TVTropes doing a lot of covering for western imperialists

Some Highlights -

China: the People’s Republic of China. It’s your usual garden-variety authoritarian state (though somewhat less so in the decades following the de facto abolition of communism by the Dengists in the 1980s), with its share of atrocities and bent on getting every one of its billion-plus people to agree with the government’s policy. […] China is a historically authoritarian state and was poor long before the Communists came into power, and given its historically ridiculously huge population, perhaps it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that China has little regard for the concept of “inalienable human rights”.

Dengists BTFO :deng-stoned: (jk I love u all)

Vietnam: During the Vietnam War, North Vietnam was officially known as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. It was, of course, a brutal and repressive dictatorship that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, banned and jailed all political opposition, and enacted state control of the economy to a far greater degree than even other Asian socialist states. The modern Vietnam is a lesser version. It’s now known as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and while it’s still among the more authoritarian countries in the world, it’s nowhere near as brutal as it used to be (it’s nowhere near as poor, either). Amusingly, it fits this trope in an another, positive way: ever since the 1986 economic reforms (much like what China was doing at the time, albeit to a lesser extent), Vietnam is no longer a socialist economy, despite many a Suspiciously Specific Denial asserting the contrary.

Venezuela: the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. After he took power in 1999, socialist strongman Hugo Chávez chose the name as a nod to Simón Bolívar, hero of Venezuela’s war for independence in the 1810s and 1820s. […] the “Bolivarian Republic” was characterized by repression and dictatorship (plus complete dysfunction under Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro), its insistence that it endorses democracy to the contrary.

Canada is probably the best example of this trope inverted. While its current official name is simply Canada, its former official name (now rarely used, but still considered appropriate nowadays) is the sinister-sounding Dominion of Canada, yet the country is a relatively prosperous, stable democracy. The term dominion is a legacy of The British Empire, where it was used for colonies with a greater level of autonomy.

United Kingdom: Although not an authoritarian dictatorship, the UK’s name, or at least, the “United” part of it is oftentimes merely nominal

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