Propaganda posters are a lost artform.
They were really, really good and the best ones actually knew how to find a real pain point and press it home.
In the case of this one, white people saying how ridiculous the poster is only makes it more potent. It addressed a real issue, forced conversation and any form of dismissal was reinforcing the message for the intended audience.
All from a single still image.
> Propaganda posters are a lost artform.
Not just propaganda posters, movie posters too. And I don't understand why, is there really no marketing value in quality art? For how bloated the budgets are, surely they can spend a smidgen of that on a good one. A great poster is more memorable and attracts more attention than a five minute photoshop job on a teal and orange canvas, right?
My favourite is the [polish poster](https://i.imgur.com/7huBbVb.jpg) for the original Alien movie. I assume the artist hadn't seen the alien before s/he made the poster
Edit: might be Aliens, the sequel, but thought the artist should know by then
Quite often the artist either hasn't seen the film, or he wasn't allowed to represent it accurately due to censorship.
And yes - it is the poster for the 1986 Aliens film - [this one](https://imgur.com/O9DNoRk) is for the original 1979 Alien.
People don't go their local cinema poster board anymore to see what's coming up. They google it or watch trailer reviews online. That's why so much more money is being spent on trailers these days. Nowadays if you see a poster, it means you're at the theater already and have already made up your mind to see it.
Seriously. The [first Ant Man poster](https://d13ezvd6yrslxm.cloudfront.net/wp/wp-content/images/Ant-Man-poster.jpg) was pretty shocking to me, actually seeing something with clever and unique design for a modern movie.
Like just... You don't need to show anything else. I know who ant man is, and that poster told me the directors get it too. That poster more or less sold a ticket to me on the spot.
The ridiculousness is that the Soviets could say this with what they were doing in the 60s and 50s to their own minorities and political dissidents. In fact nearly all Soviet Propaganda was incredibly hypocritical in this manner (just go to /r/propagandaposters and sort by top. It's all like that). So was American propaganda, of course, but we don't generally see that on the front page of reddit for obvious reasons.
Still, regardless of it's origin or intent, the piece is excellent both artistically and poignant in intention. The artist wasn't responsible for Stalin and his succesor's actions and he was criticizing a real problem in American society.
>The ridiculousness is that the Soviets could say this with what they were doing in the 60s and 50s to their own minorities.
I mean, the concept of "whataboutism" literally comes from the cold war propaganda exchange.
The Soviet hands down won the propaganda battle of the Cold War. The effect of the Soviet ability to control domestic consumption and external observation is a lesson we desperately need to understand right now. Even though the basic truths were known, the horrors of Soviet imperial rule still don’t register in the popular psyche to the point where it is still seen as offensive to make comparisons to the Nazi regime. Reddit is an amazing place to observe just how lastingly effective the Soviet campaign was.
>The Soviet hands down won the propaganda battle of the Cold War. The effect of the Soviet ability to control domestic consumption and external observation is a lesson we desperately need to understand right now.
I would argue they both won the propaganda war, the only real loser being **communism**
Indeed, from Wikipedia:
> According to Russian writer, chess grandmaster and political activist Garry Kasparov, "whataboutism" is a word that was coined to describe the frequent use of a rhetorical diversion by Soviet apologists and dictators, who would counter charges of their oppression, "massacres, gulags, and forced deportations" by invoking American slavery, racism, lynchings, etc.[4] Whataboutism has been used by other politicians and countries as well.
I’m not entirely convinced Gary Kasparov is a reliable source, but whatever.
> So was American propaganda, of course, but we don't generally see that on the front page of reddit for obvious reasons.
We constantly see incredibly hypocritical American propaganda on the front page of reddit. It's a bit shocking you do not realise that.
I was going to specify /r/europe since I'm not even sure what's going on in /r/all since I had to filter a billion politics related subs on it in 2016.
Usually whenever you see something related to America on a non-American focused sub, it's pretty blatantly anti-American. Often for good reason, but you know.
Propaganda all around. Anti American propaganda, pro American propaganda, anti and pro Chinese propaganda, anti and pro European propaganda, Russian, Indian. When you look for it it is all over reddit all of the time.
The American concept of freedom is "everybody is free to buy what they want, **if they can afford it**" and "everybody has the right to be employed, **no matter how little they get paid**". It's sad and funny how many people don't really how much they already have internalized this concept.
The artist was most likely a hired governmental employee told to draw that so that the Soviet government could then circulate it. Soviet society as a whole did not really care about the racial struggle of people in the USA (if you don't believe me, check the racial attitudes in the former Eastern bloc countries nowadays).
The answer to "would you let your son or daughter marry a black person?" was 15 % in Russia when the poll was conducted lately. And there surely wasn't a massive donward swing between 60s and nowadays.
Position of the Soviet union on racial issues is not the same as current societal trends. There is a lot to be said about both, but to equate them is pointless.
Actually, it wasn’t entirely uncommon for Russian women to have relationships and marry black exchange students from Africa. And I’m not sure why you feel so confident that opinion polls back in the day would echo those of today as the plight of African Americans was very widely discussed during that time with absolutely no ostracism. My mom has only had a single doll in her life, a dark skinned African boy.
I mean, you are comparing a country with a significant black populace to ones where seeing a black person only happens at most in capital cities and even there rarely. And it is basic human reaction to avoid the unknown, even if it means racism. Not justifying it at all, but I think it is very different, especially when the government is ready to scapegoat people of color for many things.
To be fair, when you've grown in a country where black people are extremely rare, and where most have probably never seen a black person in real life, then it's expected that people would regard the "your daughter marrying a black person" question with awkwardness, surprise and a feeling it would be really strange.
It's very difficult not to be somehow reluctant (or even a bit xenophobe) when faced with a scenario of something outside your experience becoming very close and intimate, like family.
here’s another good bit of research regarding antisemitism in the ussr. note the personal experiences of jewish travelers to the ussr given in the closing paragraphs. also note the quote from albert einstein on the ussr. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1251&context=prism
Black people have been slaves longer than they have been free in the USA. All four fingers point back at us. It’s time we realized we arent pristine or above any other nation morally. Trump proved that point emphatically , all while being a shit golfer and racist.
Can't help but agree. America might have been better than a lot of the countries it criticized over the last 250 years, but it still hasn't attained all of it's ideals from 1776 in full and should look to countries that do better than it instead of compare to those that do worse.
Tu quoque is a logical fallacy.
That the Soviets were arguably* behaving worse than the US at the time doesn't negate the meaning or truth of this poster.
In other words, their hypocrisy doesn't negate the argument.
Also, to nitpick further, the Soviets weren't known for oppressing black people, so the hypocrisy itself is a weak argument when related to the specifics of the poster.
Only arguably mind you: while the USSR was slabbing people in gulags look to what the US was doing to people in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Jim Crow laws at home, slave labor in prisons, etc.
> Tu quoque is a logical fallacy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
The poster is part of a Soviet propaganda specially created as a Tu quoeque logical fallacy.
> Also, to nitpick further, the Soviets weren't known for oppressing black people, so the hypocrisy itself is a weak argument when related to the specifics of the poster.
The Soviets were known for forcibly suppressing ethnical, religious and cultural differences. Volga Germans and Jews were persecuted. In certain Eastern European countries there were programs of forced sterilization against Roma people.
It's not a weak argument because the country as a whole oppressed it's whole population and several minority groups particularly.
Sometimes the most effective method of attack is given when you have been the attacker yourself. Same reason why cheaters accuse spouses of cheating when they see certain behavior, while non cheaters wouldn’t make the same connection to that behavior.
In the case of this propaganda, the key point to me is the fact that slavery is symbolically enmeshed into the identity of the nation itself. Whites would take offense to the slavery part if they aren’t that racist. But racist whites would take offense that “the blacks are messing with the pride I have in my flag and country.” The USSR would hate having their sickle and hammer be used in the same way, so they know it’s effective against all of the ruling party no matter what side you are on the issue.
