The US has the largest military and police force in the world, and has had their hand in a multitude of regime changes, top secret experiments, etc. “Most propagandized in the world” might be a stretch, but the propaganda machine that has been manufacturing consent on this scale for years is easily among the worst of them all. Couple that with being in bed with Israel—another heavily propagandized population.

I think we have different definitions what criticism is, because all you do there is explain why, whitewash.

Wait, no, unless you think this is the part when you criticize China

Sadly, such brainworms are common in many socialist countries

Because you don't. You explicitly don't criticize China in this sentence.

Edit: I checked, definition of the words are clear. To criticize is to pass judgment, or find fault. To explain is to provide context or inform or clarify. You did the latter.

Yeah, this can’t be a partisan thing. That’s just feeding into the same nonsense division governments manufacture. It has to cross those aisles and educate folks on the fact that all working class are in the same battle against the same collective ruling class around the world. We’re seeing authoritarian regimes forming around the world and they are working together. We have to do the same.

How is acknowledging that Chinese homophobia exists, is a problem, and comes out of a socialist intellectual tradition not a criticism of China? Wtf are you talking about? Obviously, that falls under "finding fault."

Yes, of course I'm going to contextualize and explain it, because the person in that thread asked me for an explanation.

This is ridiculous goalpost moving. No criticism would ever be enough for you, short of going full on rainbow imperialism, chauvanism, or exaggerating/making shit up. You're being blatantly intellectually dishonest.

Because you don’t. You explicitly don’t criticize China in this sentence.

This is just straight up lying. Acknowledging that a problem in China is also a problem in other socialist countries does somehow make it not a problem when China does it. Fuck off with that BS.

No, literally writing "I think China is wrong on LGBT treatment" would suffice. You did NOT write that. Thats not goalpost moving, dont try to gaslight me. From the start to finish I keep claiming I have never seen you critisize China. This still remains. You're sad on SOME communist country brainworms, but you did not list that specific country in that sentence, nor your personal opinion on homophobia in question.

Heck, you can write it right now and I will be convinced and for as long that comment remains will never claim you're incapable of criticizing China.

Yeah, if you completely ignore the fact that that sentence was in the context of talking about China, if you completely ignore the parts where I talk specifically about "China's modern day homophobia" then you might not be the bold-faced liar that you are. Talking about me gaslighting you while trying to pull this shit is incredibly rich.

Liberals only ask for evidence of criticism to use it in bad faith, exhibit #1684938

Write it then. Not that hard

"Have you condemned Hamas today?"

I think China is wrong on LGBT treatment.

Also, you are a fucking liar and asking in bad faith.

American exceptionalism, of course

I literally said that I have and do criticize China for things including LGBT rights. That itself is an acknowledgement of fault. The fact that you were so intent on this fucking gotcha, so confident that it could never possibly be true that I'm capable of criticizing the country, it's just ridiculous. What, did you genuinely think we're bots, as opposed to that being something y'all say to just write off any perspectives you disagree with? Don't drink your own Kool-Aid.

denazification

Just isn't really possible for a capitalist country to denazify another capitalist country. Fascism is capitalism in decay. As long as the conditions for fascism exist, it will continue and reemerge as a social phenomenon.

The state targeting individual fascists, without delegitimizing them, just creates more fascists. And the only thing that can delegitimize fascism is a social system that can take care of people's needs, end wars, resist capitalism, provide a high quality of life (or realistically promise one), and carry out mass education that teaches people to be critical and engaged.

As long as the capitalists are with us, there will be poverty, and fascists to make sure things remain that way.

This is the only comment of yours I have ever seen where you do critisise a country you're usually idealizing. What else am I supposed to think? Indoctrinated propagandist like on Fox news with different flavour.

Also cool it with insults.

Why not loathe the existence of every nation state on earth? The worst religion is nationalism, and there is stiff competition.

Bedrock based

I don't idealize China. I do "defend" it, in the same way I do with every country. If someone makes a false or unfair criticism of any given country, then I'll push back against that on the basis of it being untrue. This is controversial because it means failing anti-communist purity tests.

For decades, it has been the norm that if someone talks shit about a socialist country, nobody challenges it, for fear of being labelled a Red, a Pinko, more recently a "Tankie." Everyone remotely on the left in the West felt the need to constantly prove that they were "one of the good ones." After actual communists were sidelined, blacklisted, kicked out of organizations like the AFL-CIO, then the tests only got more stringent, until even supporting or being involved with unions at all became suspect. Finally, we reached a point where people are out there labeling people like Obama and Biden as communists.

This state of affairs has resulted in the anticommunist myths and stereotypes to spiral out of control, and it has allowed the standards of what defines someone as a communist to shift to a ridiculous degree. This strategy of caving to anticommunist purity tests has been proven by history to be an abject failure, and is a major part of how we got to the place we're in today.

