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[+] -10 points 6 days ago* (27 children)

So, so naive.

  1. you're right, hexbear is also anarchist!

  2. authoritarian is a word used by imperialists to describe countries that dont bend the knee. Whenever you say it you basically broadcast to the educated readers that you're gonna say some imperialist bullshit. Which...

  3. Democratic socialists are liberals. They're social democrats with a new title. And social democrats sponsor capitalism.

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  • [–] 14 points 6 days ago (26 children)

    What do you call a country where one man is ruler for life (like his father before him), and his kid will be the next ruler?

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  • [+] -9 points 6 days ago (25 children)

    Canada. UK. Commonwealth. Any monarchy still in existence.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 days ago* (24 children)

    I don’t know if you’re being sarcastic, but these fucking idiot MLs will honestly claim those are monarchies, while North Korea is a legitimate communist democracy.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 days ago (16 children)

    Communist states don't exist. Those are Socialist states.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 days ago (15 children)

    True, but I think we can all understand what they meant by that and respond to their point directly, rather than getting into weeds about terms too much. The DPRK is led by a juche socialist party, a type of communist party.

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  • [–] -1 points 5 days ago (13 children)

    It’s “led” by a hereditary dictatorship, full stop. You just sound dumb when you pretend otherwise.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 days ago (12 children)

    It isn't, though. The government of the DPRK is more distributed than western governments, to begin with, so even if KJU's position was inherited, it would be less of a dictatorship than western countries. But, the good news is that his position is elected.

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  • [–] -1 points 5 days ago (11 children)
  • [–] 1 point 5 days ago (10 children)

    And true! Easy to verify even with Wikipedia.

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  • [–] -1 points 5 days ago (9 children)

    And false! Easy to verify with Wikipedia.

    North Korea is a totalitarian hereditary dictatorship with a comprehensive cult of personality around the Kim family. Amnesty International considers the country to have the worst human rights record in the world. Officially, North Korea is a communist state, and describes itself as a socialist state which holds democratic elections. However, outside observers have described the elections as unfair, uncompetitive, and pre-determined.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 days ago* (8 children)

    Ignore the sensationalizing by the liberal editors, and look at the actual facts referenced, please. From Elections in North Korea:

    Elections in North Korea are held every four-to-five years for the Supreme People's Assembly (SPA), the country's national legislature, and every four years for Local People's Assemblies.[1][2] Each candidate is selected by the Workers' Party of Korea. Voters may either submit the ballot unaltered as a vote of approval, or cross out the name on the ballot to disapprove the candidate. The vast majority of candidates come from the Workers' Party of Korea.[2][3][4]

    ...

    In reply to a question put forth by Michael Marshall, Li Chun Sik of North Korea stated at a meeting of the Association of Secretaries General of Parliaments (ASGP) of the Inter-Parliamentary Union:[2]

    While candidates could be nominated by anyone, it was the practice for all candidates to be nominated by the parties. These nominations were examined by the United Reunification Front and then by the Central Electoral Committee, which allocated candidates to seats. The candidate in each seat was then considered by the electors in meetings at the workplace or similar, and on election day the electors could then indicate approval or disapproval of the candidate on the ballot paper.

    In short, the DPRK has an approval voting system. The SPA is the highest authority, and it holds more power than Kim Jong-Un and Kim Yo-Jong. Kim Yo-Jong's position is actually more decentralized than the US, as in the US the president is also the head of the millitary. For an actual look at Korean elections in the north, I recommend Professor Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance:

    The DPRK’s electoral democracy relates primarily to the people’s assemblies, along with local state organs, assemblies, and committees. Every eligible citizen may stand for election, so much so that independent candidates are regularly elected to the people’s assemblies and may even be elected to be the speaker or chair. The history of the DPRK has many such examples. I think here of Ryu Mi Yong (1921–2016), who moved from south to north in 1986 so as to take up her role as chair of the Chondoist Chongu Party (The Party of the Young Friends of the Heavenly Way, formed in 1946). She was elected to the Supreme People’s Assembly and became a member of the Standing Committee (then called the Presidium). Other examples include Gang Ryang Uk, a Presbyterian minister who was a leader of the Korean Christian Federation (a Protestant organisation) and served as vice president of the DPRK from 1972 until his death in 1982, as well as Kim Chang Jun, who was an ordained Methodist minister and became vice-chair of the Supreme People’s Assembly (Ryu 2006, 673). Both Gang and Kim were buried at the Patriots’ Cemetery.

