You know this is the kind of post that reddit no longer allows on their bots infested shit platform.
Yes, but english language political discussions are 70-80% russophobia and sinophobia by volume.
Why not loathe the existence of every nation state on earth? The worst religion is nationalism, and there is stiff competition.
Way ahead of you
Nice instance name 👍
ML discovers anarchism.
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.
It is so annoying to hear people prop up China or Russia and North Korea as these moral islands. There is no moral outpost in the world.
So I do not trust China to maintain it’s non-expansionism once NATO not longer controls so many of the waters around them.
Right. China bad, I forgot. This isn’t sinophobia at all.
Do you have anything else than anecdotal evidence? How much of a percentage of the Chinese social media can you scan for this type of ultra-nationalist and fascist content? There are like 1 billion people there.
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 d
China is a country which throw ethnic minorities into concentration camps and executes political prisoners. Workers are exploited to the point where they throw themselves off the roofs of factories. It’s an entire society where the only way you can advance is by screwing the people below you.
So yeah, China is bad.
So you think the unhinged ramblings of an Austrian Christofascist have some kind of merit? That’s all I’m getting from this comment.
You could win an Olympic gold medal with the leap in logic you just made.
China is a country which throw ethnic minorities into concentration camps and executes political prisoners.
Ok, find me a source for that assertion that isn’t
the unhinged ramblings of an Austrian Christofascist
…or his allies in the recognized terrorist group the ETIC or the US State Department.
I’ll wait, knowing that no such source existed the last time I looked in to it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China
https://www.hrw.org/reports/1994/china1/china_948.htm
I actually thought you were joking at first.
Edit: You understand me criticizing the CCP for human rights abuses does not automatically make me a Nazi, correct?
“It is known”
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.
Is there such thing as a Marxarchist? Lol. I read Marx, but don’t believe in swapping one ruler for another, or that one governing body is somehow magically morally above another.
Marxxxxanarchisting.
the most common strain of anarchism these days is anarchocommunism, which is by and large a movement that is defined by defiance of all hierarchy and broad agreement with Karl Marx on matters of economics as they apply to hierarchical violence
There is anarcho-Communism but Marx’s philosophy is very state-centric, even if it does ultimately oppose the existence of a state.
If you’ve read Marx, I’d suggest reading the anarchist criticisms of him by Kropotkin, Proudhon, and Bakunin.
I’m not well-versed on those yet, so definitely piquing my interest. Thanks!
Conquest of Bread by Kropotkin is an absolute must read.
I actually started reading this a while back. This is a good reminder to go back to it.
Closest thing that comes to mind is autonomism
They’re after my stuff?!
I do!
“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.”
“Have you condemned Hamas today?”
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.
Exactly. I’ll never understand why certian leftists hold them up as examples to be followed instead of countries like Sweeden or Norway where every quality of life indicator is undeniably better.
If you want an actual answer, it’s because Sweden and Norway continue to participate in imperialism by propping up their economies through exploitation of the global south.
These are capitalist countries, social democracies, not socialist countries. The underlying contradictions that lead to problems under capitalism have not been resolved, so the problems inherent to capitalism persist. The only reason they seem better at this time is because of the exploitation of foreign workers and their participation in the financial models exploiting the global south.
It’s clear that the Nordic model of social democracy is unsustainable (because it’s just capitalism with more social reforms) and has slowly been eroding since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This unsustainability is also clearly recognized and discussed openly within those countries, which is why they explicitly state that the solutions are austerity or the exploration of foreigners.
So your objection with the nordic form of socialism is that it’s too close to/integrated wtih capitalism?
You know China and Russia do all of these things as well, plus the oppression of thier own people. China is defacto capitalist. Russia is all the way capitalist. Both are essentially oligarchies/dictatorships. Both also exploit developing countries in the global south, both have imperial ambitions on surrounding countries, one of them is even actively in an imperialst war. But leftists support them because they’re “socialist?”
Do you understand these countries are not worth your support? Especially if your motive is to oppose the oppression of exploited peoples.
Bedrock based
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:
irredentism doesn’t make a country imperialist
I needed a good laugh.
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?
If you actually read what the person was saying, they said:
i do not support the russian invasion of ukraine btw.
that being said, irredentism is still awful. i’m ideologically against all forms of killing, and that includes the russian attack on ukraine. just so we’re clear here, this is just about definitions, i’m not trying to argue that russia attacking its neighbors is good in any way.
Marxists tend to use a specific definition of imperialism, and that user’s position is that while Russia does engage in irredentism (bad), like invading Ukraine, they do not fit the Marxist definition of imperialism (which is more concerned with resource extraction on a global scale). This Marxist definition goes back at least to Lenin, so it isn’t something that they just made up (as they were accused of in the thread), but the common meaning today is different.
This is being misinterpreted or distorted here into, “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is fine because it’s irredentism” which was very clearly not what they were saying. What they were saying is that irredentism is bad (including the war in Ukraine), but that it is a distinct thing from imperialism.
They’re still doing apologia by playing with definitions to argue that not only is Russia not imperialist, but they’re anti-imperialist. Stating that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is irredentist and not imperialist carries the assumption that Russia’s officially stated reasons for invading Ukraine are truthful when they are clearly not. Russia wants Ukrainian territory not because it’s populated by ethnic Russians, but because they want to exploit the natural resources contained therein. Irredentism is the justification for imperialism, they are not mutually exclusive.
Russia wants
It’s inherently difficult and subjective to speculate about motivations, and doubly so when talking about a country with multiple groups with their own motivations. Of course, in any conflict, enemy countries will be assigned the worst motivations possible, which is why virtually every conflict draws comparisons to Nazis, and the idea that the enemy will just keep attacking forever if they are not defeated. This was said about Vietnam (Domino Theory) and Afghanistan (“if we don’t fight them there, we’ll be fighting them here”). Those examples show that motivations assigned to enemy countries are often inaccurate.
I don’t think it should be considered “apologia” to express reasonable skepticism that the motivations of a rival country aren’t what some people speculate. Especially when they’re still assigning a negative motivation to said country, just a different negative motivation than the one you assign. That’s kind of a ridiculous degree of purity testing, “It’s not enough to condemn Russia, you have to agree with my exact assessment of their motivations, otherwise you’re doing apologia by condemning them in the wrong way.”