In this context, there are a handful of people like myself willing to try a different strategy, of refuting falsehoods and trying to ground the discourse in reality, unconcerned about what labels may be assigned to us as a result. Because only a handful of people are willing to do this, in anglosphere discourse that is generally heavily anticommunist, it is only natural that someone such as myself will spend a lot more time refuting misinformation about socialist states than criticizing them on the points that are valid concerns.

This does not mean that I consider China some kind of utopia or that I idolize it, or think it should be a model of emulation (although there are aspects that we could do well to borrow and learn from, like their trains). China has had a unique timeline of development and has it's own unique conditions to deal with. As I said previously, I don't believe there's anything I could do to affect Chinese policy regardless of what I think of it, other than through my own government, and that is not an option I'm willing to support.

The concept of having more then two parties does indeed stupify the liberal mind.

For the haters, the limit is one.

Funny, bcs I notice pretty much everyone who talks about "Russian Propaganda" uses that to mean "anything that contradicts the US state department and billionaire owned media narrative about US geopolitical adversaries"

Hell yeah

"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 recognizing that the US's military/prison industrial complex has done more harm to the world since WWII than China Russia and Iran."

Using the Britannica definition of Imperialism is like using the IDF definition of antisemitism. It isn't actually very persuasive, bcs it gives you away as either a shill for the existing world order or a useful idiot for the same.

Imperialism is the stage of capitalism where finance capital overtakes commodity production. That's a gross oversimplification, but it'll do for the level of debate in this thread.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/imperialism.pdf

Neither China nor Russia is an Imperialist power because in neither state has capitalist control over markets led to the rise of finance capital overtaking commodity production as the main basis of the economy.

You do realise that documents like that are used to stop discussion, and are pointed to by people saying "look, we HAVE equality so stop making a fuss".

China has a lot of that, and things like bonus 高考 points for ethnic minorities are an often used rallying cry by the Han suoremists as an example of how things have gone too far (and unlike the coming one, this one is allowed to be broadcast on B站 and other sites and doesn't get pulled down).
Then you've got huge amounts of prejudice against ethnic groups, with negative stereotypes of them as thieves, or violent.
And a two tier policing system, where ethnic minority folks in Yunnan and Guizhou, for example, feel that they can't hunt or forage in traditional styles because it's in violation of the law, but Han people in the same towns do it (and you can see/find them flogging poached wildlife in the town market) without a care.

Meanwhile the "economic development" of ethnic tourism primarily leads to people from 东北 moving in and buying up land and making the profits, while local Han get middle management positions, and the ethnic minority folks get to be the side show, singers, or worst I've seen - dancing girls who are chastised for trying to get the Han 叔叔 to leave them alone.

Other examples , though much less blatant are the ways that the PRC won the Sri Lankan civil war and led to the total massacre of the Tamil Tigers, and the PRC's ongoing support for the Tatmydaw in Myanmar - pulling lots of levers and helping keep the aircraft bombing rebel population centres going.

You can be an imperialist by supporting other nation's governments to get your own benefit.

Like fr

China (PRC) kinda already is - but it's not supporting rebels.

Its crushing rebels to secure the incumbent government's assistance to ensure they keep their investment/get to get it all.

• Mining in Myanmar. (Arming and assisting Tatmydaw in the ongoing civil war)
• Ports and crops, and probably gems, in Sri Lanka (Weapons, Intel, training, and possible boots on the ground killing off Tamil Leadership).
• Pakistani marble, ports, (and oil iirc). (with PMCs in Balochistan, and arms sales to Pakistan, plus the anti-India (fuck Modi) alliance).

I assume similar things in bits of Africa, but I'm sadly ignorant of much there. (I'd put money on Chinese support of Ethiopiab government during the ethnic cleansing and nigh on civil war a few years back though).

You're right. Putin's definitely not in bed with multiple us presidents and probably never actually killed anyone. Not the smol ex-KGBean, wtf are you talking about?

"... in favor of Russian state departament and oligarch owned media narrative"

ftfy, now fuck off

I do!

irredentism doesn’t make a country imperialist

I needed a good laugh.

Putin’s definitely not in bed with multiple us presidents

Why do I get an earful about Putin every five minutes, but not one word about Robert Mercer or Ann Getty?

FFS, Mohammad bin Salmon and Benjamin Netanyahu have better claim to being "in bed" with the last half-dozen Presidents. We don't have a line of videos of US presidents bowing in front of a Russian President or abasing themselves in front of Saint Basil’s Cathedral.

Am I? In all those long conflicts the population was at first at least indifferent(Like the US in the Vietnam war or USSR in Afghanistan war) or outright supportive(Like the US in their Afghanistan war) and after the public opinion changed the wars quickly ended. On the other hand the tsar was deposed after less than 3 years of WWI.

Now if we’re talking about the Russian and Chinese working class, I’ll always support them.

There's literally one question that I ask Russian people that determines if they are worth the support. Just ask them if Crimea should return to Ukraine. That's it.

Actually... No, don't do that if you still want to believe in them.

It's more or less exactly the content of this post here. Literal Russian propaganda, I'm sure. Couldn't confirm 100% because I don't waste my precious time checking what Russia has to say about their invasion, but I'm sure the term/topic of "irredentism" comes up and never "invasion" or "genocide."

