One of the refrains of conservatism is that an institution that is currently bad used to be much better--a perspective I invariably disagree with.

Master thread of the NY Times reporting on the rise of the USSR, which garnered a Pulitzer for their man Walter Duranty
"Lenin has often been called the 'Red dictator.' This designation is wrong; Lenin never had the right to dictate, although in practice his opinion generally carried the day." Duranty, @nytimes 1/16/23
"The secret of Lenin's authority, which did in fact amount to dictatorship, was that long experience had proved him right far oftener than his colleagues."
"I venture to say that no one who behaves himself has any more to fear from the 'Gay Pay Oo' [i.e., KGB] than the average American citizen has from the Department of Justice." --Duranty, @nytimes 2/7/32
6/21/31
"Stalin is anything but remote or autocratic in method." --@nytimes 10/11/31
"There is no famine or actual starvation, nor is there likely to be." --@nytimes 11/24/32

The #holodomor genocide of 1932-3 killed millions.
"It is a mistake to exaggerate the gravity of the situation. The Russians have tightened their belts before to a far greater extent than is likely to be needed this winter." @nytimes 11/25/32

"Tightened their belts" is an interesting turn of phrase in this context.
"The Soviet press has made no secret of the food shortage and its effects. There is no need of a foreign observer to tour the villages, where it commonly happens that the disgruntled or disaffected elements talk loudest while others are busy working." @nytimes 11/28/32
"the food shortage is insignificant as compared with conditions in 1920." @nytimes 11/29/32
"The public is taught to know and recognize all three 'class enemies' and to welcome action against them."
"The [Soviet] press concentrates public opinion upon defects and ways to improve them, upon enemies and ways to defeat them, but it rigidly excludes the implication that there is anything wrong with the system itself." --@nytimes 11/25/32

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More from @michaelmalice

Feb 21
The vast, vast majority of people who had Covid got healthy on their own
In your view, was Covid a major international problem despite this?
In fact, let's look at the ten biggest US cities

The argument seems to be that the majority of BLM protestors were peaceful (indisputably true) or that breaking into stores en masse is peaceful if no one physically got hurt

1. New York
2. Los Angeles

Read 12 tweets
Feb 4
Spotify has deleted two of my @joerogan appearances
both of the episodes are pre-covid
this website checks for you

jremissing.com
Read 5 tweets
Jan 29
from the article: "To be sure, Spotify’s stock price was already on the slide — having plummeted 25% year-to-date as of Jan. 25, the day before Young’s catalog was pulled off Spotify."

A truthful headline would be "Spotify's stock price continues sliding after Neil Young" etc
how odd, the journalist who wrote the article blocked me the second I pointed out his deception and how despised he is by many Image
and now other news outlets continue the deceptive framing

this is how the Cathedral operates
within days the message reaches everyone and, like the chorus to a song, thereby rings true

Read 4 tweets
Jan 22
REMINDER
In June 2020 Buffalo police cleared the streets in blatant defiance of the 1st Amendment's guarantee of the right to peaceably assemble.
In doing so they shoved a senior to the ground, and the man started to bleed out of his ear(s).

The cops were neither fired nor indicted for fracturing his skull

abcnews.go.com/US/assault-cha…
People are claiming that he's Antifa, which I believe and don't care about in this context, and that the blood was fake.
If the latter is true, please reply w a link
Tyvm
Read 4 tweets
Oct 11, 2021
this is nothing new
this is from 1970

and in the 1980s Dr Light became a Japanese woman and Dr Mid-nite a black woman
Read 4 tweets
Oct 7, 2021
Czech elections are this weekend
There is a strong possibility that the Communists, one of the very few Communist parties to maintain their name and identity, will finally lose parliamentary representation
UPDATE
The Czechs have kicked all the Communists out of parliament and for good measure kicked out all the Social Democrats too
As of 2013 the Social Democrats had been the biggest party in parliament and the Communists in 3rd (mostly buoyed by the elderly)
They've also gone from 9 parties in parliament to 4, a couple of which are merged parties.
I discussed in The New Right how the increase of parliamentary parties in Europe made coalitions more difficult
What we are seeing instead is new, unprecedented political coalitions forming
Read 4 tweets

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