“We can talk about socialized healthcare and the evils of capitalism all day, but before we go any further I need you to pass this two-factor authentication by criticizing China and Russia.”
“Have you condemned Hamas today?”
but that’s not even what this post is suggesting we do. It’s just recognizing that China and Russia are also imperialist states, so we should be mindfull of where the information we consume comes from, since they’re all shoving propaganda down our throats and pitting us against one another, for their own imperialist intentions.
Bedrock based
Exactly. I’ll never understand why certian leftists hold them up as examples to be followed instead of countries like Sweeden or Norway where every quality of life indicator is undeniably better.
If you want an actual answer, it’s because Sweden and Norway continue to participate in imperialism by propping up their economies through exploitation of the global south.
These are capitalist countries, social democracies, not socialist countries. The underlying contradictions that lead to problems under capitalism have not been resolved, so the problems inherent to capitalism persist. The only reason they seem better at this time is because of the exploitation of foreign workers and their participation in the financial models exploiting the global south.
It’s clear that the Nordic model of social democracy is unsustainable (because it’s just capitalism with more social reforms) and has slowly been eroding since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This unsustainability is also clearly recognized and discussed openly within those countries, which is why they explicitly state that the solutions are austerity or the exploration of foreigners.
So your objection with the nordic form of socialism is that it’s too close to/integrated wtih capitalism?
You know China and Russia do all of these things as well, plus the oppression of thier own people. China is defacto capitalist. Russia is all the way capitalist. Both are essentially oligarchies/dictatorships. Both also exploit developing countries in the global south, both have imperial ambitions on surrounding countries, one of them is even actively in an imperialst war. But leftists support them because they’re “socialist?”
Do you understand these countries are not worth your support? Especially if your motive is to oppose the oppression of exploited peoples.It’s not that Norway and Sweden are “too integrated with capitalism” while being socialistic (or I would argue China is capitalist) but that these countries are explicitly not socialist at all. These are capitalist countries with social welfare programs and will therefore continue to suffer from the failures of the capitalist mode of production regardless of how many social welfare programs are introduced. Social welfare programs are not socialism. Capitalist and socialist countries both utilize social welfare programs. Capitalism and socialism are modes of organizing production and can be differentiated by exploring the following questions:
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Which class owns and controls the means of production and how the economy is organized? (Alternatively, who is the dictator? Until we are all in the same class, there will always be a dictatorship and oppressed people.) The workers and their parties = socialism, the financiers/owners and their parties = capitalism. There can be exceptions within a system, but one will be strongly favored.
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Is production aimed at profit or meeting human needs? Often has a messy answer, but profit will usually be favored under capitalism and usually at the expense of workers and their needs.
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Is the economy planned at a large scale or is it directed by the profit-seeking whims of the market? Socialist economies are centrally planned at a large scale and while corporations often use central planning, this is across companies, not entire industries. Capitalist economies are driven by the needs and desires of corporations rather than planned for the good of the country as a whole.
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Are key industries collectivized? In capitalism, they tend to be owned by individuals, in socialism, they tend to be nationalized or otherwise collectivized, though exceptions exist under both systems.
Norway, Sweden, and Russia all check the capitalist boxes. China checks the socialist boxes, but yes, oppression, inequality, and exploitation still exist as it is transitioning from capitalism to communism and the underlying class contradictions and subsequent conflict has not been resolved. They run a partially mixed economy because capitalist organization can be beneficial to building up industrial forces. You’ll also notice that they nationalize large and key industries before they became monopolies to prevent capital from holding parts of the economy hostage (as is often done in actual capitalist countries) and are shifting away from capitalist organization as a whole. It was a tool to modernize and does not make them defacto capitalist because capitalists never held political power.
I would never hold either Russia nor China up as some shining example of perfect countries. Russia is not socialist in any way and no socialist argues that they are. They happen to be be in a position that is directly opposed to US/Western imperialism right now, but not by choice. They hold this spot because the West forced them into it.
This is what socialists are arguing Russia is doing, not that they are a shining example of a socialist society that should be emulated. Socialists do not like Putin, but they do seek to understand him. To argue that socialists hold Russia up as a model country is to argue against a straw man.
I do argue that China is a socialist country despite their mixed economic system. Political control of the country resides in the hands of the communist party and the key industrial sectors and land is owned by the state rather than existing as private property. Again, I do not argue they are perfect. My argument is that they are a socialist project working towards communism and that undertaking such a change is a long and messy path that takes more than the 80 or so years the communist party has been in power. I think they genuinely aspire to accomplish the goals they say they are pursuing, but the road to liberation is messy and they definitely have made mistakes. To expect perfection at each individual moment along the path of change is unreasonable. Likewise, it’s not my country. I can learn from them and implement what I think works well in my own country. The Chinese people can direct their country as they see fit. Socialist projects are unique to their societies everywhere they spring up and no two will look the same.
