Dear Americans,
I was born in Czechoslovakia. Communist propaganda drilled into my head from childhood that the greatest villain in the world was the American president, and that America was the worst aggressor of all time. The caricatures in the communist magazine Dikobraz, which I enjoyed reading—because apart from the obligatory propaganda, it occasionally featured funny stories and cartoons—always portrayed American presidents as villains. I remember all their caricatures, from Carter to Reagan.
Soviet bloc propaganda looked like this
Their grotesquely distorted faces were meant to evoke disgust (according to the so-called psychology of disgust), and neurologically condition people to feel repulsion whenever they saw the American flag or an American president. An image of Uncle Sam as a hideous old man with Jewish features and bony claws was no different from the anti-Semitic propaganda of Der Stürmer under Hitler. We knew it was their shitty stuff, but that was our daily dose of dirt. We digested this mind virus every single day.
A typical Russian cartoon depicted American rich class as fatty dumb rich pigs
Communist propaganda gleefully reported every little incident of black demonstrators being beaten in Alabama, of black children being denied entry to schools, and of black workers being denied equal jobs and wages. Communists sneered at American racism, at the naive, fetishistic love of guns, and at the bravado and self-confidence of Americans—something they claimed was built on nothing more than TV propaganda about the greatest and most powerful empire. They somehow failed to notice that the Soviets were telling their own citizens the exact same thing to keep them obedient and ignorant.
Americans, according to communist propaganda, were a nation of dumb, obese, uneducated, violent alcoholics who worshipped oil, guns, and money.
Another piece of Soviet crap. They were wrong, right?
Forty years have passed, and today, I listen to what communists in my country say today. And if there’s anything truly hilarious, it’s this. You know what they say now? Wait for it.
They sing praises to your president. They adore him. They fawn over him, celebrate him, and write him thank-you notes. They bow and cherish. So where do you think things went wrong? I have one possible explanation.
The Communist Party, like all its Eastern European counterparts in the 90s, changed its colors overnight. With the help of Russian mobsters flashing their brand-new foreign passports, they started doing big business. They had everything a ruler needs to plunder a country—know-how, contacts, economic knowledge, business networks, and a vast web of people in the right places. As freshly minted capitalists, they placed their own people in banks. Those banks then loaned out vast sums of state money to these new capitalists. Naturally, those loans were never repaid—just like Donald Trump’s debts to Deutsche Bank. Instead, those banks went bankrupt, and their debts were covered by the state budget—by our taxes. We paid for those billion of dollars of our pockets.
Czechs are an incredibly hardworking and technically and artistically talented nation. In the 1990s, an economist calculated that if communists hadn’t siphoned billions from the state budget—with the help of Russian mafia—and stashed it in London and New York to buy football clubs, villas, and apartments in Trump Tower, the Czech Republic would be wealthier today than Switzerland or Liechtenstein.
Communists and their Russian criminal allies have always been seen as thieves in Czech lands, and rightly so. From the first day they seized power in 1948, they looted, stole, confiscated, destroyed, fired people, and annihilated everything of value. They wrecked the Czech currency. They wrecked the Czech economy. They destroyed Czech agriculture and what was once a highly advanced Czech industry.
You, dear Americans, have probably never heard this story. Honestly, we were ashamed—ashamed of how naive we were to let ourselves be robbed of most of our national wealth. We knew the communists for what they were. And yet, we still couldn’t stop them and their Russian allies from ransacking our country again in the 90s.
But frankly, when we see that you elected the King of Commies—the man who helped them funnel their loot across borders—as your president, we don’t feel so stupid anymore.
We don’t want you to end up like we did. We like you. We love seeing you drink beer in our beautiful country and admire our centuries-old Gothic cathedrals. We used to love Johny Cash, Dolly Parton, CCR, Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Nirvana…you name it.
And of course we still adore Bruce Willis, shouting Yippee-Ki-Yay, Motherfcker!* We still believe that the communist propaganda was a hateful crap.
Czech republic is the European Shire
We are a small nation. But during World War II, we found the courage to assassinate Hitler’s second-in-command and paid the ultimate price—many men, women and children were slaughtered in retaliation. We are as hardworking as hobbits, and our country looks a lot like the Shire. We look up to great nations. We admire your space exploration, your universities, your art and literature. And we don’t want to watch the same parasites devour your wealth.
Stay strong, America. We shall overcome.
about author
Alex Alvarova is Czech-Canadian author and communication expert.
A recognized authority in political marketing and public relations, a sought-after seminar leader, facilitator, podcaster and public speaker. In 2017 she wrote The Industry of Lies, a non-fiction work that introduces, outlines and fully supports a core concept: Russia used the 2013 presidential election in the Czech Republic as a trial run to perfect its hybrid-warfare aggression for altering the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential elections. In 2021, she published Feeding The Demons: The conquerors of America, a political thriller on behavioral propaganda. She wrote numerous expert articles on political marketing and algorithmic propaganda.​​ Together with her co-host, expert on social media algorithms, Josef Holy, she hosts a czech podcast called Canaries In The Net, on algorithmic propaganda and AI
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Thank you for this thoughtful article. It makes me want to drink beer and listen to Dolly Parton with hobbits by cathedrals. The Czech Republic is on my bucket list now!
He’s not a communist nor is Putin. They are simple autocrats pursuing unlimited power. Putin already reached his goal almost 20 years ago while Trump just started.