As they said, they condemn both Russia’s invasion and irredentism in general, so my main point was to correct your misunderstanding, when you asked if “tankies” don’t realize that irredentism leads to negative results.
Trying to divine Russia’s True Motivations for invading Ukraine is a total Red Herring side show distraction in the context of this discussion.
The problem we’re discussing is that tankies employ definitions gymnastics to escape giving traditionally capitalist negative labels to their beloved authoritarian dictatorships, like “imperialist” and “tyrant.”
“Russia is not imperialist because they only invade for irredentist reasons” and “Russia is not imperialist because they oppose imperialist nations” are both half-cooked, dumb assertions.
It doesn’t matter if Russia invades other countries and takes their resources because they think the Bible says they should, because there are people with similar genetics in neighboring countries, or because Putin is bored; it’s still imperialist.
Imagine if someone said the USA is not imperialist because they’re only bombing Iran to fulfill a biblical prophesy, so they’re actually just theocratic. That’s obviously a ridiculous thing to say and you wouldn’t jump in to defend them because you’re biased to defend tankies but not western capitalists.
If they’re going with a niche definition rather than the common definitions everyone uses, they should have stated that to prevent the confusion and argument that it seeded, as I said further down in the argument.
I actually agree with you on that. However, “being too prone to using Marxist definitions and terminology” does not warrant labelling them as a “tankie” or “Russian propagandist.”
It’s this sort of thing that makes me see every accusation of “tankie” as a complete joke. If you can literally say, word for word, “I do not support the Russian invasion of Ukraine” and still get called a tankie and Russian propagandist, then those words have no meaning, aside from, “You disagreed with a liberal about literally anything.”
Did their condemnation of Russia not give you a moment’s pause before dismissing them as a Russian propagandist and misrepresenting their positions to others afterwards? It seems like you just recognized that they’re not part of your political in-group so you ignore everything and jump straight to labelling them a fascist. Yes, they communicated in a way that’s somewhat confusing, but you’re much more at fault for jumping to those unwarranted accusations.
I actually agree with you on that. However, “being too prone to using Marxist definitions and terminology” does not warrant labelling them as a “tankie” or “Russian propagandist.”
That’s not what I was asserting, no.
The rest of your comment soapboxes on that straw man so I’ll not respond to it.
Even if we take the assertion that they are doing apologia for Russia as true; the accusation of ‘tankie’ is strange. As if people who identify as communist have never heard of the fall of the USSR.
Maybe it would make sense when defending China in some contemporary contexts, but Russia?
It all reminds me of how George Bush used the term terrorism. Anyone who thought we need a different approach to respond to 9/11 than GWB was ‘letting the terrorist win’. Now anyone who thinks we need to find a different approach other than throwing the military industrial complex at the war in Ukraine is a tankie.
Do these same people think the war in Iran would be better if China got involved. Of course not, that would be insane. But change China to US and Iran to Ukraine and all of a sudden they support it.
The point is to have more skepticism toward all militarism; that’s not to say militarism is never justified. But NATO was literally built to contain the USSR, it worked on some level, the USSR fell. Russia’s militarism toward Ukraine is completely unjustified, but their complaint about still being contained NATO is valid. They subjected their people to a ton of economic hardship in the 90s to appease the west. But we can’t disband or renegotiate NATO because too many people benefit from it staying how it is.
The answer to the Ukraine war was to bring Russia into the western block on more equal terms 30 years ago. Now the situation is fucked, it gets more dangerous to more people every day it goes on.
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.”
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.”
Irredentism is a negative word, nobody would use it in their own propaganda to describe their own actions. Furthermore, the user you were talking to clearly and explicitly condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:
i do not support the russian invasion of ukraine btw.
You seem to have misunderstood what they were saying, and the idea that they’re spouting “literal Russian propaganda” while explicitly condemning the invasion, and labelling it an invasion, is completely absurd.
I guess that’s why you felt the need to pretend they didn’t label it as an invasion. I do wish y’all would practice a slightly higher degree of intellectual honesty though.
"employing both hard power and soft power”. russia only uses military might (hard power)
What a mind-bogglingly stupid thing to say
“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.”
Yes actually
This but unironically
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
Anything’s possible when you make shit up
I can’t tell if this is directed at me or a hypothetical conversation with a tankie.
I’m 90% sure they’re directing it at a hypothetical tankie.
The concept of having more then two parties does indeed stupify the liberal mind.
For the haters, the limit is one.
There will be no third party. The bank rolled two party system needs two bags of dildos and they will stop at nothing to crush any change from the bottom. The third party will be split between two optically moderates from both parties as plants. The stank yanks got amnesia… talking out both sides of the mouth unable to balance their contradictions. It is agonizing to watch since I share their inheritance.
Jesus Christ can you at least write like a normal person? Why can’t Americans just admit that their country suck and leave it at that?
Why can’t Americans just admit that their country suck and leave it at that?
It’s a good question. Because our land is beautiful and a lot of us are working to keep it that way. Because we still see lots of people trying to come here for a better life. There are much fewer now, and a lot of us have deep shame for what the asshole in power has done to their communities. Despite appearances, a lot of us respect and admire them for taking the hard, unwanted jobs that nevertheless still need to get done. We still believe in what the Statue of Liberty stands for despite anything the asshole tries to do to it. Yes, we functionally conquered the world when we became the sole superpower after the Soviet Union fell apart. But we also led the world with science, inventions, entertainment, and aid. That’s lost now, and a lot of us deeply resent everyone who had a hand in ruining that.
We are still working to make ourselves better.
Yes, we functionally conquered the world when we became the sole superpower after the Soviet Union fell apart. But we also led the world with science, inventions, entertainment, and aid. That’s lost now, and a lot of us deeply resent everyone who had a hand in ruining that.
Oh. So it’s because you haven’t studied history. Got it.
Read your words. You are trying to reclaim a lost position of “goodness” for the USA, that was lost through the bad actions of bad people. You are trying to reclaim the position of helping the world, being a beautiful country that respects others and is welcoming.
We call that “Blue MAGA”. You’re imagining a time before the Rs fucked everything up and trying to move “forward” to reclaim the position of “good”.
