The ruling class of the PRC is the Proletariat, so you have more in common with the Proletariat in the PRC than you do with the ruling class of, say, the US.
As for Russia and Iran, it’s important to not just get swept up in the common enemy of the Western bourgeoisie. The current era, where the US is the current Hegemon but whose Imperialism is waning and decaying, means the US bourgoeisie has a vested interest in creating more subjects to plunder to keep this process going for as long as possible, and countries who exert more control over their own resources and industry are the number 1 targets on the US’s list. Russia and Iran both need eventual Socialist revolutions, but these would be pushed back if they were to fall under the thumb of the US Empire.
This is why it’s critical for Communists to have strong understandings of Imperialism. Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism remains the most important work for understanding the primary contradiction and thus primary obstacle in the way of Socialist movements everywhere, of all stripes, today.
Question: if you check families of the top people, they all seem to be children of former high-level dignitaries. Are they somehow stopping birth of a neoaristocracy ruling class, or is the PRC simply too young (2-3 generations) for that to become noticeable yet?
The NPC has over 3000 members, many of whom do not fit that description. I suppose it would be accurate to say beauracracy could form, but Xi Jinping’s campaign was built up off of strong anti-corruption protections and purging of opportunists from the party.
I spent the greater half of my comment elaborating on what I meant by that statement. If you have specific questions, please, ask away, but I already answered.
The current era, where the US is the current Hegemon but whose Imperialism is waning and decaying, means the US bourgoeisie has a vested interest in creating more subjects to plunder to keep this process going for as long as possible, and countries who exert more control over their own resources and industry are the number 1 targets on the US’s list. Russia and Iran both need eventual Socialist revolutions, but these would be pushed back if they were to fall under the thumb of the US Empire.
Bolded are the parts where I specifically stated why siding with the US bourgeoisie against Russia and Iran, ie getting them to capitulate to US demands and open up their markets for foreign plunder, is a bad thing for any Marxist. They aren’t paragons of good, but neither are US allies in the area, like Israel, Ukraine, or Saudi Arabia. Socialist revolution is far easier in a country combatting Imperialism than capitulating to it, as experience has shown.
As for Russia and Ukraine, we could push this back onto the Nationalist Banderites who were shelling the Donbass region for a decade before the Russo-Ukrainian War. What we have now is a Nationalist-controlled Ukraine that is being carved out via predatory loans from the US on one side, and Russia on the other.
Russia seeks demilitarization, the US seeks full control of Ukrainian industry and profits, the working class of Ukraine suffers and the compradors profit. Russia seeks to counter NATO’s millitant buildup on their border in order to threaten Russia into opening its markets to foreign plundering, and responded to Luhansk and Donetsk declaring independence from Ukraine.
This isn’t a situation where an evil leader wants to do evil and spread evil for the sake of evil, there are materialist factors at play. The US only cares about damaging Russia and profiting off of Ukraine, and Russia primarily cares about keeping NATO off of its border and protecting the ethnic Russians in Donetsk and Luhansk.
How familiar are you with Marxism? This is a Marxist community, so being familiar with Marxist analysis of Imperialism and Economics helps greatly when discussing the Marxist POV of current global events.
This is a Marxist community, so being familiar with Marxist analysis of Imperialism and Economics helps greatly when discussing the Marxist POV of current global events.
TBF this comm seems like it’s more for outreach to vague leftists to propagandize ML to them, not a place for followers of the immortal science to discuss among themselves like lemmygrad or hexbear. People with a vulgar understanding of class war chiming in is to be expected.
Honestly as a post left anarchist I’ve completely given up on Lemmy as a leftist space. Cowbee is literally just a standard campist who has twisted Marx into sixteen layers of dogma to justify their geopolitical premise.
“Oh you have to be familiar with Marxist analysis…” Ok buddy, but apparently not any of the more contemporary leftist theory which doesn’t buy into that campist slop. “Listen, Marxist” was published in 1968 but we just don’t talk about that. Nor do we entertain any of the century long criticism and revisionism of leftist theory. Marcuse who? Beauvoir? Gesundheit!
We’d rather just huff farts and yell “left unity” until Russia seems like an ally.
