This is a misinformation meme that gets reposted from time to time. The USSR at it’s worst had about 2x more prisoners than the USA at it’s worst (so far).
With the new ice budget it seems like the USA republicans will be trying to beat Stalin’s numbers, but so far, this meme is still blatant misinformation.
Another of my comments from then, with some actual statistics for the USSR:
I find back about that it peaked at 1.4% or 1.5% in 1950 in a few sources: 2.5m to 2.7m prisoners for about 180m citizens. So significantly higher than what you found.
Having read testimonies of the nazino island gulag and a few Russian prisoner novels, the Soviet prison system really shouldn’t be compared to the USA one. Those percentages might not be far off (“only” 2x more at the worst), but numbers don’t tell everything. Stalin’s reign of terror was so much worse than the modern day USA dystopia. Compare the USA to modern day Canada or western Europe and it will highlight much better how bad it is doing.
Yet it still wants to draw the impression that the then USA prison system is somehow comparable or worse to Stalin’s gulags. That’s the thing about implying something: even if it’s not explicitly stated, it’s still part of the message.
Omissions of key facts, misrepresentation, just asking questions, dog whistles, unspoken implications, … None of those are explicitly stating what they are implying, so should I just accept stinking memes like those because whatever falsehood they are implying is not spelled out word for word? Well I’m not, I’m going to continue calling them out as misinformation.
I’ve made 2 other comments in the oldest comment chain of why I find this particular meme so awful, but I’m not going to give the same replies in each new chain.
Do you not understand math, percentages, or numbers? Or that it’s speaking of today, and not what it was 40 years ago?
The claim is that RIGHT NOW if you were to count up every prisoner from around the globe, 22% would US prisoners.
Now I have no idea if that statement is actually true or not, but the arguments you’re making against it have dick all to do with what the meme claims.
USA by itself is not 22% of the world population. No, I didn’t even do the math yet…let’s see, if there’s 8 Billion people, and USA has 300 million, that’s uh…less than 10%, let’s leave it at that.
But the meme was not about that percentage, Stalin’s ussr had a much higher % of the population incarcerated and consequently also very likely a much higher percentage of the world prison population than the USA has now. This is not checked in the fact check and I doubt enough numbers are even available, it’s just deduction from population numbers. The meme doesn’t care about it either, it’s just doing Godwin’s law to draw a comparison of USA prisons to something like this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazino_tragedy It might as well have been a meme comparing Nazi concentration camps with USA prisons (not the new republican ones that are being opened now, but the ones at the time the meme was made). It’s a completely misappropriate comparison to make.
It wouldn’t matter if Stalin had 80% of the world’s prison population… the meme is meant to shock you that the USA could even be in the same order of magnitude by having nearly a quarter of the world’s prison population in modern times while having less than 5% of the world’s total population. That seems stalinesque.
Compare it to western Europe or Canada and people will be shocked as well.
Compare it to Stalin’s gulags or call it stalinesque and I am appalled. Stalin’s gulags were so much worse that the comparison is either made out of historical revisionism or out of ignorance. And since this meme first appeared in a period when Putin was working on historical revisionism, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if it was deliberate misinformation.
They aren’t disputing the information presented. Simply the context of associating it with an image of stalin. Sort of sane washing him. It’s definitely bad that the United States does this. But it’s also definitely bad that it keeps getting reposted in this sort of context as a propaganda tool. Two things can be bad. Why couldn’t meme just ask what country does this? And then end with the United states. And I’d argue it would be just as impactful. Without having to downplay the horrors of another group.
This is a misinformation meme that gets reposted from time to time. The USSR at it’s worst had about 2x more prisoners than the USA at it’s worst (so far).
With the new ice budget it seems like the USA republicans will be trying to beat Stalin’s numbers, but so far, this meme is still blatant misinformation.
A link to an old discussion about it: https://lemmy.world/comment/6354847
Another of my comments from then, with some actual statistics for the USSR:
I find back about that it peaked at 1.4% or 1.5% in 1950 in a few sources: 2.5m to 2.7m prisoners for about 180m citizens. So significantly higher than what you found.