I meant both this and the first comment to help explain these stances in good faith, but I get the feeling the first might not have been taken that way? I’ll leave any discussion of the topic here because the China one is deeper than I want to get into in an online thread. If you truly want to understand why socialists take these stances, I recommend you research socialist theory directly including the topic of imperialism as defined by Lenin and have some deep conversations with people who hold these views.
I hope this better explains not just why we argue what we do but what it is we are actually arguing for.
You know I was going to write this big huge thing, but after reading your last paragraph I see you don’t want to take it further. But thanks, you have confirmed for me that the only reason some leftists support China and Russia is because these countries are supposed to be socialist, and not because of any measurable quality of life standards such as wealth, life expectancy, education, freedom of the press, political representation, and so on.
In real life, Russia and China are defacto capitalist oligarchies. I think I’ll never support the corruption and oppression such governments propogate to uphold an ideology.
I mean, respectfully, it’s tiring writing out so much on a phone screen. I think the discussions are important, but it’s the wrong format to have a long-form discussion, you know?
I hope you didn’t find my tone dismissive even though we disagree. It wasn’t meant to be. If your take-away was that I’m being dogmatic and make choices purely on ideological lines, I don’t think writing up paragraphs of text turned out to be a very effective at communicating what I wanted to say.
These discussions are better held in person because it’s difficult to capture nuance in writing without being long-winded.
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This comment is so real it hurts.
I just had someone trying to convince me that Russia can’t be imperialist because they oppose the US, an imperialist nation.
… that’s not the definition of “imperialist,” my dear tankie.
Not sure if linking it so others can laugh/cry is “brigading” worthy of getting me banned off of various Lemmy communities/instances or not.
Fuck it, here’s the thread:
irredentism doesn’t make a country imperialist
I needed a good laugh.
Never heard the word “irredentism” before, looked it up. It’s literally fascist logic. Do tankies seriously not realize that the logical endpoint of irredentism is a world made up exclusively of ethnostates?
If you actually read what the person was saying, they said:
i do not support the russian invasion of ukraine btw.
that being said, irredentism is still awful. i’m ideologically against all forms of killing, and that includes the russian attack on ukraine. just so we’re clear here, this is just about definitions, i’m not trying to argue that russia attacking its neighbors is good in any way.
Marxists tend to use a specific definition of imperialism, and that user’s position is that while Russia does engage in irredentism (bad), like invading Ukraine, they do not fit the Marxist definition of imperialism (which is more concerned with resource extraction on a global scale). This Marxist definition goes back at least to Lenin, so it isn’t something that they just made up (as they were accused of in the thread), but the common meaning today is different.
This is being misinterpreted or distorted here into, “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is fine because it’s irredentism” which was very clearly not what they were saying. What they were saying is that irredentism is bad (including the war in Ukraine), but that it is a distinct thing from imperialism.
They’re still doing apologia by playing with definitions to argue that not only is Russia not imperialist, but they’re anti-imperialist. Stating that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is irredentist and not imperialist carries the assumption that Russia’s officially stated reasons for invading Ukraine are truthful when they are clearly not. Russia wants Ukrainian territory not because it’s populated by ethnic Russians, but because they want to exploit the natural resources contained therein. Irredentism is the justification for imperialism, they are not mutually exclusive.
Russia wants
It’s inherently difficult and subjective to speculate about motivations, and doubly so when talking about a country with multiple groups with their own motivations. Of course, in any conflict, enemy countries will be assigned the worst motivations possible, which is why virtually every conflict draws comparisons to Nazis, and the idea that the enemy will just keep attacking forever if they are not defeated. This was said about Vietnam (Domino Theory) and Afghanistan (“if we don’t fight them there, we’ll be fighting them here”). Those examples show that motivations assigned to enemy countries are often inaccurate.
I don’t think it should be considered “apologia” to express reasonable skepticism that the motivations of a rival country aren’t what some people speculate. Especially when they’re still assigning a negative motivation to said country, just a different negative motivation than the one you assign. That’s kind of a ridiculous degree of purity testing, “It’s not enough to condemn Russia, you have to agree with my exact assessment of their motivations, otherwise you’re doing apologia by condemning them in the wrong way.”
As they said, they condemn both Russia’s invasion and irredentism in general, so my main point was to correct your misunderstanding, when you asked if “tankies” don’t realize that irredentism leads to negative results.
Trying to divine Russia’s True Motivations for invading Ukraine is a total Red Herring side show distraction in the context of this discussion.
The problem we’re discussing is that tankies employ definitions gymnastics to escape giving traditionally capitalist negative labels to their beloved authoritarian dictatorships, like “imperialist” and “tyrant.”
“Russia is not imperialist because they only invade for irredentist reasons” and “Russia is not imperialist because they oppose imperialist nations” are both half-cooked, dumb assertions.
It doesn’t matter if Russia invades other countries and takes their resources because they think the Bible says they should, because there are people with similar genetics in neighboring countries, or because Putin is bored; it’s still imperialist.
