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When in fictional Warhammer 40000, thousand people are killed daily to keep travel in entire galaxy safer, it is something monstrous.
When in real USA during the pandemic around thousand people died daily to keep the top bourgeoisie profits high, it is freedom.
Tbh, the satire in 40K (and satire in general) seems harder to distinguish from life in the West the longer I live.
If you do even some basic back of the napkin math on how many psykers are sacrificed to the God Emperor of Man each day compared to how many people there are in the imperium and figure out how many are born and die each day you’ll end up with a very small percentage. It was actually a fun exercise to figure it out in my friend group.
Why does everyone think North Koreans call Kim Jong Un “dear leader” or whatever? Is it a misleading translation of Korean honorifics or official titles or something? I know the main reason is bigotry, but this is so pervasive that I wanna know where it came from.
Same reason people keep referring to DPRK as North Korea, it’s a result of decades of western propaganda. DPRK along with Cuba have been hands down the biggest targets of US propaganda because they remain as the closest analogs of USSR today. They utterly reject capitalism and don’t even make an attempt to make any concessions to the west.
True, but I’m wondering whether this bit is based on anything at all. It’s remarkable how widespread it is.
Many (most?) countries have a prime minister. We’re very used to hearing those words in conjunction, but if you just tell people it’s a ridiculous phrase, then prime minister, supreme leader, dear leader, etc, are interchangeable in meaning and grandeur. Since you’re translating from another language, it’s up to you which variation to translate to.
Journalists do this with all sorts of translations. A foreign word for ‘small bump in the road’ gets translated as ‘an insurmountable roadblock’. They might be synonyms for ‘problem’ but what self-respecting propagandist is going to let a little context or accuracy get in the way of a good story.
It would be cool if someone who knew Korean could confirm this for us, but in my opinion I don’t think it’s that strange to call people “dear” in general. Didn’t FDR refer to Stalin with “my dear” in his letters to him? I don’t find that weird. Also it could very well be a cultural thing too, some are just “warmer” than others. I mean, this example isn’t the same, but I thought it was hilarious when Hakim called Putin “habibi.” Maybe it’s just me, though, I like sweetness.
The particular phrasing that gets thrown around is extremely cultish in English (dear leader, glorious leader, supreme leader, etc.) which is why westerners keep repeating it. It doesn’t come off as a term of endearment, more like subservience. I dunno what Koreans say in Korean and whether it carries the same connotations though (probably not).
Yeah that makes sense. In my political science classes when Authoritarian governments are brought up the term “supreme leader” is used a lot so maybe I’m used to it. Then again it very well might be a language barrier with tonal contexts (how they say it). I can’t recall a time when a Western leader was ever referred to as “supreme leader”…
Yeah, Aria mentioned how “prime minister” is the same thing but with neutral connotations. It’s another case of using good words to describe ourselves and bad words to antagonize our targets.
But muh Applebees!