I'll just go ahead and get the obvious out of the way
No, the central claim of his book is that North Korean internal politics is based largely on a form of nationalism derived from Showa Imperialism from their time as a Japanese colony with a thin coat of faux M-L paint.
Though the author is a typical liberal, he's specifically against the aggressive policies of the US against the DPRK, and explicitly admits the atrocities committed against them by the United States during the Korean War.
I think is a great misunderstanding of korean culture. Not totally incorrect about some stuff, like you mentioned about japan, but I think he's trying to push a liberal agenda and trying to talk about this subject from a western perspective
Brody Sanders
While the most prevalent or loudest critique of this book would no doubt be that of the subaltern theorists, I think it is laughable to explain the complicated body politic of the DPRK simply by aesthetic or critical analysis of their propaganda. One may unearth the 'collective abstract' that the WPK wants to advance, but I'm far more partial to the much more anodyne possibility that we're simply interacting with an ideological edifice as though it was the absolute dictate of life. Well, this much should be obvious, the policy of national self-reliance is very much just grasping at retaining sovereignty under the auspices of a legitimate (domestic) political order. The order of representations that forms the great bulwark of this modern 'socialist' concordat is a dereliction of the non-didactic spirit of communist governance, if it can be referred to as such; however, not for reasons as trite as an ethnic paternalism. The economics of imperial organization are dead, giving way to a far more authoritarian order of capital. To continue the talk of 'revisionist/imperialist' historicity, one must firmly commit to some essentialist stupor whereby the world never left the 20th century and we can continue to draw the phantom support and victories of bygone times. It's an okay book, but I don't think it appreciates just that which makes the conception of "Korean Socialism" and its relation to the modern world so very precarious
Bentley Evans
I think he goes more into it than just their propaganda, but I think analysis of propaganda is more meaningful than you give it credit for, the nature of propaganda can say a lot about the worldview of the people it's attempting to influence, as well as the worldview of those who produced it.
Chase Gray
The "ethnonationalism" of the DPRK is the natural outcome of the social order they built. Prim.communist societies were based of what if not blood?
Ayden Lewis
Good thing we're not primitive communists then.
William Watson
You are so retarded you don't understand this has nothing to do with racism. And with burger racism in particular.
Adrian Evans
Are you so retarded that you don't understand "Workers of the world, unite!"?
Hudson Miller
this has to be bait
Jack Evans
...
Owen Hernandez
What if the "workers" were far from equal because race is real and thus can never unite?
Liam Morris
Why would inequalities stop them from uniting?
Jayden Gutierrez
It's you that don't understand it.
Gavin Ramirez
It's the only comparison we have. We can only dream to reach what they are reached.
Nathan Wilson
Because the differences in capability are vast and thus the races as aggregates will cluster into specific places in society. In the case of niggers and spics they essentially have no utility in the US economy for example, spics are only viable as a labor source when they work far below the labor cost of others and blacks don't work at all. They aren't workers in the first place statistically speaking.
When one group is markedly less capable than another due to inherent qualities which cannot be changed then strife will occur.
Ayden James
That's where enforced racial mixing comes in, to remove genetic inequality. A redistribution of the means of reproduction.
Adam James
Well, good then that differences aren't that extreme, if at all existing.
So it's anarkiddie-tier "national liberation is the same as imperialist/fascist nationalism"… extra insulting since the DPRK purged Japanese occupiers, while most of the ROK government was completely unchanged from Japanese rule when the USA took over. There is no real material difference between the DPRK and the DDR, Cuba, Stalin's USSR, etc.
Noah Fisher
and soon you'll start talking how they should be enslaved again so you can slack off more
Aaron Wilson
What that user is alluding to imo is that pure analysis of propaganda is is a non-dialectic ordeal, the author (probably) assumes that what the state says about its citizens the citizens assume fully. Just look at how this worked in the soviet bloc: not even the apparatchik identified with the official messaging.
Analysis of propaganda =/= analysis of ideology
Noah Flores
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Angel Mitchell
Yes, because the US economy is propped up by niggers and spics.
If they leave, the US collapses!
Never mind they are the biggest welfare recipients as well as illegal labors.
Oliver Collins
A poor white is still going to be better than a poor black.
