something that puzzles me about reactionaries speaking about north korea or any communist country, is the idea that they have a dictatorship so powerful that people aren’t able to fight against it, movies and spectacles accused as “staged” or “if he/she fails he/she will die with his/her family”. the typical idea of enemies “being weak and uberstrong at the same time”, like damn…if people in dprk were under a dictatorship so brutal as they say, you would hear more about uprisings and strikes more frequently than in USA, are you trying to tell me that the only “efficient dictatorships” are the communist ones? that capitalism isn’t able to keep people like pinochet or hitler more than a couple of decades and with constant revolts and a huge media industry? ok…
It seems like you assume there is a direct relationship between how brutal a dictatorship is and how often people revolt, but I don’t see why that would be the case.
An important factor in how people resist their government is the risk/reward of doing so. Do they understand that revolt can create change? Do they fear for their lives?
My understanding is that in North Korea, it is very likely that speaking out against the government will result in years or decades of jail time. Information there is also tightly controlled, so people do not believe such action would be productive anyway. I think a person would not want to revolt given those conditions, even if they are not happy with their government.
Simply put, they do not know things can be better, and they wouldn’t know how to make them better if they did.
well…maybe we should ask the russians in 1917, or people under pinochet, cubans under batista et al
I would argue the people in every case you just listed were far more aware of the reward of revolt, which is half the equation. All of those dictatorships had existed for less than 15 years before another revolution or similar event had taken place. The people remembered a better life.
North Korea has some of the most effective information control seen this century, and their government has held uninterrupted power spanning 50 years. They are arguably the single most extreme case in modern history of a population that is ill-equipped to revolt.
“All of those dictatorships had existed for less than 15 years before another revolution or similar event had taken place. The people remembered a better life” oh c’mon now…what about french revolution? what about the change into capitalism from feudalism? “North Korea has some of the most effective information control seen this century” yeah, because north koreans are too stupid to know about the world under the eye-that-sees-everything of
sauronkim familyThis sounds like the White Man’s Burden. The people who live in DPRK are well-equipped to know what makes a happy and healthy life. They’re not any more brainwashed/blindly obedient to “the party” than people in the West are.
What a strangely intentional choice of words. I was talking about their awareness of how their government could/does treat them. You’ve changed the subject to their awareness of…happiness and health?
Part of living a happy life is not living in fear of your government. To deny that North Koreans live in fear of their government is to basically ignore all of the information we have from the people who lived there.
The only standard that applies is the happiness and health of the people. Saying that they “don’t know” or “wouldn’t know how” dehumanizes the people who live there.
There’s disgrace in describing people this way. Do better.
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