Why I am hesitant to believe the horror stories about the DPRK
Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2017 5:42 pm
Fear is the mold with which the imperialists shape their propaganda. Consistently throughout history, when those at the top have wanted those at the bottom to submit, they use fear to intimidate and to suppress them.
During the first world war, British propaganda purported that German soldiers were impaling babies on bayonets. Some stories detailed how German soldiers were attacking babies by cutting off their hands and even eating them. These accounts were often based on flimsy evidence, if any at all. Yet stories about how the vicious German "Huns" would ravage our homelands, enslaving us and raping women and killing children were spread across the world. This war led to a great loss of life on both sides that fought, and set the stage for the rise of Hitler.
Nazi Germany also used the tactics of fear to get the Germans to support them. During the years of the Weimar Republic, the Nazis would constantly try to scare the German people with the idea that Communists, Jews and Freemasons were conspiring against them. The way they managed to turn their citizens against the Jews was with fear of them. That fear, was of course, based on flimsy evidence (if any at all), such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which documented a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world and is now universally acknowledged as a forgery. They also managed to dissolve the Reichstag with fear of communism. They pinned the blame on Marinus van der Lubbe, a communist, for the burning of the Reichstag (which many historians suspect may have been done by the Nazis, as there was a tunnel leading from their headquarters to the Reichstag). This convinced President Hindenburg to ban the Communist Party, as he believed they were conspiring against Germany. As the communist party was banned, they could not vote against the resolution for Hitler to have unlimited power. The Nazis once again used fear to get the remaining parties on their side. They convinced the Centre Party and National Party that the Jews and Communists were conspiring against Germany and the Catholic Church and the only way to stop them was to put Hitler in power. And, they sent the SA brownshirt thugs to intimidate the Social Democrats into abstaining. During the war, the Nazis span lies about the allied soldiers. Racist propaganda posters depicted black soldiers committing various acts of atrocity such as the rape of German women. These tactics of fear led to the deaths of 11 million people.
Later on, the U.S. government, aided by the likes of Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch Society span several horror stories about a communistic plot to take over the United States. Left-leaning actors and politicians were attacked viciously as communists. This all served a singular purpose - to get patriotic Americans cheering for wars such as the Korean War and Vietnam War out of fear and intimidation, which had led them to believe communism was a pervasive threat that had to be stopped by any means necessary.
During the rise of the gay rights movement, extremist fundamentalist Christian groups tried to intimidate those with homosexual tendencies to repress those urges by not only using the threat of hell, but with the association of gay sex with sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS. Indeed, the original name for AIDS was GRID, Gay-related immune deficiency.
During the Gulf War, a false testimony was given by an individual named Nayirah al-Sabah who alleged that the Iraqis were taking babies out of incubators. The testimony was cited by President George H. W. Bush and many U.S. senators as the reason for the war.
These are just a few examples of how fear-mongering has been used to manipulate people's minds.
They all share:
a) The person telling these stories has sinister ulterior motives.
b) An innocent person upon hearing them are shocked, saddened and/or angered.
c) Sn innocent person upon hearing them fulfill the person telling them's wishes to support their method of "dealing with the situation".
d) They are endlessly repeated ("If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." - Joseph Goebbels) to justify the actions of those telling it.
And most importantly: e) There is little to no evidence for any of them.
These examples can be likened to a common advance-fee scam, where a scammer hacks an email and uses it to send an email to a friend of the person they have hacked, telling them that they are in a terrible situation and need money to get out of it.
And here is the thing - the horror stories about the DPRK fit the bill!
B, c, d and e are all demonstrated in the allegations of concentration camps, suppression of religious freedom, false elections, cannibalism, etc. that have been labeled at the DPRK. But what about a? Well, there is almost undoubtedly a desire within the imperialist powers that be to start a war with the DPRK, this is for many reasons but mainly:
1. The DPRK is rich in natural resources and minerals, This is akin to the War in Iraq where the perpetrators profited off of the oil.