The USA was never good. Not only did FDR put anyone vaguely asian looking into concentration camps, the administration stole all of their commercial property and wealth. Not only that, but the FDR administration established the entirety of racial redlining. The USA has been at war for >90% of its existence, and half of the years it wasn’t at war, it was engaged in the massive chattel slavery and maintenance of the genocide of indigenous peoples. The USA wasn’t taken over by racist pedophilic raping oligarchs, it was founded by them. Trump doesn’t hold a candle to the evils of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.
As long as you believe in some mythical past where the USA was a net good for the world, you will never be able to understand why the rest of the world wants to see your country destroyed and dismantled.
I understand. My question was: why can’t Americans NOT involve Russia, china or whichever other superpower to make themselves seem better? It’s ok to just admit that you suck and leave it at that.
I didn’t downvote you. I think the answer to that is that all humans everywhere, Americans included, want to immediately jump to whatabboutism to save face.
When people say Russia, do they include their government? Because the Russian government can fuck off alongside any government. I consider myself far left and I refuse to simp for any government or its leaders. Now if we’re talking about the Russian and Chinese working class, I’ll always support them.
You’re based.
I truly don’t understand that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” rhetoric that LOT of folks maintain out there just because they hate the US. Like if China or Russia were better places to live. The worst part is that this is what dominant classes want, polarization.
It’s wild because I know the folks saying those things are aware that politicians are not their friends. So I don’t know why they allow themselves to be captured by otherwise problematic beliefs. We don’t apply enough nuance and separation of ideas from people.
Yeah, it’s really wild.
I personally am from center-left, though I have some common views with anarchism and this is one of them.
Well of course we should support the international proletariat, even the ones heavily propagandized to the right such as in Russia and the US.
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.
When people say Russia, do they include their government?
I would think that would be all they are including. regular russian civilians aren’t out there making a lot of propaganda, it’s all either state owned media or right-wing nationalist influencers. except for the occasional video trying to convince people that pork tongue is actually good.
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.
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.
So what’s your opinion of the US working class?
Support. We’re the most propagandized country in the world and need to be free of this tyrannical bullshit.
orca is not just friend-shaped but comrade-shaped
Greatly appreciate you modeling healthier ways of engaging with leftist political ideology, thank you ❤️
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.
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.
Because US propaganda has never been interrupted for 250 years. The regime in control of the USA has been the same regime the whole time, and the propaganda of that regime never went through an overturning. Russia’s propaganda machine started in 1992, because the propaganda machine of the USSR went through a counter-revolution with the dissolution of the USSR and its machinery. The same is true of China, which would only have it’s propaganda machine since 1950.
Additionally, the USA is the inventor and creator of essentially all modern mass media from movies, to television, to the internet. It has the largest and most prolific media production organizations in the entire world, and it has such a robust propaganda system that it has literally been running radio and TV stations for propaganda on every inhabited continent for decades.
It has the time, the means, the capabilities, the money, the power, the history, the staffing, and the motive and it doesn’t have an adversary anywhere near as effective as it is for everyone else.
Also, PR professionals in the US outnumber journalists by more than 6 to 1. And most journalists are enmeshed in the Western propaganda engine, just as they had been in Europe well before the USA even existed.
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.
Fascinating to see one comment deeming “most propagandized in the world” a stretch with +8 -0 and another with +3 -4.
American exceptionalism, of course
Yeah, I’d accept “we’re heavily propagandized,” but “most in the world” is quite the claim.
I’ll support a government in so far as it does something to help the working class, generally that means I’ve only ever supported a government on one issue and told it to fuck off on the rest. I vote as far left as possible and that means I’ve never actually had a government comprised of people I’ve voted for.
Hell yeah
When people say [country] it’s their government.
When people say [group of people] it’s that group of people.
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I still support worker-lead efforts. I just don’t fold to singular figures or authorities. I’ve watched people excuse abhorrent shit simply because it’s a person they otherwise like.
Hey bud I don’t actually think you can get any further to the left than anarchism.
So two things worth mentioning IMO, one important, the other kinda pedantic but still important from a theory POV:
-
Being the “furthest left” is not always the best tactic, and certainly not a strategy. If being far left means a practical program to unified liberation and resistance to capitalism, that’s great, I’m right there with you. But actual conditions are contradictory and constantly struggling to be the furthest left is sectarian/opportunist and not practical/critical.
-
Capitalism contains anarchist elements, such as anarchy in production. There are right wing anarchists ho want to consolidate power by delegitimizing/eliminating social protections; not liberate the masses to self actualize, but liberate the individual to rob and oppress.
I don’t make these point to attack you or anarchism, I work with anarchists and feel affinity with them, and I think they would agree with me on these points. But in my experience, the point is not to be the furthest left, but to have the best means to determine actual truth and teach others to think critically. In some ways, the left/right paradigm does more harm than good, even if it is useful in other contexts.
-
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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.
“Without a hierarchical authority system of a small group ‘directing’ the large group, the people can’t remain organized!” - every supposed “stateless”, “classless” ML.
Incorrect. Anarchism is against unjust hierarchies. It can absolutely be organized.
Au contrare, virtually all anarchists are ultra-left.
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No government can wage a war for twelve years against wishes of their own population.
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.
How do you explain the US wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan?
The Americans were asking for it. Did you see how they were dressed?
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?’
capitalists fucking LOVE wars
Wait, I thought China was capitalist?
How many Chinese billionaires are there again, I forgot
Yeah, that’s the idea! China is capitalist but
capitalists fucking LOVE wars
And China hasn’t fired on a ship since 1988 and hasn’t dropped a bomb in a conflict since 1989.
So is it that capitalists love wars or that China isn’t capitalist? I’m confused
The question itself is ridiculously reductive. Let’s also not forget how China has ongoing border disputes with pretty much every neighbor that occasionally flare up, is expanding its reach in the South China Sea with artificial islands that serve as military outposts, is building up a massive navy and is in the process of modernizing its army.
The .ml explains a lot lol
Damn, americans must love expensive insulin
Ok? They might, if they wanted they could have adopted one of the European healthcare models a long time ago.
Voting is a sham in the US. whatever the owning class pays for is what we get here. They just propagandize the voters they can control and disenfranchise the rest. Regardless of what percent of the population wants something, the scales only move when the elite tip them. We don’t have a true democracy here.
History says you are so, so wrong. Indisputably wrong
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.
