reminder rule
edit: GUYS fuck stalin and fuck tankies, period. i understand that this community is more sensitive than most to pro-stalinist vibes, and i apologize for unintentionally twinging that nerve, but you need stop calling each other (and me) slurs
good heavens, happy new year, fuck incarceration and murder in all forms
(mods pls also do your job and help with the slurs thing)
edit2: big thank u 2 da mods for helping with the slurs thing u guys rock 😎 💕
This has got to be one of the most stupid memes ever.
The percentage of Soviet citizens that were put into prisons/gulag camps/colonies will have far exceeded the percentage of us citizens currently incarcerated in the usa, and in far more inhumane circumstances.
Unless the op is trying to deflect from the problems of the USA penal system by drawing attention to a far worse system, I don't get the point of this meme.
Why’s it at +157/-3 after 3hr:
The US stat is so bad you easily believe it when attributed to stereotypical evil regime.
Then you’re reminded that same evil thing is actually something the US is currently doing.
I’m glad we don’t just kill everyone we arrest, I’m glad we’re not ruled by a dictator… still, I wish the average person viewing a meme weren’t able to easily believe something we do was actually done by someone we vaguely recall learning was the worst.
I did some googling out of curiosity, turns out Wikipedia has a whole ass article on it: The US prison rate as of 2021 is 531 per 100000 (peaked in 08 with 755 after a huge spike in the 80s and 90s, I wonder why). In the Soviet Union during the high of the gulag system, it was estimated (by actual historians, not the soviets) to be 714 to 892.
Apartheid South Africa was 851. Saudi Arabia has 200.
You're counting the percentage of population, in the meme it's the percentage of all incarcerated people.
I don't want to search for stats, but it may be so that with a higher incarceration rate the USSR still held less of the total.
I find back about that it peaked at 1.4% or 1.5% in 1950 in a few sources: 2.5m to 2.7m prisoners for about 180m citizens. So significantly higher than what you found.
On Quora a Russian posted a nice graph, but I don't see a source for the data : https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-Soviet-citizens-were-incarcerated-at-any-given-time-The-US-has-0-7-of-its-population-in-prison-and-I-was-wondering-how-that-compares-to-the-old-USSR
Having read testimonies of the nazino island gulag and a few Russian prisoner novels, the Soviet prison system really shouldn't be compared to the USA one. Those percentages might not be far off ("only" 2x more at the worst), but numbers don't tell everything. Stalin's reign of terror was so much worse than the modern day USA dystopia. Compare the USA to modern day Canada or western Europe and it will highlight much better how bad it is doing.
What's your source for the gulag numbers? The wiki lists 18M though the system with a population of 180M, with something like 1.5M deaths. That would seem to indicate a number higher than 1%.
The emergent consensus among scholars is that, of the 14 million prisoners who passed through the Gulag camps and the 4 million prisoners who passed through the Gulag colonies from 1930 to 1953, roughly 1.5 to 1.7 million prisoners perished there or they died soon after they were released. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
Hexbear is leaking.
This comment is excellent.
If your average prison sentence is 10 years, you will have 10x more prisoners than annual arrests/sentences.
It’s the same kind of misleading stat as life expectancy being 30 years in medieval time. If you survived childhood you could easily reach your 60s or later, just like how you can live that long without any serious health interventions today.
it’s not a misleading stat it’s a stat with nuance. slavery in the U.S. is legal per the 13th amendment, as are for-profit prisons.
this fiscal motive leads to more sentences for smaller crimes (marijuana possession) for longer times, and it’s obscene.
So a 10 year prison sentence isn't 10 times worse than a one-year sentence? You think 3 people in prison for a month each is worse than two people with a year each?
My favorite jokes is the "Look how bad it is in North Korea/Russia/China..." Then the ol "sike that's America".
My second favorite thing is all the whataboutism replies because butthurt folks don't like reality. Rather than address the problem, they'd rather go into finger pointing.
I think it's because the meme itself is the wrong way to try to make that argument. Instead of just saying "the US has 22% of the world's aggregate prisoner population and that's a problem", it's making that argument by directly comparing it to a MUCH WORSE regime for that exact violation of rights.
The whataboutisms tend to be bristling at the bad comparisons more than a direct refutation of the underlying point being made. I think complaining about the whataboutisms misses the point of those replies, which is valid.