On Quora a Russian posted a nice graph, but I don’t see a source for the data : https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-Soviet-citizens-were-incarcerated-at-any-given-time-The-US-has-0-7-of-its-population-in-prison-and-I-was-wondering-how-that-compares-to-the-old-USSR
Having read testimonies of the nazino island gulag and a few Russian prisoner novels, the Soviet prison system really shouldn’t be compared to the USA one. Those percentages might not be far off (“only” 2x more at the worst), but numbers don’t tell everything. Stalin’s reign of terror was so much worse than the modern day USA dystopia. Compare the USA to modern day Canada or western Europe and it will highlight much better how bad it is doing.
If you read closely there’s a second line in the picture saying “just kidding, that’s in the US today”. No claim is made about the USSR under Stalin.
My Brother in Christ that is a literal picture of Stalin.
Yet it still wants to draw the impression that the then USA prison system is somehow comparable or worse to Stalin’s gulags. That’s the thing about implying something: even if it’s not explicitly stated, it’s still part of the message.
Omissions of key facts, misrepresentation, just asking questions, dog whistles, unspoken implications, … None of those are explicitly stating what they are implying, so should I just accept stinking memes like those because whatever falsehood they are implying is not spelled out word for word? Well I’m not, I’m going to continue calling them out as misinformation.
I’ve made 2 other comments in the oldest comment chain of why I find this particular meme so awful, but I’m not going to give the same replies in each new chain.
Do you not understand math, percentages, or numbers? Or that it’s speaking of today, and not what it was 40 years ago?
The claim is that RIGHT NOW if you were to count up every prisoner from around the globe, 22% would US prisoners.
Now I have no idea if that statement is actually true or not, but the arguments you’re making against it have dick all to do with what the meme claims.
USA by itself is not 22% of the world population. No, I didn’t even do the math yet…let’s see, if there’s 8 Billion people, and USA has 300 million, that’s uh…less than 10%, let’s leave it at that.
It’s talking about the world’s PRISON population not the world’s population as a whole 🤦
Lol. Not population. PRISON population. Jesus
1950 is 75 years ago, not 40. I won’t bother with the rest of your math, just thought I’d pick the low hanging fruit.
Why do you think it’s comparing that at all? It gives no hint to the gulag, USSR, or any other time period.
What direct comparison are you talking about?
The only comparison is the image of the readers head of stalin ussr and the USA. Their is nothing direct other than the 22% claim.
The only claim it makes about the ussr is that was ruled by stalin.
I don’t really uave a horse in this, but why won’t you address the actual claim made in the meme?
You called it misinformation, but never once contradicted the actual claim: The US prison population is 22% of the world prison population
This is an old meme, it’s easy to look up a fact check, here’s one: https://www.truthorfiction.com/under-stalin-repression-was-so-severe-that-soviet-gulags-held-22-of-the-worlds-prison-population/
But the meme was not about that percentage, Stalin’s ussr had a much higher % of the population incarcerated and consequently also very likely a much higher percentage of the world prison population than the USA has now. This is not checked in the fact check and I doubt enough numbers are even available, it’s just deduction from population numbers. The meme doesn’t care about it either, it’s just doing Godwin’s law to draw a comparison of USA prisons to something like this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazino_tragedy It might as well have been a meme comparing Nazi concentration camps with USA prisons (not the new republican ones that are being opened now, but the ones at the time the meme was made). It’s a completely misappropriate comparison to make.
It wouldn’t matter if Stalin had 80% of the world’s prison population… the meme is meant to shock you that the USA could even be in the same order of magnitude by having nearly a quarter of the world’s prison population in modern times while having less than 5% of the world’s total population. That seems stalinesque.
Compare it to western Europe or Canada and people will be shocked as well.
Compare it to Stalin’s gulags or call it stalinesque and I am appalled. Stalin’s gulags were so much worse that the comparison is either made out of historical revisionism or out of ignorance. And since this meme first appeared in a period when Putin was working on historical revisionism, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if it was deliberate misinformation.
They aren’t disputing the information presented. Simply the context of associating it with an image of stalin. Sort of sane washing him. It’s definitely bad that the United States does this. But it’s also definitely bad that it keeps getting reposted in this sort of context as a propaganda tool. Two things can be bad. Why couldn’t meme just ask what country does this? And then end with the United states. And I’d argue it would be just as impactful. Without having to downplay the horrors of another group.