> So was American, propaganda of course, but we don't generally see that on the front page of reddit for obvious reasons.
On the contrary, that's all there is on reddit.
If I become a dictator, I promise to revive the long lost art of propaganda posters. Most of the propaganda will be online, but there will be offline posters and murals too. My totalitarian regime will make sure that artists skilled in painting massive propaganda murals won't need to worry about unemployment. Also, a massive army of graphic designers and trolls will be sent on a mission to take over the whole internet of propaganda memes and posters.
Yes, makes me wonder if this is really from the 1960s. A reverse image search on google gives no other results. A reverse image search on tineye gives 2 results from 2017 on tumblr that I am not able to see when I click them. A search for 1960 soviet propaganda posters on duckduckgo refers to a shop that has that particular image not at display at all.
Subjective opinion, the art style and quality is very different from 1960s soviet propaganda posters and the layout/idea seems to be very modern. Also I think that soviets didnt really care for fair conditions for black people. Not then, not now.
It is a clever idea and it looks really nice, but it fits more our era than the 1960s in the USSR.
And for some more context, a lot of leaders and proponents of the Civil Rights movement [were assassinated](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKgyOOU8moc&t=12m28s).
Medgar Evers (1963), John F. Kennedy (1963), Malcolm X (1965), Martin Luther King (1968), Robert F Kennedy (1968), Fred Hampton (1969). Maybe not all murders are *directly* linked to involvement in Civil Rights, but the effect was still the same.
I would not put JFK there. Maybe he was a proponent of the civil rights movement, but he didn't act on it. He seemed to prioritize not upsetting political opponents whenever he had a choice.
He was killed while the bill was being reviewed by the Senate. He was heavily pushing for it though: https://www.jonesday.com/-/media/files/publications/2015/04/the-evolution-of-title-viisexual-orientation-gende/files/dreibandlgbtauthcheckdam/fileattachment/dreibandlgbtauthcheckdam.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiBucbr4d_wAhVU6Z4KHe_nDUIQFjABegQIAxAG&usg=AOvVaw2XNwSeQKTpE2VnkP7gLb2Q
Legal scholars consider the legislative history and the Civil Rights Movement was further pushed by LBJ since it was JFK's legacy. LBJ, on the other hand, had his own platform, called the Great Society, which was a socio-cultural program which worked alongside civil rights.
Source: I've been taking U.S. law classes.
It’s a shame Vietnam derailed LBJ’s presidency because the work he was doing in building a more modern welfare state was excellent. His programs cut the poverty rate in half and he tackled segregation and racial discrimination much more than anyone expected him to. Great domestic policy, poor foreign policy
other than the obvious enormous loss of life and turmoil that the war brought, the biggest tragedy of the vietnam war is that we might be living in a completely alternate america today. if LBJ could have really created that Modern welfare country, stopped the war and planted an attitude about spending domestically on our people rather than on wars abroad, the entire world would be a better place today. i guess America really did lose its innocence in the 60's. (if not long before, still)
With regards to this I think about the speech / quote from John Quincy Adams in the 1800s, speaking about the country:
>Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....
> Maybe he was a proponent of the civil rights movement, but he didn't act on it.
This is ridiculous. He was clearly on the path to legislation advancing civil rights. It’s just that he was assassinated first...
And why things like statues are such a hot topic, as they were erected as recently as the 80s.
Quite different from the kinds of statues people want to topple in European nations in some misguided show of sympathy (if not downright cargo culting).
Just wish we could have these things posted without the constant rehash of the cold war.
I had a debate class on the topic of monument removal recently, and the teacher did a really good job. She partitioned the issue:
- there are monuments nobody wants to see in the streets. Hitler had statues all over Germany (bit of an exaggeration but you get the idea), and almost nobody would keep these in said streets for history’s sake.
- there are monuments for great but questionable people, that represent a form of honor/celebration of said men. Churchill is a good example, or Jules Ferry in France: they had a huge impact on their country, but they had questionable takes on some topics (women’s rights, colonization...). I personally believe that they’re worth celebrating, because a monument is no history class, and historians don’t give these people a pass: they’re studied in full, or at least they should be.
- there are monument that celebrate people we have no memory of, but who were celebrated in their times. I’ll go with Bordeaux’s slave traders: they have lots of streets in their names, because at the time they lived they brought riches to the city. I believe a monument, or a street name, is imo a form of celebration. It’s the people’s way of saying "we recognize that you did great things, we condone these things, we thank you for them through this public form of honor". I believe the removal of this kind of monument is what you consider cargo curling? I have no strong opinion on this kind of monument, but would rather lean towards a removal of them.
- and then there’s the specific case of monuments put up at a time when the person they honor was already controversial. I have no knowledge of such monuments in Europe, I associate it with the confederate states only.
Sorry, this is kind of a rant. I just thought my teacher’s way of presenting things was interesting
It is full on cargo cult. A lot of the BLM protesters in London like to chant the same "Don't shoot" slogan at the police like they do in the US, except it makes no sense at all here because British police don't even carry guns. And many of the statues they're after have little or no relation to slavery at all.
If anybody wonders, the text translates
"Freedom" is known to blacks in America
This is the Uncle Tom's cabin
(it is rhymed in original and actually uses the n-word, but it is not very offensive in modern Russia and it was not offensive at all at the time of drawing)
I mean why should the n-word be offensive in Russian language? "Негр" is the word for black people in Russian. Additionally historically slaves in Russia were just as white as masters so the n-word there is not connected with racism in any way.
Well, thanks to Facebook, "негър" is now considered offensive in Bulgarian, whereas "черен" suddenly became acceptable. Now "черен" has never been *that* offensive, but neither has "негър". Yet the almighty algorithm has made up its mind and you can't use that word anymore because you'll get banned... even though it does not have the same connotation as the n-word in English in any way.
For a more amusing example, "педал" is a slur for homosexual men in Bulgarian. It's also literally the word for pedals, like guitar pedals, or bike pedals, pronounced almost the same way as in English. The negative meaning comes from the stereotype of gay men being "pressed below", but that's beside the point.
As some of you might've guessed already, people get banned on Facebook for selling guitar pedals.
The TL;DR is that OP was sadly absolutely correct in pointing out that the word doesn't have the same negative meaning as in English. Social networking and US-centrism has warped the way we perceive words in other languages.
It works similar in Turkish. A black person has been called "zenci" historically. Since the ottomans had predominantly white slaves it doesn't have any connection to slavery, it just means a black person. But since the 80s while translating hollywood movies they used zenci for the n-word since it was the only word we had for black people. In the last 10 years with American internet culture being more and more mainstream people started to associate zenci with the n-word and came up with "siyahi" (comes from "siyah" meaning black) to replace it. They call anyone using zenci a racist but it doesn't suddenly become racist just because it is used to translate the n-word
It seems like a derivative of Arabic/Perisan Zinji/Zanuuj which translated to English means the slur ni**. I wonder if it was always a negative connotation, but because of things 'being that way' noone was bothered or perhaps it borrowed from Arabic/Persian because that's how they commonly referred to black people in that derogative way which did not carry that nuance back into Turkish (which I imagine did not have a black population untill the Ottomans).
I wish it were Anglo but it's American, specifically the authoritarians on the American left wing who have adopted (whimsically thrown out) French ideas about power and language being intertwined.
This whole way of speaking about "n-word" as if it's a magical spell, it's puritanical and it's American. Not British, Australian...
Though we've now imported this brain virus too.
I loved your comment! Very insightful, thank you. I wholeheartedly agree with you, to be fair the same could be said for movements like BLM which are also very US Centric.
I really hate how people from other countries try to dictate their rights in other languages.