Probably because you jumped up to defend the motherland from the really mildest criticism but that's your life not mine chief.

I'm not really here to shill for any of those wholesome chunguses but Dubya had some amazing stuff to say about the guy if you want to play waddabouts. Or maybe we could just act cool any time someone says something shitty about a government? Maybe it's not all a psyop some of the time?

¯\_ (ツ) _/¯

When people say [country] it's their government.

When people say [group of people] it's that group of people.

I think most anarchists do exactly that. The obvious tension is that marxists want to replace one state with another, whereas anarchists would prefer not to swap one yoke for another.

Spending time on Chinese social media has shown me platforms that read exactly like the garbage from the right wing talking heads here on Twitter. Extreme nationalist sentiment is very, very, common. I have seen soooo many memes expressing desire to just wipe out the Philippines, and just repopulate it with mainland Chinese. Memes about their eventual control over Africa, which uses surprisingly western racist stereotypes to portray Africans. So much discussion that mirrors MAGA like behavior, in many ways, but just discussing the greatness of China, instead. So many who, at least claim, to wholeheartedly believe revisionist, extremely idealized, versions of China's past, often including things that just are not physically possible. There is a lot of open talk about what China is going to do to so many of it's neighbors when it over takes the US, and NATO recedes from the region. I stopped going on their, because it was just becoming more, and more, X-China. Then my translator stopped using social media there, expect for work, as well, and now I just can't.

Friends of mine who have spent the past 20+ years living in China are reporting seeing more, and more, of it offline too, when politics was not something Chinese would publicly really talk about, especially to foreigners. However, especially in the past 10 years, they said their open expression of xenophobia, hardline nationalist sentiments, desire to take, and punish other countries, has become almost common in certain social spaces there, and it is worrying them. These people moved to China after studying Chinese language, culture, and history, for many years, including attending Chinese universities. They loved it there. Now they are talking about how it is sounding more, and more, like the rhetoric you get from flag wavers in the US.

So I do not trust China to maintain it's non-expansionism once NATO not longer controls so many of the waters around them. Nationalism is popular their, and the idea of finally taking revenge for the century of humiliation only grows.

Bro, I stare at goats for a living; I don't kill them, I just make them ejaculate. If you don't get the reference to the movie about how America does counterintelligence like I do for my job I think I do for the aliens, you should watch The Men Who Stare at Goats and become enlightened to the degree of the game being played. Operation Mockingbird was over fifty years ago, people. MKULTRA and Star Gate are the same program.

Never heard the word "irredentism" before, looked it up. It's literally fascist logic. Do tankies seriously not realize that the logical endpoint of irredentism is a world made up exclusively of ethnostates?

Damn seems like it's the "tankies" getting removed and not the smug liberals. I wonder what else you're wrong about.

Some edits? :p

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

The Insidious Evil Easterners Other imperialist nation states also do double-plus imperialism, which is even wrongerand that's also wrong. And theya good portion of their citizens don’t even realize its wrong, because they have been so brainwashed.

That’s why Westernersthe proletariat needs to fight the Insidious Eastimperialist nation states and defeat them. Then the people will be liberated and the West - which was only doing imperialism in self-defense the people - can finally enact a lasting peace that will bring about a global utopiasomething way less shitty than we what have now.

Most idiot leftists don’t get this, because they flunked out of college and don’t understand how economics works. [perfect, no notes].

Greatly appreciate you modeling healthier ways of engaging with leftist political ideology, thank you ❤️

Damn, americans must love expensive insulin

Absolutely. Of course the world isn't black and white, it's not divided into good guys and bad guys, and there's degrees to things. If micronesia decides to become highly imperialist, all of a sudden, I'm not going to care as much. If, all of a sudden, China starts invading a bunch of its neighbors, then that's a huge deal to me!

If one country is responsible for 12 million deaths abroad in its imperial dealings in the past decades, and it has invaded and bombed more countries than I care to list here (I'm not sure if lemmy has a character limit, and spelling all this out is less effort and fewer characters than the actual list of countries), then I'm going to care about that country a whole bunch more than I'm going to care about a country that's invaded two countries and whose death count abroad doesn't even hit 7 digits.

Anyway my point is pick your battles, and focussing on China over America is really missing the mark. If you go by the actual numbers on imperialism, you are focussing on a country that is literal orders of magnitudes less bad. Complete waste of time.

I definitely can’t take full credit, but I appreciate this. My mom was a foster system case worker and bestowed her empathetic ways to me. I also admire people like Patrice Lumumba, Fred Hampton, Parenti and a few other folks. I like to assume most working class folks aren’t approaching a debate or idea with malice. Our brains are so inundated with stuff on the daily; we have opportunities to reduce that load and be respectful.

I think "support the working class" doesn't have to mean "do whatever they say". We're all generally propagandized into oblivion. Like, the US working class has been concerned about immigrants and trans women in sports but it's not pro-worker to go after those things.