Chapotraphouse

I'm an anarchist, I don't have a particular articulable issue with the DPRK as a whole that I couldn't articulate about any other group of people trying to weather the storm of global capitalist domination. Is their society how I'd draw it up in a vacuum? Of course not. Do I think they're doing good work want them to keep it up? Absolutely.

Obviously there are a lot of really idealist people in both the anarchist and Trot camps, but I've met plenty of idealists in any leftist strain of thought, which is especially frustrating when they invoke the word materialism to distract from how their positions are completely divorced from material reality. That's just the nature of dealing with people, the ones who know the least are gonna be saying the most.

On topic, propaganda against the DPRK is really strong, to the point that people think of it as some kind of cartoon dystopia. I've noticed that westerners will literally just make up anything, ("If you don't salute the flag of the DPRK whenever you see it, they'll tie you to the back of an 1800s style carriage and throw rotten tomatoes at you while dragging you down the road!!!") and they fully believe it. Even though they just made it up just now, even though they have literally never heard another human say it, they believe it. Because they believe that the DPRK is a nightmare realm where literally anything bad you can imagine is happening on a systemic level. You probably see a lot less anarchist and trot criticism of Cuba, because we haven't been told from all angles for decades that Cuba is run by literal demons. All you can do is challenge and counter the propaganda and trust that, ultimately, truth will prevail.