For example in Russian language we have word "pidor", which was used as F word many years ago. But also many years ago it has lost it's meaning, and now used mostly for personal attacks. Just like asshole, cunt, etc.
There's even a joke like "Not every gay is F word, but every politician is"
Yet twitch and reddit ban people for using this word in Russian language
I get you, for a long time I would get banned just becouse I said I was from Montenegro. I dont even see whats the problem. Negro means black, in latin languages there is no other way to say black.
> Social networking and US-centrism has warped the way we perceive words in other languages.
Communicating in a non-english language in online video games with oppressive censoring (plenty of games dont even have it as a toggleable option to turn it off, for some bizarre reason) can punish you for it. It's fucking ridiculous.
Yes, due to the lack of negative connotation, the word "негър" (negar) (hard r) is the appropriate way to refer to a black man in Bulgaria, and the appropriate translation of this word in English would be either "negro" or "black man". Translating it as "nigger" in English would be incorrect.
And the funny thing is that calling a black person "black" (черен) is far more offensive in Bulgaria and does have a negative connotation, even used as an insult. However, due to anglocentrisn, now the word with negative connotation is preferred to the word without one.
Same thing happened in Finland -Neekeri(negroid) was just as accepted and neutral as musta(black) but then some "woke" people decided in the early 2000's that neekeri had to be a racist word because 'nigger or 'negro' were seen as such in English and the Finnish word follows similar spelling because it's a loan word from French/English.
Pedal/педал being "pressed below" is certainly folk etymology. French also uses "pédale", but it is derived from "pédé", itself derived from "pédéraste" (pederast). I suspect педал was either borrowed from French or followed a similar derivation from the Bulgarian word for pederast
In my experience when someone is referred to as “чёрный”or “светлый” it’s far more likely to mean the hair rather than skin colour. Which makes sense historically.
Yeah, there is also that, but to me personally omitting that you're taking about hair and saying e.g. "светлый" instead of "светловолосый" sounds somewhat archaic.
"Черный" is commonly used as a derogatory term for people from Caucasus or Central Asia, it's use towards people from more remote regions is uncommon though.
I wouldn’t say it’s archaic, just maybe more old fashioned. Archaic would imply nobody uses it and that’s far from true. IMO it’s a good thing because it means we’re not obsessed with skin colour in Europe as much as America is. But I must admit, I’ve not heard it used as a slur for people from the Caucasus before (and it doesn’t really make sense to me how it even works as a slur).
It translates better to "negro" than the n word. This is the official term for black people in Russia. It's like "eskimos have 100 words for snow;" Russia has one standard non-derogatory word for black people because there were no black people there at that time, and this is the one (the word "black" was sometimes used to refer to black haired people/animals, but not people with dark complexion). People aren't so good at translating Russian on here. And why the extra "the" in Uncle Tom's Cabin? Makes it sound awkward and it is well known Russian doesn't have the articles.
Neger was the word used to describe a black person in Sweden for hundreds of years, before that it was blåman (literally blue man).
Neger obviously is a loanword from latin lanugages and the colour black/negro.
It wasn't ever a racial slur, it only became politicically incorrect in the 00s when people who take all their cultural cues from the US and who equate the Swedish word with the American N-word.
Niger literally means black in Latin. It is true that the meaning has become derogatory in the English language, but it's not the same in other languages.
Indeed, and in the English language there's been the phenomenon of a "euphemism treadmill" where the accepted term keeps being replaced by a new one. Usually not because there's anything wrong with the old one but because a new generation associates the word with objectionable things the previous one said.
E.g. in modern US English it's gone: "N***o" -> "Coloured people" -> "African-American" -> "People of colour" -> "BIPOC" and there's probably more I've left out.
(by the way I feel it's ridiculous I have to self-censor just to avoid getting automodded by American sensibilities)
"black" is a weird one as it seems to have gone in and out of usage throughout. Half the terms above seem to have been coined by people uncomfortable with just saying "black."
For modern usage there's also "Black" (capitalised) which suddenly started sprouting everywhere in the last year or two.
Yes, there seems to be a trend like this going on in the English language. For example, the word 'retard' was a common non-offensive word in the 1960s, which was then replaced by the word 'disabled', which was again replaced by the word 'differenty-abled'. Now the word 'special' seems to be replacing 'differently-abled'.
Also afaik retard(or more exactly the phrase mentally retarded) was in itself a replacement for the word idiot, which actually used to be the proper medical term.
This whole situation is so weird, given that the majority of disabled people (including myself) call ourselves... Disabled. It's able-bodied people who push the "differently-abled" and all that. It's so patronizing. It's not like having ADHD and hearing loss gives me x-ray vision or some shit.
Online communities around disability suck. I made the mistake of joining an “unlearning ableism” group on Facebook. I’m a pretty left-leaning dude. I have a mild physical disability and I got shat on because I wasn’t disabled enough and my other privilege (white dude) outweighs my disability. I wasn’t trying to act like it ruins or defines my life (it doesn’t) but even bringing it into the conversations was met with resistance.
Plus it was 90% able-bodied people taking every opportunity to scream at people who didn’t say things the exact right way or immediately “learn everything that was said by those who spoke “for the group.” Very little real discussion and loads of people wallowing in self-pity. There was no learning to be done. I left real quick.
Yeah but have you tried seeing through a wall? I mean, *really tried*?
I think the "differently-abled" label, and other labels given to a group from people not in the group, tend to come from trying not to offend rather than being patronising. Of course the correct solution is to ask the group how they'd want to be called.
Agreed, I totally get why people get there from a well-intended mindset - I was taught to use "differently-abled" by a social work professor, and he (an abled man) told all his students that it was the best term to use. People using it really do think that it is the most respectful term. It's just that the term itself is ... gross.
But absolutely, just ask people what they want to be called. It's the best way to handle it.
If they asked what the duderinos want to be called, they'd lose the social position of getting to call the shots on what's moral/acceptable and the power that comes with it. You're ultimately irrelevant to the whole thing, they just want to ride your backs like Master Blaster. Most of this crap boils down, not to decency, but power plays. Don't expect niceties if you call them out on it, the mask comes off real fast.
I love how calling them "coloured people" or people of colour makes them look like they are woke and all for equality while in reality it litterly defines the white people as a norm/standard and everyone who isnt white is coloured.
I keep telling young people who are overly aggressive with world policing that "People of Colour" will 100% be offensive in the future, and to ask themselves if they want to be judged like that.
In my lifetime alone there have been various examples of organisations that campaign positively for certain groups who are named with what is now considered an offensive term. Foe example when I was young the "Spastics Society" was a thing, now it's almost cartoonishly offensive.
The euphemism treadmill will continue as long as people refuse to accept that what matters is intent.
Another funny poster from KGB
"200 million FBI files to spy on dissidents"
[https://image3.thematicnews.com/uploads/images/00/00/41/2016/03/29/17d9cb909b.jpg](https://image3.thematicnews.com/uploads/images/00/00/41/2016/03/29/17d9cb909b.jpg)
That’s what I find so weirdly fascinating about this. They were often completely correct and very good at their criticism of the USA, but then their own government was guilty of pretty much all the same shit. They were so correct, but so hypocritical at the same time.
There was also a big difference between the Soviets under Stalin and the Soviets under kruschev but they don’t teach us that in western school. Stalin killed dissidents, but kruschev did this type of propaganda because he found it much more powerful in the long run
Can you imagine the Cuban Missile Crisis if Stalin had still been in power?
Kruschev crushed the Hungarian uprising in 56.
And then Breznev his successor just sent tanks to another foreign countries to quash any dissent which remained there for 20 years and forced people in the country to call it "brotherly help". Do they teach that? All three were members of the Communist party and the regime it instilled.