I remember smug Americans scolding third worlders for having dictators run their countries, proudly claiming that they themselves were just better, more democratically inclined, which ofc led them to living in democracies. The third worlders just didn’t want democracy hard enough.
Now Trump is president and they just lay down and take it.
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.
If one country is responsible for 12 million deaths abroad in its imperial dealings in the past decades
Do you have any sort of source for that? I can find 4.5-4.6 million for the war on terror and that is being very very loose with the term US imperialism has caused(like includes indirect deaths and includes deaths caused by all sides in pretty much every conflict you could consider part of the war on terror)
We don’t even need to look at war, the death toll from the USA’s bipartisan consensus on collective punishment via brutal economic sanctions is 40M people over the last 50 years. Without firing a single shot. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(25)00189-5/fulltext
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That also includes simping Putin and Xi.
You’re either with US, or you’re with the
TerroristsCommunists!Like fr
Are these Putin and Xi simpers in the room with us right now?
Yes they’re from 3 Lemmy instances, one of them being yours.
It’s so crazy that I’ve never met one then, only people with takes that are nuanced and are based on non-CIA approved sources (although I really think this only applies to Xi, I’ve never seen a single person supporting Putin)
Seriously though, I think you’re pre-emptively blocking out what people are actually arguing just because you perceive it to be russian or chinese or whatever propaganda. Almost everyone I’ve talked to/seen has had reasonable takes that are based on evidence, and a huge part of that is asking why they believe what they do instead of just screaming “TANKIE” at them
Yeah. I haven’t seen a single person actually praise Putin, because he has not achieved a single thing worth of defense and praise in all of the years he’s been Russia’s leader.
Xi however is a different case. His country is doing very well on many metrics and is threatening to overtake the US hegemony on the world stage. Around the time when China seemed to start catching up to the West, you started reading about how China literally was 1984 irl.
Outfits connected to the same US that is the single biggest reason for everything bad in the middle East and the Islamic world started condemning China for islamophobia. These same US based outfits also condemned China for worker abuses, despite the fact that their country was built on the backs of slaves, and still utilities the labour of millions of undocumented immigrants. That’s not to speak about how prisoners are used as cheap workforce in America.
The US and its propaganda arm has spewed so many lies and destabilized so many regions that I simply cannot trust anything they say about any other country – especially not a well-positioned rival. Why is China the eternal Big Bad? The same atrocities the Chinese are accused for have been committed by many allies to the yanks, with comparatively non-existent backlash and critique. The US lies to accomplish its strategy goals, something that even the blindest US shill can’t deny. Is it that unbelievable that they would lie about China?
Then you look at China and see a nation that isn’t only threatening the US position as the world leader, but also doing much more in service of its people than all American presidents since Reagan combined. You notice how narratives about “social credit scores” are exaggerated beyond parody without any criticism in Western media, and your trust to the West’s judgement of other nations starts to falter.
Why would I believe the US and its rhetoric about China? I know they don’t give a single fuck about human rights, they just want to “win”. To me, it’s more likely that the majority of whatever China is accused of doing is exaggerated or simply untrue.
That’s what leads me to “defend” the country. I’m not Chinese, I don’t live there and I gain nothing by being positive to them. However, westerners talk about China with such racism that I simply refuse to partake in. Westerners are also guilty of far uglier crimes and should therefore just zip it.
I also love to see that there exists a government that can jail billionaires and force them to pay their fair share to the people from which these leeches get their riches. In the US, you’re supposed to eat a rich man’s shit with a grin.
I haven’t seen a single person actually praise Putin, because he has not achieved a single thing worth of defense and praise in all of the years he’s been Russia’s leader.
That’s not actually true. Putin first two terms coincided with super high oil prices which brought in a shit ton of revenue. His administration used that money to stabilize the ruble and ensure consistent payments of state wages and pensions, which for the decade prior had been totally chaotic and people were not just angry but in serious economic precarity. That alone earned him a massive amount of popular support. Basically, he presided over a decade of standard of living increases that had seemed impossible before he was elected.
Xi may be doing things well, but with a truly distopic fine-print beyond every single good thing.
such as…?
Their “houses are for living, not for speculating” slogan. China’s government might be actually doing something with that… Just to by the other hand harden their mass control and mass surveillance even more; not for anything they have one of the biggest — if not the biggest — regional firewalls (maybe just behind North Korea’s one) — the GFW. Then also they have “Reeducation Camps”, and all that stuff that any good fascist dictatorship has. Not to forgive Xi Jingping image cult.
So yeah, at what cost? It’s at the cost of their freedom. Oh, and China has other parties outside the Chinese Communist Party? To think, ladies and gentlemen.
“But at what cost??” ass take.
Copy-paste because I have things to do:
Their “houses are for living, not for speculating” slogan is an example. China’s government might be actually doing something with that… Just to by the other hand harden their mass control and mass surveillance even more; not for anything they have one of the biggest — if not the biggest — regional firewalls (maybe just behind North Korea’s one) — the GFW. Then also they have “Reeducation Camps”, and all that stuff that any good fascist dictatorship has. Not to forgive Xi Jingping image cult.
So yeah, at what cost? It’s at the cost of their freedom. Oh, and China has other parties outside the Chinese Communist > Party? To think, ladies and gentlemen.
Yes ofc. Keep moving the goal posts :D
China and the US has some of the same issues, and also issues more unique to both.
The US takes on imperialism and human rights… Or rather lack thereof is a shared value with China.
The US and Chinese economies are both relatively fucked, based on financial speculative growth and has limited upwards possibility for their youths. Look at the American GenZ hate towards work and reciprocated reaction from employers, look at the laying flat movement in China. Which is banned to even mention on social media.
Go to any major Chinese (Tier I and II) city and your first reaction will leave you in awe. Everything looks great on the surface, but how do you achieve cheap motorcycle deliveries within minutes? By having a large, lost, low class of workers. Selling their time for peanuts, barely able to scrape by. Potentially being shipped medicine by parents, as seen in a Danish travel programme recently.
The US has the same kind of gig economy, but not nearly to the same psychopathic degree China does.
Both economies have fucked up rural areas, just like most of the world, low key forcing people to move towards population centers to find work - Said centers ends up flooded with labour.
International human rights abuse? Yeah the US is worse, but that’s most likely due to the US being everywhere.
