Only a masochist would have this conversation. Just point out that this is absurd and that no sane government would do this. Any state in this position would simply depopulate a different country and move settlers into the vacuum. You know, like euros did/still do.

Two things:

Firstly, youtube videos are meant to entertain and drive engagement. They aren’t there to teach you anything.

Secondly, how much “burnout” can be ascribed to already knowing most of this information? Or just getting bored? Most of these videos are not going in depth, like you said. They are there for people who don’t want to spend time or money on learning something. A lot of them probably riff off of each other.

Some names would help here… I know Reagan was famously left-leaning in his younger years, as was Jeb Bush, but other than that I can’t think of any ex-Trot neocons.

True of other artistic mediums as well. Everyone wants their hobby to be “art” but nobody wants to actually engage critically with anything which they consume. For most people, film, literature and music are sources of cheap dopamine hits, and the artistic output of the twenty-first century shows it.

It doesn’t matter if we consider China capable of solving our crises and absolving us of our sins. Painting China as complicit in Israel’s genocide is still completely unfair. You can argue that they have not done enough to stop the bleeding, but to say they’ve made no attempts, diplomatic or otherwise, to disrupt Israel’s genocide is simply untrue. It’s also not the job of the Chinese people or their government to clean up after our messes in the first place, especially at risk to their own national security and economic development.

This kind of thinking, where major powers are culpable for all the evils of the entire world over, is rooted in the Anglo-American imperialist mindset. It makes sense for the Brits or the Yanks to feel responsible for all the suffering in the world. We are! But are Chinese people also meant to feel this way? If so, why?

http://209.151.22.101/Journalists/Strong-AL/TheStalinEra-AL-Strong-1956.pdf

Lenin recovered from his second stroke enough to investigate the Georgia matter himself before suffering his third stroke and dying. You make it sound like Lenin was warning the world of the evils of Stalin on his deathbed, and that’s just not what happened.

And Stalin and Lenin had been colleagues and friends for twenty years by this time. They knew each other since 1905. And was he not in prison for working on the revolutionary socialist project?

And I apologize for being rude, but this is just contrary to everything I’ve learned about Stalin. Frankly, it feels indistinguishable from liberal histories of Stalin, which have been extremely falsified. So when I say you’ve been mislead in a serious way, I’m being quite serious.

You’ve been mislead in a very serious way. That “warning,” which is more critical of Trotsky than of Stalin, comes from Stalin’s only conflict with Lenin, which happened to take place during Lenin’s last days, over Stalin’s supposed “brutality” in Georgia. Since Lenin only got this information second-hand (he was bedridden), he never published that “testament.” Once he recovered, he began to investigate personally. After he did, Stalin was acquitted.

On another note, those “left-wing Bolsheviks” like Zinoviev and Kamenev betrayed Lenin at the very hour of the revolution. Trotsky had been against it until that hour. Stalin and Lenin had been working together to bring about the revolution for decades, longer than any of these “left-wing Bolsheviks,” and on top of that he never backstabbed Lenin. The idea that Lenin and Trotsky of all people were close friends and Stalin was a distant, shifty politician lurking in the background waiting to take power is absurd. Stalin was the only legitimate successor to Lenin, especially since he built the party into power even before Lenin’s death.

Stalin saved the world from the Nazis too, so you might want to show a little bit of respect for this great leader. I think part of that respect involves doing your research before you unknowingly reiterate these lies in an explicitly pro-AES community.