about the suffering and chaos of the Cultural Revolution. He said (and I’m paraphrasing) that after a revolution, it’s sometimes necessary to eliminate opponents to avoid a counter-revolution. 

First, no. 

Second, that’s what the communists said they were doing, but that’s not actually what happened.

The CliffsNotes version: After Mao ZeDong’s disastrous economic policies caused millions of Chinese to starve to death in one of the most disastrous man-made famines in history, he was quietly moved aside. But the man had an ego, a reputation as a hero of the revolution, and knowledge of how to work propaganda. 

He took to the national stage and got people all drummed up about finding and humiliating the “capitalist roadsters” in their midst. He urged young people in the Red Guard to humiliate and torture their elders, especially teachers and other intellectuals. Like many a witch hunt in history, most people just went along with it out of fear, and opportunists used it to settle personal vendettas and consolidate power1.

Maybe it's unfair to pick on my friend for this one comment, but it was a striking example of a fallacy best embodied by a TikTok sound: 

Person 1: “USSR bad” is Cold War capitalist propaganda.

Person 2: So USSR good?

Person 1: No, no. USSR complicated.

Person 2: USSR good. 

Person 1: No, No!

[USSR anthem starts]

Person 2: USSR good. 

Instead of taking a minute to dig into the specifics or even just admit to not knowing enough to have an opinion, people seem to think they should spout a hot take based on the idea that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” 

The end result is two sides lobbing propaganda at one another, resulting in an empty conversation entirely divorced from reality.

This is not just a leftist problem by any stretch. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is probably the most morally unambiguous conflict since World War II2, yet some far-right commentators and political candidates are doing gold medal gymnastics routines to justify supporting Russian President Vladimir Putin because he has the support of Donald Trump.

But in even more confusing sectors of the internet, leftists came to Putin’s defense, calling NATO expansion an example of western imperialism. NATO was founded when the USSR was gobbling up satellite states to draw a line in the sand. As the USSR fell apart, some of those states joined NATO because they didn’t trust Russia as far as they could throw it. No one made them join, and, as we see now with Ukraine, their concerns were justified. 

Look, I fully support questioning dominant narratives; it’s what I’m hoping to do with this Substack. But you can’t reject one form of propaganda just to embrace the other.

Yes, western capitalism used the USSR and Chinese Communist Party to instill fear of leftist movements, from organized labor to civil rights. But that does not mean that the USSR and CCP embodied leftist ideals. Karl Marx was not a big fan of the consolidations of power and resources among the bourgeoisie, so I doubt he would’ve been a fan of authoritarianism. 

Also, modern-day China is only communist in name. For most people, it’s laissez-faire capitalism until you attract the wrong kind of attention; the state is largely absent until its boot is on your neck. 

And we cannot ignore the dystopian elements, then and now. If there’s one thing you can definitively say about those dictatorships, it’s that they can get things done, for better or for worse. Whether it’s restructuring the economy, hosting the Olympic Games, or shipping dissidents off to labor camps, where there’s a will there’s a way. 

On the flip side, not everything about those eras was dystopian. The mother of one of my students told me that, given how wide the wealth gap is in China today, she misses the socioeconomic equality of her childhood. “We were very poor, but everyone was poor.” Doctors made more than street sweepers, but it wasn’t like today where China’s wealthy seem to live in a separate reality.

This stuff is complicated. People can (and do) spend their whole lives studying history, power, and narratives and still feel like there’s always more to learn. But without making an effort to interrogate those narratives, we end up having empty, useless conversations.

My husband is Cuban, so when the Cuban people took to the streets last summer to protest the government’s handling of the pandemic and the economy, we went to a protest in Milwaukee. On the right were the disgruntled Cubans who had fled the Castro regime, advocating the US invade the country and overthrow the government. The leftists were arguing the problem was not the government (it was) but the US sanctions (they weren’t) and that the solution was to lift them. 

Neither side had family or friends living in the country. Neither side was even talking about what the people were protesting, much less having a productive conversation about a way forward. Each side came and left with their framework intact. 

We left after 15 minutes. It was a waste of time. 

Thank you for reading No Final Drafts! And as promised, here’s a photo from a recent hike at Natural Bridge State Park.

We probably picked the coldest day of the year to go on this hike, the kind of day where your face hurts from just stepping outside. But we were getting stir crazy and the sun was out.

One perk of this particular park is that you reach the main attraction, the natural bridge, pretty early on. So if you’re not in the mood for a full-on hike on, say, the coldest day of the year, you can get to the main event, keep hiking as far as you like, and then call it a day.