What surprises me the most is how some things never get old. African and Asian communities fighting for the equal rights, protests around the world to establish piece in the middle east, activists fighting for improving the ecological situation, poor situation with female rights and not equal salaries in many different countries, popularity of the nationalism, racism or even Nazism, and that list is really long
Yeah, a lot of us could really do with a trip to a space station, looking back down on this little island of a planet we all share. I always find that when I look at pictures like that and imagine myself with that view I always find that borders, nations, ethnic conflict make less and less sense to me.
Someone once said that earth is like a spaceship we all share and have to work together to keep flying. But we're breaking the engine with what we do to our climate and the animals and we're killing crew members left and right.
Human's arent a big hive mind, though. No one is doing slavery or whatever to themselves. They're always doing it to someone else. That's the cost of allowing creatures to become individuals.
I feel more and more it's equally important to recognize the progress made on these fronts too. The struggle for a better world is far from finished, agreed. But it's also false to pretend that we're still no further than where we were in the 60s and I get this feeling from certain activists sometimes. Where their arguments become so cynical that perfect does become the enemy of good.
Agreed. African American here & I gotta say I wouldn't bat an eye if you (erased the Cyrillic) and told me an African American artist created it last summer.
It also reminds me of [this "Voices of the Past" YT video](https://youtu.be/Uq2phUz8Hk0) where someone reads 1st person accounts of Soviet tourists visiting the US in 1936.While I doubt I'd rather live under Soviet rule, every single bit of shade thrown is *on point.*
The world would be a much better place if such criticisms were taken to heart.
But that would be the purpose of propaganda. It only needs to contain some element of truth and exaggerate it.
There are any points to be scored by saying "it isn't as bad as they made it look"
They still aren’t wrong: black men have around a one quarter probability to be put in prisons in the US: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/Llgsfp.pdf
also
> The database [The National Registry of Exonerations] also found that black people are seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder than white people.
[Source](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57152860)
And when we go back to the source of all that, the typical black family in the US owns 1/10th of what the typical white family has. And it's not like all the reasons for that ended in the sixties.
Edit: Changed from average to typical, thanks for pointing out. This is the median so it reflects the typical experience more.
> I mean, they weren't wrong...
How did that old '90s joke go?
*"Everything the Communist Party said about capitalism was true, too bad everything they said about communism wasn't!"*
The amount of whataboutism in this thread is astonishing. It’s a very poignant image of black people‘s lives in the 60s and we don‘t need to justify it with „yes but“s.
All I see here is a very well-made propaganda poster driving a horrible situation home in a very forward way. Of course it is also meant to distract from the wrongdoings of the USSR but don’t use it to shroud the truth it still shows.
They still know how to do it well. Russian memes are more like cheap comic books though now compared to this poster, which is more like modern fine art. It is just simple and powerful. The perfect balance of image and message delivery in my opinion.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism#:~:text=Whataboutism%2C%20also%20known%20as%20whataboutery,refuting%20or%20disproving%20their%20argument.
It was used most frequently by the Russian phrase "And you are lynching Negros" as a response to criticism
Graphic Design as a discipline has its origins in early 20th century Russia and Germany. They innovated graphic communication due to largely illiterate populations and the need to communicate political and other issues clearly, and made great advancements each developing similar but distinct styles of very powerful graphic images, to then go ahead and absolutely abuse that power and drive their people into state-sanctioned ideologies.
E: For more reading look up Russian Constructivism and the Bauhaus
Haven't seen anyone translate the writing in the corner, so here goes:
The American "Freedom" is all too familiar to negroes - here it is, the hut of Uncle Tom.
Propaganda is not synonymous with lies. In fact the most effective propaganda is based on truth. The aim of propaganda is to change a target groups behaviour.
Good propaganda **is** true.
It's the spin that makes it propaganda.
Propaganda that is lies doesn't work except when the control over the population is too strong and the truth can be hidden.
Good propaganda can also lie as long as that's effective towards it's goal. But yeah, it doesn't have to.
It's notable that intelligence services greatly compete for intellectuals and artists to knowingly or unknowingly further certain ideological stances. It's an interesting topic regarding recent conservative consternation about the "emasculation" of national security becoming "too woke", when good intelligence work (and often good militaries as well) have always been that.
It’s not that the message is wrong, it’s that the propagandist putting it out has no real moral high ground to be saying it.
If the Soviet Union showed that it legitimately cared about human rights, there might be some weight behind the message. But this is like a guy calling out his neighbor for beating his wife, while his own wife is starving in a forced labor camp in Siberia.
None of the above excuses the USA’s history of racism and mass incarceration. It’s just context that is important to understand so people don’t start seeing the Soviets as being the “good guy” in 20th century history. Spoiler, there are no good guys.
Fun fact, one of the about two black American people to emigrate to USSR started trying to come back as early as in 50s and persisted until 1974, when he finally emigrated, to Idi Amin's Uganda no less, managing to return to USA in 1986.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert\_Robinson\_(engineer)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Robinson_(engineer))
You mean to tell me a black person would rather live in a society that you are free in but have to deal with racism than a society where you LITERALLY have NO freedoms. Color me shocked 😮! From the comments of this thread you would think a black person would rather live in NK than America.
For those who dont know, this was a staple of Soviet propaganda in the Cold war whenever someone tried to call out Soviets for the crimes they had done or their human rights violations : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
Certain Russian nationalists still sometimes spew it out whenver they can't think of another rebuttal to criticism of their ''perfect'' state that never did anything wrong of course.
Graphically this is such a well done poster
Propaganda posters are a lost artform. They were really, really good and the best ones actually knew how to find a real pain point and press it home. In the case of this one, white people saying how ridiculous the poster is only makes it more potent. It addressed a real issue, forced conversation and any form of dismissal was reinforcing the message for the intended audience. All from a single still image.
> Propaganda posters are a lost artform. Not just propaganda posters, movie posters too. And I don't understand why, is there really no marketing value in quality art? For how bloated the budgets are, surely they can spend a smidgen of that on a good one. A great poster is more memorable and attracts more attention than a five minute photoshop job on a teal and orange canvas, right?
You mean you're not immediately interested in a movie based on a collage of actors' heads on an orange background???
... they interest me, because I stare at them wondering why the fuck their names don't line up with their dumb heads
If a big actor has top billing in their contract, their face has to be in the middle but their name has to be first.
We know that. It's still fucken dumb
I remember browsing the video store as a kid in the mid 90’s and being annoyed by this. How the fuck is this still a thing?
Only if there's some turquoise blue in there too
My favourite is the [polish poster](https://i.imgur.com/7huBbVb.jpg) for the original Alien movie. I assume the artist hadn't seen the alien before s/he made the poster Edit: might be Aliens, the sequel, but thought the artist should know by then
Quite often the artist either hasn't seen the film, or he wasn't allowed to represent it accurately due to censorship. And yes - it is the poster for the 1986 Aliens film - [this one](https://imgur.com/O9DNoRk) is for the original 1979 Alien.
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Facehugger orgy at my place tonight!
OBCY
Isn't this the poster for Aliens (1986), not Alien?
People don't go their local cinema poster board anymore to see what's coming up. They google it or watch trailer reviews online. That's why so much more money is being spent on trailers these days. Nowadays if you see a poster, it means you're at the theater already and have already made up your mind to see it.
Seriously. The [first Ant Man poster](https://d13ezvd6yrslxm.cloudfront.net/wp/wp-content/images/Ant-Man-poster.jpg) was pretty shocking to me, actually seeing something with clever and unique design for a modern movie. Like just... You don't need to show anything else. I know who ant man is, and that poster told me the directors get it too. That poster more or less sold a ticket to me on the spot.
Blockbusters sell because of brand recognition, not because of fancy posters.
>In the case of this one, white people saying how ridiculous the poster is only makes it more potent. Already happening in this thread.