    How do elections to all of the various bodies of governance work? Elections are universal and use secret ballots, and are—notably—direct. To my knowledge, the DPRK is the only socialist country that has implemented direct elections at all levels. Neither the Soviet Union (in its time) nor China have embraced a complete system of direct elections, preferring—and here I speak of China—to have direct elections at the lower levels of the people’s congresses, and indirect elections to the higher levels. As for candidates, it may initially seem as though the DPRK follows the Soviet Union’s approach in having a single candidate for each elected position. This is indeed the case for the final process of voting, but there is also a distinct difference: candidates are selected through a robust process in the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland. As mentioned earlier, the struggle against Japanese imperialism and liberation of the whole peninsula drew together many organisations, and it is these that came to form the later Democratic Front. The Front was formed on 25 July, 1949 (Kim Il Sung 1949), and today includes the three political parties, and a range of mass organisations from the unions, youth, women, children, agricultural workers, journalism, literature and arts, and Koreans in Japan (Chongryon). Notably, it also includes representation from the Korean Christian Federation (Protestant), Korean Catholic Federation, and the Korean Buddhist Federation. All of these mass organisations make up the Democratic Front, and it is this organisation that proposes candidates. In many respects, this is where the multi-candidate dimension of elections comes to the fore. Here candidates are nominated for consideration from all of the mass organisations represented. Their suitability and merit for the potential nomination is debated and discussed at many mass meetings, and only then is the final candidate nominated for elections to the SPA. Now we can see why candidates from the Chondoist movement, as well as from the Christian churches, have been and can be elected to the SPA and indeed the local assemblies.

    To sum up the electoral process, we may see it in terms of a dialectical both-and: multi-candidate elections take place in the Democratic Front, which engages in extensive consideration of suitable candidates; single candidate elections take place for the people’s assemblies. It goes without saying that in a non-antagonistic system of class and group interaction, the criterion for election is merit and political suitability

    As for the bodies of governance, there is a similar continuity and discontinuity compared with other socialist countries. Unlike the Soviet Union, there is a unicameral Supreme People’s Assembly, which is the highest authority in terms of laws, regulations, the constitution, and all leadership roles. The SPA is also responsible for the national economic plan, the country’s budget, and foreign policy directions (Han 2016, 47–48). At the same time, the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland has an analogous function to a second organ of governance. This is a uniquely Korean approach to the question of a second organ of governance. While not an organ of governance as such, it plays a direct role in electoral democracy (see above), as well as the all-important manifestation of consultative democracy (see below). A further reason for this unique role of the Democratic Front may be adduced: while the Soviet Union and China see the second body or organ as representative of all minority nationalities and relevant groups, the absence of minority nationalities in a much smaller Korea means that such a form of representation is not needed.

    The DPRK is thus a more distributed and even system than western liberal democracies, and is not hereditary.

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  • [–] -1 points 5 days ago (7 children)

    Well you didn’t specify that I was supposed to cherry pick specific details that appear to support your claim in isolation and ignore the summary at the top that synthesizes all the details. Be more specific next time!

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  • [–] 1 point 5 days ago (6 children)

    Let's examine that summary:

    North Korea is a totalitarian hereditary dictatorship with a comprehensive cult of personality around the Kim family.

    "Totalitarian" in this instance means "unitary economy," as in nearly the entire economy is publicly owned, ie socialist. They use the word "dictatorship" because it's a unitary economy as well, even though KJU has less authority than Donald Trump does, or any European head of state. They use hereditary because KJU's father and grandfather both had positions in government, but they have had largely different positions. They use the phrase "cult of personality" because the Kims are highly revered in the DPRK, but they will rarely use those phrases to describe leaders like FDR, Churchill, George Washington, etc who had and have similar reverance.

    Amnesty International considers the country to have the worst human rights record in the world.

    This is correct, in that Amnesty International does believe this. Amnesty International is a UK-based propaganda outlet, essentially, though one that has a bit more of a strict adherance to truth than New York Times or BBC.

    In 2015, Amnesty published the report titled "Unlawful and Deadly: Rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian armed groups during the 2014 Gaza/Israel conflict" describing human rights violations during the 2014 Gaza War.[27] The scholar Norman Finkelstein, in Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom writes that the report disproportionately focused on the actions of Palestinian armed groups while under-reporting and under-emphasizing the scale and context of Israeli military actions.

