The People's Cube
The People's Cube (TPC) is a group blog created by Oleg Atbashian that satirizes liberals and American Democrats. It is a Communist-themed humor website regarding important issues and people of the day. They provide original photos that mock liberals and their socialist buddies. A quick glance at their home page reveals artistic T-shirts for sale.
Contents
Founder's biography
Before moving to the United States in 1994, founder Oleg Atbashian lived in Ukraine, where he sometimes worked as a propaganda artist for the old Soviet Union, creating agitprop posters for the local Party Committee in a small town. During that time, Oleg says he "... witnessed the transition of Republics of the Soviet Union from corrupt socialism to corrupt kleptocracy."
When he arrived in the United States, Atbashian was puzzled by the "level of delusional affection for all things Left among the 'liberal' intellectual elites who take America's exclusive well-being for granted." At that time Oleg dismissed this "delusional affection" as silly and of little consequence.
Then 9/11 happened. Oleg witnessed that day from the base of the Twin Towers. "I'm still haunted by the horror I came to be a witness of," says Atbashian. "The subsequent blame-America attitude among the intellectual trend-setters enraged me; 'liberalism' no longer seemed laughable. It was dangerous suicidal madness that had to be confronted. I took up political activism."
Oleg's activism blossomed into the satirical street-theater group, "Communists for Kerry". Atbashian says that, "Communists for Kerry was started in July, 2004 as a six-member satirical group with the stated goals of helping George W. Bush get re-elected and having a lot of fun in the process. I was the group's writer, graphic artist, and webmaster. The project exceeded our expectations. Our last street theater event on Union Square in New York featured over 30 volunteers in communist costumes; many more people joined us online from all over the USA. We even had a sister group in Australia, and people wearing CFK shirts at a rally in Paris, France."
With The People's Cube, Oleg is hoping to turn it into "a nationwide community web portal of spontaneous political humor and parody for conservatives, libertarians, objectivists, and anyone who supports and celebrates America's freedoms, individual rights, and capitalism." He currently writes for The People's Cube under the pseudonym "Red Square".
Oleg and Bryan McCarthy (a recent immigrant from Ireland) also launched the commercial website Che-Mart, which sells products lampooning Che Guevara.
The actual cube
The People's Cube is named after its flagship product, a Rubik's Cube that is red on all six sides, thereby ensuring equal results for all who attempt to solve it, with no potential loss of self-esteem.
Google controversy
In early March 2006 it was noticed by The People's Cube that Google erased/blocked any link to TPC site in its search engine database. The People's Cube suspected it was a deliberate move by Google because of TPC's criticism of Censorship by Google in China, and also TPC's political views. Based on another known case of Google blocking individual political site pages. TPC then wrote letters to Google asking for an explanation, to which there was no immediate reply.
Once The People's Cube posted the topic of the Google removal it spread quickly through the blogosphere. Including a post by Google employee Matt Cutts on his blog, where he made the argument that TPC removal had to do with spam in the form of hidden text.
Google eventually restored TPC to their database and in a written response to TPC stated, "While we cannot comment on the individual reasons your page was removed, we'd like to assure you that we do not alter our search results based on political viewpoint or ideology."
Articles of notoriety
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Was Overreaction
The article is an attempt to ridicule those who have criticized Israel for a "disproportionate" use of force during its 2006 military conflict with Hezbollah by implying they would have done the same in reaction to the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising by Polish Jews against Nazi oppression during World War II.[1]
An image from this article began circulating via email, which was taken seriously by some people. Both Snopes.com[2] and About.com[3] have entries explaining the parody.
The People's Cube Pwns Iranian Propaganda
Press TV - Iran's first international news network, in an on-line article titled "Iranian Jews reject emigration report" published an image[4] from The People's Cube[5] article "Israel Dismantles; World's Problems End".[6] Press TV mistook the image as authentic, when in fact it was an altered image used to spoof the relationship between Iran's leadership and Israel. After two days Press TV realized their mistake and replaced the image.[7]
Tikritos: Cruel Ranch and Other Progressive Flavors
Advertising Age magazine, June 27, 2005 issue published an article referencing this piece.[8]
Neocons Imprison Mick Jagger Without Trial
This was reprinted in the New York Post, August 28, 2005.[9]
Wikipedia censorship
In January 2017, the Wikipedia® entry for The People's Cube was deleted from Wikipedia.[10][11][12]
The site's owner, Oleg Atbashian, responded with the following comment:
The People's Cube entry has just been purged from Wikipedia. Congratulations, comrades. We are now officially a non-site populated by non-persons sharing non-thoughts and making non-jokes. It makes me feel right at home, back in the Soviet Union, where an invisible hand obstructed any of my efforts to manifest my existence. How liberating. No visibility means no responsibility. Out of sight, out of mind.
As a linguistic experiment, scientists once had "out of sight, out of mind" translated into Russian and then back into English. The phrase returned as "invisible lunatics." That's who we are now. No need to think now, non-people. The Wiki-progs have turned us into invisible lunatics.
First the Wiki-prog-editors defaced it by removing all the valid content and references, leaving only disparaging language. Then they voted to delete it altogether because there was no valid content and references left.[13]
This episode highlights how easy it is for editors to abuse certain rules within Wikipedia in order to achieve a desired outcome.
See also
References
- ↑ Historians: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Was Overreaction
- ↑ Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
- ↑ CLAIM: 1943 New York Times Called Warsaw Ghetto Uprising an 'Over-Reaction'
- ↑ Iranian Jews reject emigration report
- ↑ The People's Cube Pwns Iranian Propaganda
- ↑ Israel Dismantles; World's Problems End
- ↑ How dumb are Iran's propagandists?
- ↑ Tikritos: Cruel Ranch and Other Progressive Flavors, Ad Age only published the jpg, it was not on its website. This link contains a scanned image of the page itself.
- ↑ Neocons Imprison Mick Jagger Without Trial
- ↑ Wikipedia Commissars Declare People's Cube Non-Site
- ↑ Wikipedia deletes The People’s Cube from history
- ↑ Wikipedia deletes its page on The People’s Cube, American Thinker
- ↑ The People's Cube has just been deleted from Wikipedia
