[Jgoauh]

"It becomes evident that the parade was a carefully choreographed spectacle, designed to showcase the Soviet Union’s ideology and power to the world."

Ah yes, everyone known that in a TRUE democracy parades are spontaneously occurring events, self organizing to show the country's weaknesses and the population's biases.

Seriously tho, what does this mean, has anyone ever been to a parade and concluded it was neither coreographed, planned, or meant give a positive image ?

How do you determine people's enthusiasm is planned and orchestrated by looking at them ?

Are all parades proof the country is actually the torture Truman show or just the countries you're being payed to spy on ?

[wl]

In my experience as an American, most of the parades I'm personally familiar with are organized by local groups rather than the government. Maybe you can read some ideology into the American Legion marching with flags, but it's more an exercise in giving the local high school band a chance to march, the Shriners an excuse to break out their clown cars, and maybe the whole thing is an advertisement for the 4H or FFA fair. That's not to say that the US doesn't have parades in the genre the article talks about—the Army 250th Anniversary Parade probably counts. But not every parade is a propaganda exercise.

[watwut]

Military parades with actual soldiers in USA are organized by local groups rather then the government? Like commooooon.

[wl]

I wasn’t talking about military parades.

[inglor_cz]

Ugh, how I hate this sort of relativization coming from people who never experienced an actual authoritarian system.

By the age of 6, I was required to carry a standard paper lantern on the November 7th celebration of the Great October* Socialist Revolution, with my parents fully aware that presence and absence lists were maintained by the teachers, who would forward them to the school cadre bureaucrats keeping dossiers on the kids, who could alert the secret police to take a closer look at the repeat offenders, and who would definitely play a big role in allowing you later to enter high school or not.

My grandpa was subject to hearings and threats because his son (my uncle) had bad marks in the compulsory Russian language lessons and the spooks were convinced that he was bad at it on purpose, by being secretly taught animosity against the Soviet Union at home.

I wonder if you ever experienced this sort of paranoia and coercion from your government. In the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, this was the norm even during the late 1980s.

* Yeah, the October/November mismatch fits, because in 1917, then-Russia was following the Julian calendar and only later switched to Gregorian. Hence the difference of 18 days which was reflected in the timing of that parade.

[wat10000]

I think pretty much everyone here knows about the October/November thing if only because of The Hunt for Red October.

[pipes]

Thanks for posting. The other term for it "what aboutism" (which given your background you are probably well aware of, but others here might not be).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Countering these arguments is exhausting.

[jopsen]

Every seen a pride parade?

I'm not sure what kind of special torture you'd employ to make people display that kind of enthusiasm :)

[wiseowise]

Just visit any (sparse) Dutch events, like King’s day, you’ll see what it means when people self-organize.