Chinese propaganda is rampant on the fediverse. We need to discuss ways to combat this. One group- memes or something is wholly controlled by Chinese state actors. What do you think?

  • such as in the US Empire, where within a single month sentiment on Israel flipped from overwhelmingly positive to majority negative.

    It didn’t go from +90% to -90%. That’s what I mean with the huge ‘swing’ seen here. Negative attitudes on Israel went from 42% to 53% in 3 years time. Yet this supposed “total reversal of opinion” happened in months? Nonsense of course. Remember, the Soviet referendum did not have “dissolution” as an option. People picked the option closest to it.

    the large majority of people in post-soviet countries feel worse off and/or regret its fall

    This is irrelevant to the false notion that the Soviet Union dissolved against what the people wanted at the time, which that graphic is often used to misleadingly suggest.

    Even then, opinion polling on the subject is highly unreliable. Even the same pollster slightly rephrasing the question nets wildly different results. In the Baltics opinion is pretty consistent that the fall of the USSR was a good thing. But Belarusians tend to disagree with that. But when Belarusians are asked if they prefer to follow a Soviet system or a western democratic system, they choose the latter. And when another pollster asks them again in the same year, opinions flip again.

    There’s certainly a strong sentimental nostalgia towards the Union, though not in all former member states. Yet it seems unlikely the population would be willing to vote it back into existence.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      3 hours ago

      People did have a massive swing in opinion. I’m aware that dissolution was not an option, but your claim that people didn’t change their opinion in light of the immense political turmoil between that vote and the second vote requires more evidence than “people don’t change their minds that quickly.” Rather, to the contrary, large shifts in opinion do happen more swiftly than gradually.

      Further, the fact that the large majority regret the fall of the soviet union is relevant in showing that it clearly wasn’t as simple as saying everyone hated living in the soviet union, but realized how good they had it afterwards. Polling is often inconsistent not because of bad polling, but political instability caused by the immense fuckery of capitalism and imperialism in these countries, and forces like NATO.