I don’t twist Marx into dogma, my analysis is very standard for Marxist-Leninist orgs around the world. I’m not a campist, either. I do agree with the Marxist-Leninist analysis of Imperialism, and those of Marxists well-after Lenin such as Fanon, Losurdo, Roderic Day, Nia Frome, Walter Rodney, and more. In my opinion, a coherent and consistent analysis of Imperialism is the number one most urgent issue on the Left to this day, and the Marxist-Leninist analysis as it has developed over the centuries and is actively developed to this day is the best answer.
We can talk about critiques of Marxism, that’s valid. Marx was right, the tradition of all dead generations does weigh like a nightmare on the brains of the living. As a consequence of that, though, much of what I discuss with those unfamiliar with Marx is misunderstandings or distortions of Marx, once we get a correct baseline, we can discuss more coherently. Marx was wrong about some things, such as revolution happening in the advanced Capitalist countries first, after all, we now know that Imperialism delays that process and pushes it onto the Global South. Marx was overall very correct, though, and his framework of analysis continues to be the most useful for understanding the world around us. That’s why Marxism is a living framework, it didn’t stop at Lenin, but continues to this day.
Overall, if you want to have a discussion, I’m open to, but if you’re going to misrepresent me and my views then we can’t get anywhere.
I agree we are unlikely to get anywhere because this is a communist com and I am not a communist. You are quite taken with your modernist ideals so I will leave you to them, but the notion that Lenin’s imperialism is axiomatic geopolitics without wide debate on the left is either ignorant, naive, or argued in bad faith.
If anything, the struggle between post Soviet reactionary influence and the rise of western postmodern idealism has shown these concepts to be simplistic at best. Some sparks create infernos but most fizzle out. We have seen where the spark of ML thought takes us, and it is not setting the world on fire, regardles of excuses. Rather, it has twisted itself into a scheme of autocratic apology which too often insulates itself from introspection. Again, this is extremely basic libertarian left and post left theory which arguably traces itself back to Kropotkin, so pretending like these statements only exist as some ignorance of leftist knowledge is what makes me question your motivation. But it’s really a tale as old as time. Time, of course, being modernist chauvinism.
Yet we aren’t really enemies. Except I’m pretty sure you’d put me up against the wall if given the chance. But my final words would still be “To will oneself free is also to will others free.”
The PRC needs to stop comitting atrocities against the Uyghur and other Turkic muslims, and Tibettans, and stop brutalising and denying political self determination to the people of Hong Kong. Oh and stop being a authoritarian surveillance state.
Broadly speaking I don’t like the government of pretty much every country that matters on the world stage. If they matter, they wield enough power that they have used that power to do harm rather than just provide for their people. The only ones that haven’t are maybe some of the tiny or globally insignificant countries’ governments.
I don’t like the US government where I’m from, the UK government, Israel’s government, Iran’s government, most of the governments in the middle east really, excluding the ones I don’t know enough about. I don’t like the PRC, I don’t like the Russian government, I don’t really like the Japanese government, I don’t like the Australian government, I don’t like the Brazilian government, and I don’t like the German government. I don’t know a lot about most governments in Europe though, so I’m not inclined to have a stance on them until I have more reason to not like them. There are probably lots of others also worth not liking that I don’t know about, or forgot.
And I’m postive there are good, kind, earnest, compassionate civil servants working in all of those governments, but as entities I still have issues with them, and think they could better wield their power to help rather than harm the humans they’re supposed to provide for and/or their global neighbors.
Other people have done good jobs of recommending sources on the specific areas you mentioned, so I’ll pivtot to methodology and media literacy. In the western, English-speaking world, the media is dominated by Capitalists and corporate interests, the US State Department, and more. The common narrative threads against foreign countries that do not fully capitulate to the West are controlled. They begin with kernals of truth, omit critical context, and massage the quality and quantity of their events as much as they can while still remaining plausible, often using “anonymous sources” for reference.
The reason the West does this is because the West wants these countries to destabilize, so it can freely plunder their markets and resources, as is standard for the rest of the world. As a Socialist state, the PRC has strong sovereignty over its own markets, and this is a problem for Western Capitalists. That’s what I want you to focus on as you look into these countries.