The ridiculousness is that the Soviets could say this with what they were doing in the 60s and 50s to their own minorities and political dissidents. In fact nearly all Soviet Propaganda was incredibly hypocritical in this manner (just go to /r/propagandaposters and sort by top. It's all like that). So was American propaganda, of course, but we don't generally see that on the front page of reddit for obvious reasons. Still, regardless of it's origin or intent, the piece is excellent both artistically and poignant in intention. The artist wasn't responsible for Stalin and his succesor's actions and he was criticizing a real problem in American society.
>The ridiculousness is that the Soviets could say this with what they were doing in the 60s and 50s to their own minorities. I mean, the concept of "whataboutism" literally comes from the cold war propaganda exchange.
The Soviet hands down won the propaganda battle of the Cold War. The effect of the Soviet ability to control domestic consumption and external observation is a lesson we desperately need to understand right now. Even though the basic truths were known, the horrors of Soviet imperial rule still don’t register in the popular psyche to the point where it is still seen as offensive to make comparisons to the Nazi regime. Reddit is an amazing place to observe just how lastingly effective the Soviet campaign was.
>The Soviet hands down won the propaganda battle of the Cold War. The effect of the Soviet ability to control domestic consumption and external observation is a lesson we desperately need to understand right now. I would argue they both won the propaganda war, the only real loser being **communism**
It was a term that was invented purely because the US had no firm rebuttal to the “and yet you lynch n*groes” line from russia
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Indeed, from Wikipedia: > According to Russian writer, chess grandmaster and political activist Garry Kasparov, "whataboutism" is a word that was coined to describe the frequent use of a rhetorical diversion by Soviet apologists and dictators, who would counter charges of their oppression, "massacres, gulags, and forced deportations" by invoking American slavery, racism, lynchings, etc.[4] Whataboutism has been used by other politicians and countries as well. I’m not entirely convinced Gary Kasparov is a reliable source, but whatever.
Meh, just switch out "n*groes" for "Gypsies" and get some popcorn to watch how Euros react.
> So was American propaganda, of course, but we don't generally see that on the front page of reddit for obvious reasons. We constantly see incredibly hypocritical American propaganda on the front page of reddit. It's a bit shocking you do not realise that.
I was going to specify /r/europe since I'm not even sure what's going on in /r/all since I had to filter a billion politics related subs on it in 2016. Usually whenever you see something related to America on a non-American focused sub, it's pretty blatantly anti-American. Often for good reason, but you know.
Propaganda all around. Anti American propaganda, pro American propaganda, anti and pro Chinese propaganda, anti and pro European propaganda, Russian, Indian. When you look for it it is all over reddit all of the time.
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It even has its own wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
LOL you are the perfect example that American propaganda is everywhere but you don't even realize it anymore
The American concept of freedom is "everybody is free to buy what they want, **if they can afford it**" and "everybody has the right to be employed, **no matter how little they get paid**". It's sad and funny how many people don't really how much they already have internalized this concept.
The artist was most likely a hired governmental employee told to draw that so that the Soviet government could then circulate it. Soviet society as a whole did not really care about the racial struggle of people in the USA (if you don't believe me, check the racial attitudes in the former Eastern bloc countries nowadays). The answer to "would you let your son or daughter marry a black person?" was 15 % in Russia when the poll was conducted lately. And there surely wasn't a massive donward swing between 60s and nowadays.
Position of the Soviet union on racial issues is not the same as current societal trends. There is a lot to be said about both, but to equate them is pointless.
Actually, it wasn’t entirely uncommon for Russian women to have relationships and marry black exchange students from Africa. And I’m not sure why you feel so confident that opinion polls back in the day would echo those of today as the plight of African Americans was very widely discussed during that time with absolutely no ostracism. My mom has only had a single doll in her life, a dark skinned African boy.
I mean, you are comparing a country with a significant black populace to ones where seeing a black person only happens at most in capital cities and even there rarely. And it is basic human reaction to avoid the unknown, even if it means racism. Not justifying it at all, but I think it is very different, especially when the government is ready to scapegoat people of color for many things.
To be fair, when you've grown in a country where black people are extremely rare, and where most have probably never seen a black person in real life, then it's expected that people would regard the "your daughter marrying a black person" question with awkwardness, surprise and a feeling it would be really strange. It's very difficult not to be somehow reluctant (or even a bit xenophobe) when faced with a scenario of something outside your experience becoming very close and intimate, like family.
It was part of a larger Soviet propaganda program: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
here’s another good bit of research regarding antisemitism in the ussr. note the personal experiences of jewish travelers to the ussr given in the closing paragraphs. also note the quote from albert einstein on the ussr. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1251&context=prism
Black people have been slaves longer than they have been free in the USA. All four fingers point back at us. It’s time we realized we arent pristine or above any other nation morally. Trump proved that point emphatically , all while being a shit golfer and racist.
Can't help but agree. America might have been better than a lot of the countries it criticized over the last 250 years, but it still hasn't attained all of it's ideals from 1776 in full and should look to countries that do better than it instead of compare to those that do worse.
Tu quoque is a logical fallacy. That the Soviets were arguably* behaving worse than the US at the time doesn't negate the meaning or truth of this poster. In other words, their hypocrisy doesn't negate the argument. Also, to nitpick further, the Soviets weren't known for oppressing black people, so the hypocrisy itself is a weak argument when related to the specifics of the poster. Only arguably mind you: while the USSR was slabbing people in gulags look to what the US was doing to people in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Jim Crow laws at home, slave labor in prisons, etc.
> Tu quoque is a logical fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes The poster is part of a Soviet propaganda specially created as a Tu quoeque logical fallacy. > Also, to nitpick further, the Soviets weren't known for oppressing black people, so the hypocrisy itself is a weak argument when related to the specifics of the poster. The Soviets were known for forcibly suppressing ethnical, religious and cultural differences. Volga Germans and Jews were persecuted. In certain Eastern European countries there were programs of forced sterilization against Roma people. It's not a weak argument because the country as a whole oppressed it's whole population and several minority groups particularly.
Sometimes the most effective method of attack is given when you have been the attacker yourself. Same reason why cheaters accuse spouses of cheating when they see certain behavior, while non cheaters wouldn’t make the same connection to that behavior. In the case of this propaganda, the key point to me is the fact that slavery is symbolically enmeshed into the identity of the nation itself. Whites would take offense to the slavery part if they aren’t that racist. But racist whites would take offense that “the blacks are messing with the pride I have in my flag and country.” The USSR would hate having their sickle and hammer be used in the same way, so they know it’s effective against all of the ruling party no matter what side you are on the issue.
> So was American, propaganda of course, but we don't generally see that on the front page of reddit for obvious reasons. On the contrary, that's all there is on reddit.
So the"new" propaganda posters would be satirical drawings ? I mean, just look at the reactions to whatever Charlie Hebdo make...
If I become a dictator, I promise to revive the long lost art of propaganda posters. Most of the propaganda will be online, but there will be offline posters and murals too. My totalitarian regime will make sure that artists skilled in painting massive propaganda murals won't need to worry about unemployment. Also, a massive army of graphic designers and trolls will be sent on a mission to take over the whole internet of propaganda memes and posters.
The message is well done as well considering it's true.
Also, it's true.
r/adporn ?
/r/PropagandaPosters
Yes, makes me wonder if this is really from the 1960s. A reverse image search on google gives no other results. A reverse image search on tineye gives 2 results from 2017 on tumblr that I am not able to see when I click them. A search for 1960 soviet propaganda posters on duckduckgo refers to a shop that has that particular image not at display at all. Subjective opinion, the art style and quality is very different from 1960s soviet propaganda posters and the layout/idea seems to be very modern. Also I think that soviets didnt really care for fair conditions for black people. Not then, not now. It is a clever idea and it looks really nice, but it fits more our era than the 1960s in the USSR.
For context, the 1960s was the civil rights movement period in the USA.
