I think it is highly debateable that having Nazis in a country is justification to invade them, because that's a justification for practically any country to invade practically any country. Especially when the Invading country is also full of neo-nazis.

Read up on the Chinese Ethnic Unity Law

Some exerpts:

Article 4 In advancing the building of the community for the Chinese nation, economic, political, cultural, social and ecological-civilization development shall be coordinated; common prosperity and development for all ethnic groups shall be fully realized; the people of all ethnic groups shall be ensured the ability to jointly act as masters of the country; a shared spiritual home for the Chinese nation shall be built; all-round mutual embeddedness and extensive interaction, exchange and integration among all ethnic groups shall be promoted; an ecological home in which humanity and nature coexist in harmony shall be jointly protected; and the Chinese nation shall be developed into a community with a stronger sense of identity and greater cohesion.

Article 5 Citizens of the People’s Republic of China are equal before the law. All ethnic groups in the People’s Republic of China are equal. Discrimination against or oppression of any ethnic group is prohibited.

Article 6 A sense of community for the Chinese nation is the foundation of ethnic unity. The state shall increase commonality while respecting and accommodating differences, promote mutual support and harmonious coexistence among all ethnic groups, and safeguard the great unity of the Chinese nation. Acts that undermine ethnic unity or create ethnic separatism are prohibited.

Article 8 The state shall uphold and improve the system of regional ethnic autonomy and safeguard national unity and ethnic unity.

Article 9 The state shall govern ethnic affairs in accordance with law, protect the lawful rights and interests of the people of all ethnic groups in accordance with law, strengthen publicity and education concerning the Constitution and laws, enhance the awareness of the state, citizenship and the rule of law among the people of all ethnic groups, safeguard the unity, dignity and authority of the socialist rule of law, and modernize the system and capacity for governance of ethnic affairs within the framework of the rule of law.

Article 15 The state shall comprehensively promote and popularize the standard spoken and written Chinese language. No organization or individual may obstruct citizens from learning or using the standard spoken and written Chinese language. Schools and other educational institutions shall use the standard spoken and written Chinese language as the basic language of education and instruction. The state shall promote the learning of Putonghua by preschool children and the basic mastery of the standard spoken and written Chinese language by young people who complete compulsory education. State organs shall use the standard spoken and written Chinese language for official purposes. Where documents are required by relevant laws to be issued in the spoken and written language of an ethnic minority, versions in both the standard spoken and written Chinese language and the minority language shall be provided. Where state organs, social organizations, enterprises, public institutions or other social organizations need to use both the standard spoken and written Chinese language and the spoken and written language of an ethnic minority in a public setting, prominence shall be given to the standard spoken and written Chinese language in terms of placement, order and other respects. The state shall respect and protect the learning and use of the spoken and written languages of ethnic minorities, promote their standardization, normalization and digital development, and support the preservation, collation, study and use of ancient books and records in minority languages.

Article 16 Schools and other educational institutions of all types and at all levels shall carry the requirements for fostering a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation through the entire education process and incorporate them into an education system combining classroom instruction, social practice, themed education and online education. Schools and other educational institutions of all types and at all levels shall use state-compiled textbooks in accordance with relevant state provisions. Education administrative departments shall implement the requirements for fostering a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation in the preparation and review of teaching materials. The departments of the State Council responsible for education administration, ethnic affairs and related work shall organize the preparation of series of textbooks or readers concerning the community for the Chinese nation.

Article 29 The state shall enhance mutual learning and integration among the cultures of all ethnic groups and encourage all ethnic groups to appreciate one another’s fine traditional cultures and learn one another’s spoken and written languages. People’s governments at all levels shall support cultural workers and relevant entities in creating and presenting literary and artistic works that are grounded in Chinese culture and reflect interaction, exchange and integration among all ethnic groups. People’s governments at all levels shall support libraries, museums, cultural centers and stations, memorial halls, art museums, science and technology museums, workers’ cultural palaces, children’s and youth palaces and other public cultural-service entities in conducting exhibitions and exchange activities concerning the history of the Chinese nation, national prosperity and development, and related subjects. People’s governments at all levels shall draw on the Chinese nation’s rich cultural, sporting and other resources to encourage and support exchange activities, including traditional festivals of the Chinese nation, folk culture events and sporting competitions, that are welcomed and jointly participated in by the people of all ethnic groups.

So scary for our government with mandated representation of minorities to wish to encourage cultural exchange while instituting a common tongue to allow for our social and physical mobility while continuing to encourage the teaching of minority languages and writing systems. 😱

Hey bud I don’t actually think you can get any further to the left than anarchism.

How do you explain the US wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan?

The US population elected a president who was promising to end the Afghanistan War in 2008. That war ended in 2021. That's at least 12 years of war against the wishes of the majority.

