GarbageShoot

You have observed real problems but are interpreting them the wrong way. Should we take different positions? Absolutely not. Should we not always pick fights on this when there are (within a given conversation) sometimes more useful things to focus on? Sure.

Never, ever lie and agree that "reds killed trillions" "haircuts are banned in communist north korea" etc, and if that's all someone has to say, then leaping to find some conciliatory subject is not helpful, but realistically in a given conversation you can only discuss so many things at once, and you are unlikely to get to every point you could make, so it makes sense to prioritize relevant topics of practical importance and fundamentally the USSR is usually not the very highest on that list if you are discussing literally anything to do with the modern day.

But fundamentally we must support the DPRK in its historic struggle against American imperialism and people who don't understand why this is should eventually learn it, because there is a palpable difference between people who get this and those who don't. In the context of people on this dumb agglomeration of websites, there is no such thing as an anti-imperialist ideology that does not hold this position, just social chauvinism at best.

Our infamy remains to our advantage, because the neoliberal idiots at the core of other userbases make us out to be monsters even though our positions are much more humane. You are right that it can be a wedge, but it is often a wedge in our favor as well!

To be fair, the Wall Street Bull exists

And exactly how much importance should I assign to this niche internet forum's opinion of the editor of a small magazine?

This is such a cowardly deflection. If the moderation had any sense, you'd be banned specifically for this because it demonstrates total bad faith.

It's pure parasociality

Remind me where Parenti uncritically parroted "The Cleanest Race"

I know some lore about "The Cleanest Race" because I read through a good bit of it a while ago. Let me tell you, that shit is unhinged. The author claims that a painting of a mountain stream is symbolically representing "the lofty heights and purity of the Korean race" with zero evidence, when it's literally just a pretty Korean landscape painting.

It might be pertinent to question how when they left and why factor into it, though that is probably a doxxing risk to share here.

What you're talking about was also very much the basis for the idea of the "New Soviet Man" and versions of this can be found even in Lenin's writings. We can at least see that some forms of sexism were systemically combated to the point that even the now-former Soviet states have much higher rates of women in STEM and such.

That too. Although, I wonder what the terms of the embargos are, and what north korea has to do on their side to appease the west and allow trade.

Most of the recent-ish embargoes (last few decades) are most directly the US and friends punishing the DPRK's development of nuclear weaponry. This is plainly because the nuclear arms are one of the DPRK's strongest deterrents to US invasion, since it's not as though the DPRK wants to use those weapons or intends to except under the circumstances of being invaded by foreign powers.

Hilariously, it has realer-looking hair than he does and I'm not even saying that as a joke

I'm definitely giving an interpretation, to be clear, though there is some evidence for it. I think there ended up being an aside, for example, that L's given name was really considered to be "L" by the shinigami eyes (with his legal surname still being needed for the Death Note), though whether it was because he thought of himself as L or because others thought of him as L or something else is never explained.