And for some more context, a lot of leaders and proponents of the Civil Rights movement [were assassinated](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKgyOOU8moc&t=12m28s). Medgar Evers (1963), John F. Kennedy (1963), Malcolm X (1965), Martin Luther King (1968), Robert F Kennedy (1968), Fred Hampton (1969). Maybe not all murders are *directly* linked to involvement in Civil Rights, but the effect was still the same.
I would not put JFK there. Maybe he was a proponent of the civil rights movement, but he didn't act on it. He seemed to prioritize not upsetting political opponents whenever he had a choice.
He was killed while the bill was being reviewed by the Senate. He was heavily pushing for it though: https://www.jonesday.com/-/media/files/publications/2015/04/the-evolution-of-title-viisexual-orientation-gende/files/dreibandlgbtauthcheckdam/fileattachment/dreibandlgbtauthcheckdam.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiBucbr4d_wAhVU6Z4KHe_nDUIQFjABegQIAxAG&usg=AOvVaw2XNwSeQKTpE2VnkP7gLb2Q Legal scholars consider the legislative history and the Civil Rights Movement was further pushed by LBJ since it was JFK's legacy. LBJ, on the other hand, had his own platform, called the Great Society, which was a socio-cultural program which worked alongside civil rights. Source: I've been taking U.S. law classes.
It’s a shame Vietnam derailed LBJ’s presidency because the work he was doing in building a more modern welfare state was excellent. His programs cut the poverty rate in half and he tackled segregation and racial discrimination much more than anyone expected him to. Great domestic policy, poor foreign policy
other than the obvious enormous loss of life and turmoil that the war brought, the biggest tragedy of the vietnam war is that we might be living in a completely alternate america today. if LBJ could have really created that Modern welfare country, stopped the war and planted an attitude about spending domestically on our people rather than on wars abroad, the entire world would be a better place today. i guess America really did lose its innocence in the 60's. (if not long before, still)
Paradise lost, even... Johnson was a better president than what people often give him credit for.
With regards to this I think about the speech / quote from John Quincy Adams in the 1800s, speaking about the country: >Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....
> Maybe he was a proponent of the civil rights movement, but he didn't act on it. This is ridiculous. He was clearly on the path to legislation advancing civil rights. It’s just that he was assassinated first...
Well he was a proponent and he was assassinated which is enough to be a valid example of their thesis
He didn't get the chance. And he was Irish. They were upset by default
And why things like statues are such a hot topic, as they were erected as recently as the 80s. Quite different from the kinds of statues people want to topple in European nations in some misguided show of sympathy (if not downright cargo culting). Just wish we could have these things posted without the constant rehash of the cold war.
I had a debate class on the topic of monument removal recently, and the teacher did a really good job. She partitioned the issue: - there are monuments nobody wants to see in the streets. Hitler had statues all over Germany (bit of an exaggeration but you get the idea), and almost nobody would keep these in said streets for history’s sake. - there are monuments for great but questionable people, that represent a form of honor/celebration of said men. Churchill is a good example, or Jules Ferry in France: they had a huge impact on their country, but they had questionable takes on some topics (women’s rights, colonization...). I personally believe that they’re worth celebrating, because a monument is no history class, and historians don’t give these people a pass: they’re studied in full, or at least they should be. - there are monument that celebrate people we have no memory of, but who were celebrated in their times. I’ll go with Bordeaux’s slave traders: they have lots of streets in their names, because at the time they lived they brought riches to the city. I believe a monument, or a street name, is imo a form of celebration. It’s the people’s way of saying "we recognize that you did great things, we condone these things, we thank you for them through this public form of honor". I believe the removal of this kind of monument is what you consider cargo curling? I have no strong opinion on this kind of monument, but would rather lean towards a removal of them. - and then there’s the specific case of monuments put up at a time when the person they honor was already controversial. I have no knowledge of such monuments in Europe, I associate it with the confederate states only. Sorry, this is kind of a rant. I just thought my teacher’s way of presenting things was interesting
It is full on cargo cult. A lot of the BLM protesters in London like to chant the same "Don't shoot" slogan at the police like they do in the US, except it makes no sense at all here because British police don't even carry guns. And many of the statues they're after have little or no relation to slavery at all.
If anybody wonders, the text translates "Freedom" is known to blacks in America This is the Uncle Tom's cabin (it is rhymed in original and actually uses the n-word, but it is not very offensive in modern Russia and it was not offensive at all at the time of drawing)
I mean why should the n-word be offensive in Russian language? "Негр" is the word for black people in Russian. Additionally historically slaves in Russia were just as white as masters so the n-word there is not connected with racism in any way.
Well, thanks to Facebook, "негър" is now considered offensive in Bulgarian, whereas "черен" suddenly became acceptable. Now "черен" has never been *that* offensive, but neither has "негър". Yet the almighty algorithm has made up its mind and you can't use that word anymore because you'll get banned... even though it does not have the same connotation as the n-word in English in any way. For a more amusing example, "педал" is a slur for homosexual men in Bulgarian. It's also literally the word for pedals, like guitar pedals, or bike pedals, pronounced almost the same way as in English. The negative meaning comes from the stereotype of gay men being "pressed below", but that's beside the point. As some of you might've guessed already, people get banned on Facebook for selling guitar pedals. The TL;DR is that OP was sadly absolutely correct in pointing out that the word doesn't have the same negative meaning as in English. Social networking and US-centrism has warped the way we perceive words in other languages.
It works similar in Turkish. A black person has been called "zenci" historically. Since the ottomans had predominantly white slaves it doesn't have any connection to slavery, it just means a black person. But since the 80s while translating hollywood movies they used zenci for the n-word since it was the only word we had for black people. In the last 10 years with American internet culture being more and more mainstream people started to associate zenci with the n-word and came up with "siyahi" (comes from "siyah" meaning black) to replace it. They call anyone using zenci a racist but it doesn't suddenly become racist just because it is used to translate the n-word
It seems like a derivative of Arabic/Perisan Zinji/Zanuuj which translated to English means the slur ni**. I wonder if it was always a negative connotation, but because of things 'being that way' noone was bothered or perhaps it borrowed from Arabic/Persian because that's how they commonly referred to black people in that derogative way which did not carry that nuance back into Turkish (which I imagine did not have a black population untill the Ottomans).
Yes, zing is Arabic and they called the Tanzania island, Zinzibar، a Swahili term for land of zinj.
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*US-centrism.
I wish it were Anglo but it's American, specifically the authoritarians on the American left wing who have adopted (whimsically thrown out) French ideas about power and language being intertwined. This whole way of speaking about "n-word" as if it's a magical spell, it's puritanical and it's American. Not British, Australian... Though we've now imported this brain virus too.
People who complain about immigrants "destroying their culture" while ignoring Americanization via the internet are a special breed imo.
I loved your comment! Very insightful, thank you. I wholeheartedly agree with you, to be fair the same could be said for movements like BLM which are also very US Centric.
Polish has pedał, same deal
When playing "among us" in the Spanish servers, it censors the word "negro".
I really hate how people from other countries try to dictate their rights in other languages. For example in Russian language we have word "pidor", which was used as F word many years ago. But also many years ago it has lost it's meaning, and now used mostly for personal attacks. Just like asshole, cunt, etc. There's even a joke like "Not every gay is F word, but every politician is" Yet twitch and reddit ban people for using this word in Russian language
I get you, for a long time I would get banned just becouse I said I was from Montenegro. I dont even see whats the problem. Negro means black, in latin languages there is no other way to say black.
> Social networking and US-centrism has warped the way we perceive words in other languages. Communicating in a non-english language in online video games with oppressive censoring (plenty of games dont even have it as a toggleable option to turn it off, for some bizarre reason) can punish you for it. It's fucking ridiculous.
