This is pretty crazy if true. I wonder if it has any connections to the alleged “ghost” CCP police stations that were reported around in Canada. I believe it was being claimed the stations were being used to bully Chinese people that were in Canada.
I don’t know man. The RCMP has recently charged one of their officers for allegedly putting pressure on people of Chinese origin. Now, I’ll admit this a pretty different situation than the “secret Chinese police stations” and, as far as I know, no charges been brought up in their cases or anything found during their investigations. However, China does appear to be putting pressure on its citizens from abroad using clandestine methods. Is the West likely doing much the same? shrug I haven’t heard about that myself but regardless this kind of practice shouldn’t be done by any country.
Anyway I found this National Post article which has more details:
Anyway, I appreciate the source but I gotta say I don’t find it very credible. It starts going down a rabbit hole that this all part of some CIA backed psyop, but I don’t really believe that. These types of stories have been popping up around the world and I doubt the CIA has that kind of reach in some attempt to… what… make China look bad?
These types of stories have been popping up around the world
Can you specify? How many cases do you know? And in which countries? Otherwise its hard to guess if the CIA can fake it. But I’d say if it is up, say to a hundred then: Yes totally something the CIA could and would do.
and I doubt the CIA has that kind of reach in some attempt to… what… make China look bad?
To influence public opinion and manufacture consent for a wide range of political actions against the only threat to US hegemony in existence
“Last December, a report from NGO Safeguard Defenders said it had identified 102 Chinese police stations operating in 53 countries, including five in Canada.”
To be fair, the article you posted claims that NGO is some kind of CIA backed organization. I don’t know if I really buy that, but I suppose it is possible. Antcedotally, I’ve heard other stories of China doing stuff like this (particularly when there were a lot of Hong Kong protests) but I’ll admit I don’t have much first hand evidence myself. It’s just, on a balance of probabilities, I’m much more likely to believe that an authoritarian regime like China is capable of doing it.
Also that example about the “Devil Eyes” dolls is bit disengenious to bring up. Your own source states that they only ever built a few prototypes. Granted, it does say an anonymous Chinese source says hundreds were shipped to Pakistan, but again I don’t think we can really trust China’s take on this.
The CIA has lots of looney plans (likely a product of Military-Industrial complex), but not many come to fruition becasue they are not practical.
As I obviously have not read yours. I will catch up on both. Thanks for quoting that anyways
NGO is some kind of CIA backed organization
I wouldn’t be surprised. The CIA has a history of backing NGOs like this dating back to the Congress for Cultural Freedomwhose goal it was to purge leftism in europe of communism. Nowadays they usually use the NED for that though
… “Devil Eyes” … is bit disengenious to bring up. … they only ever built a few prototypes. … I don’t think we can really trust China’s take on this.
Whether or not it is true they only ever produced prototypes I don’t think its disingenious as my point was not the impact it made but how the CIA operates and this is a good example as it simultaneously needs to be: somewhat recent, yet not too recent so its publicly known (declassified or uncovered) and ridiculous.
I wanted to push back on your notion that something sounds too ridiculous for the CIA to pursue, which generally is just not a framework in which to understand the CIA.
The Chinese source was not “China’s take on this” it was a source of the washington post in China where the CIA allegedly commissioned the dolls (which they did not dispute according to wapo).
But since you brought up the trustworthyness of a take: I wouldn’t trust the CIAs take on this, which is the source claiming “too their knowledge” only 3 dolls were produced.
But personally I think its clear these dolls never got into the hands of many customers, its just such a dumb plan.
Antcedotally, I’ve heard other stories of China doing stuff like this
Historically many narratives about China have been proven false or misrepresented too (social credit system, authenticity of tiananmen papers,…) thats why I am sceptical.
Thanks to the illusory truth effect this anecdotal gut feeling is terribly vulnerable to manipulation. It happens in media all the time, i.e. some rightists believe the LGBTQ community is full of groomers bc its what they are told all the time (not sure if this is a good example, I just wanted to pick a partisan one)
If the targets voice is not represented its even worse bc the claims stay largely uncontested and false claims can stack up (one misrepresentation giving you the feeling “this is totally something they would do”, strenghtening your misconception), creating a gut feeling in the population that is wrong. A fairly uncontested example for such a deconstruction of a foreign target through the media would be Iraq pre invasion. You can look up polls from around the time and correlate it with the reporting of the time. This is also the effect of filterbubbles of course filtering out the opinions you lose the corrective
Whether or not the CIA was/is involved in influencing public opinion like this (personally I have no doubt), this is absolutely what is happening WRT reporting on China ATM, there is no corrective and false claims just stack up.
Look at the histeria that an off-course weather balloon caused: people would line up at an event to scream at Biden about the balloon, even though the initial press release of the pentagon clearly states that this was not an uncommon phenomenon and that there is no threat associated with it (granted its longer than that and one can have a discussion about some of the wording, but this comment is long enough already)
Fair enough. I appreciate the detailed response. I agree there’s lots of reasons to be skeptical of claims made against China. At the same time, I think we can still be critical of China’s actions and not merely dismiss everything against China as some CIA backed plot.
I agree, the best thing is to not jump to conclusions neither the conclusion “Everything is 100% CIA lies” nor the conclusion “China bad” and be patient with individual topics before stepping onto the emotional roller coaster
I’ve listened to a podcast (“Silk and Steel”) by a Chinese living in the US and he describes the media coverage of China in the West as skewed, but he describes it as narrowed onto a certain slice of Chinese reality that is there just blown out of proportion.
I don’t remember his exact words and I am not an English native so I might not transfer the nuance precisely. But along those lines is what I remember. And even IIRC its just the opinion of one person, but it stuck with me. Tbf that was years ago though and narrative has certainly picked up since then
Thank you for the appreciation, I have to say I have yet to get used to the discussions on lemmy being seemingly way more good-faithed than on reddit!
This post is on lemmy.ml, an instance whose owner decided to continue federating with lemmygrad.ml for… reasons. Go visit lemmygrad.ml and you’ll understand why.
I really wish Lemmy supported defederation of instances by individual users (so I’d auto-block anything that came from lemmygrad or its users for any reason). I have been threatened with death by communists enough and just want to be left alone to my far-left-but-not-communist devices.
I’d love that, but as I said elsewhere I have communities I run and a post history. Are we talking about me just making myself a mod elsewhere and cutting all my post histories? I mean, it’s not the end of the world, but it’d be nice to keep my post histories coherent.
I see it all over Lemmy unfortunately. I think it is because Lemmy is still relatively fringe and it is where lots of pro communism communities emerged. Normally, I find it actually pretty refreshing to see more left wing stuff but the pro China (or at least the kneejerk reactions to anything anti China) to be exhausting.
To be fair, I used to see a lot of it on Reddit as well. I think they are just a bigger proportion percentage wise on Lemmy so you see much more of it.
It’s a bit of a mixed bag. There are a lot of pro-China comments that are just… Well they either drank the kool-aid or are dishing it out. Especially when it comes to social policies.
On the other hand, China has been making significant technological accomplishments that you just don’t hear about in Western media. They’ve made a lot of advancements in spaceflight and manufacturing processes that humanity as a whole could benefit from if we were more cooperative. And that’s not even mentioning Nuclear Power.
China is WAY ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to new nuclear power. They’re the only ones with Gen 4 reactors, the only ones working on Thorium reactors, and are on track to build over 100 new nuclear plants over the next few years. China is to nuclear power as the US is to weapons; sure other countries might be tinkering with some stuff, but there’s really no comparison when they’re doing more than the rest of the world combined.
I wish there were more unbiased sources. Unfortunately, there’s usually only one of two sides. Either you get news from China which usually boils down to “We’re amazing and nothing we do is ever bad or wrong. Anyone saying otherwise is just lying because they’re jealous/afraid of our wild success!” Or you get news from the US/West that’s basically “China is a totalitarian poo-country that’s on the verge of collapse. They contribute nothing to global advancement and the only thing they’re good for is making cheap, poor quality, crap.”
I guess you would have to sift the scientific literature to get a general idea. It would be the least biased source. Being totalitarian really helps with nuclear. Just look at what Germany has been up to.
What’s with all the conspiracy nutcases here? The fucking Uighur genocide…
… is mostly sourced from a far right German nationalist who’s been proven to mistranslate Chinese documents over and over again, and claims that God gave him a mission to destroy China.