2. The DPRK is an independent socialist state, true to its philosophy of Juche/Self-reliance, it does not submit to the powers that be and goes its own way. It does not have a Rothschild-owned central bank and prints its own money debt-free. The imperialists have been known to go after independent nations that don't submit to them, such as Iraq, Libya, Syria and Russia (NOTE: I am not saying I support those nations, but merely that the reasons that imperialists went after Libya and Iraq and are going after Syria and Russia is because they are independent and go their own way).
And recently, American-occupied south Korea has overthrown far-right imperialist puppet Park Geun-hye and elected Moon Jae-in, a man who is passionate about Korean reunification, as their new president. Is it a coincidence that the corporate media has ramped up the propaganda against the DPRK just when a potential peace deal could be set up prompting reunification?
The usual evidence to back up the claims of the imperialists and the media is of north Korean refugees who have escaped the country and can tell as eyewitnesses what they saw. But in many cases, it has been proven that they go after the most sensationalist accounts. True, an honest north Korean refugee who talks about how they have lived in famine and bad conditions may be good for ratings, but people may then ask "What is the reason for the famine?" and then find out about how the United States and other nations owned by imperialists have put unfair sanctions on the DPRK so it is difficult for them to trade things for food from other countries, and how little to no aid is given to them to stop famine, floods and other atrocities.
So, instead, they must pick the most sensationalist of stories - such as that of a young girl who claims that when she was only a child, her mother was executed for the mere act of watching a Hollywood movie. No evidence is given for these stories - in fact - in many cases these refugees have admitted that they have fabricated to some extent (as was the case with Shin Dong-hyuk, the author of Escape from Camp 14), or outright lied (as was the case with Jeon Hye-sung who defected to south Korea, appearing on an anti-DPRK, and then defecting back to the north, apologizing for what she said on that show).
Nevertheless, those who hear the stories of these refugees immediately take in what they hear, and are conditioned to view life in north Korea as hellish, due to its oppressive, totalitarian country.
But the claims that aren't made by refugees are even more ludicrous. Many people such as Hyong Song-wol and Kim Chol have been reported to be executed, only to be seen walking around days later. Other news outlets, desperate for sensationalist coverage, pick up information from satirical outlets that are meant as a joke and report them as truth. Such examples include the claim that Kim Jong-un's uncle was killed by being fed to starving dogs, and that the north Korean media reported that Americans all live in tents and eat snow. Other outlets pick up groundless claims by south Korean authorities and make them even more insane. Such examples include when the media reported that Kim Jong-un banned sarcasm. Others use flimsy evidence as proof of north Korean atrocities, such as blurry photographs of buildings from above that they claim must be concentration camps.
Now let's finally debunk the myth that the DPRK have been developing nuclear weapons in an attempt to kill us all. This is naught but drivel. The USA and other western imperialist powers have far more nuclear weapons, and to add to that, have been systematically conditioning their populaces to hate the DPRK and their way of life. The DPRK is well within their rights to defend themselves, and if the imperialists really wanted them to disarm, they would be backing Moon Jae-in's efforts to set up a peace treaty. But instead, they goad the DPRK into further improving their military capabilities to continue a the Korean war which was started by the U.S. imperialists.
Any other slanderous claims about the DPRK that I have not mentioned have already, it has likely been debunked by the brilliant Maoist YouTuber Jason Unruhe, a man to whom the DPRK and all its admirers (such as myself) are wholly indebted to for his devotion to the Juche cause and the countless research he has done to defend it.
Now, am I saying that there is 0% chance that what is being said about the DPRK might be true, and that it is in fact an oppressive, authoritarian regime? Of course not. All I am saying is that we have no way of knowing, and from the lessons of history, and the fact that our court justice systems view the accused as innocent until proven guilty, we should be very, very cautious before believing what we hear or read. We should think about who runs the media and the motives they might have for spreading a story before believing it.