Good question. For most of those years (goes for both wars) they just straight up lied about how bad things were going. Then there's the propaganda. Holy hell, so much propaganda. Like not saying you're wrong by asking that question but there are ways of selling unpopular wars.

Added to this, capitalists fucking LOVE wars. And without breaking capitalism all they're really going to do about the majority coming out against war is say 'yeah, what the fuck are you gonna do about it then?'

Incorrect. Anarchism is against unjust hierarchies. It can absolutely be organized.

How do you explain the US wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan?

The Americans were asking for it. Did you see how they were dressed?

History says you are so, so wrong. Indisputably wrong

You're either with US, or you're with the Terrorists Communists!

Lazy

You can make the argument for Russia but I really don’t understand how China, a country that has been at peace for over 40 years and which is developing an alternative economic sphere such that countries are not forced to accept whatever conditions the West imposes, could possibly be considered “imperialist.”

Any conflict between the US and China in the Pacific Rim is described as "US Imperialism" from the Chinese perspective and "Chinese Imperialism" from the US perspective.

Any claim China makes along its border regions is Imperialism. Any naval actions made by the Chinese military is Imperialism. Any police action inside the recognized territory of China is imperialism. The entire 1.4B person population is routinely described as a Han monoculture.

The national economic plan is at once a failed project, doomed to collapse within the year, and a sinister plot to steal global market share for the most villainous purposes imaginable. China is, at once, the world's biggest polluter and the perpetuator of a string of environmentalist "hoaxes". It's producing commodities, like consumer electronics and cars and steel girders and plastic widgets, too cheaply and quickly. But it's also dogged by inefficient bureaucracy and COVID restrictions and an inherent cultural disinterest in entrepreneurship, so the country is constantly lacking essentials.

So they need to go out and steal other people's stuff, whether its Taiwanese semiconductors or Middle Eastern fossil fuels or East African mineral wealth. And the government accomplishes this by tricking idiot liberals into doing business with them, while secretly infiltrating their societies with the most black-handed saboteurs and spies and assassins.

China is ontologically evil. Its politics is so authoritarian that the people don't even realize they are being oppressed. But also the people DO realize they are oppressed and yearn for freedom. And if you don't understand all of this to be true, you're either an idiot or a LLM programmed to ignore the obvious and trick other people just like an Evil Chinese would.

Westerners do imperialism, and that's wrong. But westerners also say "Imperialism is wrong", which proves that they are critically thinking.

The Insidious Evil Easterners do double-plus imperialism, which is even wronger. And they don't even realize its wrong, because they have been brainwashed.

That's why Westerners need to fight the Insidious East and defeat them. Then the people will be liberated and the West - which was only doing imperialism in self-defense - can finally enact a lasting peace that will bring about a global utopia.

Most idiot leftists don't get this, because they flunked out of college and don't understand how economics works.

Like, just rhetorically? Or are you jet-setting between the two battlefronts?

Ironically, calling anarchism "disorganization" is almost always a result of capitalist/authoritarian propaganda about what anarchism is. Sorry you can't conceive of a world where people organize themselves without the use of oppressive violence.

Americans will ingest American Propaganda from an American billionaire backed by American industry in pursuit of American foreign policy and get called "Dupes of an Evil Foreign Insurgency" by their next-door neighbors who have been ingesting slightly different American Propaganda.

If you think the US wanted Ukraine in NATO for the good of the Ukrainian people, you’re delusional.

If the Ukrainians had just been included into NATO, the war would have never happened. That's because the Russians are rational actors and long-term planners, who recognize a long-term disaster of a military conflict when they see one and always play a conservative, largely non-military game when they can.

The Ukrainians, once included into NATO, would immediately become a net asset for the organization thanks to their large and rapidly growing economy. Their top-tier military would add to the common defense. And it wouldn't be long before they were inducted into the EU, because Western Europeans love Eastern immigrants and transplants crossing into their country en mass.

I think its abundantly clear that including Ukraine into NATO - and eventually the EU - would be a win-win for everyone involved. Even Russia. And the only reason Ukraine wasn't added to NATO/EU before the war started is... uh... hmm...

Why didn't Ukraine get admitted before the war started? Anyone remember?

I guess the people running NATO/EU are just stupid.

"We can talk about socialized healthcare and the evils of capitalism all day, but before we go any further I need you to pass this two-factor authentication by criticizing China and Russia."

They brigaded you Dagnet. RIP.

Purged like their authoritarian heroes wished for dissidents, downvotes to the back of the head. :,(

but that's not even what this post is suggesting we do. It's just recognizing that China and Russia are also imperialist states, so we should be mindfull of where the information we consume comes from, since they're all shoving propaganda down our throats and pitting us against one another, for their own imperialist intentions.