… has been debunked by many Muslim countries visiting China to investigate
… is a media narrative connected to the US funding radical Islamic groups to destabilize east turkestan and failing miserably as the Chinese response was mostly improving economic conditions and funding uyghur cultural programs which actually is effective at deradicalization, which is what the US could have done in Iraq in Afghanistan if they were over there for altruistic or mutually beneficial reasons and not just to extract oil and opium while making some defense contractors very rich.
I’d appreciate sources on these points, please. I don’t trust western media blindly, but I also recognize that China has its own propaganda machine (as does every state). I’d like to learn more, but would need links for topics about which I’m unfamiliar else I’ll only be able to read the western media I mentioned above.
You can look up a bunch of articles on uyghurs and follow the links for claims. They almost always at some point come back to “Zenz says” with a sprinkle of radio free asia, which is a front for the state department charitably, and a front for the CIA uncharitably. This tactic of circuitous citation was also used when the US wanted to make people believe that Iraq had WMDs.
Here is a right wing anti-china article that talks about 14 different Muslim countries investigating, claiming without any proof that it is all staged. www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/…/2003792883
I dont have a source on reducing poverty decreasing radicalization but Im guessing you’d agree people with a secure economic future are less likely to throw their lives away. If you disagree I can go find some sources.
Along with his “mission” against China, heavenly guidance has apparently prompted Zenz to denounce homosexuality, gender equality, and the banning of physical punishment against children as threats to Christianity.
The fact that this nutcase is being paraded as a credible researcher on the subject is absolutely surreal, and it’s clear that the methodology of his “research” doesn’t pass any kind of muster when examined closely.
If you are left with any questions while looking at the other comments, I’m sure they’d be happy to explain but if they don’t I also would be. I just don’t want to fill your inbox with redundant information.
Lots of mainstream western racists are now here after reddit migration. It’s a good reminder of just how deranged people who guzzle western propaganda all day are.
It seems to be a much greater conspiracy to claim that there is a genocide going on over a huge population concentrated in the region without producing a massive refugee crisis like we saw with other genocides (e.g. the Holocaust) and with a massive dearth of photo/video evidence despite most young people in China having a VPN on their phones.
Exactly, if we look at an actual genocidal situation then we have to look no further than Afghanistan where US has been massacring people for the past two decades and created 2.6 million refugees in the process www.unhcr.org/countries/afghanistan
If anything remotely like what the west claims was happening in Xinjiang then we’d see a huge flood of refugees in the neighbouring countries.
It differs from sub to sub but the bigger and more political the stronger the imperial narrative is enforced.
r/worldnews is one of the worst, and honestly suspect its astroturf and run by assets or a derivative of an imperial institution (council on foreign relation, think tanks, the likes)
I legitimately don’t understand why Leninists are so keen on making folk heroes out of tyrants. Why exert the energy to defend this shit instead of learning from it and building a better class of socialist??
I’ll listen to western leftists when we actually take power and have to learn to use it to defend ourselves, currently we have a big fat 0 in the wins department
Not in the Square itself, which was the scene of many absurd claims by defectors, like the “tanks crushing people to wash them down the gutters” cartoon bullshit.
I legitimately don’t understand why Leninists are so keen on making folk heroes out of tyrants.
What a sentence! You’re jumping to conclusions all over the place!
You’re conflating information with a desire to “make folk heroes out of tyrants”, trying to denormalise a desire to understand what was actually happening.
There was bloodshed but not on the Tienanmen square and the conditions are less clear than you believe
It is obvious that most peoples idea of what happened is heavily influenced by propaganda, I know mine was.
If you could stop sabotaging efforts to cut through the disinformation that would be great thanks
Also: “They are tyrants” thanks I’ll defer judgement as long as the evidence you present us with turns out to be propaganda, there are other “tyrannical governments” much more in reach
A big part of my gripe here is precisely the idea that one can engage in critical analysis of statecraft, while hand waving away inconvenient statecraft. Or worse - supporting broad censorship of inconvenient statecraft.
A big part of my gripe here is precisely the idea that one can engage in critical analysis of statecraft, while hand waving away inconvenient statecraft. Or worse - supporting broad censorship of inconvenient statecraft.
I have no idea what that sentence is supposed to mean.
My gripe here is that nobody can have an informed opinion on foreign policy if they do not acknowledge the tons of pro US propaganda that surround them on EVERY issue in this category and dominate most of it.
It is important to call you out on your power-serving statements.
You tried to push critical thought out of the overton window when you painted it a kind of sacrilege (“make folk heroes out of tyrants”) and everyone engaging in it someone that needs to be shunned by society (a “tankie”).
Mind you all without addressing, let alone contesting, the facts.
With all due respect: As long as your actions are indistinguishable from those of a US intelligence social media asset, don’t expect any good will engagement.
Have an open mind and start to reflect a little more
But I am fine criticizing the US and acknowledging US propaganda. I do it all the time. You are the one dismissing anything which doesn’t align with a very narrow ML head-cannon as indicative of being a US intelligence asset. And you are telling me to have an open mind?
Buddy, there is an entire world of socialist thought and literature which diverges from and challenges ML dogma. Either you are unaware of this, or you are so narrow minded that you see anything outside of that script as some monolithic enemy.
Call me buddy all you want but it doesn’t change the fact that you are not good at making sense
Why are you jumping to conclusions so weirdly?
Case in point that complete second half is you responding to conclusions you’ve drawn up in your head. Re-read this thread, nowhere is it ever about ML or socialism. You think its accurate to call me ML because…?
This thread is about US propaganda on reddit, which I characterized by posting a fact that is affected by it (with the goal of fabricating consent for military action against another country).
Your mind is closed AF when you equate my mention of that with being a “LEniNisT tyRanT LoVEr”
You are the one dismissing anything which doesn’t align with a very narrow ML head-cannon as indicative of being a US intelligence asset
An obviously completly untruthful rendition of my statement. I phrased it carefully so if you’d do me the favor and try harder to understand it.
I would appreciate it if you could refrain from purposefully misrepresenting my statements as you have done in every one of your comments so far
Imagine thinking there are paid astroturfers on a tiny niche platform with a few thousand users. We have some utterly insane people here after reddit migration.
Imagine thinking governments, fascists and PR agencies wouldn’t migrate to wherever people choose to hang out and continue their decades-long campaign to brainwash people into believing whatever is convenient for them.
I see you don’t understand the concept of niches. Governments, fascists, and PR agencies are going to spend their effort where it makes the most impact. Only a brainwashed person couldn’t comprehend that people could legitimately disagree with their world view, and anybody who thinks different from them must therefore be a paid troll.
If you don’t like it here then feel free to go somewhere else. Lemmy was a community of sane people who were capable of having civilized discussion, and then a bunch of reddit chuds flooded here and started acting like you own the place. Get over yourself.
Bahaha look at you. “Everyone who disagrees with me is a bootlicker/troll/westerner.”
Edit for the bootlicking troll below: Ahem A straw man fallacy is the informal fallacy of refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be “attacking a straw man”.
You don’t understand what a straw man is.
You’re really bad at this. You even tried to copy my comment and failed miserably! Congratulations, you’re stupid in two languages!
Most socialists are people in the global south. Their projects that “tankies” support are actually being done. Most of this “you’re a tankie” shit stems from western chauvinist white man’s burden shit. Call us when you’ve done a successful socialist revolution, until then we’re going to be emulating the ideologies of successful socialist projects.
Edit: because lol “the US did a revolution” , read “the counter revolution of 1776”
So engaging in violence is the determining factor for determining who can have opinions?
That’s great news, because Marx drew pretty heavily from the French and US revolutions when discussing his own revolutionary framework. Where do I pick up my badge?
So engaging in violence is the determining factor for determining who can have opinions?
No, you are free to engage in revolutionary violence that results in a socialist society with a communist ruling party or elect your way into a socialist society with a communist ruling party. Plenty of socialists did the latter, they just didn’t live for long. If you do that I’ll gladly listen to you.
Wow that kind of seems like a very narrow view of who can have a voice. It seems to exclude any socialist tradition which is skeptical of revolutionary praxis, or any statecraft which is not based on democratic centralism. Do I have that correct? You only find Orthodoxy and Leninism valid and are not interested in any forms of libertarian or democratic socialism?
Do you think only the successful revolutions have been orthodox marxist or orthodox ML?
You are free to follow the example of libertarian socialists and electoral socialists, but I’d prefer if you didn’t get yourself killed. Why do you only like ideologies that aren’t successful?
