RedArmyCapybara

The US has a long history of employing atrocity propaganda. One of the earliest and most well-known instances was the claim that Spanish saboteurs attacked and sunk the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898. Although there was no evidence to substantiate the claim, the story was widely circulated and used to rally support for the war with Spain. These types of fabricated and sensationalized stories were commonly published in newspapers owned by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. This form of journalism became known as "Yellow Journalism." The US would continue to develop their systems and methods to produce and disseminate propaganda throughout WWI. Following the 1917 revolution in Russia, the Bolsheviks became a primary target of imperialist atrocity propaganda campaigns. Most of the alleged atrocities have been debunked through the declassification of Soviet archives, but the damage was already done. Once propaganda is disseminated, it can persist despite the facts. ...

We’ve all seen the headlines: “Kim Jong Un executes this official,” “Kim Jong Un purges that minister,” and whatever else the Western media can squeeze out. According to outlets like Radio Free Asia, simply existing inside the Workers’ Party of Korea or the government is a death sentence waiting to happen. Kim Jong Un is supposedly wiping people out left and right for the smallest imaginable reasons. The sources for these claims are always unverifiable and dubious. South Korean intelligence will make an assertion and cite some “unknown source in Pyongyang,” then the story gets picked up by Western media and spreads like wildfire. However, there is a noticeable trend behind these sensationalist headlines: many people who were claimed to have been executed by Kim Jong Un have apparently risen from the dead. Hyon Song-wol Take pop star Hyon Song-wol for example. In 2013, South Korean media reported that a group of pop stars had been mass executed by a machine gun wielding firing squad, wi...

In the West, the DPRK is often called "the hermit kingdom." It's claimed that the DPRK is an isolationist state that has cut itself off from the rest of the world and refuses to engage with the international community, but is this really the case?  It's true that the United States, South Korea, the European Union, the United Nations, and others have attempted to force the DPRK into isolation through decades of brutal economic sanctions. The country has more than 2,000 sanctions.¹ However, these attempts by imperialist nations to isolate the DPRK don't mean that the DPRK or the Juche Idea are isolationist. A closer look at the evidence reveals the opposite. The Juche Idea is Internationalist  Those who say that the Juche Idea is an isolationist philosophy seem to not only be ignorant of the actual content of the Juche Idea, but they also conflate self‑reliance and isolationism. They lack a correct understanding of what independence means in the Juche Idea. Kim Jong...

The claim that Mao Zedong engineered a famine and killed 50 million people is pervasive among Western liberals. It's been repeated so often that it has become accepted without serious historical analysis. This article examines that claim and asks a simple question: did Mao Zedong intentionally engineer a famine that killed 50 million people? Answering this question first requires situating the Great Leap Forward famine within the broader historical conditions of China. What Caused the Great Leap Forward Famine? The Great Leap Foward famine was the last in a long history of cyclical famines that occured frequently. Between 108 BC to 1911 AD, there was at least 1,828 recorded famines throughout China.¹ Famines in China were historically caused by a multitude of intersecting factors, such as weather conditions like floods, typhoons, pests, plant diseases, and feudal agricultural infrastructure and farming methods. The CPC inherited this history of famines and the conditions that creat...

The DPRK is hands-down the most mystified socialist state in the world. The government is considered irrational and crazy, Kim Jong Un is called a brutal dictator, and its people are said to be brainwashed and severely oppressed. The purpose of this series, Demystifying the DPRK, is to challenge widespread misconceptions and claims that we hear in the West. In Part one, we are focusing on religion. Most readers have probably heard the common claims: that there is no religious freedom, that owning a Bible is illegal, and that religious people are suppressed and persecuted by the state.  So let's take a closer look and see if we can clear up some of this. The Religious Landscape of the DPRK Before we begin, there is a vital fact we need to bear in mind when discussing this topic.  During the Korean War, US forces dropped 635,000 tons of bombs, including 32,557 tons of napalm on the DPRK¹, killing 20% of the population.² This devastating atrocity left virtually no...