God how true this is for all the America bad people
Lemmy has wayyyy to many people who can’t understand that America bad ≠ China good.
Yeah it’s annoying when any criticism of Occupied China results in them talking about America
Well given how Lemmy is mostly American ultra-leftwing it’s weird when they talk about changing China when they can’t even change their own neighbourhood, or even their own home.
Eh, Lemmy isn’t that left wing. It’s just normal left.
Depends on the instance, Lemmy ranges from liberal to Anarchist to Marxist. Most instances lean in one of those major directions, or at most 2.
Drag noticed something after the election: All the non voters say it’s not their fault, because Kamala is more to blame. They think blame is a limited resource. They think you can only blame either the DNC OR the voters, not both.
It’s the same as with China. They think if America is bad, then China has to be good. If there’s evidence of China being bad, the counterevidence is that America is worse.
Tankies think only one thing can be bad at a time. It’s the same with genocide, too. We can’t care about Ukraine and trans people and West Bank, because WhAt AbOuT gAzA.
The tankie mind only has room for one single bad thing in each subject. Only one bad genocide. Only one bad empire. Only one bad politician. They can’t conceive of two things being bad at the same time. It does not compute. When they say they understand two things being bad, they’re lying. They can only understand it in short term memory. They can’t internalise it and apply it to long term memory. Fifteen seconds after they admit two things can be bad, they forget it. It’s like clockwork. “America and China are both bad… 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15… China can’t be bad because America is bad! I’m not to blame for Trump’s win because Kamala ran a weak campaign! Gaza is the only genocide that matters!”
What the living fuck are you talking about ‘occupied China’
that is the most brain broken anti-historic nonsense I’ve ever heard. The CPC is literally the result of decolonizing themselves. It was occupied until then. Not to be cliched but crack a fucking book holy shit
I am aware of the terrorists sitting back while Real China 🇹🇼 tried protecting the people from the Japanese then not having the strength afterwards
Chiang Kai-Shek was kidnapped by his own guards because he was too preoccupied on hunting down the communists to the ends of the earth to stop the Japanese from running rampant.
I’d love to hear your explanation of how 8000 people hiding in one of the most remote regions of China came to win the civil war, if not through widespread popular support.
China good though
Who is China good for?
-_-
(As an anarchist)
-_-
Gets it in one.
There’s a reason everyone is currently demonizing liberal ideology instead of standing up for the rights that the conservatives are working to strip away.
Too many reports for the comments of this post so I’m locking this
It’s something that really bothers me about communism and socialism being derisive in the US, even in 2024, about 35 years after USSR fell.
The alternative to community-centric society is autocracy, typically devolving into monarchism.
Death to monarchists!
I mean “atheism” is still a dirty word in politics, thousands of years after the prejudice against that started. Apples to oranges, sure, but just goes to show how long it takes for public opinion to shift sometimes.
[LONG RAMBLE]
TLDR: Atheism wasn’t really regarded as a threat (other than the thing that USSR enforced) until the aughts and the New Atheism movement, at which point right-wing religious ministries turned from hating on other ministries to hating on atheists and secularists.
Atheism has some fascinating recent history. In the 1970s and 1980s atheists were disregarded almost entirely since it was an asserted position mostly by hard-line scientists and philosophers. Most of the none population instead went to (or at least associated with) left-wing churches. My parents (my Dad who is a rocket scientist and was atheist except in name) joined my mom and I at the Church of Religious Science (later the Science of Mind Church) which is pretty darned lax and easy to accept as religions go.
And the religious right (then, the Southern Baptist Church and the rising Evangelical movement) hated us and declared us false. They also did this to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (still regarded as a dangerous cult) and the Roman Catholic Church. John F. Kennedy got a lot of flack for being Catholic, and Republicans insisted he’d be beholden to the Holy See – and they tried to pressure him! – but he demonstrated he could serve the US as president and keep the Vatican at arm’s reach. Romney was still getting crap for his Mormonism in his 2012 presidential run, but it blended seamlessly into all sorts of other biographical anomalies that suggested character problems.
I should add there was a pro-religion sentiment in the US that was really anti-USSR. Marx recognized religion as the opiate of the people a symptom that the masses were suffering from precarity or scarcity, but Marx was saying the response of the community should be to feed them and keep them free of want, and as the dispair fades the need for religious practice will fade as well. (We’re not sure if he’s completely right.) So Lenin and Stalin’s response was to ban religion, which didn’t actually address the issue, but it gave the US justification to push church-going in the mid 20th century as a thing that pinko commies didn’t do.