    Finkelstein criticised the report for its heavy reliance on Israeli sources and a narrative which downplayed Israeli actions while highlighting those of the Palestinian armed groups. By focusing on the Palestinian armed groups' use of unguided rockets, Finkelstein writes that the report failed to adequately address the asymmetry of power between Israel and Gaza's armed groups and the resulting disparity in the impact of their respective offensives. As a particular example, the report describes the Hamas arsenal without citing sources for these claims:[28]: 242 

    The majority of Israel's 8.3 million people, and all 2.8 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank... are now within range of at least some of the rockets held by Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip

    In short, they frequently get criticized for western bias.

    Officially, North Korea is a communist state, and describes itself as a socialist state which holds democratic elections.

    The DPRK is indeed a socialist state, with democratic elections based on approval voting.

    However, outside observers have described the elections as unfair, uncompetitive, and pre-determined.

    This is entirely unsourced on the Wikipedia article, leaving us to revisit the election article. Here's what they say:

    The elections have been variously described as show elections or a political census.[17][18] Seats are uncompetitive as all candidates are chosen by the Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea.[3][2][4] Because of the near 100% turnout, elections double as unofficial censuses. The inminban neighborhood watch-style organization reportedly watches the elections to identify and investigate no-shows.[7]

    The source for "show elections" is New York Times and NK News, both propaganda outlets and not scholarly research.

    South Korean news reporter, Dae Young-kim, claims that there are separate boxes for "no" votes, where "nobody dared to put his or her ballot".[19]

    Sensationalized editorializing from a South Korean reporter describing the fact that you can disapprove candidates as a scary thing.

    According to Roger Cavazos, a retired US army lieutenant-colonel, voting against the official candidate, or refusing to vote at all, is considered an act of treason, and those who do face the loss of their jobs and housing, along with extra surveillance.[19][20]

    So the literal US millitary, the same one that committed genocide against Korea and is colonizing the lower half today, is describing it as such.

    Several North Korean defectors have corroborated the danger voting against the official candidate or abstaining from voting supposes.[21][22][23][24][25][26]

    Defector testemony is often forced under threat of torture, incentivized with huge money, and defectors are largely jobless. The Wikipedia article on media representation of the DPRK paints defector testemony as sensationalized and unreliable:

    Defectors from North Korea are a key source of first-hand information for intelligence officers, scholars, activists, and journalists. While their testimony is considered valuable, there is growing skepticism about the veracity of their accounts.[54][55][56] Often, defectors are cited anonymously to protect their identities, which makes it difficult to verify their information.[57] Moreover, defectors often have limited experience and are not experts on North Korea.[31]

    For their part, when surveyed in 2017 by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, many defectors complained that journalists had violated their right to privacy.[58]

    Felix Abt, a Swiss businessman who lived in the DPRK, argues that defectors are inherently biased. He says that 70 percent of defectors in South Korea are unemployed, and selling sensationalist stories is a way for them to make a living. He also says that the overwhelming majority of defectors come from North Hamgyong Province, one of North Korea's poorest provinces, and often have a grudge against Pyongyang and provinces nearby. He says that defectors in South Korea's resettlement process tailor their accounts over time to become less mundane and more propagandistic. He criticizes journalists and academics for not being skeptical about even the most outlandish claims made by defectors.[50]: 117–18  Similarly, academic Hyung Gu Lynn has commented that some defectors embellish or fabricate their stories to sell books or lobby for regime change.[59] Representatives of the defector community in South Korea have also expressed concern about the unreliability of defector testimony.[60]

    The journalist Jiyoung Song has said that she has encountered numerous inconsistent stories when researching defectors over sixteen years. She noted that cash payments for interviews are standard and have increased over the years. The more exclusive or emotional the story is, the higher the payment.[61] Other South Korean journalists have accused defectors of producing fantasies for money.[31]

    After extensively interviewing Shin Dong-hyuk, a prominent defector, the journalist Blaine Harden wrote in 2012 that, "There was, of course, no way to confirm what he was saying. Shin was the only available source of information about his early life". According to Harden, Shin confessed that his original story about his mother, told in interviews to South Korea's National Intelligence Service and others, and in his memoir, was not true: "Shin said he had been lying about his mother's escape. He invented the lie just before arriving in South Korea."[62] In January 2015, Harden announced that Shin had admitted that the account of his life that he had given Harden was also false.[63][64][65][66][67] Analyst Andrei Lankov commented that "some suspicions had been confirmed when Shin suddenly admitted what many had hitherto suspected", described Harden's book as unreliable, and noted that defectors faced considerable psychological pressure to embroider their stories.[68]

    In 2017, Chun Hye Sung, a defector who had been a guest on several South Korean TV shows using the name Lim Ji-hyun, returned to the North. On North Korean TV, she said that she had been pressured into fabricating stories detrimental to North Korea.[69] The South Korean broadcaster denied her claims, and some observers suggested she was speaking under duress.[70]

    I highly recommend the documentary Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang in Seoul, which goes over the horrendous treatment of defectors in the ROK.