Domestic human rights abuse? If you think the UK or US is censored, learn Chinese and visit their social media. A picture of Winnie the pooh? Gone. Mentioning laying flat? Deleted.
Then we have the Uyghurs, Hong Kong not being respected for the one hundred year lease initially agreed upon, stole the Dalai because they can’t accept Tibet isn’t Chinese.
International conflict, 9-dash line, no signs of wanting to finalise the Chinese civil war still ongoing with Taiwan, continued support of Russia despite them being behind the bloodiest current war on our planet.
Not to talk about the AI cold war the two states are running at the moment, neither side has dared to say it publicly and neither side have shown any signs of wanting to stop the ongoing cold war for the betterment of our planet.
Is the US the good guys? Nah.
I’m personally growing more and more annoyed with my own government and the EU as a whole not being willing to take a harder stance against the US. Trump made the blunder of a lifetime, but the Hormuz is still closed instead of trading energy in Euroes - Benefitting everyone but the US. The world economy would had taken a rollercoaster ride, but it would benefit all of us long term.
Both the Chinese, American and Russian leadership is a cancer to the planet, and more countries should recognise them as such
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How is that a defend of the US?
A post directly asking to distance from the US… Is a defence of the US? Like what.
Finally, someone that’s reasonably and logically minded, between so much polarized people.
Such a lame, cliched, drone-speak of a comment. You sound like when all the MAGA turds simultaneously started sarcastically typing “orange man bad” online. One brain, infinite fingers.
ok
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When your contribution to the discussion consists of nothing but witlessly hurling pejoratives you don’t get to act surprised and offended at getting booted
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Damn seems like it’s the “tankies” getting removed and not the smug liberals. I wonder what else you’re wrong about.
Your comment appears to bear very little relevance to what I said, other than maybe it being translated to “ha ha, you got your comments removed!”
I wasn’t really responding to you, since I couldn’t see your comment. The thread just appeared to be leftist responses being removed.
Were you posting like a stinky lib or posting like a cool tankie?
Russian / Chinese, but yeah.
Any independent thinker should indeed seek to critically understand multiple perspectives, yes. Although even just being able to formulate perspectives of other countries, or being willing to challenge blatant misinformation will get you accused of being an imperialist by left-posturing Western chauvanists.
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.” I’m guessing people will just be like, “Well what if they invaded Taiwan? The things happening purely in my imagination prove China bad.”
Had me in the first half, ngl.
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/territorial-disputes-south-china-sea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan
Ask literally any average Southeast Asian citizen about China’s influence on their country, and you’ll get a sense of Chinese imperialist ambitions.
I’m brushing over the long history of Han ethnic expansionism and the literal war with communist Vietnam over their supposed vassal-state of Cambodia.
Edit: Read up on the Chinese Ethnic Unity Law: https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/ethnic-unity-and-progress-law/
Whom will likely benefit the most: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_China
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/territorial-disputes-south-china-sea
Territorial disputes without violence. China hasn’t fired on a ship since 1988. They have engaged in territorial disputes over the SCS without engaging in violence. If you want to understand what the alternative would look like, I direct you to the events in the Caribbean.
The UN recognizes Taiwan as a province of China and has done so without interruption for many decades.
Ask literally any average Southeast Asian citizen about China’s influence on their country, and you’ll get a sense of Chinese imperialist ambitions.
And yet, China is not actually doing anything resembling imperialism. You project psychology (ambitions) onto a nation-state (China) because that’s all you understand. You don’t understand what the possible alternatives are.
I’m brushing over the long history of Han ethnic expansionism and the literal war with communist Vietnam over their supposed vassal-state of Cambodia.
Chinese imperialism during the dynastic era is not only well understood and recognized, it’s openly discussed in China as the wrong solution to statecraft. Chinese violent and wrong-headed foreign policy during Mao’s leadership are also openly discussed in China as the wrong solution to statecraft. The government has openly declared that those decisions were incorrect and have openly established that they are taking a new direction based on more accurate understandings of the principles of statecraft and the consequences of those actions.
They have engaged in territorial disputes over the SCS without engaging in violence.
This isn’t exactly true. The level of violence they have engaged in thus far has been limited but they have absolutely engaged in violence. The same is true for the disputed territory with India. There is regular violence, but it is limited with lines that they have not crossed (i.e. they aren’t out there firing missiles and dropping bombs, they doing things like ramming fishing boats or beating people with clubs). I think you are going to be very disappointed by China if you genuinely believe the current government is pacifist or lacks an imperial agenda.
The border dispute with between India and China over that specific border is both millennia old and exacerbated by European colonialism in the region defining boundaries by dictatorial decree. The fact that the border is policed by armed guards wielding clubs is by mutual agreement between India and China and the fact that there was a skirmish is not the same as “China is out there beating innocent people with clubs for their own territorial gains”.
As for ramming fishing boats, look at Operation 34A. The US has a history in the region of using fishing boats to lay mines covertly to avoid triggering a response or causing an international incident. The US soldiers were unmarked, wearing civilian clothing and the boats were design deliberately to look like civilian fishing boats.
When you don’t know history, it’s difficult to understand the present.
If you think China engaged in top-to-bottom self criticism and established the official opinion that previous foreign policy under Mao was incorrect and not beneficial to the Chinese state means that after 40 years of non-violent growth they maintain imperial ambitions because they are still managing ancient border disputes and are defending against real threats from the most violent psychopaths on the planet, I don’t know what to tell you.
Operation 34A
I’m sorry but this does not come across like a serious argument. China is not ramming fishing vessels because the US once clandestinely deployed mines in the 1960’s. If you genuinely believe that I don’t know what to say except I hope you develop a more nuanced and realistic understanding of the world.
Re: China beating innocent people with clubs, I didn’t quite say that. I am sure some random innocent people have been caught up in it and beaten but on balance I think it has primarily been mutual combat involving provocations from both sides in the India/China border dispute.
I don’t think “40 years of non-violent growth” is an accurate statement at all. I can agree that contemporary Chinese imperialism doesn’t look like US imperialism and has utilized less violence overall. I think your framing of China vs. violent psychopaths is inherently flawed. China may or may not have fewer of those kinds of people in power compared to other governments, but it has plenty. It’s an inescapable fact of humanity that those people exist and have a tendency to seek power, and that power has a tendency to bring out those characteristics in people. There is nothing special about the people of China that make them better than the rest of humanity, the same problems of humanity manifest in China as everywhere else on the planet.
