I felt the need to share something personal about myself to one of the most welcoming, great communities I've ever had the honor to call myself a part of. You can make posts lamenting my radicalisation all you want, but seriously that shit is none of your business and the fact that you decided to deride me for being "tricked" or something makes me really mad. Do you think some internet strangers can automatically re-write 10 years of the US school system's imprint on my brain? The people on hexbear were everything the people on your instance claimed to be and more, these "genocidal tankies" showed patience, compassion, and empathy to me, and you think you can just condesendingly harp on about how i've been brainwashed? seeing hexbear made me decide to take a second look at my worldview, and really research who i was, what i believed, and what i stood for. If you think you can reduce that to me being brainwashed, you can go to hell.
fuck you and never post about me again.
(what community do i post this to? cth should be fine right? just delete it and dm me if i have to move it :P )
Minor quibbling for the sake of ~~post engagement~~ clarity: The term "brainwash" is a literal translation of a term coined by Mao, itself a pun on a ritualistic "heartwashing" that was customary to spiritually "clean" yourself (before? after?) entering a temple. Mao was using it as basically a jocular way to refer to political reeducation. The literal translation itself was first produced by some niche orientalist author who was making theories about chicom mind control powers. It was then adopted by the establishment after those soldiers in the Korean War were, in fact, rehabilitated by China* and renounced the war, confessed to using chemical and biological weapons (which never happened according to the notoriously honest US State Department), and in some cases even fully refusing to be brought back to America, instead choosing to live in the PRC or DPRK.
Another "fun" one is "Ostalgie," a German portmanteau of "Ost" (east) and "Nostalgie" (nostalgia), which is the way that German popular culture characterizes the feelings of the former East Germans who preferred East Germany. It's another instance of pathologizing popular sentiments by treating them as some bizarre and peculiar psychological phenomenon rather than accepting that people have reason to think what they think.
*I think it was mostly by China, since China had a pretty dominant role late in the war, but that's not to say there was no Korean involvement or that every case with every supposedly-brainwashed prisoner was the same.