I Didn't Know This

The guy who owns The People's Cube used to be a real live Soviet spinmeister.

"He's funny. Wow, is he funny, yet his humor is serious. That's talent, my friend, to actually be funny, with a compelling purpose. Meet Oleg Atbashian, a former agitprop artist from the Soviet Union. The posters, the banners, the slogans. He's one of the many people who created the Soviet Union's symbols and political sloganeering, all that Workers Paradise stuff we hated, the kind of cliched posters Barack Obama's campaign is producing. It's true the change for Americaleft relies on symbolism over substance. They have to. It's all they have. Symbols, speeches, posters, politically correct language and harangues."

Some great examples of his hilarious graphics at American Thinker, too. I especially like this one:



Read the comments thread, too. I like these two:

"Many of us who came from the Communist 'paradase' are like Oleg. Alas, nobody listens to us because Americans know better about everything including our past. Alas, American culture is very arrogant one. That is why I told my American friends on many occasions - 'You think that I came from your day before yesterday. It is just the opposite. I came from your day after tomorrow'. It looks like Obama does his best to make it real. Thanks G_d that Oleg was noticed. A tiny glimmer of hope.

Posted by: Cassandra "

"Nine years ago I sat at a wedding reception with a couple who had been planners at the Tiananmen Square protests, they were forced to flee China and are currently medical doctors in the United States. For me the chance to talk to people who had witnessed such history was fascinating, unfortunately for us we were at a table of "progressives", at least one of whom had worked in the Clinton White House. That was the first time that I had ever heard anybody outside of the Chinese government state that the "Tiananmen Massacre" was really just simple Western propaganda. After dinner I got to talk to them about their experiences and the first thing that either one of them wanted to know was "what is wrong with them?" The woman commented that everybody at the table was well dressed, they appeared successful and well educated yet they became downright boorish when the problems of communism and tyranny were brought to light from the life stories of their tablemates. That dinner served as an eye opener for my new friends and another lesson for me.

Posted by: EL Rider"

And a response from the great lampooner himself:

"Wencel Ebats wrote: "Oleg seems no revolutionary thinker (anti-revolutionary, as it were). And he DID assist the murderous USSR in duping and oppressing its own people."

I guess that's what you get for not explaining properly that my work as a propaganda artist was only a 3-year stint after college, and that it was followed by a much longer period of lampooning and satirizing the Soviet regime and its leaders - not exactly a career-enhancing move in the USSR. And, as I also found out the hard way, neither was it a career-enhancing move in the United States because the "establishment" on this side of the Iron Curtain was just as dogmatic about "progressivism" as were the objects of my satire. And THIS is the real story of my life - not "assisting the murderous USSR in duping and oppressing its own people."

Posted by: Oleg Atbashian"