China is not ramming fishing vessels because the US once clandestinely deployed mines in the 1960’s.
So what you’re saying is that China has no valid security concerns behind their actions?
I don’t think “40 years of non-violent growth” is an accurate statement at all.
Let’s see why.
I can agree that contemporary Chinese imperialism doesn’t look like US imperialism and has utilized less
Well, since 1992 the US has conduct major kinetic military operations against over 14 countries, completely destroying at least 3 of them. Since 1992, China hasn’t fired a shot against anyone. So, yeah, doesn’t look like it at all. Less as in zero.
I think your framing of China vs. violent psychopaths is inherently flawed.
Fair. White supremacist Christian Eurocentric empire has only dominated every continent for 600 years, with most national borders across the whole world defined by genocidaires and child rapists, and military bases all over the world that are immune to local laws where young women are kidnapped, raped, and murdered by soldiers weekly and everyone knows it but no one can do anything about because of the violent psychopaths (sorry, I meant USians, who are just like everyone else). Not to mention the US criminal justice system monitoring and managing at least over 3x the number of prisoners and parolees as the next highest country in the world with some of the worst outcomes, worst recidivism rates, and economic extraction practices compared to literally anyone.
But fair, maybe my framing is uncharitable.
China may or may not have fewer of those kinds of people in power compared to other governments, but it has plenty.
Granted. Is it driving the same outcomes? No. It’s not. The outcomes are substantially and consistently better and have been for decades without interruption.
It’s an inescapable fact of humanity that those people exist and have a tendency to seek power, and that power has a tendency to bring out those characteristics in people.
And it is the job of a society to develop the social technologies necessary to manage those characteristics effectively. Eurocentric society is the world-crowning pinnacle of what happens when you fail - patriarchal white supremacist ChristoFascist genocidal child raping oligarchs committing mass murder on every inhabited continent to prove how civilized they are.
There is nothing special about the people of China that make them better than the rest of humanity, the same problems of humanity manifest in China as everywhere else on the planet.
And yet, the outcomes are different. Is that because Chinese people are racially superior? No. It’s because Chinese society has developed superior social technology for managing these problems.
China is not ramming fishing vessels because the US once clandestinely deployed mines in the 1960’s.So what you’re saying is that China has no valid security concerns behind their actions?
WTF dude. No, that is not what I said. I quit right there because this is a complete non sequitur. Good luck with your ideas, I am out.
More complicated than what most people think considering the history of Taiwan. Imagine if fascist in your country seized a region via ethnic cleansing and then created a break away state. Would your country be happy to recognize it as an independent nation? The only thing that complicates this is they eventually established a somewhat democratic government, after +40 years of violent authoritarianism.
Ask literally any average Southeast Asian citizen about China’s influence on their country, and you’ll get a sense of Chinese imperialist ambitions.
Eh… Comparatively I think you would hear worse if you asked them about western ambitions.
China is a superpower, you don’t get to that status without flexing that power. The reality is that every superpower in history regardless of what social economic system they utilize has to compete with an established hegemony to upset the status quo. You can label that as imperialism if you want However that opens the debate on how we quantify imperialism, and the only real way to do that is by comparison.
Compared to the leading superpower I’d hardly say their activity in their own backyard really can’t be compared to what the US is currently doing to control a waterway right now.
I’m brushing over the long history of Han ethnic expansionism
I think Han chauvinism has long been an issue within China, even Mao spoke about it during his time in power. Do I think it’s as dire as it’s depicted in western media? No, but I do hope that the CCP takes more steps to integrate ethnic minorities into positions in higher government like the politburo. That being said, is the treatment of ethnic minorities on the same level or worse than in western nations…? Not really, which leads me to believe that ethnic chauvinism isn’t really a problem specific to any government or economic system.
war with communist Vietnam over their supposed vassal-state of Cambodia.
Which the CCP openly admits was a misguided mistake, and apparently unlike other superpowers was something they actually learned from.
Would your country be happy to recognize it as an independent nation
Self-determination is a virtue. Holding onto the claims of your forefathers is problematic to say the least. History of Israel and all that.
Comparatively I think you would hear worse if you asked them about western ambitions.
Anecdotally, I have experienced the opposite. I oppose US imperialism too. It’s all bad
You can label that as imperialism if you want However that opens the debate on how we quantify imperialism, and the only real way to do that is by comparison.
This is a non-answer. You want to discuss the nature of power and dynamics. Doing an imperialism because your neighbor did an imperialism does not make it morally correct, in fact it’s likely to lead to a cascade into conflict. This is not US or Russia apologia, everyone should rail them for doing that. Making excuses for China doing the same is the weakest take you can have in a conversation on the topic of morality.
On the topic of Han ethnicity, we should always be wary of the concept of ethnicity in political policy, rather than people as people.
Great to hear that the CCP is willing to admit a few mistakes. Really puts into perspective how bad Trump is.
The non-western world’s current stance on LGBTQ+ will always make the US and Europe better places to exist for personal choice and freedoms. Until that changes, Chinese / Russian apologists will always be treated with derision and Fox News level credibility. FYI
Self-determination is a virtue. Holding onto the claims of your forefathers is problematic to say the least. History of Israel and all that.
Is it always a virtue? For example, was the Arrow Cross party taking over Hungary and helping exterminate 500k Hungarian Jews a virtuous act of self determination?
I oppose US imperialism too. It’s all bad
I think we can agree that any foreign nation flexing their power their smaller neighboring countries is bad, but we are making a comparison here. You can disagree with the actions of both countries and still compare their actions against each other.
This is a non-answer. You want to discuss the nature of power and dynamics.
My point wasn’t supposed to be interpreted as a definitive answer. It was a way to open the discussion to further evaluation.
Doing an imperialism because your neighbor did an imperialism does not make it morally correct, in fact it’s likely to lead to a cascade into conflict.
To have an actual discussion about this we would have to first define what you think imperialism actually is. That way we can separate acts of imperialism, and actions taken to bulwark against encroaching imperialism.