Sorry this is so fucking long, I have a horrible habit of being incredibly long-winded 🥲
I already agree with pretty much all of that but I don’t really buy into the idea that therefore only sources that agree with China can be correct (which I don’t think you’re necessarily saying, I’m just clarifying the way I look at things)
Someone alluded to the human rights commission article I linked being written by someone it sounds like is very biased against the PRC but his name isn’t on the article anywhere and I have no way to validate that claim, and the HRC has been more than critical of western “free” market capitalist countries too.
In fact, most if not all of the sources I regard highly are extremely critical of the us government, many of our allies, and a variety of western nations.
I don’t think the US isn’t warping the perspective of everyone they can, at home and abroad (along with all the other western countries with the budget to do so), but china and russia are also always carrying out their own disinformation, propaganda, and espionage campaigns. Its the nature of being a big important country in a world where those things are standard.
Understanding that the vast majority of media I have access to is tainted by the filter of “they’re able to make money saying this, and are getting paid for doing so which shapes their motives and can reflect a capitalist bias”, doesn’t really change the fact that I still have to discern what’s propaganda, and propaganda produced by who, and that if it were easy nations wouldn’t spend billions all competing with eachother to shape narratives
Sidebar- just realized tankie is probably an insult, that didn’t occur to me… I should probably apologize to the person I called a tankie and clarify that I just meant to refer to their broad political perspective not insinuate it was less valid…
I don’t take the perspective of pro-PRC communists wholesale because I see that as being just as filtered as most of the narratives I have access to in western media, but going the opposite direction- BUT its still extremely useful to learn how y’all look at things, take a look at the sources y’all feel are relevant, and see how they might change or not change my perspective. Being in even slight different parts of the political spectrum, we kinda live in bubbles with different facts, and its really helpful peek into other people’s bubbles to see other people’s facts and compare them to your own. (Which is why I feel so strongly about trying not to smugly antagonize people I disagree with, you’re just as complex and intelligent a human as I am and I’d like to learn from you, which requires respect.)
But I generally feel that every powerful government in the world has skeletons in the closet. To the best of my knowledge the PRC still hasn’t acknowledged the Tiananmen square massacre and still cracks down on gatherings at the anniversary. If a source isn’t willing to criticize both the west and the “communist block” (sorry, I don’t have a better way to refer to those commonly lumped together countries, if there’s something better I’d be interested to hear it!) Then I’m unlikely to consider them an especially trustworthy source. Is that perfect? Undoubtly no, propaganda is extremely sophisticated these days, but I think it’s a valid starting place. I’m open to disagreement or critique
It’s okay to be long-winded. One thing with HRW, is that it was essentially founded to be an anti-Communist tool of propaganda, not an impartial judge of national character. Criticism of HRW is frequent for its US-bias, even if it also critiques the US or Western countries, it does so with far more kindness than it does for non-Western countries.
As for the PRC and Tian’anmen, they absolutely do acknowlwdge it. They call the event the “June 4th Incident.” They disagree with the debunked UK diplomat cable that alleged 10,000 people killed in total, and a massacre on the square, on the basis of the UK diplomat Alan Donald admiting to have made up the figure from various sources and that he fled the scene well-before. All reputable sources report a relatively consistent story, no deaths (or up to 3ish by some reports) on the square, around 300-500 deaths of PLA soldiers and rioters combined. I recommend checking out the links on this document for more.
This is what I mean by the West taking a kernal of truth, and distorting the quality and quantity of the events. To this day, BBC reports the 10,000 figure as though it’s accurate, while Alan Donald himself has reduced his own estimates to 2000-3000, a number much higher than other estimates but much lower than his initial, and leaked cables back up the CPC’s claim of no deaths on the square. The west calls the denial of the debunked aspects censorship of the entire event, when pretty much everyone in China is familiar.
You’re correct, every government has skeletons in their closet. What’s important is having the media literacy to look at all sides, and not taking Western Sources about their enemies too seriously, as its a massive propaganda regime.
As a side-note, “tankie” is a pejorative for Marxist, but pretty much no Marxist takes it seriously, just like “commie” or “pinko.”