Imagine if someone said the USA is not imperialist because they’re only bombing Iran to fulfill a biblical prophesy, so they’re actually just theocratic. That’s obviously a ridiculous thing to say and you wouldn’t jump in to defend them because you’re biased to defend tankies but not western capitalists.
If they’re going with a niche definition rather than the common definitions everyone uses, they should have stated that to prevent the confusion and argument that it seeded, as I said further down in the argument.
I actually agree with you on that. However, “being too prone to using Marxist definitions and terminology” does not warrant labelling them as a “tankie” or “Russian propagandist.”
It’s this sort of thing that makes me see every accusation of “tankie” as a complete joke. If you can literally say, word for word, “I do not support the Russian invasion of Ukraine” and still get called a tankie and Russian propagandist, then those words have no meaning, aside from, “You disagreed with a liberal about literally anything.”
Did their condemnation of Russia not give you a moment’s pause before dismissing them as a Russian propagandist and misrepresenting their positions to others afterwards? It seems like you just recognized that they’re not part of your political in-group so you ignore everything and jump straight to labelling them a fascist. Yes, they communicated in a way that’s somewhat confusing, but you’re much more at fault for jumping to those unwarranted accusations.
Even if we take the assertion that they are doing apologia for Russia as true; the accusation of ‘tankie’ is strange. As if people who identify as communist have never heard of the fall of the USSR.
Maybe it would make sense when defending China in some contemporary contexts, but Russia?
It all reminds me of how George Bush used the term terrorism. Anyone who thought we need a different approach to respond to 9/11 than GWB was ‘letting the terrorist win’. Now anyone who thinks we need to find a different approach other than throwing the military industrial complex at the war in Ukraine is a tankie.
Do these same people think the war in Iran would be better if China got involved. Of course not, that would be insane. But change China to US and Iran to Ukraine and all of a sudden they support it.
The point is to have more skepticism toward all militarism; that’s not to say militarism is never justified. But NATO was literally built to contain the USSR, it worked on some level, the USSR fell. Russia’s militarism toward Ukraine is completely unjustified, but their complaint about still being contained NATO is valid. They subjected their people to a ton of economic hardship in the 90s to appease the west. But we can’t disband or renegotiate NATO because too many people benefit from it staying how it is.
The answer to the Ukraine war was to bring Russia into the western block on more equal terms 30 years ago. Now the situation is fucked, it gets more dangerous to more people every day it goes on.
I actually agree with you on that. However, “being too prone to using Marxist definitions and terminology” does not warrant labelling them as a “tankie” or “Russian propagandist.”
That’s not what I was asserting, no.
The rest of your comment soapboxes on that straw man so I’ll not respond to it.
It’s more or less exactly the content of this post here. Literal Russian propaganda, I’m sure. Couldn’t confirm 100% because I don’t waste my precious time checking what Russia has to say about their invasion, but I’m sure the term/topic of “irredentism” comes up and never “invasion” or “genocide.”
Couldn’t confirm 100% because I don’t waste my precious time checking what Russia has to say about their invasion, but I’m sure the term/topic of “irredentism” comes up and never “invasion” or “genocide.”
Irredentism is a negative word, nobody would use it in their own propaganda to describe their own actions. Furthermore, the user you were talking to clearly and explicitly condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:
i do not support the russian invasion of ukraine btw.
You seem to have misunderstood what they were saying, and the idea that they’re spouting “literal Russian propaganda” while explicitly condemning the invasion, and labelling it an invasion, is completely absurd.
I guess that’s why you felt the need to pretend they didn’t label it as an invasion. I do wish y’all would practice a slightly higher degree of intellectual honesty though.
"employing both hard power and soft power”. russia only uses military might (hard power)
What a mind-bogglingly stupid thing to say
“We can talk about socialized healthcare and the evils of capitalism all day, but before we go any further I need you to pass this two-factor recognizing that the US’s military/prison industrial complex has done more harm to the world since WWII than China Russia and Iran.”
Yes actually
This but unironically
Ah yes, let’s complain when people post factual memes about countries that both commit genocide, and are both heavily invested in destabilizing western governments
I take it you’re one of those “free” thinkers too?
How hard is it to recognize that, yes, the US is fucking evil, yes, always has been, but that the exact same goes for Russia and China? Ooohh, what a concept, multiple parties being evil? *brain explodes
I can’t tell if this is directed at me or a hypothetical conversation with a tankie.
I’m 90% sure they’re directing it at a hypothetical tankie.
Anything’s possible when you make shit up
So how much does daddy Putin or mommy xi pay exactly? Is it worth it, or are you actually one of those people that just ignores the thousands of photos, videos, and witness testimonies? Or are you one of those conspiracy types that believes its all orchestrated by reptilians or something?
Doesn’t really matter, all those options make you a horrible person
The concept of having more then two parties does indeed stupify the liberal mind.
For the haters, the limit is one.