As the other poster said, why not compare with Scandinavian countries that genuinely do have better justice systems rather than comparing with USSR or CCP which have much worse justice systems?
i think sometimes it’s worth critiquing memes for the rhetorical impact rather than raw arguing power
if you wanted a watertight meme that perfectly describes your argument, you’re right, this isn’t it.
but if you want an emotionally jarring meme that encourages debate and spreads awareness of the disturbing nature of american justice, i’d say this has acheived that goal looking at these comments :)
i’m still working this position as a shitposter but i’d say this is at least an A- tier meme in that a) it’s factual (not outright false), and b) it encourages active discussion and awareness of issues in the comments.
I hate the US as much as the next person but the meme itself is basically whataboutism.
It's always "if you don't like it, go live in Somalia" and never "if you don't like it, go live in Denmark". It's saying "it could be worse" instead of "it could be better".
Pretty much. "Could be worse" is for when you're recovering from the flu, not the "There is 1.2 million people in prison right now".
this is such a beautiful way to put it, thank you
I just want to know the story behind your username. Did a tuber betray you somehow?
I'm editing over my old comment and deleting my replies bc it was me assuming op was a tankie and being an asshole to them about it. It's a good meme, I'm just a lot more sensitive to tankie looking stuff on a place like lemmy, and this isn't an excuse but I've been in a pretty shit place mentally and looking for fights where there shouldn't be any. I'm really sorry op, you didn't deserve any of the shit I originally said to you, I hope you have a good day :3
There’s something (🤷♂️) I don’t get here.
Are you thinking OP is pro-Stalin?
It's a reasonable assumption to make, considering this is basically a hexbear meme
So totally unnecessary. This sort of bait and switch factoid is what brought me left in the first place.
yo homie just wanted to let you know i see this and i’m sending love and support to you telepathically. we love a good character arc and i definitely could have picked a less inflammatory meme to post on my bi-daily excursion here—my sincere apologies that my post incurred a negative emotional toll on you. have an excellent day :3
I thought it was a safe assumption as well, but you're showing strength and good will by changing your comment. Take it easy pal!
lol hexbear is leaking again
I have a full instance block and it still isn't enough. Every day more braindead tankie takes make it through the filter.
"everything the USSR/CCP/DPRK did wrong is actually capitalist state intelligence propaganda" is so exhausting.
"Capitalism is bad" apparently no longer includes state capitalism or the political capital exploitation of the vanguard class that preceeds it.
What is this, Facebook forwards from babushka?
Now, I'm all for a Socialist utopia, but that guy did NOT do it right.
Authoritarian state =/= socialism
That's what happens when citizens break the law and retain their rights in the eyes of the state. They don't disappear or get mulched into the soil to increase yields.
Here's a fun article on Survivorship bias
That doesn't change the fact that US prisons are for-profit. And that corporations have huge lobbying powers. It's why marijuana laws are so harsh and disproportionate to actual heinous crimes. Stoners make a more complacent prisoners to make money off of then psychotic killers.
You're not wrong, here's a list of countries that may execute you for possession of canabis;
Bahrain, Brunei Darussalam, Iran, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Qatar, Singapore, Sudan, Taiwan and the USA.
Something tells me the USA has executed far fewer prisoners over this charge, leading back to the point I had originally made.
Only 8 percent of the US prison population is housed in for profit prisons. For profit prisons might be an okay place to start, but the entire US prison system is terrible and absolutely needs reform. There are a myriad of other things that need to be changed, just as much.
I don't live in the US but don't prisoners lose their right to vote and get elected for quite a while?
Depends on local laws of their state, but yes in most states you lose the right to vote while in prison and some places, like Florida, make it difficult to get your right to vote back. Not sure if the prison sentence being for a state or federal crime makes a difference or not.
Yea they lose some rights, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not on the list of rights removed. That's why the USA has larger prisoner populations.
That's what happens when citizens break the law and retain their rights in the eyes of the state
Is it? Why don't European countries have a similarly high incarceration rate then?