What qualifiers are there that we're the most propagandized country in the world? I'm of the opinion that that's an incredibly hard thing to truly know and quantify.

Definitely the latter.

And so they prove my point. Luckily those downvotes are as meaningless as their opinions

Don't be so hasty!

We love propaganda from ANY source so long as it gives us that sweet xenophobic dopamine hit!

That explains the hammock.

I find it incredible funny that I have seen many other people (me included) criticizing their country, all of the countries really... but I have never seen Objection saying a negative word about China. Not even once. On any matter.

Edit: I stand corrected. I though Objection to be either a hypocrite, a shill or a bot, or otherwise unable to criticize China. They changed my opinion by showing they are capable of criticising China on issues they find fault with.

Do they (China) try to expand their territory?

Well, they quitely took over what, 10% of Bhutan, since 2021 - and noone cares, because noone cares about Bhutan, right? Bhutan didn't sold those territories, and isn't even trying to defend them, because how would that work.

And that it is militarily a very good position in case they'd want to expand into India, that's just a coincidence, I'm sure.

I mean yeah, I get it, compare it to the empire of evil and it looks benign. But it isn't good, just a lesser of two evils.

Separate comment because its easier to talk that way:

EU is not imperialist. They are a function of like global capitalism, which is imperialist, but EU is not imperialist.

That sentence does not make sense. Its a shade of green but not green makes no fucking sense.

having Nazi symbolism

A fringe party with less than 1% popular support (could not find the actual number, IIRC about 12k votes total) tied to a far right paramilitary group of few hundred people does not mean a country is Nazi. Its as stupid as idk, like saying China is Nazi because of Kuomintang.

Or alternatively, if fringe support is enough to make Ukrainie a Nazi hotspot, then USA is Nazi Grand Poobah.

Dealers choice.

One of the bigger jokes of the whole "Russian Propaganda!" line has been how much modern Russian Propaganda is coming out of the same far-right white nationalist clearinghouses as the OG American shit. FFS, we've had everyone from Steve Bannon to Ross Douthet to Rod Dreher piling into Eastern Europe to saturate their media with the most dumb-baby US-grade bullshit. And then it's come right back around again, like the distant echo of a particularly wet fart.

What people scream about from back in 2016, or the Tim Poole shit as recently as 2024, is perfectly interchangeable with your standard issue Rush Limbaugh / Ben Shapiro western chauvinism going back to the 1960s.

Ah yes, let's complain when people post factual memes about countries that both commit genocide, and are both heavily invested in destabilizing western governments

I take it you're one of those "free" thinkers too?

How hard is it to recognize that, yes, the US is fucking evil, yes, always has been, but that the exact same goes for Russia and China? Ooohh, what a concept, multiple parties being evil? *brain explodes

The ways chauvanism can manifest and reassert itself, even when people rational recognize it as a bad thing in the abstract, are so crazy. The internalized indoctrination works like some kind of demon constantly whispering in people's heads, trying to get them to come back around to "America #1!"

Criticism will either be overly specific, "This is just because of Trump, I miss when we had respectable Republicans like Bush," or it will be overly general, "Yes, the US is bad, but only in the sense that all governments are bad." Anything to avoid the conclusion that the US just fucking sucks.

If the American government fails it must either be an exception, or an inherent flaw in all governments, because we're the smartest, best, most moral and freedom-loving people in the world. Impossible that foreigners could succeed where we failed, if we failed, it could only be because the task is impossible. That's how the chauvanists think, and so the conclusion is already determined before a single actual fact is considered.

Anything to avoid the conclusion that the US just fucking sucks.

Even that is overly broad and kinda skitters over what it is that makes US empire a global horror.

Like, "ah bummer man the US sucks" doesn't do justice to the pile of bloody backpacks at the Minab school attack. It feels almost trite to say "The child murder needs to stop", but so much US policy - foreign and domestic - is about slaughtering children by the millions. It's not just a "aw shucks things are bad". It's a global campaign of eugenics, driven by a handful of plutocrats who have pegged their collective future on the advent of Computer God.

Impossible that foreigners could succeed where we failed

Unless they're Norwegian, for some reason. Only the Scandinavians - the whitest of the white Europeans - are allowed to claim anything approaching "Functional Socialism". And only when they build their society on the back of a petro-state.

I'm not sure how many MAGA people you know but most of them were running defense for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, essentially saying they should just give up and never should've been considered for nato. All of that is proven to be Russian propaganda + the election of Trump was helped massively by Russian bots convincing maga voters.

I can't tell if this is directed at me or a hypothetical conversation with a tankie.

orca is not just friend-shaped but comrade-shaped

This comment is so real it hurts.