Nah, this shit is broken on mobile and I can’t see the context of my own comments for some reason. Sometimes when I hit context it shows me random comments under the same parent.
But bro you are on the same website having the same conversation I am lmao.
“Every person who doesn’t participate in Sinophobi is paid off by the Chinese government”
Like, really? You actually believe that? Was 911 an inside job? How hot DOES jet fuel get??? Is Q-anon real? Is the earth flat?
If you’ve ever debunked a conspiracy theory, you should reconsider the idea that maybe, just maybe, not everyone hates China. It’s probably more likely than you think…
Edit: And then they edited their comment to be more defensive instead. Perfect.
Can you provide even circumstantial evidence of people like myself being paid, or are you resorting to unhinged conspiracy theories to explain people vociferously disagreeing with you?
It literally wouldn’t even matter, you’ll just deny it and refuse to concede even the most minor of points because for you, debate is not a means to find truth, it’s a power play. We’ve all seen it countless times. We know your game, your patterns of behavior, and since you do not want to play fairly because you’ll know you’ll lose, you don’t get to play at all. You don’t get to participate in discussions with us, especially not me. You’re isolated to your cult now. I hope you find happiness in choosing genocide.
Pardon me, I thought you were responding to a different comment (I was replying in my inbox to many different disputes). Seeing the actual context, this is ridiculous. You accuse me of being a paid actor and then say that you have no reason to present evidence of the accusation?
Let us imagine that I was a paid actor and would behave exactly as you expect. Aren’t there other people reading the conversation? Wouldn’t it be worth proving to them that you aren’t just going on paranoid rants because your ideology has no way to deal with the concept of westerners freely disagreeing with you on these issues?
Man it’s almost like the vast majority of tourists stick to coastal cities and big urban areas where the Uighur population isn’t and not the vast desert that these camps and people’s exist in.
Wait, do you think there aren’t people who tour Muslim cultural sites, of which there are many? Do you not think that anyone ever goes to interior spots? In the US, the rocky mountains and the Appalachians are both used a lot for tourism.
Do you think there aren’t uyghurs in the cities in the region?
It sounds like you dont know anything about the situation and are trying to justify already held beliefs by making rhetoric that doesn’t really apply to the reality of the situation.
Buddy, this was incredibly easy to search. The Uyghur population mainly lives in Xinjiang, composed primarily of the Gobi desert. While somewhat popular with domestic travel, it is at the bottom of the list for international travel statistics. This is also something you can very easily hide in the desert. You act like reeducation camps have to be placed next to cities. You can visit North Korea and never see their work camps either. I know more about the situation than you, as evident by your many replies that spout nothing and don’t cover your own base. You’ve been overtaken by propaganda, you should educate yourself and the many many problems the Uyghur population is currently facing from China.
You can visit North Korea and never see their work camps either.
Firstly, there is much more restriction on tourist movement in the DPRK for a litany of reasons, mostly pertaining to national security. Tourists in Xinjiang can move pretty freely, though if they are going all over the place they will cumulatively need to pass through many checkpoints.
Secondly, “work camps” here is what people call prison labor in Bad Country. The DPRK has prisons, certainly, and we can have discussions about penal labor, but it’s much less notable than people pretend and much less secretive as well.
Thirdly, “work camps” are not remotely comparable to committing genocide against one tenth of the entire population of the region, which is the claim that was popularly made against Xinjiang before it got walked back to “cultural genocide”.
Incredibly easy to search for this. Prison labour in America through the 13th amendment is certainly wrong but nowhere near what North Korea does. Look up Yeonmi Park and her story. A North Korean defector, she would know what happens when people fail to please Kim Jong Un. Entire generations of families are taken and worked to death, from pretty crimes like burglary to the heinous like not being sad enough when dear leader dies. Attempting to equivocate the two disproves that theory.
Second, en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocideLike come on there’s so much documented evidence of this atrocity. I don’t trust death rates on either side, but if the estimation of 1mil+ Uyghurs are in detainment camps, that’s still about 10% of the entire people’s being here for political reasons. Whether it’s a human genocide or cultural genocide, its still wrong and immoral being spear headed by an evil totalitarian regime.
Your comment got removed before I saw it. If you’d like to give it another shot, I guess maybe check the modlog to see what rule you broke and reword it a little.
It’s nice to know there are cool people on blahaj zone. Near the start of the reddit migration I saw that there was a bit of a red scare going on there. Are things a bit better now?
Edit: I looked up that user’s comment in the modlog a yeesh, they really went whole-hog with Park’s spiel. As an aside, people say some really unhinged shit, like since then there was another comment about how the only thing to do about the DPRK is invade and diplomacy is a waste of time.
A decent TLDR: The article argues that anti-Chinese propaganda spread by the U.S. and Western media is fueling racist sentiment. Claims of mass detention of Uyghurs are based on flawed studies and sources like Adrian Zenz, a far-right Christian fundamentalist. Atrocity propaganda is a common tactic used by the U.S. to justify wars. The U.S. is threatened by China’s economic rise and technological progress, so it is trying to portray China negatively and prepare public opinion for a potential conflict. However, most of the world sees China positively and as an economic opportunity, making a new Cold War against China unlikely to succeed
In short, a lot of information about China that has come out of Western news media has been proven to be based on known biased sources, known anit-China rhetoric, and/or outright lies. It’s difficult to prove/disprove of any information specifically, that takes time and reporting, but a lot of people see the anti-China pattern in BBC reporting, and tend to dismiss it because of known history.
I think this flies a bit too far in the other direction. China is totalitarian. It is not a democracy. It is also increasingly antagonizing nations abroad. I think it is valid to consider it a threat if you are any other nation, period.
So… No, it’s not like Russia at all. But that nuance is too long for me to explain right now. Short answer is that Russia is capitalist, and China is 50/50 capitalist/socialist, depending on definitions, and yeah a lot of nuance.
But China is run by the people, their authoritarian politics keeps their billionaires and induatry in check. Their local politics is a negotiation with the national politics.
And… How exactly is China antagonizing nations abroad? Because a lot of countries are choosing to work with China because they AREN’T antagonizing them as much as America and Europe. So… The reality is the opposite.
I mean, if you haven’t been there or don’t know anyone from there you could pretend they are a democracy, but they are authoritarian like Russia is authoritarian. Long term they will seek a wider swath to be authoritarian over.
Newsflash, you can find people in any country who don’t like their government, and you’ll obviously see these people over represented in the population that left the country. The fallacy of your argument is to conclude that the people you know hold the opinion of the majority of people in China. I made plenty of friends who from China in university, and most of them went back after graduating. Vast majority of people in China support their government and are proud of their country. Even western polling admits this.
You used so many words to tell us that you don’t know anything about Chinese political system and expose yourself as being confidently wrong. Maybe spend some time educating yourself instead of flaunting your ignorance in public.
If you thought that was “so many words” reality is too complicated for you.
“The Government of the People’s Republic of China is a unitary Marxist–Leninist one-party authoritarian political system under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”
The people who actually live in China consider their democracy to work far better than pretty much any western shithole country that calls itself a democracy and have consistently higher satisfaction with their government because unlike in the west they see it working in their interest.
Thinking that the number of parties is a measure of democracy demonstrates an infantile understanding of the concept. Democracy is a government that works in the interest of the majority and is held accountable by the majority. Procedural democracies such as seen in the west demonstrably produce terrible results in practice. As a recent study of US shows, the system does not actually work in a democratic fashion
If Taiwan is its own nation, they should really specify that in their constitution instead of claiming to be the rightful government of all of China and Mongolia.
That claim is mutually exclusive with Taiwan being “its own nation” distinct from China. It is definitionally its own government, but it claims to be a superset of the nation of China (because of also claiming Mongolia and some smaller territories). Nations are a social construct based on historical group identities, so the PRC is the same nation as the ROC was back when the ROC controlled the mainland. The ROC claims to still be that nation (plus Mongolia) which the PRC currently administers.
1, Xi Xinping and whatever he says, doesn’t matter how many show ponys you fill the room with.
In the end they all answer to the whims of the central government, which can change or remove and rights and responsibilities autonomous regions within China have.
So what I’m hearing is it doesn’t matter if you’re ignorant about the way China works because the US media told you Xi is an evil dictator who controls everything and you believed them. Got it.
No, Xi is an evil dictator who controls everything he wants to. It doesn’t matter if you technically control something you will always end up doing the bidding of Xi or you will disappear. From reading your replies, it’s evident you have fallen for Chinese propaganda and now simp for an evil dictator and totalitarian regimes. Got it.