And that's factual.
It comes home when even rich black do crimes.
John Robinson
Don't worry. It's ok to be 52% white.
Jason Barnes
fuck off mongrel, Holla Forums is white man's board
Mason Moore
More like white liberal board.
Holla Forums cares about racial purity now?
Adam Butler
if we can find ways to integrate people with disabilities then we can find ways for different races to integrate too
Benjamin Myers
Just because people don’t believe the official propaganda doesn’t change the fact that propaganda always more or less embodies the ideology of the state and elite. True, North Korean people may not mindlessly accept their propaganda, but it clearly shows what the government wants them to think.
Chase Murphy
American political """wisdom""" strikes again! Try to define that term, fatty. Not really, we just hate self-hating mongrels like (you)
Are you really going to keep calling yourself non-white to have some convoluted retard way of saying "see you ARE racist"?
Carter Gomez
I mean, we do care about purity ourselves, it's just weird that people who think race-mixing = okay uses the 56% meme as some sort of insult.
Christopher Richardson
I've read parts of it, not completely. In my opinion it's mostly just conjecture. Myers makes psychoanalytical interpretations of North Korean propaganda and then some far-fetched conclusions about it being fueled by underlying racism. Some stories are purely anecdotal, like how some defector didn't like him because of course she's racist and not because the guy looks like a creep. I think the idea that North Korea is racist is quite absurd, there are African teachers in North Korea, there is a film of an Afro-American visitors group touring the DPRK in the 90s, etc. - they called Obama a monkey but monkey is not a slur for a black person in Asia it just means "going wild" or "going reckless". Also, Obama is a war criminal, so fuck him.
Some parts are outright bullshit, when he uses the argument "human nature" and makes wild Holla Forums tier conjecture about Japanese spirit has entombed itself in the Korean soul, blabla. Feels > Reals.
That makes him even more dangerous as a propagandist. Lots of ridiculous anti-communist propaganda written by obvious right wingers, such as "Dear Reader", is so insane and badly sourced that one can easily discard it, but when liberals give themselves this centrist "both sides" attitude they appear more believable and legitimate for the liberal mainstream. Myers is still a propagandist, and this mask of neutrality he put on is for the show.
Daniel Perry
People uses it here because it upsets people obsessed with racial purity.
Jason Price
Really? You use a racial purity meme to make fun of people obsessed with racial purity?
Jordan Hill
Yes. We make fun of people who hold others to standards they can't fulfill themselves.
James Nguyen
Incorrect. They never actually did this. In fact, they were hired by the Party.
Samuel Gomez
Even by the standards of your bunk race-science bullshit, the actual difference between races are relatively minuscule with large amounts of overlap.
You don't see to understand standard distributions, boon. They most certainly do not overlap where it counts the most.
Benjamin Reed
I see you have read the book but this is wrong or a blatant misrepresentation. In Korea, most intellectuals and artists were required to learn Japanese under the occupation, it's obvious that they were included in the intelligentsia after the revolution. In South Korea, Japanese speaking intellectuals were intellectual because every intellectual was suspected to be a commie.
Myers just makes shit up to justify his conspiracy theory about le secret Japanese nationalism
Michael Jackson
Japanese speaking intellectuals were killed*
Henry Mitchell
I mean there are plenty of ways liberals or even milquetoast socialists could criticize the DPRK but to just shriek DASS RACYST because the DPRK was mean to some burgers is the worst way to do it.
Christian Russell
Don't mistake my pointing out that your claims aren't consistent with the your evidence with me actually believing any of the "evidence" presented by Nazi race "scientists".
My point is that even your junk science doesn't support your grand racialist claims.
That's absolutely ridiculous, kys. All the occupiers stayed in the ROK.
Grayson Torres
[citation needed] Post source or get reported.
Blake Allen
There is literally nothing wrong with being racist. I hope the gallant people of the DPRK places all of you baboons in zoos. Simians of world, to the Pyongyang ape exhibit! Stupid baboon brains. Suck my cock nigger apes.
Ryan Russell
you and your shitty author are the ones making the wild claims.
Dylan Lopez
Also, most of the former landowners and collaborators in the north fled into the south after the Provisional People's Committee implemented land reform.