Anyway, atheism became significant movement thing due to two factors. One was the new atheist movement which orbited Richard Dawkins and the top atheist guns. Dawkins motivation (as he tells it) was the 9/11 attacks, which showcased the power of religion as a force multiplier in violent conflict. But there was also a certain privilege that religious movements and religious institutions were given that secular ones were not, which was a favored topic of Douglas Adams. And so bringing atheist and secular organizations to equal status as churches was a big early goal of the new atheist movement.
The other factor bringing the rise of popular atheism was the rise of the internet which allowed us all to actually talk about things and confront that a lot of us already had awkward relationships with our respective religious institutions. Myself, this was a period for me to naturalism, ruling out supernatural elements until one comes and bites me on the butt. (This is the dream for IRL ghost hunters, to have a poltergeist beat them with their own duffel. Pain is temporary but evidence lives forever on the internet!)
That said the aughts marked the spread of atheism (and the consequential collapse of left-wing church attendance. Right wing church attendance has been falling less quickly but noticeably, and ministries continue to be in panic about it. And this was when anti-atheist pro-Christian and pro-Muslim movements (who absolutely don’t ally) started organizing to scare everyone how terrible we godless folk are, as if our interest in intellectual exercise and not the hypocrisy endemic to right-wing Christian ministries is what is driving parishioners from their pews.
[/LONG RAMBLE]
I also noted this was a problem with the Rebel Alliance (who just supports a republic of oligarchs), and was called a centrist for my efforts.
“But they’re the good guys!”
That’s why I don’t support governments or countries, I support people and anarchist liberation movements :3
No gods no masters
✊️
Only dragons, right?
Only bad dragons 😉
Hate your state
Peace, Justice, and Anarchy
✊
Exactly! I’m so tired of being accused of being a liberal and/or a fascist every single time I note that China or Russia isn’t some perfect leftist utopia, but in fact just another empire that is a pain in the ass not only to other countries but also their own citizens.
China is a fascist ethnostate, Russia is another neoliberal capitalist state, North Korea IMO cannot be described as socialist, Vietnam is pretty cool but mixed and only partially socialist, Cuba is not great tbh just in general, Venezuela is horrible, the Nordic states are just Social Democrat states, Israel has multiple worker co-ops but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re still a genocidal ethnostate, that just about covers all the tankie countries.
Russia has long reached the end state of neoliberal capitalism, fascism. The US is currently transitioning.
Israel is a tankie country now? Don’t they support Palestine? Let’s not rob tankies of their only correct opinion!
Kinda how they believe Chinas genocide is justified Tankies have no real problem with genocide
I haven’t seen a single Marxist in favor of Israel, though, you’re just inventing people at this point. Unless you’re trying to describe entirely different groups under the same general umbrella, but that confuses the convesation.
I’m using the term “tankie” to describe fake leftists, Israel has a lot of fake leftists and so called “Labor-Zionists”
The people supporting China, Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela, etc. and “critically supporting” Russia in its anti-Western stance are generally Marxists, and none of these people support Israel, and none fully support Russia. Israel has some few people that support the faux-Socialist “Kibbutz” system, but these people are anti-China, anti-Cuba, anti-Vietnam, anti-Venezuela, etc.
That’s why I am saying it’s confusing the conversation, your “tankie” doesn’t hold all of the views you mentioned, you’re describing separate groups under one label, a label almost always used for Marxists, and as such it leads to obfuscation of your actual message, hence confusion from other users.
If you think China is fascist, you’re brainwashed. There isnt another explanation for thinking the most democratic nation currently on the planet is fascist.
China perfectly fits the definition of a fascist ethnostate. Their economy is indirectly managed by the government while having capitalist elements (state control is the only “socialist” elements), they enforce a language, one ethnicity is clearly depicted as the “true Chinese ethnicity” (despite China having many), censorship is rampant, they’re committing a genocide, and at the end of the day THEY’RE NOT EVEN SOCIALIST.
It’s amazing how you neolibs expose yourselves. You sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable on reddit little buddy?
I’m an Anarcho-Sydicalist -_-
Oh, you’re an idealist stuck two centuries behind everyone else. Capital can and will crush everything you build through your ideology, so drop the anarcho part until capital is eliminated globally, or enjoy being a slave to capital your entire existence.
the most democratic nation currently on the planet
Sorry, but I didn’t see anyone mention Denmark or Norway anywhere in this thread.