There will be no third party. The bank rolled two party system needs two bags of dildos and they will stop at nothing to crush any change from the bottom. The third party will be split between two optically moderates from both parties as plants. The stank yanks got amnesia… talking out both sides of the mouth unable to balance their contradictions. It is agonizing to watch since I share their inheritance.
Jesus Christ can you at least write like a normal person? Why can’t Americans just admit that their country suck and leave it at that?
Huh…
Well, for one: I’m not an American. I don’t know why you just presume that I am, but… Oh wait, I dared to criticize your dear leader, that was enough for you to simply assume it, amirite?
For two: had you bothered to read the complete comment, you would have seen “yes, the US is fucking evil, yes, always has been”. I’m sure you and I can both see eye to eye on that statement. The only difference is that you support other evil states for unknown and not understandable reasons (well, its money or lack of brain cells) whereas I do not support any evil state.
So fuck the USA, fuck Russia, fuck China, fuck Iran, fuck Israel, fuck north Korea, and fuck a few more because they all have evil dictatorship governments
Why can’t Americans just admit that their country suck and leave it at that?
It’s a good question. Because our land is beautiful and a lot of us are working to keep it that way. Because we still see lots of people trying to come here for a better life. There are much fewer now, and a lot of us have deep shame for what the asshole in power has done to their communities. Despite appearances, a lot of us respect and admire them for taking the hard, unwanted jobs that nevertheless still need to get done. We still believe in what the Statue of Liberty stands for despite anything the asshole tries to do to it. Yes, we functionally conquered the world when we became the sole superpower after the Soviet Union fell apart. But we also led the world with science, inventions, entertainment, and aid. That’s lost now, and a lot of us deeply resent everyone who had a hand in ruining that.
We are still working to make ourselves better.
Yes, we functionally conquered the world when we became the sole superpower after the Soviet Union fell apart. But we also led the world with science, inventions, entertainment, and aid. That’s lost now, and a lot of us deeply resent everyone who had a hand in ruining that.
Oh. So it’s because you haven’t studied history. Got it.
Read your words. You are trying to reclaim a lost position of “goodness” for the USA, that was lost through the bad actions of bad people. You are trying to reclaim the position of helping the world, being a beautiful country that respects others and is welcoming.
We call that “Blue MAGA”. You’re imagining a time before the Rs fucked everything up and trying to move “forward” to reclaim the position of “good”.
The USA was never good. Not only did FDR put anyone vaguely asian looking into concentration camps, the administration stole all of their commercial property and wealth. Not only that, but the FDR administration established the entirety of racial redlining. The USA has been at war for >90% of its existence, and half of the years it wasn’t at war, it was engaged in the massive chattel slavery and maintenance of the genocide of indigenous peoples. The USA wasn’t taken over by racist pedophilic raping oligarchs, it was founded by them. Trump doesn’t hold a candle to the evils of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.
As long as you believe in some mythical past where the USA was a net good for the world, you will never be able to understand why the rest of the world wants to see your country destroyed and dismantled.
I understand. My question was: why can’t Americans NOT involve Russia, china or whichever other superpower to make themselves seem better? It’s ok to just admit that you suck and leave it at that.
I didn’t downvote you. I think the answer to that is that all humans everywhere, Americans included, want to immediately jump to whatabboutism to save face.
Why not loathe the existence of every nation state on earth? The worst religion is nationalism, and there is stiff competition.
ML discovers anarchism.
Spending time on Chinese social media has shown me platforms that read exactly like the garbage from the right wing talking heads here on Twitter. Extreme nationalist sentiment is very, very, common. I have seen soooo many memes expressing desire to just wipe out the Philippines, and just repopulate it with mainland Chinese. Memes about their eventual control over Africa, which uses surprisingly western racist stereotypes to portray Africans. So much discussion that mirrors MAGA like behavior, in many ways, but just discussing the greatness of China, instead. So many who, at least claim, to wholeheartedly believe revisionist, extremely idealized, versions of China’s past, often including things that just are not physically possible. There is a lot of open talk about what China is going to do to so many of it’s neighbors when it over takes the US, and NATO recedes from the region. I stopped going on their, because it was just becoming more, and more, X-China. Then my translator stopped using social media there, expect for work, as well, and now I just can’t.
Friends of mine who have spent the past 20+ years living in China are reporting seeing more, and more, of it offline too, when politics was not something Chinese would publicly really talk about, especially to foreigners. However, especially in the past 10 years, they said their open expression of xenophobia, hardline nationalist sentiments, desire to take, and punish other countries, has become almost common in certain social spaces there, and it is worrying them. These people moved to China after studying Chinese language, culture, and history, for many years, including attending Chinese universities. They loved it there. Now they are talking about how it is sounding more, and more, like the rhetoric you get from flag wavers in the US.
So I do not trust China to maintain it’s non-expansionism once NATO not longer controls so many of the waters around them. Nationalism is popular their, and the idea of finally taking revenge for the century of humiliation only grows.
It is so annoying to hear people prop up China or Russia and North Korea as these moral islands. There is no moral outpost in the world.
