I see a lot of old Soviet Bear crap that looks like either “I refuse to draw a cute bear being scary rather than cute” or “They said to draw the USSR as a grizzly bear, they didn’t say it had to be a scary bear”.
I mean, people were genuinely that scared of communism. The Cold War was an absurd time, the Red Scare never really ended, and in the little conservative de-facto theocratic backwater towns throughout rural North America that no one really pays any attention to, you can see exactly what Cold War Christianity was and still is. But also, there absolutely were Soviet sympathisers, McCarthy was crazy but a lot of crazies tend to grasp the edges of the truth, and I wouldn’t be surprised if at least some of the stuff that portrays communists as badass, or the Soviet Bear as hug shaped, came from our own party members and sympathisers, or just the sorts of people who thought both sides were wrong or “hey, the commies do suck, but they helped us beat the fascists, and how we screwed them over after throwing them at the Nazis just wasn’t right”. (Which is both a thing I suspect some folks truly believed in the 50s as the Cold War ramped up, and a line I have used on liberals while discussing McCarthyism.)
I happen to know a bear who is absolutely a Maoist. With nasty sectarian tendencies. He’s lucky he’s hug shaped and that I will put up with a lot for bear hugs.
Comrade Cuddles would like to know “are you a Maoist or are you wrong?” and “do you need a hug, comrade?” But careful what you say, he also says “no hugs for revisionists”. And he thinks everyone’s a revisionist.
I see a lot of old Soviet Bear crap that looks like either “I refuse to draw a cute bear being scary rather than cute” or “They said to draw the USSR as a grizzly bear, they didn’t say it had to be a scary bear”.
I mean, people were genuinely that scared of communism. The Cold War was an absurd time, the Red Scare never really ended, and in the little conservative de-facto theocratic backwater towns throughout rural North America that no one really pays any attention to, you can see exactly what Cold War Christianity was and still is. But also, there absolutely were Soviet sympathisers, McCarthy was crazy but a lot of crazies tend to grasp the edges of the truth, and I wouldn’t be surprised if at least some of the stuff that portrays communists as badass, or the Soviet Bear as hug shaped, came from our own party members and sympathisers, or just the sorts of people who thought both sides were wrong or “hey, the commies do suck, but they helped us beat the fascists, and how we screwed them over after throwing them at the Nazis just wasn’t right”. (Which is both a thing I suspect some folks truly believed in the 50s as the Cold War ramped up, and a line I have used on liberals while discussing McCarthyism.)
Look at this cute hex bear:
Yep, he’s a cute one. Lots of bear to hug right there, himbs chonky. I like.
Mmmmm, commie bears. Cute.
I happen to know a bear who is absolutely a Maoist. With nasty sectarian tendencies. He’s lucky he’s hug shaped and that I will put up with a lot for bear hugs.
Comrade Cuddles would like to know “are you a Maoist or are you wrong?” and “do you need a hug, comrade?” But careful what you say, he also says “no hugs for revisionists”. And he thinks everyone’s a revisionist.