NEVER let reason take the back seat to emotion! Trust your intellect above all!
During the first world war, British propaganda purported that German soldiers were impaling babies on bayonets. Some stories detailed how German soldiers were attacking babies by cutting off their hands and even eating them. These accounts were often based on flimsy evidence, if any at all. Yet stories about how the vicious German "Huns" would ravage our homelands, enslaving us and raping women and killing children were spread across the world. This war led to a great loss of life on both sides that fought, and set the stage for the rise of Hitler.
Nazi Germany also used the tactics of fear to get the Germans to support them. During the years of the Weimar Republic, the Nazis would constantly try to scare the German people with the idea that Communists, Jews and Freemasons were conspiring against them. The way they managed to turn their citizens against the Jews was with fear of them. That fear, was of course, based on flimsy evidence (if any at all), such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which documented a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world and is now universally acknowledged as a forgery. They also managed to dissolve the Reichstag with fear of communism. They pinned the blame on Marinus van der Lubbe, a communist, for the burning of the Reichstag (which many historians suspect may have been done by the Nazis, as there was a tunnel leading from their headquarters to the Reichstag). This convinced President Hindenburg to ban the Communist Party, as he believed they were conspiring against Germany. As the communist party was banned, they could not vote against the resolution for Hitler to have unlimited power. The Nazis once again used fear to get the remaining parties on their side. They convinced the Centre Party and National Party that the Jews and Communists were conspiring against Germany and the Catholic Church and the only way to stop them was to put Hitler in power. And, they sent the SA brownshirt thugs to intimidate the Social Democrats into abstaining. During the war, the Nazis span lies about the allied soldiers. Racist propaganda posters depicted black soldiers committing various acts of atrocity such as the rape of German women. These tactics of fear led to the deaths of 11 million people.
Later on, the U.S. government, aided by the likes of Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch Society span several horror stories about a communistic plot to take over the United States. Left-leaning actors and politicians were attacked viciously as communists. This all served a singular purpose - to get patriotic Americans cheering for wars such as the Korean War and Vietnam War out of fear and intimidation, which had led them to believe communism was a pervasive threat that had to be stopped by any means necessary.
During the rise of the gay rights movement, extremist fundamentalist Christian groups tried to intimidate those with homosexual tendencies to repress those urges by not only using the threat of hell, but with the association of gay sex with sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS. Indeed, the original name for AIDS was GRID, Gay-related immune deficiency.
During the Gulf War, a false testimony was given by an individual named Nayirah al-Sabah who alleged that the Iraqis were taking babies out of incubators. The testimony was cited by President George H. W. Bush and many U.S. senators as the reason for the war.
These are just a few examples of how fear-mongering has been used to manipulate people's minds.
They all share:
a) The person telling these stories has sinister ulterior motives.
b) An innocent person upon hearing them are shocked, saddened and/or angered.
c) Sn innocent person upon hearing them fulfill the person telling them's wishes to support their method of "dealing with the situation".
d) They are endlessly repeated ("If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." - Joseph Goebbels) to justify the actions of those telling it.
And most importantly: e) There is little to no evidence for any of them.
These examples can be likened to a common advance-fee scam, where a scammer hacks an email and uses it to send an email to a friend of the person they have hacked, telling them that they are in a terrible situation and need money to get out of it.
And here is the thing - the horror stories about the DPRK fit the bill!
B, c, d and e are all demonstrated in the allegations of concentration camps, suppression of religious freedom, false elections, cannibalism, etc. that have been labeled at the DPRK. But what about a? Well, there is almost undoubtedly a desire within the imperialist powers that be to start a war with the DPRK, this is for many reasons but mainly:
1. The DPRK is rich in natural resources and minerals, This is akin to the War in Iraq where the perpetrators profited off of the oil.