Thank you so much for taking the time to collect some links for me, those gave me a lot more to think about! I had missed the history section on the HRW Wikipedia page talking about its founding to watch the USSR specifically and slowly expanding to include more regions and whatnot. I’ll have to take a look at that page of their criticisms more closely, thank you for the link! The criticisms section in the HRC page was much more limited, I didn’t realize there was a dedicated page
Thats super interesting regarding them acknowledging the tianamen square massacre, if that’s true that totally changes my perception of that part of China’s history. If nothing else, I didn’t realize how close in time that was to the death of Mao, being about 10-15 years after he died, and that the deaths didn’t happen in the square. I think the argument for it being a significantly lower death toll are interesting and fairly compelling, I’ll keep that idea in the back of my mind as I learn more in the future, thank you for the sources! Do you happen to know any reputable, relatively impartial sources where I can learn more about how the event is talked about in China, and the governments acknowledgement of it? If not that’s okay but I wanted to ask :)
Wait, so does tankie not even really include maoists? I thought it was maoists marxists, stallinists (is that a thing?) Etc.
Thank you for taking the time to engage with me, I think these kinds of conversations are exhausting but I really appreciate them. O think it’s really important to be able to talk to people who’s perspective you don’t share and learn why they see things differently.
As for “Maoists,” Mao himself was a Marxist-Leninist. His contributions to Marxism-Leninism are called “Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.” Maoists are a subsection of Marxists after Mao that believe certain individual characteristics of the Chinese Revolution are universal, rather than individual, ie they see Maoism as a higher stage of Marxism surpassing Marxism-Leninism. They get called “tankies” just as much, even if they reject most Socialist states as “valid.” “Stalinism” isn’t really a thing either, Stalin took the writings of Marx and Lenin and synthesized it into Marxism-Leninism, but didn’t really create any new theory. Those calling people “Stalinists” are generally trying to fearmonger around the name of Stalin, even if Marx, Engels, and Lenin are the broad majority of Marxism-Leninism, and Stalin more the first person after Lenin to really collect how Marxism and Leninism had changed and developed over time.
I would urge you to think about the question of wether or not there is a “correct” way to attain socialism. I am not talking about hypothetically in a synthetic environment, but in the real world where the material gain of the proletariat comes at the expense of the bourgeoisie (and will until we arrive at gay space communism, which is again purely theoretical).
How would you nationalize the resources and means of production of your country so as to distribute it fairly among the people? How would you stop those that resist on some stupid basis of “inalienable rights to private property” (🤢 btw)? If you are thinking about a country other than the US, how would you stop the hegemon from coming after you, either by assassination, invasion or both?
It is easy to critique AES states based on a comparison to fantasy. If you think that you have theory that is not just pure speculation that can never be realized due to it inherently ignoring material reality, please share it.
Note that I am not asking you to prove anything to me so that I can pick it apart at the seams while providing no viable alternative myself (that would be hypocritical with regards to the point I am trying to make). What I am asking is for you to consider this line of questions along with the specific historical material reality that have given way to say the PRC in particular.
That idea of what a practical implementation of left wing ideology would look like is something I think is super important! Though I should clarify, I don’t actually know if I’d describe myself as a socialist, my political ideology is still very much changing and evolving, there’s a ton for me to learn about still, but there are aspects of socialism, anarchism, and libertarianism (not anarcho-capitalism) that I have felt resonate with me. But my perspectives on political ideology are really fragmented and I’m still trying to learn enough to put together an actual image of each system and what I’d ideally want the world to look like
I think the most practical idea I have on how I’d like to see problems solved in the immediate short term is communalism, which if I understand right is more of a school of anarchism. But that’s a very small piece of a practical whole, that’s just how I think I’d like goods and services to be provided. I don’t really know enough to have meaningful answers to a lot of the other questions around how you build a better world, but I do like to think about it
It took me a long time before I engaged much with politics so I still have a fuckton to learn. I still don’t even really grasp what exactly communism is in an applied sense, and most schools of anarchism don’t really seem to make any sense to me in terms of how the world would actually work if they were implemented.
Maybe someday I’ll have more answers, but today I’m content to just learn when I have energy and remain cognizant of the fact that I don’t have an idea for how I’d like a nation to work in its totality. I just keep assembling small policy stances until I get a bit more complete of a picture, bit by bit.
But I do think that pragmatic, “what would this actually look like in practice, complete with how you would solve major pitfalls” discussion doesn’t happen enough in left wing spaces, a lot of it feels super “pie in the sky”
By the way, what does AES mean in this context, all I could find is “Alliance of Sahel States”, is that what you’re referring to?