So I do not trust China to maintain it’s non-expansionism once NATO not longer controls so many of the waters around them.
Right. China bad, I forgot. This isn’t sinophobia at all.
Do you have anything else than anecdotal evidence? How much of a percentage of the Chinese social media can you scan for this type of ultra-nationalist and fascist content? There are like 1 billion people there.
decides to become highly imperialist, all of a sudden, I’m not going to care as much. If, all of a sudden, China starts invading a bunch of its neighbors, then that’s a huge d
China is a country which throw ethnic minorities into concentration camps and executes political prisoners. Workers are exploited to the point where they throw themselves off the roofs of factories. It’s an entire society where the only way you can advance is by screwing the people below you.
So yeah, China is bad.
So you think the unhinged ramblings of an Austrian Christofascist have some kind of merit? That’s all I’m getting from this comment.
You could win an Olympic gold medal with the leap in logic you just made.
China is a country which throw ethnic minorities into concentration camps and executes political prisoners.
Ok, find me a source for that assertion that isn’t
the unhinged ramblings of an Austrian Christofascist
…or his allies in the recognized terrorist group the ETIC or the US State Department.
I’ll wait, knowing that no such source existed the last time I looked in to it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China
https://www.hrw.org/reports/1994/china1/china_948.htm
I actually thought you were joking at first.
Edit: You understand me criticizing the CCP for human rights abuses does not automatically make me a Nazi, correct?
“It is known”
Way ahead of you
Nice instance name 👍
I think most anarchists do exactly that. The obvious tension is that marxists want to replace one state with another, whereas anarchists would prefer not to swap one yoke for another.
Is there such thing as a Marxarchist? Lol. I read Marx, but don’t believe in swapping one ruler for another, or that one governing body is somehow magically morally above another.
Marxxxxanarchisting.
the most common strain of anarchism these days is anarchocommunism, which is by and large a movement that is defined by defiance of all hierarchy and broad agreement with Karl Marx on matters of economics as they apply to hierarchical violence
There is anarcho-Communism but Marx’s philosophy is very state-centric, even if it does ultimately oppose the existence of a state.
If you’ve read Marx, I’d suggest reading the anarchist criticisms of him by Kropotkin, Proudhon, and Bakunin.
I’m not well-versed on those yet, so definitely piquing my interest. Thanks!
Conquest of Bread by Kropotkin is an absolute must read.
I actually started reading this a while back. This is a good reminder to go back to it.
Closest thing that comes to mind is autonomism
I do!
They’re after my stuff?!
Absolutely. Of course the world isn’t black and white, it’s not divided into good guys and bad guys, and there’s degrees to things. If micronesia decides to become highly imperialist, all of a sudden, I’m not going to care as much. If, all of a sudden, China starts invading a bunch of its neighbors, then that’s a huge deal to me!
If one country is responsible for 12 million deaths abroad in its imperial dealings in the past decades, and it has invaded and bombed more countries than I care to list here (I’m not sure if lemmy has a character limit, and spelling all this out is less effort and fewer characters than the actual list of countries), then I’m going to care about that country a whole bunch more than I’m going to care about a country that’s invaded two countries and whose death count abroad doesn’t even hit 7 digits.
Anyway my point is pick your battles, and focussing on China over America is really missing the mark. If you go by the actual numbers on imperialism, you are focussing on a country that is literal orders of magnitudes less bad. Complete waste of time.
If one country is responsible for 12 million deaths abroad in its imperial dealings in the past decades
Do you have any sort of source for that? I can find 4.5-4.6 million for the war on terror and that is being very very loose with the term US imperialism has caused(like includes indirect deaths and includes deaths caused by all sides in pretty much every conflict you could consider part of the war on terror)
We don’t even need to look at war, the death toll from the USA’s bipartisan consensus on collective punishment via brutal economic sanctions is 40M people over the last 50 years. Without firing a single shot. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(25)00189-5/fulltext
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Yes, but english language political discussions are 70-80% russophobia and sinophobia by volume.
You know this is the kind of post that reddit no longer allows on their bots infested shit platform.
Funny, bcs I notice pretty much everyone who talks about “Russian Propaganda” uses that to mean “anything that contradicts the US state department and billionaire owned media narrative about US geopolitical adversaries”
“… in favor of Russian state departament and oligarch owned media narrative”
ftfy, now fuck off
You notice people slurping up one propaganda while you’re slurping up another, and think you’re smarter than they are.
So that’s a definite “yes” on believing everything the US State Department has to say about the geopolitical adversaries of the US?
Oh, you’re just a straight up tankie lmao. Ta-ta!
Not beating the allegations lol
Damn, it usually takes two or three rounds of replies to get them to just admit it like that.
Rule 1 is long past dead…
Have you stopped beating your wife yet? Yes or no. If you don’t answer I will interpret that as a “no”.
Can’t stop what you never started!
That’s exactly what a domestic abuser would say!