1, Xi Xinping and whatever he says, doesn’t matter how many show ponys you fill the room with.
Do you know what a legislative body is? Anglophones are almost all educated on “executive, legislative, judicial” aren’t they? Xi is the leader of the Executive branch in China, not the Legislative or Judicial.
You do know what a dictator is right? You can call yourself the head of this and that and have cronies technically control the rest, but it’s not fooling anyone slightly smarter than the average microwave. It’s inherently evident you do Xi Xinpings bidding no matter where you are placed or you will be replaced. Not a hard concept, even someone like you can understand.
Such fierce condescension and yet you’re the one pushing a children’s story. All these hundreds and thousands of representatives, all the millions of Party members, are just puppets under the Bad Guy’s control. There was no violence to install him, the existing government put him there (since I assume you don’t endorse Chinese elections) and then he played an Uno Reverse and now they are all an extension of him, with all of Chinese politics then becoming merely being a matter of how much people chaff under the collars and fetters he fixes to them. When politicians fight each other? When journalists fire back and forth in the papers? When policy goes one way and then pivots? It’s all just a Potemkin Village with a few hundred million people as the staff.
So no, “someone like me” cannot understand how such a thing could exist outside of a children’s cartoon or a similar sort of story told to an audience that is very much suspending its disbelief.
How in went way is that a children’s story. It’s incredibly easy to understand like a children’s story but is very real, so real you can see it happening in real time. Your idea of China is more like a children’s fairytale rather than the reality it currently is.
I do not support Chinese elections, same way I do not support Russian or North Korean elections. These are also similar to children’s stories.
On your next point, politicians can argue all they want but in the end they will fall in line. Similar to journalists, who may I remind you are often targeted as political prisoners to be sent to reeducation camps. Also, yes, policy changes, people change their minds or gain retrospection on what doesn’t work and pivot, it happens often. For example, China’s Great Leap Forward, which really lead to mass starvation and steel barely useable. Then Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi reversed these policies and ended the great Chinese famine. Then Mao changing his mind again and having both of them thrown into reeducation camps, Shaoqi would die.
Your “no u” line about how actually I am telling children’s stories doesn’t work as well as you think it does. The crux of my case is that these states aren’t monoliths and potemkin villages but actually have complex internal politics where people of varying viewpoints are able to openly disagree and protest, as is observably true in these countries! Not everyone in the Russian legislature supports the war, and they generally did okay with this position. There are all sorts of left/right debates in China among various politicians and journalists and so on. To call this kabuki theater or totally inconsequential without any actual evidence is silly.
Also your timeline is bad. The Great Famine ended circa '61 and the Cultural Revolution began in '66. The Cultural Revolution certainly had its issues, but it didn’t cause a famine. Deng did end the Cultural Revolution, sort of, but only after Mao’s death and the purging of the Gang of Four (prior to Deng’s re-ascent).
As an aside, I don’t think Deng was ever imprisoned in connection to the Cultural Revolution, though he was half-purged and assigned to menial duties in one case and basically paid leave in another. It’s quite interesting how pissed Mao and his clique were at Deng and yet they held their hand, relatively speaking. Wasn’t it supposed to be a death sentence to oppose Mao, as the liberals tell it? Of course, Mao took pride in trying to rehabilitate people (even the last Chinese Emperor and captured Japanese soldiers!), so he would in almost all cases resist having someone killed or left to rot in prison.
There’s a wild bias in western media in trying to make a Khrushchev out of Deng, but Deng himself vociferously refuted those comparisons while in office, calling Khrushchev a fool, a traitor, and so on, and saying that being compared to Khrushchev was an insult (which is true).
I understand you think Xi Xinping is very good at kung fu because he’s Chinese, so there’s nothing anyone can do to stop his Hokuto Shinken, but China actually has over a milliard Chinese people, and they’re equally Chinese, so their Kung Fu should be just as strong. Hope this helps =)
We put a lot of stock in personal stories, but we also pay a lot for incriminating evidence against China.
Do you know about the 1 child policy (That was recently ended?) And how that affects this? Because I actually looked into it. But I bet an online personality won’t change your mind. So I won’t even bother.
Remember America didn’t forcefully sterilize anyone. We just straight up bombed them, raped them, and shot them.
Or the fact we literally have drone and camera footage of mass arrests. I’m not one to view Vice these days, but one of their reporters went there and saw some rather suggestive situations as well.
After Trump was so nice (dumb) enough to showcase just how clear US satellite photos are these days, one has to question why some here are so quick to cry in China’s defense. Especially after the very public take over of Hong Kong, you think an ethnic cleanse is out of the question?
I’m sure some pro-Chinese twit will come rushing in with some whataboutism or a crack on US history, as if that excuses things.
Especially after the very public take over of Hong Kong, you think an ethnic cleanse is out of the question?
You’re projecting. China exempted ethnic minorities from the one child policy, that is how anti “han supremacist”(which itself is just white supremacist projection) they are.
Especially after the very public take over of Hong Kong, you think an ethnic cleanse is out of the question?
After China followed the diplomatic agreement it had with Britain for decades to handle the transition from Hong Kong being a British colony back to it being under the jurisdiction of its own nation (as a Special Autonomous Region exempted, like other such regions, from a great portion of federal law), now that means China will do ethnic cleansing? Most of Hong Kong supports the mainland, but that falls very much along class lines. The protestors you saw on western news 24/7 for a while were mostly members of wealthier families who don’t represent the majority.
I have mixed feelings about the protest itself in that I think back when it was more fragmented there were surely meaningful segments that weren’t concerned about an extremely normal (but now withdrawn anyway) extradition law, but once it became the Five Demands and begging for their white colonizers to return, the highest credit I can give them is that they still were at least dignified enough to turn away Azov fascists who visited them.
I mean the nice thing about the internet is that you can at least find videos documenting what the article claims. I mean sure… it could all just be propaganda. But somehow there is a little much of it from so many different sources.
You say this and yet, what videos? How many have you actually watched vs assumed were there vs read the headline? I’ve seen a bunch of photos and videos and all of them were either hoaxes (calling normal buildings camps), ridiculous misunderstandings (like saying the screeching of brakes was screaming victims), or gross misrepresentations (e.g. normal prison transfers being a slate of new genocide victims). But if you just skim through what just so happens to trend on Reddit, you’ll see atrocity after atrocity and not stick around long enough to see the retraction, or the people in the comments debunking it, and so on.
There’s a reason neoliberal outlets walked their claims back to “cultural genocide” over time, because there was nothing there except the testimony of like three people from a region of 15 million.
So that is one of the things worth considering, but that hypothesis isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card and needs to be weighed against other factors like the variety of sources and people involved, their history and material interests, etc.
Yes, I am saying things need to be scrutinized instead of just taken at face value if they comport with our prejudices, I apologize if that takes the wind out of your sails, but blind faith won’t lead you to good conclusions.
Apparently there is a PRC smear campaign against Adrian Zenz - mandiant.com/…/pro-prc-information-operations-cam…, including by creating what Mandiant describes as what they “suspect to be at least three fabricated letters based on obvious grammatical errors and typos” to smear him - so I’d take anything that is ad hominem attacks against him rather than debating his actual work with a grain of salt.
However, even if you don’t accept his writings, there are plenty of other people who have done credible research into the plight of the Uyghur people - e.g. resources contributed to xjdp.aspi.org.au, such as articles like this one by Gene A. Bunin: livingotherwise.com/…/the-elephant-in-the-xuar-ii….
Why would ASPI do credible research into the ethnic minorities in China? Who are ASPI again? Actually, what’s ASPI’s own track record of being directly responsible for systematic murder of muslims?
The authors wish to extend their gratitude to the individuals and organisations who supported this research by providing concrete feedback for revisions on the report, offering suggestions and advice at the planning stages, and offering ongoing collaborative and moral support while conducting this research: Elise Anderson, Campaign for Uyghurs, Freedom House, Tim Grose, Ondřej Klimeš, Julie Millsap, David O’Brien, the Rights Practice, Radio Free Asia, Isabella Rodriguez, David Stroup, Hannah Theaker, Emily Upson, the Uyghur Human Rights Project, the Uyghur Transitional Justice Database, the World Uyghur Congress, the Xinjiang Documentation Project, the Xinjiang Victims’ Database, and Adrian Zenz.