AES referer to acutally existing socialism in this context. I think most socialist have to go through some traumatic internal development in order to mature and and grow their political views. The main part of Marxist theory, as per my understanding of it (still learning), is to analyze the means of production through the view of historical dialectial materialism.
I will explain these terms after a quick digression. The kernel of my belief in socialism is just the basic belief that every person by birth has the same right as me to have a good life. I also understand that earth’s resources are finite and that our means of production are as well (although increasing, historically).
Thus the crux of the problem is this: If we both want something that is finite in supply, how does my gain not come at your expense? The answer is that it is not possible, which begs the question of who gets the pie? The easy answer is that we share it, but then how? This is where we begin to move away from morals and ethics and should start to analyze this objectively, more as a social contract. For me, that is what the origin of socialism is.
Now, anyone born today has no part of any pie by right. Sure, some get bestowed something by their parents, but the truth is that all of earth is owned by someone or something (with few caveats). Who owns what is clearly a matter of history (usually those that owned something yesterday owns that and maybe even more today).
So how does this fit in with the idea of a social contract that should serve the goal of an egalitarian society? It does not. It is clearly not in the direct personal interest (from a materialist point of view) for the people that own something to just give that stuff away and so we see that they don’t.
I am already now hinting at the core Marxist idea of dividing people into classes according to ownership, since after all the poor have in common that they deserve a larger share and the rich have in common that they do not want to lose their wealth (after all it is finite at a global scale, so without the development of the means of production it is static). The unadressed term dialectical is in essence the study of contradictions within societies such as these, in order to solve them.
From the historical point of view we see the rise of capitalism as a bourgeoisie revolution (against the prior feudal economic structure on which another societal structure rested). Marxists do not believe that the vehicle of this revolution was that some people started nailing messages on doors nor that somebody just woke up and wanted to free themselves of feudal tyranny and so did. They instead argue that the technological and material development forced a shift in power away from those that held landed power and over to the mercantilist bourgeoisie.
Thus we only need to view the historical trend that the powerful rule, and the fall of feudalism seem almost inescapable. If we return to actual Marxist theory again, we can recognize that the means of production is dependant on a social class that does not really reap the full benefit from it: the workers. Analogously to the bourgeoisie revolution, we believe that the technological and materialist development of capital (i.e. the means of production) are what is needed for everyone to have enough to share, and that it must be wielded by the workers (the proletariat), whose interest it actually is to divide fairly among all people.
I have tried to make this more colloquial, at the unfortunate expense of accuracy. However, if parts of this story resonates with you, you might just be a budding socialist yourself. I would either way implore you to analyze the world from the pragmatic point of “what if everyone did/had the same as me” even if you do not believe that we are all more or less equal. In the same line, if you think you are entitled to more than anyone else, how would you stop those that disagree they deserve less from taking your wealth? If you think you are entitled to defend your wealth by force, why are those that need commodities not entitled to take what they need by force.
And thus we return to the necessity of a social contract or maybe just plain socialism.
how would you stop the hegemon from coming after you, either by assassination, invasion or both?
Or by funding, organizing, and fueling internal unrest/insurrection, which is what the US did in Beijing in 1989, in Hong Kong in ~1999, and in Xinjiang in ~2000–2015.
Of course you dont like the PRC. After all, they are better than the west at almost everything. They make trades with countries that were previously looted by the west. Those countries might free themselves soon. And then… No more treats!
I’m pretty sure virtually all of the Tibetan people are happy to no longer be suffering under theocratic feudalism. Happy to no longer be illiterate serfs and slaves living in depredation under a god-king. I doubt many of them are sad that CIA asset Dalai “suck my tongue” Lama is in exile.[1]
and stop brutalising and denying political self determination to the people of Hong Kong
Hey, thank you for the links! I don’t consider all of them impartial enough to weigh very heavily for me personally, but several of them have made me more informed or changed how I see certain global issues!