“Both sides are the same! I am very smart.”
Yes, those two are the same. They’re not two different sides. The side opposite them both is woke, learns what propaganda looks like, recognizes it, refuses it, and doesn’t employ it as a tactic. Get outta here trying to paint me as a centrist when the common enemies of mankind are all on the side of rape, genocide, and greed.
Then surely you would know that NATO’s propaganda is far more pervasive and commonplace than that of non-NATO countries, and that just because another source disagrees with NATO’s official message it’s not necessarily propaganda (at least, not one that fabricates evidence)?
Then surely you would know that NATO’s propaganda is far more pervasive and commonplace than that of non-NATO countries, and that just because another source disagrees with NATO’s official message it’s not necessarily propaganda (at least, not one that fabricates evidence)?
Yes I know that. It is propaganda, though. I mean, it’s pretty fuckin obvious. Hilariously so. I get that it works really well on uneducated people living in enforced ignorance, but I’m not one of them. You’re a faux-communist dictatorship propaganda sockpuppet and you stick out like a sore thumb.
Hint: maybe you shouldn’t all post this dreck on .ml accounts.
wasn’t expecting instance racism today on lemmy lmao. give me some of your enlightened, non-propagandized takes then
Try harder halfwit
Based. Venezuela and Cuba too (I’m from Venezuela, founder of the ALBA-TCP/BAPO-PTT [Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America - Peoples’ Trade Treaty], and Cuba is the main provider of military and political support of the Venezuelan Narcoterrorist State).
Russian / Chinese, but yeah.
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It doesn’t matter. I have argued with literal western sources, like primary attributions what the chief of the NED said or the archived funding page of the NED, or academic works by Ukrainian scholars. Photos and western media articles about the Nazi problem in Ukraine.
Nothing with convince a liberal that the Nato isn’t a holy alliance of the pure and willing to bring freedom, justice and democracy to Ukraine. A full embrace of the fantasy that the west finally fights “the good fight” again.
All I want is peace and a diplomatic solutions, an end to the warmongering. But what do pacifists get today? Endless insults and mocking. The liberals and “leftists” are acting just like MAGAts and climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers. I look from one to the other and back again and see no difference.
So what’s your solution? Let Ukraine put their weapons down so that Russia would annex and genocide them?
Let’s not forget that Russia is a nazi state, hellbent on promoting Russian ethnic supremacy.
One major reason that Nazis are bad is their propensity for invading, robbing, and murdering the people of their neighboring countries.
Ukraine has a Nazi problem? Oh man, that is horrible!
Do Ukrainian Nazis invade rob and murder their neighboring countries? That would be a really bad thing for Nazis to do.
How many seats in the Ukrainian parliament are currently held by Nazis?
All you want is for the Ukrainians to stop fighting back, you mean.
I don’t think for a moment Ukraine is getting NATO support for altruistic reasons, but that doesn’t mean NATO started this fight. Nobody in the EU wanted a proxy war with Russia. They were all making tons of money from Russia, and vice versa.
The Russian pretext for the invasion has shifted about a dozen times since the war started, and Putin’s little green men were all over the border region stirring up trouble ever since the invasion of Crimea. These are all documented facts too. He gambled he could get away with it without much of a fight, and lost the bet. Fuck around and find out I guess.
It’s also true that there is a well documented percentage of Ukrainians who are literally neonazis, like the Azov brigade. But surely one could reasonably assume the biggest reason Ukrainians hate the Russians nowadays is because Russia invaded their country, not some CIA psyop, or because they’ve been reading Meine Kampf to the kids at night.
Let’s face it, Russian propaganda is a symptom. Trump style Republicans are the cause (Russia spends big on opportunities they provide).
…and one could argue establishment Democrat complicity is what enabled Trump style hard right populism.
The world isn’t America. Your current crop of republicans are only a symptom of the global push of the alt-right.
I’m not American, but I can at least recognize their cultural Hegemony in the western world.
Bro, I stare at goats for a living; I don’t kill them, I just make them ejaculate. If you don’t get the reference to the movie about how America does counterintelligence like I do for my job I think I do for the aliens, you should watch The Men Who Stare at Goats and become enlightened to the degree of the game being played. Operation Mockingbird was over fifty years ago, people. MKULTRA and Star Gate are the same program.
I mean. This isn’t the clearest meme is it? Lol
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Funny you think criticism of russian propaganda equates to support for the west
De facto support. If there’s a conflict and the West is on one side, then if you oppose the side the West is fighting you are supporting the West. There’s no secret third way that lets you keep your hands clean. You have to pick a side, and you have picked the West’s side in Ukraine.
I guess this community doesn’t want to talk about that, though, so my comment was removed.
This is one of the most ridiculous thought processes I have ever heard. How do you even take yourself seriously?
An incredible false dichotomy you presented there. Whatever you need to tell yourself i guess
Its not a false dichotomy you’re just spineless
You know what’s actually spineless? Deleting your comment because it got down voted.