This is so key to propaganda. When researchers do a study on 58 people, you can barely claim you have a good representation of the population. And even in that case, if they are good, high quality researchers, they aren’t pushing any opinion, just stating facts. It’s just that 58 people can’t represent the population well, It’s just a starting point.
Now if we’re talking about an opinion and not just stated facts, 58 people is hardly representative, easy to manipulate, especially when you don’t have to cite specifics, just conclusion.
Okay, let’s assume these are facts. 58 people were threatened, etc. This is still propaganda. Opinion, and interpretation can push the conversation in one direction or the other very heavily.
For example, let’s draw a comparison to a system that people find more familiar (For westerners, at least), such as the united states police system or the FBI. How many US citizens are threatened to stop talking when pushing the limits of conversation publicly (Say, about calling out the inhumane treatment of others by the US military)? How many people have talked publicly about being approached by the FBI, or said they can’t comment on their interactions with the FBI, or of some private corporation that paid them off to keep their mouths shut about some insider deal, money laundering, or underage sex scandal? Governments and even private citizens coming after people who are talking shit publicly happens in capitalist states all the time.
And that’s just taking into account regular people who live in western countries. How about an even more direct comparison? The Uyghurs are Muslims that participated in terrorism in China, but the United States had Muslim terrorists of their own, what did they do? en.wikipedia.org/…/Human_rights_in_post-invasion_… You can find all kinds of resources about the human rights violations that the united states participated in against the muslin people, even in western sources such as wikipidia, and others amnesty.org/…/iraq-20-years-since-the-us-led-coal… have lots and lots of facts surrounding this.
“rules for thee, but not for me” comes to mind.
Sorry didn’t mean to unload on you. I’m vehemently agreeing!
Is there a way to jump instances and bring all your content/moderation with you? I really didn’t sign up for tankie voat, but I have growing communities in this instance.
Unfortunately not right now, maybe in the future. You can make the community on the new instance, stop all posting on the old one and pin a link to the new one so users are forced over, but that might not work and you could lose a largish portion of your userbase.
The term tankie comes from the 1956 hungarian revolution/counter-revoluton (depending on who you ask) which split the British communist party, those that supported the Soviet Union suppressing it with the military were called tankies.
The video of the man in front of the tank column related to the June 4th incident did not result in the man standing in front of the tank dying, and those tanks were leaving the area where the violence occurred and is not where the word tankie comes from like I believe you are suggesting.
No, I was suggesting that tankie came to describe USSR supporters (which modern apologists project onto Russia, as if the wall never fell). I am aware of the origin of the term.
My comment was a reply on people supporting whatever Russia and China do. It takes a jab at both.
No, I was suggesting that tankie came to describe USSR supporters
No, it started that way? Do you mean started to be more all encompassing? I literally explained the origin of the term one comment ago. Also, I dont see how this
" Imagine thinking Chinese workers own the means of production, or not even knowing where the term “tankie” comes from. "
-can mean what you say you meant.
(which modern apologists project onto Russia, as if the wall never fell).
Anyone who has researched the USSR enough to cut through capitalist propaganda knows Russia is now a neolib-ish bourgeois democracy.
No, it started that way? Do you mean started to be more all encompassing?
So, didn’t the term come to describe people who support the USSR imperialist practices by rolling into countries with tanks?
Anyone who has researched the USSR enough to cut through capitalist propaganda knows Russia is now a neolib-ish bourgeois democracy.
Have you ever seen anything written by the average lemmy tankie? They will defend Russia because it’s not the US.
If the US invades a middle eastern country because of “terrorists”, the true motive is oil (which I don’t disagree with). But if Russia invades Ukraine because they could potentially become a competitor petrol state in Europe more aligned with the EU, then it’s actually “nazis”.
Have you ever seen anything written by the average lemmy tankie? They will defend Russia because it’s not the US.
No, they will defend Russia’s actions because they understand the lead up to the war. The coup, the ceasefire violations, the waves of ethnically russian ukrainian refugees. And because they understand that the west expending itself on unfavorable terms is good for multipolarity and for the people the west would have otherwise used those weapons on.
Taking this at face value, that is still extremely different from “defend Russia because they believe in the intrinsic merit of the Soviet project” as you suggested before. The liberal mobsters who took over Russia tried to join the NATO club but were rejected, and the current situation is in many respects a consequence of that.
Imperialism is the final stage of capitalism. Finance capitalism takes over from industrial capitalism and seeks out markets abroad, having exhausted the internal ones. It teams up with other finance capitalism to become a global force, the export of capital becomes the most prominent feature of the economy rather than the export of raw materials or finished goods. The states they come from tend to become fascist in nature, or as some people put it, “fascism is imperialism turned inward”.
Even if China was a capitalist country as some people claim, it still wouldn’t be at that stage yet. Russia might wish to one day be there, but it too has a long way to go.
Because you need to get to imperialism via capitalism.
Socialism’s goal is to provide for its people; in theory, why can’t it engage in colonialism to bring in resources to benefit its people?
There is definitely no other way.
Its obvious how capitalism leads to imperialism, but it’s definitely not obvious how that would be the only way to arrive there.
Any elaboration you can provide would be great because you’re acting as if it should be obvious why what you’re saying is true but it absolutely is not.
Socialism’s goal is to provide for its people by moving past a society based on exploitation. This is why it wouldn’t engage in colonialism.
I think you’d need a different word to use to describe your socialist-colonialist state. Imperialism doesn’t mean, “when you invade”.
Imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism where finance capitalists export capital rather than commodities and these capitalists become the most dominant.
There’s many different capitalist interest groups, but one is by far the most powerful and dominant in global politics, the finance capitalists. This group of capitalists always come to dominate over all others, most capitalists require access to financial capital to expand their businesses, or to weather difficult circumstances in the marketplace. Financial capitalists gradually gain control of all industries through being able to see the movements of each industry and by them being the spider in the web, put simplistically. Then when they’ve run out of domestic exploitative growth opportunities they reach out beyond their borders and team up with other financial capitalists through mergers etc. This is imperialism, the final stage of capitalism. All capitalism eventually ends up here. Russia will too, but not yet.
The major capitalist interest group in opposition to the finance capitalists are the always losing group of industrial / national capitalists. These are private owners of domestic industries who mainly derive most of their profits from operating within the borders of a particular country (or the EU or whatever). Donald Trump would be an example of one of these, and he’d be in political alignment with many other industrial capitalists, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates… “industry leaders”. Their politics tend to be libertarian in nature, the social conservative aspect of their politics is just a front they put up to gain the electoral support of naïve socially-conservative people and exploit them. They don’t really care about religion or guns or anything like that. They usually like traditionalism because it provides them with a reliable exploitable source of labour. They would have opposed women in the workplace until they realised they could exploit them too without risk. Same with LGBTQ+ stuff, they used to be opposed but are now less so. They still are in Russia, indicating their capitalist immaturity. The western capitalists have grown beyond this stuff to some extent. A lot of conservative politics comes from this group. The Finance capitalists are less well known. You know the names of many western finance companies but probably not nearly as many outside the west.
Russia is an example of a country emerging from a primitive stage of capitalism that stands opposed to western financial imperialism. They are largely in control of their economy and government after western financial capitalists pillaged Russian industry after the fall of the USSR. This is upsetting to western finance capitalists, who desperately want to destabilise Russia and would love to install a government that is friendly to western finance so they can pillage it again. it slipped out of their grasp with Putin after Iraq, they want it back.
It’s western finance capitalist imperialism versus Russian industrial capitalism. Putin is the Russian industrial capitalist’s thug godfather. If any of the oligarchs step out of line and try to sell out mother Russia, they’ll find themselves defenestrated quick sharp. If he falls then they all need to quickly put someone else in place to rule over them and protect them from each other. If the US gets a foot in the door again they’re all fucked. It’s constantly knocking.
Russia’s industrial capitalists have already been raped by the US twice before now, they trust Putin as their administrator. He lets them do what they want as long as they don’t fuck over Russia. He’s a dictator, but one that prioritises a strong and functional Russia over one that collapses to be strip-mined and sold off by NATO capitalists. Given the lack of real alternatives (the Communist party was outlawed for a time), Putin has clearly been the only real option for Russians for most of the past two decades. They will not be pillaged a third time, hence this completely predictable Ukraine reaction they’d hoped for after constant provocations, the last one being the Nazi led coup and overthrow of Ukraine’s democracy by the Right Sector Nazis and others. The one thought experiment that no lib can answer is what the USA would do it the shoe was on the other foot and Russia was arming nutcases in Mexico.