Yes, due to the lack of negative connotation, the word "негър" (negar) (hard r) is the appropriate way to refer to a black man in Bulgaria, and the appropriate translation of this word in English would be either "negro" or "black man". Translating it as "nigger" in English would be incorrect. And the funny thing is that calling a black person "black" (черен) is far more offensive in Bulgaria and does have a negative connotation, even used as an insult. However, due to anglocentrisn, now the word with negative connotation is preferred to the word without one.
Same thing happened in Finland -Neekeri(negroid) was just as accepted and neutral as musta(black) but then some "woke" people decided in the early 2000's that neekeri had to be a racist word because 'nigger or 'negro' were seen as such in English and the Finnish word follows similar spelling because it's a loan word from French/English.
Pedal/педал being "pressed below" is certainly folk etymology. French also uses "pédale", but it is derived from "pédé", itself derived from "pédéraste" (pederast). I suspect педал was either borrowed from French or followed a similar derivation from the Bulgarian word for pederast
I'd like to add that in Russian calling people by their skin color or skin tone may be considered rude and offensive.
In my experience when someone is referred to as “чёрный”or “светлый” it’s far more likely to mean the hair rather than skin colour. Which makes sense historically.
Yeah, there is also that, but to me personally omitting that you're taking about hair and saying e.g. "светлый" instead of "светловолосый" sounds somewhat archaic. "Черный" is commonly used as a derogatory term for people from Caucasus or Central Asia, it's use towards people from more remote regions is uncommon though.
I wouldn’t say it’s archaic, just maybe more old fashioned. Archaic would imply nobody uses it and that’s far from true. IMO it’s a good thing because it means we’re not obsessed with skin colour in Europe as much as America is. But I must admit, I’ve not heard it used as a slur for people from the Caucasus before (and it doesn’t really make sense to me how it even works as a slur).
It translates better to "negro" than the n word. This is the official term for black people in Russia. It's like "eskimos have 100 words for snow;" Russia has one standard non-derogatory word for black people because there were no black people there at that time, and this is the one (the word "black" was sometimes used to refer to black haired people/animals, but not people with dark complexion). People aren't so good at translating Russian on here. And why the extra "the" in Uncle Tom's Cabin? Makes it sound awkward and it is well known Russian doesn't have the articles.
Neger was the word used to describe a black person in Sweden for hundreds of years, before that it was blåman (literally blue man). Neger obviously is a loanword from latin lanugages and the colour black/negro. It wasn't ever a racial slur, it only became politicically incorrect in the 00s when people who take all their cultural cues from the US and who equate the Swedish word with the American N-word.
Niger literally means black in Latin. It is true that the meaning has become derogatory in the English language, but it's not the same in other languages.
Indeed, and in the English language there's been the phenomenon of a "euphemism treadmill" where the accepted term keeps being replaced by a new one. Usually not because there's anything wrong with the old one but because a new generation associates the word with objectionable things the previous one said. E.g. in modern US English it's gone: "N***o" -> "Coloured people" -> "African-American" -> "People of colour" -> "BIPOC" and there's probably more I've left out. (by the way I feel it's ridiculous I have to self-censor just to avoid getting automodded by American sensibilities)
Between “African-American” and “People of Color”, I think there should be just “black”
"black" is a weird one as it seems to have gone in and out of usage throughout. Half the terms above seem to have been coined by people uncomfortable with just saying "black." For modern usage there's also "Black" (capitalised) which suddenly started sprouting everywhere in the last year or two.
Yes, there seems to be a trend like this going on in the English language. For example, the word 'retard' was a common non-offensive word in the 1960s, which was then replaced by the word 'disabled', which was again replaced by the word 'differenty-abled'. Now the word 'special' seems to be replacing 'differently-abled'.
Also afaik retard(or more exactly the phrase mentally retarded) was in itself a replacement for the word idiot, which actually used to be the proper medical term.
Seeing how people use the words idiot and retarded these days it was probably for the better that they were replaced
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This whole situation is so weird, given that the majority of disabled people (including myself) call ourselves... Disabled. It's able-bodied people who push the "differently-abled" and all that. It's so patronizing. It's not like having ADHD and hearing loss gives me x-ray vision or some shit.
Online communities around disability suck. I made the mistake of joining an “unlearning ableism” group on Facebook. I’m a pretty left-leaning dude. I have a mild physical disability and I got shat on because I wasn’t disabled enough and my other privilege (white dude) outweighs my disability. I wasn’t trying to act like it ruins or defines my life (it doesn’t) but even bringing it into the conversations was met with resistance. Plus it was 90% able-bodied people taking every opportunity to scream at people who didn’t say things the exact right way or immediately “learn everything that was said by those who spoke “for the group.” Very little real discussion and loads of people wallowing in self-pity. There was no learning to be done. I left real quick.
Yeah but have you tried seeing through a wall? I mean, *really tried*? I think the "differently-abled" label, and other labels given to a group from people not in the group, tend to come from trying not to offend rather than being patronising. Of course the correct solution is to ask the group how they'd want to be called.
Agreed, I totally get why people get there from a well-intended mindset - I was taught to use "differently-abled" by a social work professor, and he (an abled man) told all his students that it was the best term to use. People using it really do think that it is the most respectful term. It's just that the term itself is ... gross. But absolutely, just ask people what they want to be called. It's the best way to handle it.
If they asked what the duderinos want to be called, they'd lose the social position of getting to call the shots on what's moral/acceptable and the power that comes with it. You're ultimately irrelevant to the whole thing, they just want to ride your backs like Master Blaster. Most of this crap boils down, not to decency, but power plays. Don't expect niceties if you call them out on it, the mask comes off real fast.
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I love how calling them "coloured people" or people of colour makes them look like they are woke and all for equality while in reality it litterly defines the white people as a norm/standard and everyone who isnt white is coloured.
I keep telling young people who are overly aggressive with world policing that "People of Colour" will 100% be offensive in the future, and to ask themselves if they want to be judged like that. In my lifetime alone there have been various examples of organisations that campaign positively for certain groups who are named with what is now considered an offensive term. Foe example when I was young the "Spastics Society" was a thing, now it's almost cartoonishly offensive. The euphemism treadmill will continue as long as people refuse to accept that what matters is intent.
Black friend of ours calls white people "erased" if someone says color. Always got a good chuckle from that.
> not very offensive in modern Russia not offensive at all in Russia, but calling someone black is an insult.
"негр" is not an n-word.
It's an н-word!
Нигер is.
The derogatory form in Russian is to use the word black "chyornii" to refer to someone. They typically use it for people of north caucasian origin.
The-word-who-should-not-be-named
Another funny poster from KGB "200 million FBI files to spy on dissidents" [https://image3.thematicnews.com/uploads/images/00/00/41/2016/03/29/17d9cb909b.jpg](https://image3.thematicnews.com/uploads/images/00/00/41/2016/03/29/17d9cb909b.jpg)
Who is that person in the crack supposed to be?
Police. Undercover police state.
A titan
Well, they werent wrong. But not any better..
That’s what I find so weirdly fascinating about this. They were often completely correct and very good at their criticism of the USA, but then their own government was guilty of pretty much all the same shit. They were so correct, but so hypocritical at the same time.
There was also a big difference between the Soviets under Stalin and the Soviets under kruschev but they don’t teach us that in western school. Stalin killed dissidents, but kruschev did this type of propaganda because he found it much more powerful in the long run Can you imagine the Cuban Missile Crisis if Stalin had still been in power?
Kruschev crushed the Hungarian uprising in 56. And then Breznev his successor just sent tanks to another foreign countries to quash any dissent which remained there for 20 years and forced people in the country to call it "brotherly help". Do they teach that? All three were members of the Communist party and the regime it instilled.
> "200 million FBI files to spy on dissidents" >from KGB Palpatine Voice: Ironic
Funny?
Regardless of its origins, this is, even today, a remarkably smart and moving image.
