this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
66 points (100.0% liked)
askchapo
22764 readers
393 users here now
Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.
Rules:
-
Posts must ask a question.
-
If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.
-
Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.
-
Try [email protected] if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
There's no real way to get anything close to a real perspective if you only know English. That's the reality. To approach a real perspective, the bare minimum is learning the relevant language and engaging primary sources written or spoken in that language. English is the tongue of Western imperialism, so the vast majority of material in English will support the Western imperialist line and the majority of material in English that don't either come from state actors who have the resources to hire English translators or independent content creators who completely rely on those same state sources.
There's plenty of nuanced discourse on North Korean defector who fled to South Korea. And they're all going to be in Korean. For English, it's either the DPRK line that they're doing it largely for economic reasons or the US/ROK line that they're doing it for freedom^TM^ and democracy^TM^.
that functions well enough as an excuse to keep your mouth shut but it's quite in conflict with the idea of study. there hasn't been a socialist country that spoke english, it's ridiculous to circumscribe looking into how actual socialism was implemented/is without learning 2+ more languages. i assume most yankees here didn't get to go to private schools that offer russian or korean