From cracked.com: "5 Things you only know if you grew up in a communist regime"

[Rss]

I just read the article. One of the sources was a website called "communistcrimes.org" FFS. I thought cracked was better than this.

Seriously? Cracked has always been and will be liberal dude bro site which keeps mentally masturbating over war criminals and ruthless tycoons.

[tachosomoza]

And the mere idea that people could come from nothing and actually become rich? That blew our minds completely. Most of us didn't even consider wealth a thing that was possible before a misguided dictator came in and went "See? There are downsides to being magnificently rich!" After several seasons of witnessing the good life, we all collectively asked ourselves, "Why not us, too?" A few flying logical leaps later, we had ourselves a bloody and violent uprising.

You poor, naive, misguided fools.

[Brutus]

You poor, naive, misguided fools.

Wait? We can't?!

[Prairie Fire]

Evolutionary psychology. I saw an article by an "evolutionary psychologist" that was talking about Charlie Sheen cheating on his wife (this is before Adonis DNA, mind you) and going on about how "he can't help it, it's in his genes!" It's pretty much all in that vein. Uses psychological language to justify reactionary social phenomena. Pseudoscience at its finest.

Evolutionary psychology. It's fallacious because it fails to take environmental factors into account when determining the causes of human behavior. It's lazy pseudoscience, often used by unscrupulous people to justify their vile worldviews.

Don't take this to mean that I think evolution has absolutely no effect on human psychology whatsoever. It's just that the term "evolutionary psychology" has certain, well deserved, negative connotations.

Okay, now I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, when I first started visiting Cracked, I noticed that Cracked used to be absolutely saturated with that kind of stuff. It really bothered me at first, but now it's mercifully less frequent.

Anything by David Wong is pretty bad, and Cracked seems to have taken the decision unanimously that former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was a "Dictator", and is over-all critical of Venezuela from 1999-Present, among other things.

I visit Cracked fairly frequently, and there is a lot of reactionary shit, and the occasional Liberal shit ( Praising Teddy Roosevelt, especially because he was such a "manly" President.). As far as mass media is concerned, it isn't without redeeming features, though.


This article is an excellent introduction to the kind of Cold-War plots that were hatched ( not to speak of the ones that were actually implemented). Most people consider some of the most banal cold-war intrigue to be tin-foil hat talk. If this article can do anything to inform and lend credibility to such criticism, that is a positive development.

http://www.cracked.com/article/153_n...-war-projects/



This article shines light on the decisive role of the USSR in defeating Nazi Germany, which is tremendously important to a generation that learned their Second World War history from Medal of Honour and Call of Duty, and to a lesser extent Saving Private Ryan. This is an important rebuttal to a WWII narrative that makes Omaha Beach it's primary focal point, and it's done in a way that it reaches people who aren't history majors.

Also, it shows Winston Churchill for what he was, challenging the bourgeois narrative yet again, that he was a quotable heroic statesman. They don't go far enough, passing over his gushing correspondence with Mussolini prior to the war and overt fascist sympathies, nor any of his plain-spoken white supremacist rhetoric that spanned his entire political career and memoirs. Still, as far as introductions go, it's pretty good. They make a good point of orienting the discussion with the affirmation of the colonial peoples of the British Empire (with a few Indiana Jones and Warcraft references to keep the article relatable.).

http://www.cracked.com/article_18389...-bullshit.html


This article about early Humyn history seems to reinforce most of the major points in Engels' Origin of the family, private property and the state. It also tackles the whole "missing link" fallacy that still enjoys currency in the popular consciousness, helping to influence people towards intelligent design/creationism.

http://www.cracked.com/article_20451...-believes.html


This article is good at refuting the euro-centric way in which the ancient world is portrayed in film and television, as well as tackling much of the fallacious notions that we have about ancient Rome that originated in latter-day Christian hear-say ( i.e. that Christians were fed to lions in the Colosseum, a "Fact" portrayed briefly even in Ridley Scott's film Gladiator ,). It also rebukes pretentious pseudo-intellectuals who laud "Athenian Democracy", and deflates Euro-centrism even further by showing a more nuanced view of Ancient Greece than the "Birthplace of civilization" view so cherished by white-nationalists and in a more muted form in the more general dominant narrative as well.

http://www.cracked.com/article_20536...lizations.html


The first part of this article, again, draws example from some of the more bizarre annals of cold-war spy games. Again, this is perfect for anyone who still believes that our postulations of the methodology of bourgeois states are tin-foil hat lunacy. Once you see confirmation of some of the more unlikely and unconventional tactics of the CIA, you know that there is nothing that is outside of the realm of possibility for them or those that they serve. These people play to win, and their playbook is necessarily creative and decidedly undemocratic.


http://www.cracked.com/article_20518...story-war.html

This article is an insufficient critique of the American political system, but it is a critique none-the-less. They don't present any alternatives, but sometimes in order to talk about solutions you must first diagnose what specifically is broken. Again, if the public discourse in the US was even at the level of this article, it wouldn't be a stretch to take it from there.

http://www.cracked.com/article_20705...you-think.html


Debunks Vietnam war myths: The notion that American POWS remained behind in prison after the war( alluded to in pop-culture, from the Simpsons to Rambo); The military inferiority of the NVA/NLF; returning Americans who served in Vietnam were spit on by anti-war protestors... In the years following the Vietnam war, there has been much revanchism to win that conflict retroactively in the history books. Even Liberals still adhere to the paradigm of decrying "draft dodgers" ( this was ammunition used against Bush Jr. when he was in office,) and exhalting those who served as "heroes".