Imo morality rarely comes into play when super powers enact geopolitical strategy. As observers we can analyze the resulting fallout of those strategies, but I think it’s a mistake to assume morality in their intent.
excuses for China doing the same is the weakest take you can have in a conversation on the topic of morality.
I don’t think I really brought up morality, I was focused more on outcomes of their actions.
The non-western world’s current stance on LGBTQ+ will always make the US and Europe better places to exist for personal choice and freedoms.
Ehh… It kinda depends on what country you are talking about in Europe and honestly the US is back sliding on that front as well.
Many East Asian countries including China have actually made a lot of progress for the LGBT populations there. The Chinese government tends to take a hands off approach, going so far as to adopt the “Three Nos” position as in “no approval, no disapproval, and no promotion”.
Most LGBT people in East Asia are a lot more affected by their own family’s perception rather than the government. The wide influence of Confucianism makes any changes to family structure a slow and difficult process. Though the general acceptance among young urban people has been pretty rapid.
Until that changes, Chinese / Russian apologists will always be treated with derision and Fox News level credibility. FYI
I think that’s making a hasty generalization… I can in fact believe that China has a better track record on foreign policy than most western countries, and still be critical about some of their domestic policy. Does that make me an apologist, or were you just creating a false dichotomy?
I also don’t really know what Russia has to do with anything I’ve said? We were talking about eastern and/or socialist countries…Russia isn’t either of those. FYI
Is it always a virtue?
Yes. Nazi’s killing Jews is explicitly against the self-determination of said Hungarian Jews. To shorthand this argument: People make countries, countries don’t make people.
still compare their actions against each other.
I set the line at morality in my subsequent responses. Comparing two hegemon’s actions in discussions often falls into the Argumentum ad antiquitatem fallacy.
My first post was explicitly calling out the downplaying of Chinese imperialism from the OP. I don’t have time lately to discuss geopolitical strategies of hegemons, as you will see with this truncated response, but I will call out influence tactics of the either ill-informed or state-paid actors. Hence, bringing Russia into this.
As for LGBTQ+, I have no interest in modeling state systems that are behind on personal freedoms such as these. It’s good to hear things are changing, and I hope they do for everyone’s sake, but watching even the more “freedom” minded places utilize LGBTQs as scapegoats for conservative failings gives me little hope for the timeline of places where they are not legally recognized.
Nazi’s killing Jews is explicitly against the self-determination of said Hungarian Jews.
And what about tens of thousands of civilians The KMT murdered to create the ROC?
Comparing two hegemon’s actions in discussions often falls into the Argumentum ad antiquitatem fallacy.
Only if you force the comparison into a subjective debate about morality instead of utilizing objective observation like outcomes.
I don’t have time lately to discuss geopolitical strategies of hegemons, as you will see with this truncated response, but I will call out influence tactics of the either ill-informed or state-paid actors. Hence, bringing Russia into this.
You don’t have time to discuss the actual topic, but do have time to showhorn in a strawman argument?
As for LGBTQ+, I have no interest in modeling state systems that are behind on personal freedoms such as these.
I don’t think state systems have a real affect on the personal freedoms of LGBTQ people. There are plenty of liberal democracies that are still way behind on LGBTQ rights, and we’ve seen policy that was progressive for it’s time in communist countries and we’ve also seen those countries regress in the same policies. It has more to do with social mores than how you run a state.
And what about tens of thousands of civilians The KMT murdered to create the ROC?
Circular argument. How many native Taiwanese did the Han Chinese kill in the 1600s for the Qing to lay claim to the island?
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. 😱
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.
But they’re an oppressive evil dictatorship, why would they need to save face? Maybe just accept that you’ve drunk the Koolaid.
… Why would massively face conscious culture China care about face?
You’ve got so much irony I can’t even tell what point you’re trying to make.
No irony here. The way people in general on reddit and adjacent platforms (not you necessarily, just the way Chinese politics is spoken about) you’d think that the CPC can do whatever it pleases without care for anything. So which is it? And why are you so cynical about the genuineness of laws stating that all Chinese are equal, regardless of ethnicity?
Oh, a lot of people know nothing about the PRC or China in general. It’s infuriating.
Often either a utopia or the most evil and terrible distopia, blergh. It’s a place, full of myriad people, ideas, ways of being, and their own contradictions.I’m used to people assuming I’m at the other extreme pole, when really I’m just trying to complicate the picture and share a bit of what I learnt and saw while living in the PRC for several years - where I found something much more interesting than either idealised extreme.
Edit: and in answer to your question: of course the CCP can’t do whatever it pleases without a care for anything. It’s too faction ridden, broad, and worried about 3rd roads, dissent, and popular unrest for that. It values stability, peaceful day to day living, and being able to return its side of the social contract. But that also means that small factions that could upset or displace the sense of harmony, such as traditional ethnic minority ways of life, habits, etc. are not given much time. They need to Modernise and Develop, like the rest regardless of what those people actually think, do, or want.
Having spent a lot of time in Yunnan and Guizhou, I’ve seen enough of it myself, sadly.
Minor border disputes are not imperialism.
I’m brushing over the long history of Han ethnic expansionism
Projection.
and the literal war with communist Vietnam
Over 40 years ago lol. If the US had been at peace since Vietnam, I’d have very different opinions about it.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/imperialism
imperialism, state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas
Bruh can’t even read a dictionary, lmao.
Projection
Lmao, who do you even think I am?
The US is bad too. If you’re going to be anti-imperialist then you need to be against all imperialism and not just the one you were told to hate.
The vitriol toward defending China in this second response, at any cost, gives you away.
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.
Using what’s widely respected as one of the most accurate sources available isn’t acceptable so you bust out quotes from Lenin as the reliable source? Lol
imperialism, state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas
That’s still not the same as minor border disputes.
The US is bad too. If you’re going to be anti-imperialist then you need to be against all imperialism and not just the one you were told to hate.
Yes, decades long occupations, minor border clashes, both equally bad and equally requiring staunch opposition. You gonna go full “white lives matter” next? Or can we agree that focusing on the much, much bigger problem should be the priority?
The vitriol toward defending China in this second response, at any cost, gives you away.
“Gives me away” as what? If you’re going to accuse me of something, say it to my face.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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They brigaded you Dagnet. RIP.
Purged like their authoritarian heroes wished for dissidents, downvotes to the back of the head. :,(
Damn, my comment got removed, I wonder who did it, and admin perhaps?
