I like that we have/need new books to re-report information that was widely known decades ago because of how easy it is to sell propaganda to the west. We have actual documentaries, made by the west at the time of Tiananmen, that completely contradicts the massacre narrative that was invented years later. lol. Libs really will believe anything as long as it comes from the mouth of some oligarch backed talking head.
The key reason this kind of lazy propaganda works is because people want to believe it. It leverages the latent racism and capitalist realism people have internalized living in decaying western societies. The idea that a country that doesn't follow liberal ideology could be more successful is a complete anathema to these people.
Indeed. "The west is the best" is the prevailing thought in the zeitgeist of the west. So as bad as things can be in the west, at least they are still "the best."
But if other nations actually practice "freedom and liberty" better than they do, despite not screaming about how "free" they are all the time, it calls the whole western narrative into question. And causes a lot of cognitive dissonance. And people in the west are not given the tools they need to deal with that, so they just lash out and get angry, or find an easy excuse to ignore it.
Have you seen that chart that tracks how Americans went from credditing the USSR for making the greatest sacrifice in WWII and contributing the most to victory in 1946, to completely removing the Soviet contribution from the picture by the 80s? It's really sad. The Red Army deserves better.