I can be against the Russian invasion of Ukraine AND be against the U.S.'s attacks on Iran. Insane you think that isn’t an option.
Keep name calling on the internet tho, love it when people do that cuz it means they have nothing else :D
It’s a spineless option, you’re doing state department volunteer work and you should be ashamed
Woah, woah, woah. You think being against unprovoked military attacks is spineless? Lol
Seriously. I support both Ukraine and Iran in their wars.
i support the working people. sometimes as an expedient that means a small degree of support of national entities, but the most important thing is the freedom of the people.
Like, just rhetorically? Or are you jet-setting between the two battlefronts?
Definitely the latter.
That explains the hammock.
Westerners do imperialism, and that’s wrong. But westerners also say “Imperialism is wrong”, which proves that they are critically thinking.
The Insidious Evil Easterners do double-plus imperialism, which is even wronger. And they don’t even realize its wrong, because they have been brainwashed.
That’s why Westerners need to fight the Insidious East and defeat them. Then the people will be liberated and the West - which was only doing imperialism in self-defense - can finally enact a lasting peace that will bring about a global utopia.
Most idiot leftists don’t get this, because they flunked out of college and don’t understand how economics works.
Some edits? :p
Imperialist nation states do imperialism, and that’s wrong.
But Imperialist nation states also say “Imperialism is wrong”, which proves that they are critically thinking.The Insidious Evil EasternersOther imperialist nation states also dodouble-plusimperialism,which is even wrongerand that’s also wrong. Andtheya good portion of their citizens don’t even realize its wrong, because they have been so brainwashed.That’s why
Westernersthe proletariat needs to fight theInsidious Eastimperialist nation states and defeat them. Then the people will be liberated andthe West - which was only doing imperialism in self-defensethe people - can finally enact a lasting peace that will bring abouta global utopiasomething way less shitty than we what have now.Most idiot leftists don’t get this, because they flunked out of college and don’t understand how economics works. [perfect, no notes].
That’s why
Westernersthe proletariat needs to fight theInsidious Eastimperialist nation states and defeat them.Unfortunately, you’re just spouting pro-MAGA Populist Russian Whataboutist Both Sides Propaganda.
Most idiot leftists don’t get this, because they flunked out of college and don’t understand how economics works. [perfect, no notes].
Never let it be said the moderators of Lefty Memes are above some self-crit
That also includes simping Putin and Xi.
You’re either with US, or you’re with the
TerroristsCommunists!Like fr
Are these Putin and Xi simpers in the room with us right now?
I don’t think all of it is due to Chinese/Russian propaganda, but there are a bunch of people out there who seriously consider Chinese “socialism” as flawed but a good system to emulate.
Which is wild, if they apply practically any principles of socialism to China.
Thinking China is in any meaningful way controlled by the workers is some next-level mental gymnastics.
I’ve encountered quite a number of people who genuinely believe it. And unfortunately a decent chunk of those online from lemmy.ml. It’s certainly not everyone on that instance, but it is quite a number.
The number of liberals on .world is pretty damned high too, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yes they’re from 3 Lemmy instances, one of them being yours.
It’s so crazy that I’ve never met one then, only people with takes that are nuanced and are based on non-CIA approved sources (although I really think this only applies to Xi, I’ve never seen a single person supporting Putin)
Seriously though, I think you’re pre-emptively blocking out what people are actually arguing just because you perceive it to be russian or chinese or whatever propaganda. Almost everyone I’ve talked to/seen has had reasonable takes that are based on evidence, and a huge part of that is asking why they believe what they do instead of just screaming “TANKIE” at them
Yeah. I haven’t seen a single person actually praise Putin, because he has not achieved a single thing worth of defense and praise in all of the years he’s been Russia’s leader.
Xi however is a different case. His country is doing very well on many metrics and is threatening to overtake the US hegemony on the world stage. Around the time when China seemed to start catching up to the West, you started reading about how China literally was 1984 irl.
Outfits connected to the same US that is the single biggest reason for everything bad in the middle East and the Islamic world started condemning China for islamophobia. These same US based outfits also condemned China for worker abuses, despite the fact that their country was built on the backs of slaves, and still utilities the labour of millions of undocumented immigrants. That’s not to speak about how prisoners are used as cheap workforce in America.
The US and its propaganda arm has spewed so many lies and destabilized so many regions that I simply cannot trust anything they say about any other country – especially not a well-positioned rival. Why is China the eternal Big Bad? The same atrocities the Chinese are accused for have been committed by many allies to the yanks, with comparatively non-existent backlash and critique. The US lies to accomplish its strategy goals, something that even the blindest US shill can’t deny. Is it that unbelievable that they would lie about China?
Then you look at China and see a nation that isn’t only threatening the US position as the world leader, but also doing much more in service of its people than all American presidents since Reagan combined. You notice how narratives about “social credit scores” are exaggerated beyond parody without any criticism in Western media, and your trust to the West’s judgement of other nations starts to falter.