You’re hearing “imperialism” a lot right now because it’s been inserted into the discourse as a wildcard term to con people into explaining away the motivations behind Russia’s invasion, instantly dismissing thought of all of NATO’s provocations. It would probably take Russia decades more to become Imperialist, maybe I’m wrong, maybe it would take less time but it’s not now, and “imperialism” is not the reason for the invasion by a long stretch.
I don’t think you’re doing a very good job of attempting to answer the very direct confusion I’m having. You’re doing a lot to make sure it’s obvious how capitalism can and does result in imperialism, which frankly I’m mostly in agreement with. My issue is that you’re asserting that socialism can’t lead to imperialism. You’ve still given no reason that this is to be the case except for this attempt:
Socialism’s goal is to provide for its people by moving past a society based on exploitation. This is why it wouldn’t engage in colonialism.
And I agree that, by definition, it’s a society based on the betterment of its people. Stress should be applied there to its people. I’m not justifying imperialism at all, but it’s a pretty obvious argument that by subjugating other nations/peoples and exploiting them, you can make the lives of your people better. Perhaps you’re trying to say that the type of leadership and ideology that creates and maintains socialism would also be ideologically against imperialism, but that seems more pragmatic than theoretic. You’re saying socialism can’t engage in imperialism by definition but the most I’d give is that it doesn’t engage in imperialism in practice.
That guy has zero interest in being persuaded, he was just trolling and trying to waste my time. I’d already replied in detail and he pretended not to understand.
Because you need to get to imperialism via capitalism. There is definitively no other way.
You have more than zero point, but this is an excessively modernist way of viewing development that Marx explicitly refutes in his later writings after facing spurious accusations of supporting such views.
Thank you, I’ll look at that. It might be my misunderstanding of a technical term, but I don’t see the logical sequence that makes it apparent that socialist countries can’t engage in imperialism/colonialism.
The very short answer is that imperialism requires very specific economic systems and incentives. Those systems are not going to occur in socialist States because socialist States develop different economic systems than capitalism because the profit motive is absent, which impacts short term and long term economic development plans in many significant ways. For an extreme example look at Juche’s emphasis on self reliant socialism within an internationalist socialist order. They cannot do imperialism because all of their economic planning is built around a stable self sufficient economy. An extractivist economy isn’t just something you can graft on, it has to be a central part of an economy to make economic sense.
For an example of socialism not being imperialist when it has the opportunity to, you can look at China forgiving loans. It doesn’t do so out if the charity of its heart, it does so because it is incentivized to because damaging other nations self determination through financial coercion actively harms its project. It wants strong neighbors with close economic ties, it doesn’t want to suck the marrow out of their bones because that is destructive to China in the long term, and socialism is able to plan in the long term unlike capitalism which has to be more short term oriented because of the way its incentives function.
Imperialism is actually a very costly affair (in many cases it costs the home country and only benefits specific lobbyists within that country) compared to mutual cooperation and always rebounds on empire, it only happens because of market failures that do not happen under socialism.
They’re saying if Communists do it, it’s not Imperialism even if it looks exactly the same.
They are willfully committing an equivocation fallacy, using their definition of “Imperialism” as being necessarily related to Capitalism. The textbook definition of Imperialism does NOT necessarily relate to capitalism, so you are indeed in the right.
a policy of extending a country’s power and influence through diplomacy or military force. -Imperialism
A non-capitalist country most certainly can do that definition. And Russian and China have both done that quite unambiguously.
So you’re in the right. But you’ll never win an argument against them because lies are truth.
These are Leninists who believe that socialism cannot do imperialism because socialism is ideological manifest destiny. Nevermind that this was more or less one of the original debates between Trotsky and Lenin on how do do “global communism.”
They like to redefine words to carry whatever ideological weight they want, because it’s much easier than introspection. Like how they will carry the “Nazi means anti-Russian” banner to unironically defend mass deportation children from Ukraine. "Obviously it can’t be the UN definition of genocide, because you can’t genocide Nazis.
Well I, as a former citizen of China, do “speak out” against CCP as in family discussions, in online forums, and sometimes with classmates in school, but I don’t “speak out” as in actually participate in protests. Demonstrations just isn’t my thing. Protesting against CCP gets you labeled a “race traitor”. I mean honestly, with all the racial problems in the US, and having to deal with my abusive family, I really don’t have to energy care about CCP anymore. It’s dead to me. I view China just like how an anti-fascist German view Nazi Germany. There’s no point of protests. It’s beyond anything a protest can fix. Like… why do I even care, it isn’t even my country anymore.
Edit: Also, it isn’t a conspiracy that ethnic Chinese (I’m gonna use the term “ethnic Chinese” because this applies regardless of citizenship status) people don’t “speak out”. People just value “Social Harmony” more than being correct. Like if you live abroad, why care about what happens back in China? Most ethnic Chinese people who lives abroad don’t really feel welcome in their new country, so why be against your former country if you aren’t even sure if you are actually safe in your new one? You don’t end up in a situation where you have no safe harbor in the world. Ethnic Chinese people living abroad believe China will accept them again in-case their living situation abroad goes south, so they don’t want to get on the bad side of the Chinese government. Like what happened with the Chinese Exclusion act in the US more than 100 years ago, and also the Japanese Internment Camps. Maybe you disagree with the thought process, but that is what most ethnic Chinese people think.
If your comment (the top-level one) was supposed to be sarcasm, you need a /s tag because there are people actually being serious saying that “it’s a conspiracy, couldn’t be any other possible explanation” stuff.
But also, the “hostage” thing is not entirely false, just very exaggerated. They only take your family “hostage” if you are like a leader of a protest or something. But I doubt they care if you are just some forum user that has no followers and “protesting” online. They got too many dissidents within their jurisdiction to care about those abroad.
As someone who legitimately has family in China and who visits them and speaks to them in Mandarin, there is 100% a chilling effect caused by CCP autocracy.
But I am eager to hear how a bunch of people who have never been and don’t speak the language know more about this because they read a pamphlet.
Its a very weakly sourced state sponsored media article reporting on their state enemy. You have to be willfully credulous to believe their claims without further proof.
That statement is illogical. You must have huge problems with the simplest logic to argue that. You can’t bent logic by twisting what I said. Stop clowning.
I swear some of these people have never even been to China. I’ve had the opportunity, and had a lot of Chinese expat friends. I will say THEY believe the same as rest of the world does on a lot of these issues. I was told in no uncertain terms by my tour guide not to say anything about “things you might have heard” when I went to Tienanmen Square. And trust me, the soldiers everywhere with automatic weapons were enough to dissuade me from THINKING about it.
There are a lot of differences that can be passed off as unpleasant cultural differences (like the one guy was a second class citizen and couldn’t get a city passport because he was from a village… the other guy had a full country Visa with zero effort because he grew up in Beijing), but other things “yeah, we’d look up the truth on all that stuff, but we had to work hard to get around the censors and some of our friends got in caught and got in trouble for doing it”.
These tankies never seem to cover the part where the Chinese government is ACTIVELY suppressing this stuff in China. I could walk up to the site of the Bonus Army massacre and LOUDLY announce “I can’t believe the US government opened fired on American troops here over a peaceful protest” and not so much as draw police attention.
So you’re ok with guys with machineguns keeping people to afraid to ask about the Tianenmen Square Massacre because you think it’s “misrepresented”? As an American in China who thoughts things were overblown, I left China 100% sure the Massacre is as bad as I was taught, because of the way the Chinese government behaved in Tienanmen Square when I was there.
And you really feel that it’s ok that there’s human rights advocates serving time for the crime of “inciting others to knowingly participate in unauthorised assemblies” about the Tianenmen Square Massacre, like Chow Hang-tung? Do you approve of jailing for speech where most countries will, at worst, have civil libel charges?
What’s the most severe penalty you would approve of for people who witnessed and survived the massacre recounting stories that are absolutely true to them? Maybe execute them all?
In my world, EVEN if the victim witnessed the event incorrectly, this is at best Witness Intimidation, and at worst its own human rights violation.
You seem to be projecting a lot of things that don’t have a firm basis in external reality. Are the guys with machine guns there to intimidate tourists, or are they there because Tienanmen Square is right in front of the Chinese equivalent of the White House and several other important buildings that require high security? The incident (which, let us be clear, also involved armed insurrectionists with incendiaries and commandeered rifles) wasn’t even the last major violent event in the area, as people did die actually in the Square some time later when Falun Gong members set themselves and a small girl on fire in protest of the group being banned!