I just had someone trying to convince me that Russia can't be imperialist because they oppose the US, an imperialist nation.

... that's not the definition of "imperialist," my dear tankie.

Not sure if linking it so others can laugh/cry is "brigading" worthy of getting me banned off of various Lemmy communities/instances or not.

Fuck it, here's the thread:

https://lemmy.world/comment/25044062

I'm 90% sure they're directing it at a hypothetical tankie.

Yeah, I'd accept "we're heavily propagandized," but "most in the world" is quite the claim.

Well of course we should support the international proletariat, even the ones heavily propagandized to the right such as in Russia and the US.

It feels almost trite to say “The child murder needs to stop”, but so much US policy - foreign and domestic - is about slaughtering children by the millions.

Classic "no way to prevent this" says only nation where this regularly happens. A part of me just wishes that the horrors could be contained to within our borders, but we have to make all of our shit everyone's problem.

Only the Scandinavians - the whitest of the white Europeans - are allowed to claim anything approaching “Functional Socialism”.

The funniest part about this is how many people will be like, "The best approach is a mixture of socialism and capitalism" which is exactly what China is doing. I've tried so many times to get a coherent answer from the "China bad because billionaires" types as to whether the reforms in the 80's were good or bad. The only response you'll ever get from most of them is to call you a fascist for asking.

I mean, that's a really good example! And I appreciate it. Do you have any more resources about it? The wiki article is a little vague, and it would be interesting to compare with border skirmishes w India.

I'm a little hesitant to frame things as "evil" but I get your point. Its really hard to pin down China international policy, IMO, so having something concrete to review is always helpful.

I generally don't go around shit-talking other countries that I don't live in and have never been to. The only real exceptions being ones that are receiving military aid from my own country, such as Israel, because that makes it relevant to me.

For the record, I have and do criticize China on certain things, such as LGBT rights. But again, that's pretty irrelevant to any political questions that are actually relevant to me and my life. What am I going to do about problems in China? What levers of power can I or should I assert to address their problems? It kinda seems like I should probably be a little bit more concerned about all the horrible things my own country is doing. Don't talk shit about a splinter in their eye when there's a wooden board in your own or something.

If there was a way for me to assert some lever of power against China, it would be through my own government. But that would only be a valid thing to do if my government wasn't doing worse things, which is why it's relevant to point out that the US is worse, in spite of the inevitable response of "whataboutism."

If the discourse around here was upholding China as some utopia that we should all try to emulate in every regard, you would see me criticize it more. But because the discourse is more about how evil every single thing it does is, how every accusation should be believed completely uncritically, how we should support Western governments acting against it, etc, it's only natural that that's what you see me pushing back against the most.

Only what Bhutan newspapers outputs - Kuensel and the other one I forgot the name (paywal https://kuenselonline.com/dz/news/bhutan-china-border-talks).

Bhutan is literally being "polite" invaded (as in: not bombing the capital or hospitals, just army rounding up people and destroying their villages) and is doing anything to deescalate and stop, but it is a much weaker party. They tried formal protests in Chinese Embassy in India, they are trying... negotiations (e. g. https://www.mfa.gov.bt/joint-press-release-on-the-25th-round-of-boundary-talks-between-bhutan-and-china/), but they are still being annexed against their will by China - see also https://blogs.soas.ac.uk/china-institute/2024/12/18/the-bhutan-anomaly/

For the record, I have and do criticize China on certain things, such as LGBT rights

Your profile motto:

If someone claims something happened on the fediverse without providing a link, they’re lying.

Evidence or GTFO.

Sure.

China’s modern day homophobia does not come from a place of “The Buddha said this was bad,” rather, it comes from seeing homosexuality as a Western invention, and a symptom of “bourgeois decadence.” Sadly, such brainworms are common in many socialist countries. There is a stereotype many people have that gay people all live in cities and spend all our time partying at nightclubs, because that makes for better TV than the reality does.

Here's my reasoning: Capitalism is global, capitalism is imperialist, the national or transnational character of capitalism is geographically dependent. The EU as an entity does not carry out imperialist activity outside of the national/transnational framing. It engages in trade, legal definition/refinement, regulation. It empowers capitalists within the EU to conduct business on a global stage. The EU does not have a military, it does not operate a military that functions imperialistically. It can serve as an organizing force that unites national capital to coordinate national militaries with the aims of empowering national capital to conduct business globally.

Honestly the more I think through this the harder it is to parse out differences. Most, if not all, EU members are imperialist, but the imperialist part of them is national, not transnational. Honestly I can't really fault your perspective, and I'd like to develop it more than a "I'm right, you're wrong" type debate would really allow. I'd be interested in resources that support your position.

Thanks, I'll look these over