Why would I believe the US and its rhetoric about China? I know they don’t give a single fuck about human rights, they just want to “win”. To me, it’s more likely that the majority of whatever China is accused of doing is exaggerated or simply untrue.
That’s what leads me to “defend” the country. I’m not Chinese, I don’t live there and I gain nothing by being positive to them. However, westerners talk about China with such racism that I simply refuse to partake in. Westerners are also guilty of far uglier crimes and should therefore just zip it.
I also love to see that there exists a government that can jail billionaires and force them to pay their fair share to the people from which these leeches get their riches. In the US, you’re supposed to eat a rich man’s shit with a grin.
I haven’t seen a single person actually praise Putin, because he has not achieved a single thing worth of defense and praise in all of the years he’s been Russia’s leader.
That’s not actually true. Putin first two terms coincided with super high oil prices which brought in a shit ton of revenue. His administration used that money to stabilize the ruble and ensure consistent payments of state wages and pensions, which for the decade prior had been totally chaotic and people were not just angry but in serious economic precarity. That alone earned him a massive amount of popular support. Basically, he presided over a decade of standard of living increases that had seemed impossible before he was elected.
Xi may be doing things well, but with a truly distopic fine-print beyond every single good thing.
Yes ofc. Keep moving the goal posts :D
such as…?
Their “houses are for living, not for speculating” slogan. China’s government might be actually doing something with that… Just to by the other hand harden their mass control and mass surveillance even more; not for anything they have one of the biggest — if not the biggest — regional firewalls (maybe just behind North Korea’s one) — the GFW. Then also they have “Reeducation Camps”, and all that stuff that any good fascist dictatorship has. Not to forgive Xi Jingping image cult.
So yeah, at what cost? It’s at the cost of their freedom. Oh, and China has other parties outside the Chinese Communist Party? To think, ladies and gentlemen.
“But at what cost??” ass take.
Copy-paste because I have things to do:
Their “houses are for living, not for speculating” slogan is an example. China’s government might be actually doing something with that… Just to by the other hand harden their mass control and mass surveillance even more; not for anything they have one of the biggest — if not the biggest — regional firewalls (maybe just behind North Korea’s one) — the GFW. Then also they have “Reeducation Camps”, and all that stuff that any good fascist dictatorship has. Not to forgive Xi Jingping image cult.
So yeah, at what cost? It’s at the cost of their freedom. Oh, and China has other parties outside the Chinese Communist > Party? To think, ladies and gentlemen.
China and the US has some of the same issues, and also issues more unique to both.
The US takes on imperialism and human rights… Or rather lack thereof is a shared value with China.
The US and Chinese economies are both relatively fucked, based on financial speculative growth and has limited upwards possibility for their youths. Look at the American GenZ hate towards work and reciprocated reaction from employers, look at the laying flat movement in China. Which is banned to even mention on social media.
Go to any major Chinese (Tier I and II) city and your first reaction will leave you in awe. Everything looks great on the surface, but how do you achieve cheap motorcycle deliveries within minutes? By having a large, lost, low class of workers. Selling their time for peanuts, barely able to scrape by. Potentially being shipped medicine by parents, as seen in a Danish travel programme recently.
The US has the same kind of gig economy, but not nearly to the same psychopathic degree China does.
Both economies have fucked up rural areas, just like most of the world, low key forcing people to move towards population centers to find work - Said centers ends up flooded with labour.
International human rights abuse? Yeah the US is worse, but that’s most likely due to the US being everywhere.
Domestic human rights abuse? If you think the UK or US is censored, learn Chinese and visit their social media. A picture of Winnie the pooh? Gone. Mentioning laying flat? Deleted.
Then we have the Uyghurs, Hong Kong not being respected for the one hundred year lease initially agreed upon, stole the Dalai because they can’t accept Tibet isn’t Chinese.
International conflict, 9-dash line, no signs of wanting to finalise the Chinese civil war still ongoing with Taiwan, continued support of Russia despite them being behind the bloodiest current war on our planet.
Not to talk about the AI cold war the two states are running at the moment, neither side has dared to say it publicly and neither side have shown any signs of wanting to stop the ongoing cold war for the betterment of our planet.
Is the US the good guys? Nah.
I’m personally growing more and more annoyed with my own government and the EU as a whole not being willing to take a harder stance against the US. Trump made the blunder of a lifetime, but the Hormuz is still closed instead of trading energy in Euroes - Benefitting everyone but the US. The world economy would had taken a rollercoaster ride, but it would benefit all of us long term.
Both the Chinese, American and Russian leadership is a cancer to the planet, and more countries should recognise them as such
Finally, someone that’s reasonably and logically minded, between so much polarized people.
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How is that a defend of the US?
A post directly asking to distance from the US… Is a defence of the US? Like what.
Such a lame, cliched, drone-speak of a comment. You sound like when all the MAGA turds simultaneously started sarcastically typing “orange man bad” online. One brain, infinite fingers.
ok