The thought police you are imagining seem, if anything, to be a much better case for you being wrong. However you might feel intimidated in the moment, clearly once you left you understandably made a firm association between the Square and machine guns!
Furthermore, you’re making silly excuses for liars. There were people who weren’t even there for the supposed massacre (see the video) who were accounting very peculiar events in lurid detail, like tanks running over inhabited tents and then mulching them and such. Do you think some scared college student is going to have an anxiety-based hallucination that causes them to think they were places they weren’t and saw things that have probably never happened anywhere? When does that happen besides severe schizophrenics and children who aren’t processing that they just had a nightmare?
It seems to me that you are reaching for excuses, especially since you are disregarding the numerous witness, both domestic and foreign visitors, who all saw that there was no massacre in the Square as the media hysterically portrayed. Leaked state documents over the years (from ambassadors and such) only affirm this further. I can look up some if you like.
You seem to be projecting a lot of things that don’t have a firm basis in external reality
I’m not sure why you would say that.
Are the guys with machine guns there to intimidate tourists, or are they there because Tienanmen Square is right in front of the Chinese equivalent of the White House and several other important buildings that require high security?
Considering the exact placement, I would say the former. Considering their non-presence at other equally important locations? I would also say the former.
The incident (which, let us be clear, also involved armed insurrectionists with incendiaries and commandeered rifles) wasn’t even the last major violent event in the area,
Do you know what double-think is? Was the military killing armed insurrectionists, or was it all made up? Or were they standing their with tanks and watching the armed insurrectionists kill everyone? I trust Amnesty international more than you, and more than propaganda recordings from the Chinese government. Not as someone with a prejudice against China, either. The narrative makes sense, where yours does not.
when Falun Gong members set themselves and a small girl on fire in protest of the group being banned
Are you implying that the soldiers with machineguns were ther ebecause Falun Gong members set themselves on fire? And not because of the internationally known incident that, whether true or not, China is clearly censoring and jailing people for publicizing?
However you might feel intimidated in the moment, clearly once you left you understandably made a firm association between the Square and machine guns!
You’re absolutely right. I did not think China were death dealers before Tianenmen Square, but now I do. They succeeded in terrifying me, and I think that was their intention. I was sure as hell afraid to speak truth aloud in China.
Furthermore, you’re making silly excuses for liars
Why should I believe you over pretty much every unbiased body in the world?
There were people who weren’t even there for the supposed massacre (see the video) who were accounting very peculiar events in lurid detail, like tanks running over inhabited tents and then mulching them and such
Are you referring to the on-site live announcers saying they were witnessing it in real time, and the grisly follow-up photos that China was unable to suppress of a line of corpses with tank-tread sized crush marks destoying their bodies? Are those the lie? All the photos that show half naked and unarmed people killed by large military vehicles were fabricated? Or did “armed insurrectionists” bring tanks?
Do you think some scared college student is going to have an anxiety-based hallucination that causes them to think they were places they weren’t and saw things that have probably never happened anywhere?
No you’re right. People can have panic-based hallucinations when tanks open fire. And the first thing they’ll do is try to take photos of it. And no matter how hard you try, the photos come out eventually. Let me reiterate, photos of bodies crushed by tanks.
It seems to me that you are reaching for excuses, especially since you are disregarding the numerous witness, both domestic and foreign visitors, who all saw that there was no massacre in the Square
I’ve seen photos of the massacre. I have heard witness testimonies that corroborate those photos, and witness testimonies that do not. I am aware of several governments (including my own) that have used false or intimidated witnesses to try to hide an atrocity. Why EXACTLY do you see me as “reaching for excuses”? Do you think I WANT any government to mass-murder its protestors?
At what point should I throw out every piece of evidence I’ve ever seen in my life and believe this? How would you prove to an outside observer that Tienanmen Denial is different from Holocaust Denial?
Do you know what double-think is? Was the military killing armed insurrectionists, or was it all made up? Or were they standing their with tanks and watching the armed insurrectionists kill everyone?
You are underestimating me. There was no killing in the Square itself, but there was fighting all around the surrounding area. The Square was killed with the highest degree of violence being hitting some protestors with batons when they didn’t disperse on the deadline after having many hours to comply.
My position is completely consistent.
and more than propaganda recordings from the Chinese government.
It was a documentary made by westerners! The people speaking were student leaders at the protest and all remain Chinese dissidents! What level of being a “friendly source” could even hypothetically meet your standard without agreeing with you? I can dig up literal internal memos from US political actors that were leaked and you would still call it Chinese propaganda!
I can dig it up for you if you’d like, though.
Are you implying that the soldiers with machineguns were ther ebecause Falun Gong members set themselves on fire? And not because
I’m saying there is a history of many violent incidents in connection with the Square and the government doesn’t want to let more happen. You literally suggest they are there to wordlessly pressure people into what to think despite that same incident that lead to that conclusion having the opposite effect on you! It’s a nonsensical psychodrama, not a cogent political observation.
No you’re right. People can have panic-based hallucinations when tanks open fire
As far as I know, the tanks never opened fire, it was all gunfire from the PLA side. It was an urban combat situation within Beijing (because it wasn’t on the Square itself, but slightly more closed areas) so having the tanks fire seems like it would be excessively destructive and hazardous. Then again, I don’t know.
And the first thing they’ll do is try to take photos of it. And no matter how hard you try, the photos come out eventually. Let me reiterate, photos of bodies crushed by tanks.
I think you might be thinking of some famous photos of what are clearly bikes strewn about and people taking cover.
I’ve seen photos of the massacre. I have heard witness testimonies that corroborate those photos, and witness testimonies that do not. I am aware of several governments (including my own) that have used false or intimidated witnesses to try to hide an atrocity. Why EXACTLY do you see me as “reaching for excuses”? Do you think I WANT any government to mass-murder its protestors?
I don’t know your life, I can’t say. You give the impression that you are a sensitive person who was traumatized and now you seek to affirm that trauma, but that’s just my impression. Atrocity propaganda is very effective, turns out, and western powers are happy to give you as much morbid slop as you can stomach. If you’ve seen any photos of people killed on the Square, feel free to reproduce them.
At what point should I throw out every piece of evidence I’ve ever seen in my life and believe this? How would you prove to an outside observer that Tienanmen Denial is different from Holocaust Denial?
[Aside from that being a hysterical comparison] When you speak so strongly about the evidence and then don’t produce it, you aren’t really giving me a reason to believe you. If I wanted to persuade you on the Holocaust, I’d have plenty of photos that I could show you of mass graves, piles of shoes, piles of gold teeth and fillings, nail marks on the doors of the gas chambers, and notably virtually no one who was kept prisoner in the camps who denied that killing and brutality were taking place! It’s not like we have people who were prisoners in Auschwitz saying “yeah, there were no gas chambers, no butchering, it was just a prison.” Plenty of Holocaust Deniers say that, but none were prisoners of Auschwitz.
And yet, I can point you to people who were actually at the Square and say no one was killed on it, meanwhile other people who were already gone by that time talk about viscera being washed down gutters. In the video I showed you, two people were there to see it and one person wasn’t, and you are literally defending the “witness testimony” of the person who wasn’t there! Furthermore, she says in the hotel interview before the Incident that [in so many words] it was her plan to create atrocity propaganda in order to “wake the Chinese people up”! She explicitly wanted stories of bloodshed for the sake of her political goals, to the point of trying to deliberately endanger students who trust her for the sake of them being harmed! What makes you think she wouldn’t lie when every fact about the situation also makes it impossible for her to be telling the truth?!
I don’t know what you seem to think about the billions of people who know about the Massacre and millions who know enough about it not to be convinced by you. You are taking the same tactic of other deniers, expecting me to have nothing but Tank Guy and my High School History book in my back pocket.
Further, you are now accusing ME of being broken or “sensitive” for simply knowing the Tienanmen Square Massacre happened. I’m going to apply the outsider test of faith here again (I know it won’t work, I don’t care). You sound exactly like a Holocaust Denier I dealt with a year ago.
After the hysterical comparison claims… are you asking me to post the grisly photo of a line of human bodies, crushed, with joints in wrong directions, or you won’t believe it’s true? I’m not trying to convince YOU. I know from “How to Respond to Tiananmen Trolls” (from anti-propaganda Doublethink Labs) that a video of it happening would do nothing but make you smile and say “see, no evidence”. I just need to provide a voice that the world is indeed round so that flat-earthers don’t get a better foothold.