I’d like to point to some things that still support my original perspective and see if you have thoughts to share, additional sources, reasons to consider those sources with skepticism, etc. I’m not really here to argue, I expect I won’t walk away with the same perspective you have but I’d still love to learn from how you see things and see what you know that would change my view of world politics (if that’s okay with you :) and no pressure for a fast reply or anything, I understand I’m essentially asking a lot of intellectal labor from you)
The nature of global information is such that I can’t really treat any sources as being free from propaganda fueled narratives. I’m of the belief/understanding the west and the “communist block” countries both engage in information warfare and propaganda to shape narratives to their favor, so I just do my best to sift through things, refer to well respected sources with various perspectives, and do my best to integrate it into a world view as best I can 😅
That first article in the first linked comment was very interesting and I appreciate that it was from independent academics
Their page for China also includes articles describing continued preemptive crackdowns on the anniversary of the tianamen square massacre, and other human rights issues. https://www.hrw.org/asia/china-and-tibet do you believe the hrw isn’t a reputable or trustworthy source? They’re very critical of the US, and when I looked for criticisms they’ve faced it was mostly just countries being unhappy that they were criticized. Including groups criticising them for being too harsh on Israel, who the US is extremely close with. If you have additional context or perspective I’d be interested in your thoughts :)
In the article about the dali lama having made an agreement with the CIA to undermine China it says
In 1999, the Dalai Lama suggested that the CIA Tibetan program had been harmful to Tibet because it primarily served American interests, claiming “once the American policy toward China changed, they stopped their help … The Americans had a different agenda from the Tibetans.”
Gyalo Thondup, the Dalai Lama’s elder brother, also expressed frustration with the role of the CIA in Tibetan affairs. In a 2009 interview, he stated “I never asked for CIA military assistance. I asked for political help. I wanted to publicize the Tibet situation, to make a little noise. The Americans promised to help make Tibet an independent country. All those promises were broken.” He continues, claiming that America “didn’t want to help Tibet. It just wanted to make trouble for China. It had no far-sighted policy for Tibet. I wasn’t trained for this (clandestine operations). We didn’t know about power politics.”
Which suggests that Tibet would still like independence and to be considered independent from China. I still learned a lot from it though!
In the article about protesters initiating violence in Hong Kong, after doing a lot of reading to make sure I get the involved parties correct, the article is saying that the violent attackers in white shirts were pro hongkong government triad, or pro China, triad members and they victims were train riders and pro democracy protesters who were returning home from protest regarding the extradition treaty that would allow for the Hong Kong government to extradite people to mainland china (but there were a lot of victims that were just people). That doesn’t really support the narrative you were describing at all. Additional thoughts welcome :)
If you actually read all this I appreciate it! Thank you for the original group of links also. We don’t see the world quite the same way but I think it’s really important to not be hostile towards people with different perspectives from you. If people put together what we know we stand more of a chance of understanding the world as accurately as we can, and I appreciate your perspective even if I walk away with a different perception or understand of the narrative :)
Hey, sorry for yet another reply, it just occurred to me “tankie” probably kind of implicitly suggests I think your perspective is less valid or that I look down on it
If that’s what “tankie” communicates, I’m really sorry about that, it’s probably more apt to say pro-PRC communist, I was just being lazy and didn’t wanna type that out but it honestly didn’t occur to me tankie might be an insult until just a moment ago 🙃
As a side-note, if you want to actually get a view of what Communists are saying on Lemmy, consider making an account on Lemmygrad.ml, Hexbear.net, Lemmy.ml, or an instance that can view them like Mander.xyz.
Its not the highest priority for me, I just value talking with people who’s perspective I don’t share when I get the chance (including to the right of me, when I can manage the cognitive dissonance of forgetting out how their ideology and voting record are harming me) but I have been meaning to potentially migrate to another instance again for various reasons. It was gonna be .ee, but they’re shutting down now 😅
Lemmy.zip (absolutely hate the .zip as a thing that exists, but oh well) is one I wanna investigate and maybe make an account on to check out, but I haven’t made any real decision. I’ll have to go look into mander.xyz, thanks for the suggestion :) Previously I was on .ee after decinding beehaw was a bit more defederated than I wanted, but the mirroring from reddit swamping the “all” feed was the biggest reason I stopped using it
Though, I will say, the folks on exclusively communist instachoicese often EXTREMELY difficult to talk to and find common ground with as an outsider. Even folks from .ml are hard to have good discussion with at times; the more of an echo chamber people spend time sitting it, and the longer they spend there, the harder I find it is to engage with them and have a real conversation about what people think and why without it becoming antagonistic. Which is why I hate echo chambers and I’m thinking I’d like a instance that federates everyone and I can moderate as I need to.