2. The DPRK is an independent socialist state, true to its philosophy of Juche/Self-reliance, it does not submit to the powers that be and goes its own way. It does not have a Rothschild-owned central bank and prints its own money debt-free. The imperialists have been known to go after independent nations that don't submit to them, such as Iraq, Libya, Syria and Russia (NOTE: I am not saying I support those nations, but merely that the reasons that imperialists went after Libya and Iraq and are going after Syria and Russia is because they are independent and go their own way).
And recently, American-occupied south Korea has overthrown far-right imperialist puppet Park Geun-hye and elected Moon Jae-in, a man who is passionate about Korean reunification, as their new president. Is it a coincidence that the corporate media has ramped up the propaganda against the DPRK just when a potential peace deal could be set up prompting reunification?
The usual evidence to back up the claims of the imperialists and the media is of north Korean refugees who have escaped the country and can tell as eyewitnesses what they saw. But in many cases, it has been proven that they go after the most sensationalist accounts. True, an honest north Korean refugee who talks about how they have lived in famine and bad conditions may be good for ratings, but people may then ask "What is the reason for the famine?" and then find out about how the United States and other nations owned by imperialists have put unfair sanctions on the DPRK so it is difficult for them to trade things for food from other countries, and how little to no aid is given to them to stop famine, floods and other atrocities.
So, instead, they must pick the most sensationalist of stories - such as that of a young girl who claims that when she was only a child, her mother was executed for the mere act of watching a Hollywood movie. No evidence is given for these stories - in fact - in many cases these refugees have admitted that they have fabricated to some extent (as was the case with Shin Dong-hyuk, the author of Escape from Camp 14), or outright lied (as was the case with Jeon Hye-sung who defected to south Korea, appearing on an anti-DPRK, and then defecting back to the north, apologizing for what she said on that show).
Nevertheless, those who hear the stories of these refugees immediately take in what they hear, and are conditioned to view life in north Korea as hellish, due to its oppressive, totalitarian country.
But the claims that aren't made by refugees are even more ludicrous. Many people such as Hyong Song-wol and Kim Chol have been reported to be executed, only to be seen walking around days later. Other news outlets, desperate for sensationalist coverage, pick up information from satirical outlets that are meant as a joke and report them as truth. Such examples include the claim that Kim Jong-un's uncle was killed by being fed to starving dogs, and that the north Korean media reported that Americans all live in tents and eat snow. Other outlets pick up groundless claims by south Korean authorities and make them even more insane. Such examples include when the media reported that Kim Jong-un banned sarcasm. Others use flimsy evidence as proof of north Korean atrocities, such as blurry photographs of buildings from above that they claim must be concentration camps.
Now let's finally debunk the myth that the DPRK have been developing nuclear weapons in an attempt to kill us all. This is naught but drivel. The USA and other western imperialist powers have far more nuclear weapons, and to add to that, have been systematically conditioning their populaces to hate the DPRK and their way of life. The DPRK is well within their rights to defend themselves, and if the imperialists really wanted them to disarm, they would be backing Moon Jae-in's efforts to set up a peace treaty. But instead, they goad the DPRK into further improving their military capabilities to continue a the Korean war which was started by the U.S. imperialists.
Any other slanderous claims about the DPRK that I have not mentioned have already, it has likely been debunked by the brilliant Maoist YouTuber Jason Unruhe, a man to whom the DPRK and all its admirers (such as myself) are wholly indebted to for his devotion to the Juche cause and the countless research he has done to defend it.
Now, am I saying that there is 0% chance that what is being said about the DPRK might be true, and that it is in fact an oppressive, authoritarian regime? Of course not. All I am saying is that we have no way of knowing, and from the lessons of history, and the fact that our court justice systems view the accused as innocent until proven guilty, we should be very, very cautious before believing what we hear or read. We should think about who runs the media and the motives they might have for spreading a story before believing it.
NEVER let reason take the back seat to emotion! Trust your intellect above all!