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  • [–] -1 points 5 days ago (5 children)
  • [–] 1 point 5 days ago (4 children)

    Is that really the best response you have? Is your conviction really that weak?

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  • [–] -1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

    I’m sure you think you could Gish Gallop anyone into thinking the sky is yellow. Only a moron engages with stuff that is just false on its face like this.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 days ago (2 children)

    I linked Wikipedia. This isn't gish-gallop. If you think Wikipedia is too tankie for you, then I have no idea how you navigate through life, considering it's practically the liberal bible. No, I can't convince anyone that the sky is yellow, but I can convince people to think critically and confront their own brainworms from a lifetime of propaganda.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 child)

    You misrepresented the gestalt of the article. You cherry picked. Initially, you lied and claimed the article said the opposite of what it says in its opening paragraphs. I don’t have time for this BS. You fool no one.

    By the way, your sad little downvote on every one of my comments in this one-on-one conversation just makes you look pathetic. You and I are the only ones reading this.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago

    I used the actually evidence-backed parts of the article. Of course the Wikipedia editors are going to dress it up in a negative way, I figured that was obvious. But looking at what is backed by hard evidence, it supports what I said. As for looking pathetic, I'm not the one that refuses to even engage with the argument at hand and dodges it entirely. Downvotes aren't for disagreement, but for comments that genuinely don't add anything, which has been your last few comments for sure.

    I know you're fully capable of grappling with what I've said and the evidence provided. I'm not even bringing out textbooks or anything, this is just Wikipedia so it's very short.

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  • [–] -3 points 6 days ago

    Technically not outright monarchies, but the DPRK is legitimately a juche socialist state, with more comprehensive democratic institutions, than those countries. This is the same analysis as the Black Panther Party, Communist Party of Cuba, etc, not some fringe online thing. People will really do no research into left perspectives on Korea whatsoever and blindly believe anything about it.

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  • [–] -5 points 6 days ago* (5 children)

    Dynastic leadership is how juche socialism works. It has been incredibly successful for the DPRK, as evidenced by their progress lately. Also, the DPRK has more democracy than your bog standard liberal democracy under capitalism even with their dynastic characteristics. You can read about the democratic structures of the DPRK on Wikipedia, you don't even need to strain yourself and read an actual book.

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  • [–] -1 points 6 days ago (4 children)

    The DPRK doesn't have dynastic leadership, all successive leaders have been elected to their positions, and their roles have been split up and decentralized over the years. Kim Jong Un has much less authority over the DPRK than Trump does of the US.

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  • [–] -2 points 5 days ago* (3 children)

    I am struggling to understand the point of referring to DPRK leadership as non-dynastic despite the obvious lineage. Your point that it is transitioning is noted, but is there some other historically-accurate term for transitory dynasties under socialism? Or is it your understanding that the state was never dynastic in the first place and the lineage has been mischaracterized?

    Is there a book you can recommend with perspective on the issue of dynasty in DPRK?

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  • [–] 0 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    I think it's pretty easy to see that leadership powers are both more distributed in the DPRK than the west, and that all positions are elected. Professor Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance covers the DPRK as well, but it's slightly outdated as the DPRK has shifted to multi-candidate primaries instead of building consensus before approval voting.

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  • [–] -1 points 4 days ago* (1 child)

    Indeed, the hard part for me is not observing the conditions, it's the analysis of those conditions: avoiding conflation of a genuine dynasty vs. a democracy that continually wants the same family to run things. It is not an easy thing for me to navigate at all, yet.

    I will read. Thanks.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 days ago

    No problem! And for what it's worth, "running things" isn't quite accurate. Neither Kim Jong-Il nor Kim Jong-Un have the same level of authority as Kim Il-Sung, because they are regularly breaking up bigger roles into multiple rules. In that way, the Kim family is gradually becoming less and less important, and more and more like a cultural icon.

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