Why would anyone mention racist petrocountries that are essentially Saudi Arabia but white?
I mentioned the Nordic states, they’re ok as far as neoliberal western states go (not very)
Democratic countries don’t silence people for outing criticism.
You must be sarcastic, otherwise your comment just doesn’t make any sense.
Good thing China doesn’t either.
The chinese web novel reverand insanity literally got banned for criticizing china. The guy who wrote it can’t write it anymore and you can’t even pirate the novel in china. cuz its been deleted off the chinese internet.
That’s nice and all, but there are literally millions of critics that aren’t banned, whose work is publicly available, who criticize from a place of wanting to improve, not destroy.
China is ML, and if there’s anything MLs live to do, it’s criticize each other.
The vast majority of people that actually get banned from producing certain works either spread entirely false propaganda created by western intelligence agencies ( uighur “genocide” ) or want to remove the government entirely and replace it with a kleptocracy like the US has.
How are you so sure? How do you see beyond western and Chinese propaganda and get to a semblance of truth? Genuine question.
I’ve lived in China for work. It’s genuinely no different than say, the Denmark in terms of “repression” except instead of arresting those that threaten capital, they arrest those that threaten the people (usually on behalf of capital). It’s not an anarchist paradise, they haven’t achieved communism, but they’re likely the furthest thing from fascism that’s still a nation. Anyone that claims to be on the left and dislikes their methods or compares them to fascists are genuinely either not on the left, or are baby lefties stuck in the 1800s in terms of reading and philosophy.
It’s kinda unavoidable that if one major power loses influence, another will benefit from the vacuum. You can’t really oppose your own country’s imperialism without making the case that other countries taking advantage is an acceptable risk.
This is more or less the story of WWI. With the increasing tensions and military buildup, socialists of countries across Europe formed the Second International and agreed in the Basel Declaration, which said that they would use the crisis to rise up simultaneously against every imperialist power and put an end to both the war and to capitalism:
If a war threatens to break out, it is the duty of the working classes and their parliamentary representatives in the countries involved supported by the coordinating activity of the International Socialist Bureau to exert every effort in order to prevent the outbreak of war by the means they consider most effective, which naturally vary according to the sharpening of the class struggle and the sharpening of the general political situation.
In case war should break out anyway it is their duty to intervene in favor of its speedy termination and with all their powers to utilize the economic and political crisis created by the war to arouse the people and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.
But once the war actually broke out, most of them found reasons to rally around their country’s flag. German socialists pointed to the conditions of serfdom under the Tsar and pointed to the massive colonial empires of Britain and France, while British and French socialists argued that Germany undemocratic under the Kaiser and had more responsibility for starting the war. They mostly agreed that both sides were bad, but they said they were only fighting to safeguard their countries “against defeat” rather than for victory, but regardless, for all intents and purposes it was the same thing. Of course, in all of these countries, there was considerable political pressure and propaganda pushing them to fall in line and to regard the enemy as worse, and many people did what was personally advantageous regardless of what they had said previously.
There was only one exception, where the socialists took advantage of the war to overthrow their government, without regard for the possibility that it could help the other side, and they did end up ceding a fair bit of land too, but they were able to put a stop that that theater of the meat grinder everyone was being fed into.
The way I understand the meme, it’s not saying anti-imperialism is wrong. It’s saying that being a tankie, i.e. simping for china and russia doesn’t qualify as anti-imperialism.
As near as I can tell, advocating for peaceful, dovish, isolationist policies is enough for someone to be considered a tankie (ironically enough). WWI era socialists who did not fall in line behind their governments certainly faced similar accusations.
WWI era socialists who did not fall in line behind their governments certainly faced similar accusations.
Eugene Debs went to prison for that exact reason.
Listen, I’m as anti-imperialist as the next guy. But realistically if the core of capital that has nearly unopposed dominion over the entire world recedes, another entity that deserves the moniker of ‘empire’ completely equally will step in to fill the void! And if that’s the case, we should just support the most morally righteous empire. Ours >:-D
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Turtle Island managed to not have white people using such logic for thousands of years just fine
Tankies support the more problematic empires such as Russia and China.
Did you not read the meme? Imperialism is bad no matter who is doing it, and arguing over which empire is more ‘problematic’ is counterproductive, as we should oppose all empires instead of wasting all of our time and effort on getting on each other’s throats.
true, being rude to other people is bad. We should stop being rude and criminalize it.
wait…