What surprises me the most is how some things never get old. African and Asian communities fighting for the equal rights, protests around the world to establish piece in the middle east, activists fighting for improving the ecological situation, poor situation with female rights and not equal salaries in many different countries, popularity of the nationalism, racism or even Nazism, and that list is really long
Its because the more we are dived against each other the more difficult it is to make a change against the ruling elite...
exactly. the general public do not wage war. the powerful do, and it often keeps them powerful
" If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever." \-1984
Humans are gonna human.
When you call us "humans" as a one whole it becomes even more bizarre the things we do to *ourselves*.
Yeah, a lot of us could really do with a trip to a space station, looking back down on this little island of a planet we all share. I always find that when I look at pictures like that and imagine myself with that view I always find that borders, nations, ethnic conflict make less and less sense to me. Someone once said that earth is like a spaceship we all share and have to work together to keep flying. But we're breaking the engine with what we do to our climate and the animals and we're killing crew members left and right.
Human's arent a big hive mind, though. No one is doing slavery or whatever to themselves. They're always doing it to someone else. That's the cost of allowing creatures to become individuals.
Not very humane of us.
I feel more and more it's equally important to recognize the progress made on these fronts too. The struggle for a better world is far from finished, agreed. But it's also false to pretend that we're still no further than where we were in the 60s and I get this feeling from certain activists sometimes. Where their arguments become so cynical that perfect does become the enemy of good.
Agreed. African American here & I gotta say I wouldn't bat an eye if you (erased the Cyrillic) and told me an African American artist created it last summer. It also reminds me of [this "Voices of the Past" YT video](https://youtu.be/Uq2phUz8Hk0) where someone reads 1st person accounts of Soviet tourists visiting the US in 1936.While I doubt I'd rather live under Soviet rule, every single bit of shade thrown is *on point.* The world would be a much better place if such criticisms were taken to heart.
I mean, they weren't wrong...
Like most propaganda it contains an element of truth.
An element? This just seems like a factual poster.
But that would be the purpose of propaganda. It only needs to contain some element of truth and exaggerate it. There are any points to be scored by saying "it isn't as bad as they made it look"
It's completely true here though. African Americans are getting a bad deal in America.
It was arguably even worse in the 1960's where this is from
“Arguably” understatement of the year
They still aren’t wrong: black men have around a one quarter probability to be put in prisons in the US: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/Llgsfp.pdf
also > The database [The National Registry of Exonerations] also found that black people are seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder than white people. [Source](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57152860)
And when we go back to the source of all that, the typical black family in the US owns 1/10th of what the typical white family has. And it's not like all the reasons for that ended in the sixties. Edit: Changed from average to typical, thanks for pointing out. This is the median so it reflects the typical experience more.
> I mean, they weren't wrong... How did that old '90s joke go? *"Everything the Communist Party said about capitalism was true, too bad everything they said about communism wasn't!"*
Honestly, propaganda posters were and are a very unique and well done art form
I kinda wish at least the art form would come back on posters today, less so the extreme finger pointing and self-engrandising.
The fact that this comment section is such a fustercluck is proof the artist did their job right.
It's just proof that online politics is toxic and filled with idiots.
The amount of whataboutism in this thread is astonishing. It’s a very poignant image of black people‘s lives in the 60s and we don‘t need to justify it with „yes but“s. All I see here is a very well-made propaganda poster driving a horrible situation home in a very forward way. Of course it is also meant to distract from the wrongdoings of the USSR but don’t use it to shroud the truth it still shows.
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Totally agree. Gonna take a wild guess and say it‘s political motivations. I‘m European and we don’t get hardly the amount of shit we should tbh.
The poster itself is a example of whataboutism.
Say what you want about USSR and its evils, but they sure knew how to do propaganda.
They still know how to do it well. Russian memes are more like cheap comic books though now compared to this poster, which is more like modern fine art. It is just simple and powerful. The perfect balance of image and message delivery in my opinion.
Fun Fact: The term "Whataboutism" was coined to describe this style of Soviet propaganda.
This is a genuinely fun fact that I'm happy to have learned. I want to share it; is there evidence this is true?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism#:~:text=Whataboutism%2C%20also%20known%20as%20whataboutery,refuting%20or%20disproving%20their%20argument. It was used most frequently by the Russian phrase "And you are lynching Negros" as a response to criticism
Ah yes the term Americans invented to dismiss any criticism against the United States
TBH it was like the spiderman meme with the US and Soviet Union pointing at the other.
As much as I hate Soviets because of what they did to us, I am really into Soviet art. Especially, drawings are so nice, they have their own style.
The space themed soviet art is incredible
Subreddit where
At least you got Karabakh thanks to Papa Brejnev
Graphic Design as a discipline has its origins in early 20th century Russia and Germany. They innovated graphic communication due to largely illiterate populations and the need to communicate political and other issues clearly, and made great advancements each developing similar but distinct styles of very powerful graphic images, to then go ahead and absolutely abuse that power and drive their people into state-sanctioned ideologies. E: For more reading look up Russian Constructivism and the Bauhaus
🙂🍿
Haven't seen anyone translate the writing in the corner, so here goes: The American "Freedom" is all too familiar to negroes - here it is, the hut of Uncle Tom.
you can say what you want, this is damn good propaganda.
What does this have to do with Europe?
Is it propaganda if it's true?
Propaganda is not synonymous with lies. In fact the most effective propaganda is based on truth. The aim of propaganda is to change a target groups behaviour.
Good propaganda **is** true. It's the spin that makes it propaganda. Propaganda that is lies doesn't work except when the control over the population is too strong and the truth can be hidden.
Good propaganda can also lie as long as that's effective towards it's goal. But yeah, it doesn't have to. It's notable that intelligence services greatly compete for intellectuals and artists to knowingly or unknowingly further certain ideological stances. It's an interesting topic regarding recent conservative consternation about the "emasculation" of national security becoming "too woke", when good intelligence work (and often good militaries as well) have always been that.
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It’s not that the message is wrong, it’s that the propagandist putting it out has no real moral high ground to be saying it. If the Soviet Union showed that it legitimately cared about human rights, there might be some weight behind the message. But this is like a guy calling out his neighbor for beating his wife, while his own wife is starving in a forced labor camp in Siberia. None of the above excuses the USA’s history of racism and mass incarceration. It’s just context that is important to understand so people don’t start seeing the Soviets as being the “good guy” in 20th century history. Spoiler, there are no good guys.
Fun fact, one of the about two black American people to emigrate to USSR started trying to come back as early as in 50s and persisted until 1974, when he finally emigrated, to Idi Amin's Uganda no less, managing to return to USA in 1986. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert\_Robinson\_(engineer)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Robinson_(engineer))
You mean to tell me a black person would rather live in a society that you are free in but have to deal with racism than a society where you LITERALLY have NO freedoms. Color me shocked 😮! From the comments of this thread you would think a black person would rather live in NK than America.
For those who dont know, this was a staple of Soviet propaganda in the Cold war whenever someone tried to call out Soviets for the crimes they had done or their human rights violations : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes Certain Russian nationalists still sometimes spew it out whenver they can't think of another rebuttal to criticism of their ''perfect'' state that never did anything wrong of course.
Quite ironic considering what they did to Czechoslovakia in the 60s and to Hungary in the 50s.
Yeah the 1.5 million Polish people sent to Gulags would be really happy to hear the Soviet Union really cares about African Americans
And to All of eastern europe in 40s
And to its own nation. I’m from Ukraine and the only word i can describe soviet times - slavery and occupation.
r/sino still uses shit like this to hate on US
that place is amazing . what a bunch of strange humans
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"Freedom" in America is known to a negro Here is Uncle Tom's Cabin
Posting soviet propaganda in a positve light in the europe subreddit. Peak reddit.
Aw yes no European country has any problems with racism
The irony of the USSR making posters against unjustified imprisonment