The Western and the liberal consensus on Joseph Stalin:
Stalin was an evil autocrat who seized all power from his people to establish a brutal and murderous authoritarian regime.
Stalin in reality
Stalin: Please, let me resign in peace. This is the fourth time I am submitting my application.
The central comittee: Dear Comrade Stalin, we have rejected your request for the fourth time. See you at work tomorrow.
I will bring out the CIA admits Stalin was not a dictator link in case anyone has not seen it yet. https://web.archive.org/web/20251003005751/https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf
https://hexbear.net/post/6309545
I don’t think this document proofs anything. There are more detailed and “credible” CIA documents that falsely claim him to be a dictator.
I also think this is playing into the narrative of the CIA being some kind of omniscient org that has their eyes everywhere and you can’t hide from it. AFAIK the CIA had a hard time piercing the veil and gather intelligence of the USSR and its inner workings.
In fact, i think they fell for their own propaganda like the old joke about a KGB and a CIA agent meeting.
“I have to admit, I’m always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up,” the CIA agent says.
“Thank you,” the KGB says. “We do our best but truly, it’s nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them.”
The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. “Thank you friend, but you must be confused… There’s no propaganda in America.”
I never understood the takeaway of that document to be that the CIA is omniscient. The value of it is in the fact that many people in the US will knee-jerk defend and/or believe the CIA as credible, but if the CIA itself is saying that the people they thought the CIA said were enemies are not as bad as they thought they were, something must be off.
Because something is off. There is the layer of “intelligence” that is what gets told to the public and then there is the layer that gets acted upon, and these aren’t always the same thing. The one that gets acted upon has to be a somewhat sober analysis for it to be effectual at all. The one that gets told to the public can be total fabrication. Though it might be argued that nowadays, the two are blurring more so and this is some of the cause of more chaotic / mask off behavior in the empire; the argument being that some of the current crop of power brokers ate the onion on the propaganda of the previous crop and so they don’t actually understand the dynamic of the world as it is, but more so understand it through the cartoonish lens that was put together to confuse and distract the public in the past.
I am of the opinion that we shouldn’t use bad arguments just because they might be effective.
It opens one self up to being corrected that the document is just a random goon that is reporting his own subjective view and then the opponent will link to a bunch of more “credible” CIA documents where they call stalin a dictator and suddenly the person you were trying to convert/argue against in order to convert onlookers is more entrenched because the idiot commie can’t even source correctly.
This document does not show the CIA’s thoughts at all. It is merely some lower level dude who is stating his findings which are at odds with others findings.
There are better CIA documents that show that even the liberal intelligence bastion has to admit that, for example, the nutrition and calorie levels of the USSR where on par or better than that of the US at the time.
How is it a “bad argument”? Are we supposed to ignore what John Stockwell whistleblowed about the CIA because “he was just a CIA officer” and wasn’t the head of the CIA or something? And what do you mean “subjective view”? Stalin was more a captain of a team, that is accurate about how socialist states function.
Some things are narrative and some things are just correct or incorrect, no matter who is doing the telling. If someone goes to lengths to show you documents that contradict this document when you put it forth to people who take everything the CIA says at face value, that doesn’t make you look like an “idiot commie”, it further illustrates the contradictions in CIA messaging and the fallibility of the organization.
Arguing that it’s somehow not a contradiction and doesn’t represent them because “it’s a lower level dude” is itself a bad argument that reads more like arguing the side of anti-communists for them.
This isn’t about using things that are “wrong” in a vain attempt to be effectual. It’s about engaging with the mental gymnastics and cognitive dissonance that a lot of people are enmeshed in.
The argument is “Even the CIA admits stalin is not a dictator” which is plain wrong because it is just some rando informant from the CIA saying it and not an official statement from them.
Because there are other informants that had the opposite subjective view…literally every view is subjective, that’s how “viewing” something works. I have made it quite clear that i don’t believe him to be a dictator.
Internal documents are not “messaging”. They are internal and not messages to the public. Otherwise i agree, but you are missing the point because the “idiot commie” comes from believing this one document instead of all the other “better and more detailed” documents that do describe him as a dictator. From the view of your opponent and the onlookers you are just clinging on one shitty informant while ignoring all the counter “evidence” that the other informants provided. It is too easily defeated and this basically makes you lose instanly in the eyes of the public.
…that is because i am arguing the side of the anti-communists. Know your enemy and all that.
I am simply providing you the most basic of arguments that they would make and how this CIA document will immediately shatter upon it.
By doing our own mental gymnastics and saying that this document proves that even the CIA believed stalin to not be a dictator? Because that is the only way this document has ever been used as.
This document is such a weak piece of evidence that it can only be used for bad faith arguments and nothing more.
That’s not how “knowing your enemy” works. 🤦♂️ “Hey, lemme go argue the side of nazis, gotta know your enemy and all that.” The world is not changed in the land of debate bros. If you haven’t even encountered someone who actually made this argument to you, it’s baseless. Theory has a place, but it still needs to be grounded in actual practice.
There is a difference between considering how something can unfold in order to better anticipate how to deal with it vs. putting forth a tunnel vision claim that it will unfold a single way without evidence. The realities of dealing with people are messy and you’re missing the forest for the trees here. If it was the case that this document was straight up not written by anyone in the CIA, I would agree with you that no one should be referencing it as representative of the CIA. That is not what you’re saying though. You’re getting into the weeds of what qualifies something as representative of the CIA, which is a level of analysis most people aren’t going to be thinking about in the first place. I can speak for myself as an example when I was very liberal, it wasn’t even on my mind what the hierarchy of the CIA is or who all each piece of information linked to it comes from. I just know at a certain point I had a kind of institutional trust and I gradually moved away from that.
The document on nutritional differences between America and the Soviet Union is actually pretty well written, but I agree with you. The C.I.A post 80s is a lot scarier than the “exploding pen” shenanigans of the post 50s
I agree.