And so they prove my point. Luckily those downvotes are as meaningless as their opinions
Being wildly unpopular does nothing to prove you right or wrong
I’m so glad nobody cares when the US does “minor border disputes” the way they care about when China does it.
Oh wait…
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And proud of it. Because anyone who thinks critically, acknowledges basic, objective facts about reality, anyone who questions their own government and confronts their own presumptions and prejudices, is a “tankie” to you liberal, imperialist, chauvinists.
At least I don’t have the blood of a million Middle Easterners on my hands like you do.
Holy based
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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.
Good comment!
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.
Which is hilarious because there’s absolutely no equivalency here. China is not running warships through the Florida Keys or in the Long Island Sound. The US is running warships off the coast of China and has Marines stationed 4 miles off the coast inside a territory that the UN recognizes as a province of the state of China. The US are clearly in the wrong here. This both-sides position is ridiculous
Any claim China makes along its border regions is Imperialism.
For those who don’t know, this statement is completely untrue, with ZERO historical basis, and ZERO consistency. This is intellectual dishonesty when spoken by people with knowledge. It’s just parroting propaganda when ignorant people say it.
China is ontologically evil
And people question why we say that the USA is the most propagandized people on the planet.
Which is hilarious because there’s absolutely no equivalency here. China is not running warships through the Florida Keys or in the Long Island Sound. The US is running warships off the coast of China and has Marines stationed 4 miles off the coast inside a territory that the UN recognizes as a province of the state of China. The US are clearly in the wrong here. This both-sides position is ridiculous
I can’t help map the history of Taiwan against the history of Cuba, when it comes to the topic of “imperialism”.
On the one hand, you have an island that was actually and repeatedly invaded by Western governments, conquered and liberated and conquered again. Bombed, embargoed, sabotaged, sanctioned, its leaders subjected to hundreds of assassination attempts. The explicit stated goal of the imperial neighbor is “regime change”. The implicit unstated goal is subjugation leading to a full-on ethnic cleansing, to clear the way for a new generation of colonial settlers to occupy vacant real estate.
On the other, you have an island that is heavily incorporated into its neighbor’s economic ecosystem. People freely travel to and from the mainland. Citizenship is muddy by design, because the Eastern government wants to encourage islanders to recognize themselves as full citizens of the neighboring state. And Taiwanese businesses are happy to take advantage of this arrangement, exploiting their special status to function as a bridge between mainland businesses (under sanction by Western governments) and Western customers (hungry for cheap, high quality Chinese goods).
Cuba is impoverished as a matter of US foreign policy.
Taiwan is enriched as a matter of Chinese foreign and domestic policies.
One of these countries has been in the headlines for decades, with hysterical predictions of an imminent military occupation. And it isn’t Cuba.
And people question why we say that the USA is the most propagandized people on the planet.
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.
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’m blessed with having long-time friends from various places in the world.
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”
“… in favor of Russian state departament and oligarch owned media narrative”
ftfy, now fuck off
You notice people slurping up one propaganda while you’re slurping up another, and think you’re smarter than they are.
So that’s a definite “yes” on believing everything the US State Department has to say about the geopolitical adversaries of the US?
Oh, you’re just a straight up tankie lmao. Ta-ta!
Damn, it usually takes two or three rounds of replies to get them to just admit it like that.
Not beating the allegations lol
Rule 1 is long past dead…
Have you stopped beating your wife yet? Yes or no. If you don’t answer I will interpret that as a “no”.
Can’t stop what you never started!
That’s exactly what a domestic abuser would say!
“Both sides are the same! I am very smart.”
Yes, those two are the same. They’re not two different sides. The side opposite them both is woke, learns what propaganda looks like, recognizes it, refuses it, and doesn’t employ it as a tactic. Get outta here trying to paint me as a centrist when the common enemies of mankind are all on the side of rape, genocide, and greed.
Then surely you would know that NATO’s propaganda is far more pervasive and commonplace than that of non-NATO countries, and that just because another source disagrees with NATO’s official message it’s not necessarily propaganda (at least, not one that fabricates evidence)?
Then surely you would know that NATO’s propaganda is far more pervasive and commonplace than that of non-NATO countries, and that just because another source disagrees with NATO’s official message it’s not necessarily propaganda (at least, not one that fabricates evidence)?
Yes I know that. It is propaganda, though. I mean, it’s pretty fuckin obvious. Hilariously so. I get that it works really well on uneducated people living in enforced ignorance, but I’m not one of them. You’re a faux-communist dictatorship propaganda sockpuppet and you stick out like a sore thumb.
Hint: maybe you shouldn’t all post this dreck on .ml accounts.
wasn’t expecting instance racism today on lemmy lmao. give me some of your enlightened, non-propagandized takes then
Try harder halfwit
What way are you reading the meme because the government and mainstream media are incredibly hostile towards Russia and China.
The character depicted at the bottom isn’t the government or mainstream media, it’s the “independent thinker”
Instead of trusting US imperialism, like a simp, they’re sucking straight from the teat of Russian imperialism instead, like a Chad. Is the meme. How are you reading it?
Maga has been on a IV drip from known Russian assets for a minute
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.
Don’t be so hasty!
We love propaganda from ANY source so long as it gives us that sweet xenophobic dopamine hit!
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.
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?
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.
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) _/¯
Dubya had some amazing stuff to say about the guy if you want to play waddabouts.
Much like Reagan and Saddam Hussein. They were friends until they weren’t
The enemy of my enemy isn’t necessarily my friend, they just happen to be aligned with me in that one, single, specific enimity.
It takes a lot more to be somebody one can trust than merely sharing a single dislike.
As I read it, that meme represents people who don’t actually think like this and instead whilst claiming to be skeptics blindly accept whatever they’re told by those who voice dislike of one or two of the same things they do (for example, American Imperialism).
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.
Social media is today’s mass/mainstream media. Capitalist imperialists own both that and the traditional channels. They decide the message in both. Being hostile “officially” and contradicting that algorithmically is a choice
Based. Venezuela and Cuba too (I’m from Venezuela, founder of the ALBA-TCP/BAPO-PTT [Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America - Peoples’ Trade Treaty], and Cuba is the main provider of military and political support of the Venezuelan Narcoterrorist State).
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