The Vietnam conflict, perhaps more than any other that the US participated in, is to this day bound up with all kinds of sentimentality and talking points aimed at inflaming passions. In this context, a sober debunking of many of these talking points is very useful, especially to a generation who learned about the Vietnam war, again, from Call of Duty. I would have liked to see them expose the gulf of Tonkin incident as well, the pretext for the entire conflict, but again these are liberals who don't object to the war itself. Altogether, though, an informative read.

http://www.cracked.com/article_20461...y-believe.html


Tackles Wild-west American history, the canon of which was almost entirely established by film and television. Addresses the historical authenticity of whooping aboriginals attacking wagon trains. Also, paints a less ethnically homogenous picture of American cowboys and the roots of Cowboy culture.

http://www.cracked.com/article_20372...wild-west.html


More exposition of cold-war shenanigans, notably operation Gladio.

http://www.cracked.com/article_20165...-missions.html


This article straight-up demolishes most colonizer founding myths about the USA. Much of the information within is pretty novice stuff in most University history programs, but again, most people never pursue history at a post-secondary level.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19864...g-america.html


More plots and intrigue. This article actually does assert that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a hoax, as well as giving a brief introduction to operation Paperclip. Of special note is the first entry in the list, talking about how the automobile manufacturers bought up city streetcars and shut them down. A succinct case-study against leaving "the market" (in other words, major industrialists and companies,) to regulate itself.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19884...-happened.html


This is still the best Cracked article I think, and their most popular one as well. Even though it concerns fictional pop-culture characters, there are still progressive implications here. Fiction is not impervious to ideology, in fact it it is generally via fiction that notions are most successfully conveyed to masses of people. For these reasons, it is an interesting thought-experiment to re-analyze famous stories from alternate perspectives, and entertain that the villains may have in fact been right all along. This is an important skill to possess, vital critical thinking and analytical skills that all of us employ, and the Proletariat and oppressed peoples must employ as well if they are ever going to make a decisive break with bourgeois narrative.

As I said at the beginning of this article, Hugo Chavez exists in the bourgeois narrative as a despotic villain, and he was a mild reformist head of state, elected to the position by majority several times over. They can't pin any bodies on him, can't contest election results after numerous re-counts under the eyes of international observers, but that doesn't halt the powers that be in their defamation. To be in opposition to the status quo in even the most minor and pedestrian ways is to invite defamation on yourself. A working class consciousness must necessarily be able to evaluate social forces and figures, both historical and present-day, on the basis of their deeds, the social conditions that gave rise to them, and who benefits.

On a lighter note, I especially got a kick out of the Lion king Hyenas and Sauron from LOTR.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18417...all-along.html


These are just a selection. I'm not going to track down every article with progressive content, but I think it should be fairly clear that despite it's numerous inadequacies and it's dual reactionary dimension, Cracked has a role to play to the class in making ideas mainstream that otherwise wouldn't be.

The simple fact is that most people don't do research. Most people don't seek out anything that contradicts the dominant narrative. In the guise of a humour website, Cracked.com reaches millions of people that a single scrap of a progressive publication never would. The format is conducive to the working class; I know when I was working blue collar, I would access Cracked on my phone at work and at the bus-stop, etc. The form itself perhaps is worthy of further investigation.

I'm not saying Cracked will ever articulate any kind of solutions, or that they go far enough in their analysis. And yes, they are rife with all kinds of reactionary dribble as well. But, because Cracked has numerous writers, they are a mixed bag of opinions and outlooks, and within that struggle something of use to Proletarian politics often emerges.

[TheSocialistMetalhead]

I once saw a Titoist on Cracked once, true story; he was slamming Stalin as an evil satantic dictator while praising Tito as a Nationalist hero. The oddities you find on such websites. It was amusing in any case. But yeah, Cracked is eye-rolling liberal nonsense.

I'm pretty sure you see more eye-rolling nonsense on this forum. Albeit not eye-rolling liberal nonsense .

Being from Europe, we actually have a couple of former Yugoslavians in our party. When they got here, they still had a lot of admiration for Tito. They had to be convinced there were better alternatives. This is apparently still very common in comrades from former-yugoslav republics.

It probably has something to do with the Bosnian war. Your country falls apart only a short decade after the death of the man and it gets caught in a negative spiral of hate based on nationality and religion. It's not too surprising that they respect the man so much. Whether he was actually an important factor in keeping his country together is of course debatable (and I'd rather not look at history and simply see the story of strong men and women, I'd rather see the story of mass movements of the people) but some of his policies did a lot of good. We shouldn't strive towards the system he stood for, I think we can agree on that but the admiration some Yugoslavians feel for him is understandable even if it is somewhat naive.

[Prairie Fire]

I stand corrected, re: Wong:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-things...o-stop-saying/

[DasFapital]

"I am not the least bit surprised that Larry Hagman allowed his image to be used as communist propaganda. He was an admitted liberal who even went so far as to protest the Vietnam War...He was also an admitted user of marijuana." - LockednLoaded

[Sinister Intents]

I just made the mistake of reading more political stuff from cracked. Will not be making that mistake again, their other stuff is okay, helps me laugh when I'm feeling down

[Comrade Jacob]

Next to pol pott Nicolae Ceausescu is the worst "communist" leader (as a person) that you'll come across, not only was he an asshole but he made socialism look awful.
But then again Romania has always been shit.