As for the evidence, most people have already seen it and you’re just helping them forget it was there by pointing out that I haven’t bombarded YOU with articles and photos you would just deny. I would really love (hate) to hear your rebuttal to the disgusting photo of corpses crushed by tanks, but I will not be posting NSFL content in this place.
Also, for anyone reading, I’d like to remind people of one rebuttal to your Holocaust comparison response. YES, there are more pictures of the Holocaust than the Tienanmen Square massacre. The holocaust happened over TWELVE YEARS and there are dozens of photos. The Tienanmen Square Massacre happened on ONE day. And for the casual observer who might still be here, note that this wasn’t just some protest-turned-riot. It was a long peaceful protest that was ended by the march-in of the military. In fact, there were upper leaders in the Chinese government who wanted to NOT kill all the protestors, and instead find a peaceful agreement with them (Zhao Ziyang comes to mind) whose career ended for not being on board. But I guess they’d just be Tienanmen Square deniers too?
There’s literally nothing but a few obviously coerced confessions that counter the truth of the massacre. And you don’t care. Ultimately, Massacre deniers will just start defending China’s “necessary” action to kill those innocent protestors, as you’ve already started doing. What you did wrong was accidentally doing it while still pretending it didn’t happen. People will notice that.
A black and white world where objective measures of press freedoms are apparently inversely proportional to trustworthiness of said journalists.
Oh my god, are you seriously claiming you can objectively measure press freedoms while saying socialists live in a black and white world? Just want to give you a chance to walk back your statement
I am quite curious to know your methodology for measuring press freedom so we can compare and perhaps find something which can be considered locally objective.
You’re retreating into “locally” objective. In this topic you’re not going to get agreement on what constitutes press freedom, so it is pointless. My point is that the claim of objective press freedom existing is ridiculous. You walked it back, but to a position that still seems ridiculous to me.
For example, I dont believe there is such thing as a free press. Any org that can produce a press machine is going to influence that press, whether that is a government or private interests. Editorial freedom isn’t possible, editorial control just ranges from the subtle to the overt.
You are the only one making assumptions here. I want to find some common ground.
So let’s pull this thread. I agree that bias is inevitable, but do you believe this negates the value of even trying to protect press freedom? And if so, do you extend this to all forms of truth seeking?
So let’s pull this thread. I agree that bias is inevitable, but do you believe this negates the value of even trying to protect press freedom? And if so, do you extend this to all forms of truth seeking?
Of course bias is inevitable, Im saying institutional bias will always be enforced down the chain onto journalists and writers.
Can you give me your definition of press freedom? Because it seems contradictory if the owner of a press will influence what is published but journalists of that press somehow have press freedom.
Well so first of all, I don’t consider only corporate or state owned media outlets to be “the press.” But certainly, editorial freedom is a big part of press freedom. One media outlet can only exert editorial control over its own journalists. It cannot force editorial restrictions onto all media the same way a government can. I think this is pretty low hanging fruit when it comes to press freedom - individual bias can be averaged out, but centralized, legally enforced bias cannot. This feels axiomatic to me, but it may not be to others whichbis why I think these conversations are so interesting.
cannot force editorial restrictions onto all media the same way a government can. I think this is pretty low hanging fruit when it comes to press freedom
Yes they can, it is called private (as opposed to personal) property rights enforced by the state. The range of opinion will always be broadly supportive of the capitalist government.
Please read inventing reality or manufacturing consent. I am tired and I feel like you aren’t interested in learning, with or without changing your opinion.
I don’t know why you think I have not read those books. I’m quite familiar with both, and agree with many aspects of them. I assure you though, Chomsky is not a press skeptic they way I think you are implying. And not everyone who disagrees with you is ignorant. You are the one shutting down conversation and making accusations.
But either way, this is quite easy to back test. Is there no western media you can think of which is critical of Capitalism? Maybe even someone you just cited?
Based on what you’ve said you really need to read those books again.
But either way, this is quite easy to back test. Is there no western media you can think of which is critical of Capitalism? Maybe even someone you just cited?
Point out the flaw in this rhetoric like Parenti would, given you’ve read him.
The corporate media will always serve the elites over token dissent. And token dissent protects capitalists from Capitalism. He is quite funny and self aware when he wants be.
Trust me I get it. What I don’t recall is Parenti expressing general skepticism of press freedom as a first principle. He mostly argues that capitalism corrupts the media. Again, this is laughably self evident.
Parenti and Chomsky are more left-libertarians though. Chomsky in particular is a outspoken and vocal critic of Lenin’s centralism and is a vehement defender of press freedom. I would say that my ideas of press freedom are quite aligned with theirs, and it seems as if you are one who has fundamentally missed the message.
The corporate media will always serve the elites over token dissent. And token dissent protects capitalists from Capitalism. He is quite funny and self aware when he wants be.
So why did you say the silly thing you said in the first place? And why do you consider corporate press to be more free than government press?
Do you have proof that there is no dissent within socialist countries? Because based on my readings there is plenty of lively debate. Hell, you can look at streams of the vietnamese assembly.
I literally know nothing about Vietnamese politics. But I also don’t think I’ve made any assertion that press/individual freedoms are incompatible with socialism. In fact, I think I’ve been pretty clear about this forum “deserving a better brand of socialist”
Wow, what? Communists talk openly about propaganda… You have no idea what you’re talking about.
We are well aware what our biases are. We are trying to get westerners to see their own biases. Being called out as hypocrites feels like an attack, but when we say everyone have biases, we know it’s true about us too.
Absorb news from a wide variety of sources, including sources from other countries, and you’ll see that the BBC is in fact biased against China.
It takes time, and reading a lot, and you won’t get it from Lemmy/Reddit/twitter(or X or whatever now)/FB. Even ground news only has so many sources. And you know what, the BBC does great coverage for a lot of things, they are a pretty high quality source for a lot of news. But yeah, everyone has biases, and the BBC is biased against China.
It doesn’t mean that reports are false just because two states are enemies (which is an exaggeration).
If they were strongly cited I would not be criticizing people believing them. All sources are biased, the question is how factual a source is.
The BBC is strongly biased against China. If they make claims without proof the most logical course of action is to not assume they are telling the truth and not incorporate what they say into your beliefs. (Note that this is different than “assume they are lying”)
Aren’t these threads wild? These people don’t want to engage in actual discussion here. They just want to remove your agency by calling you brainwashed, do the sealion “source” thing, and then ad hominem away any sources you do provide.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - the world deserves a better class of communist.
They just want to remove your agency by calling you brainwashed
Unlike when the liberals in this very thread accuse people of being brainwashed or paid shills, because then it is righteous!
do the sealion “source” thing,
lmao what dastardly trolls they are to care about sourcing
and then ad hominem away any sources you do provide.
Like you’d ever accept People’s Daily or whatever. The “tankies” need to mostly rely on liberal outlets because you will discard reporting out of China (etc.) out of hand.
the world deserves a better class of communist.
If we had a better class of communist, you’d hate them too because you’d believe everything you’re told about them, just like you do with the existing breeds.
I have no doubt, every nation has secret police. I simply doubt they are doing what the article suggests theyre doing. It seems to me the article is interested in explaining why there aren’t many uyghur Muslims joining their narrative and why a lot of them are supportive of China and feel their culture is respected.
How would that work if they have a toxic family and decided to kill 2 birds with one stone?
I mean if the CCP threatened my family while I’m abroad, I’d just go: “Lol go ahead, idgaf. They’re toxic anyways. Thanks for getting rid of them for me.” 😎
But too bad my toxic family is already here and I had to endure their abuse. 😥
I mean I have some pretty toxic family members as well, but at least a few of them are decent or innocent people. Pretty much everyone is going to have at least one family member that they care about even if most are shit heads.
Of having hysterical bullshit invented about them? True enough. Quick, does every man in North Korea need to have Kim’s haircut or is no one allowed to have it?
Going out on a limb and betting China or Russia gangs are responsible. Happy to be priced won’t but… Yea. Not holding my breath.
Every web service provider should block all China and Russia IPs until they agree to behave like responsible parties. AWS’s WAF has pretty good geo IP blocking.
Damn I had no idea that’s where the phrase came from. Now I want to start showing up at his rallies to give him the Nazi salute… Oh wait, that’s right, his followers already do that.
Well, what’s the point of being a religious leader if you can’t use that position to secretly engage in all of the debauchery you’re so vehemently condemning?
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