The US constitution permits slavery as punishment for crimes. So they made a whole set of laws to criminalize black lives and optimize enslaving them.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Reagan by Killer Mike, good song.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
There original SEO
why do people bring up other countries when USA is criticized, just admit you're in a shithole country
Because tankies love tu-quoque-arguments. That way they don't have to put all states in question
Because, you know, Soviet union (other country) in post himself
i’m saYING lmao.
Oh, is it revisionist fantasy day?
Insert 'always has been' meme.
To me it struck as "hey, America is just as bad as Stalin". I'd say, message well formed and nicely presented.
No offense OP, but source please? Random memes of Stalin are not the same as actual statistics and facts.
I'm not a tankie, fuck Stalin, but the stat is correct: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate
I don't know how well we know China's figures, though.
i also am not a tankie, fuck stalin, and thank you scv for doing my dirty work for me. tbh i didnt realize how bad it was here and i wouldn’t have posted what i thought was a funny little anti-copoganda meme if i had known. sorry yall 🥲
the United States has the sixth highest incarceration rate in the world, at 531 people per 100,000
That gives 0.5% of America by my math, which would be 0.02% of the world population. I have no idea where the 22% is coming from, it's off by 3 orders of magnitude.
Edit: I missed that it said prison population, I thought it was taking overall population.
Yeah, this is like how North Korea technically has the world's highest literacy rate. These statistics specifically exploit the transparency of western democracy on these issues by just lying about their own statistics. Anyone who doesn't think China has at least 2M people jailed is completely delusional. There's likely more than that in their Xinjiang work camps alone.
National Institute of Corrections: World Prison Population List (2015)
There are more than 10.35 million people incarcerated throughout the world with the most being in the United States--more than 2.2 million.
For profit prisons need to be abolished for sure But any downplaying of the horrendous gulags is just wrong https://youtu.be/dBjcT0QxSS0?si=jIvtvNe6j7lUiFxy
For profit prisons are a problem, but they only represent 8% of the prison population in the US. They only tell part of the story.
22% of the world's prison population. They hold a fifth of all of the prisoners in the world.
(I don't have a source for this, I'm just clarifying the meme.)
Don’t forget to factor in all the Uyghurs in camps in china and basically the entire population of North Korea to those numbers
Prison population. As in, 22% of all people imprisoned in the world are imprisoned in the US.
Given official numbers it's about right. What constitutes 'prison' population in certain South East Asian country, would change the ratio considerably.
In US this is more a sign of lack of equality, economic comfort and equal social rights leading to criminal behaviour rather than just down right oppression as in say Turkey for instance.
lack of equality, economic comfort and equal social rights
sorry, but what the fuck are those if not down right oppression?
it's oppression-lite.
Maybe tactical oppression or indirect oppression, I don't know? Down right oppression is...well quite direct. You don't spend years carving out a socio economic class for a certain group which forces them to remain in the lower rungs of society, eventually leading to higher likelihood of criminal behaviour. You incriminate and imprison them directly.
Yes those prisoners sadly still have rights and we can't mulch them up to enrich our soil or anything.
Here's a fun article on Survivorship Bias
Come on, don't be unfair. El Salvador and Turkmenistan have a higher percentage of their citizens in prisons!
The meme is pretty unclear tho. Ig you use the gulags and the ussr as a general point of evil and compare other evil(the us) to it?
based mods
But they were convicted, mostly.
Blocking OP for being a tankie rule
edit:Posting tankie memes while the mods for for OP. This community is getting blocked as well.
Hmm, i wonder which race dominates the us prison population? Were they also in the Soviet union?
LOL. the myth. like gulag or uigur camps easily exceed those numbers.
Nah instead Stalin just killed 6 million+ Russians, in Soviet Russia you don't need gulag when you have bullet.
“any and all of my country’s actions are beyond criticism because at least we didnt kill them”
An important part of critical thinking is the ability to see flaws in comparisons and arguments even when they point towards conclusions you agree with. It’s telling that you interpreted their comment the way you did.
Hey, hey. Come on, now. The United States doesn't just lock up brown people. We execute many on the spot, without provocation or probable cause. Credit where credit is due.
The US has killed dozens of times that through social murder.
I'm not saying that Stalin wasn't an autocratic dickhead, but if you're gonna compare him unfavorably to present day US, number of own citizens killed is a bad choice of metric 🤷
Famously no one died in the USSR due to social issues