Though I can appreciate being defederated wasn’t necessarily the communist instances choices, and being in your own space where you don’t deal with outsider has it’s merits as well as disadvantages
Thanks for the suggestion and I hope you have a lovely day :)
One thing, I’d say that Communist spaces can’t really be real echo chamberd, as in the English-speaking internet and world liberalism is by far the most dominant ideology. Communists cannot avoid exposure to liberalism.
Thats a perspective I really hadn’t considered but that’s very fair, at least in some ways. I think that’s an issue for any minority group.
But I will say that still being exposed to outside voises as noise intruding on your space doesn’t really mean you can’t become increasingly hostile to outsiders. If anything, I think it makes it harder to remain open to talking to folks you don’t agree with because you’ll constantly be subjected to hostility and context collapse where outsiders step in to interject, often with hostility or antagonism, and even when it’s not antagonistic, it’s probably exhausting. When youre hugely outnumbered other perspectives are more likely to feel “inescapable” vs being just one more in the conversation. I can appreciate that I basically stepped into other people’s space and started a debate that takes everyone involved a huge amount of emotional and intellectual labor (though I feel a bit less bad about it given this comm seems like it’s kinda intended for persuading people and outreach)
I can both agree that patience is a good method of outreach while understanding the frustrations from comrades. Plus, outreach is better done in orgs and parties directly, engaging in mass media such as on YouTube. We have to be where the people are. Lemmy is more of a place to not have to worry about censorship.
I mean there literally are no global impartial sources. The us government isn’t my source for deciding how I feel about foreign governments, but if everything is western propaganda surely you can see China participates in that propaganda just as much as every other country. I do my best to cut through the noise and understand the high level patterns and ongoings globally, but there’s not exactly anyone truly impartial. Lots of people buy wholesale into US propaganda that we’re the most free nation in the world and have done no wrong abroad, I don’t really have any more reason to listen to tankies about geopolitics than those people. I have no way to know that you aren’t a victim of literally just another propagandized narrative
There’s not any great way for me to tell truth from propaganda other than listening to well respected journalistic sources with a variety of perspectives, and doing my best to sift through the common elements, but I live in the us and only read English. I do my best 🤷♂️
See? You just showed how much all your previous claims about not just accepting all claims against China were hollow by posting an article that uses Adrian fucking Zenz as it’s main source. So you’re willing to trust ultra far right pundits from the “Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation” who are literally paid by western governments and claim to on a mission from God to destroy China, but I’m guessing even the most mild pro-China source is too much for you.
The antagonism is uncalled for, I literally just replied to the other commenter who provided lots of sources in hopes we could discuss further, some of which definitely made me more informed. You don’t have to attack me just because I don’t see the world the same way you do.
You literally could have just said “hey, the person who wrote that article or was the primary source has background you might want to research”
I didn’t see an author listed on that article so instead I looked at what the hrc has been criticized for, and it led me to believe they were fairly willing to criticize both the west and the PRC. What tells you that Adrian Zenz is the source for the paper? His name is never mentioned in it, so it’s not like there’s any good way I could have known that, or check it now that you’ve said so.
I’m happy to discuss and learn why you have a different perception of things than I do, just dont be a dick to me. I’ve read the bulk of two Wikipedia pages (linked by another pro PRC commenter in this thread), read a couple additional articles, and done my best to get some background on like 4 sources/authors now just trying to run down what y’all think and why it’s different from what I do because I’m interested in talking to people I don’t already agree with, I don’t see how acting like I’m a fucking idiot for having any perspective other than yours is productive or helpful to anyone’s cause
If everyone can tell what’s propaganda and what’s not, and which narrative is fake, it wouldn’t be very good propaganda. That was my point. It’s extremely difficult to discern whether your beliefs are propaganda, or mine are. But I’m fucking willing to try, I do my best. Don’t be a dick.
The ruling class of the PRC is the Proletariat, so you have more in common with the Proletariat in the PRC than you do with the ruling class of, say, the US.
As for Russia and Iran, it’s important to not just get swept up in the common enemy of the Western bourgeoisie. The current era, where the US is the current Hegemon but whose Imperialism is waning and decaying, means the US bourgoeisie has a vested interest in creating more subjects to plunder to keep this process going for as long as possible, and countries who exert more control over their own resources and industry are the number 1 targets on the US’s list. Russia and Iran both need eventual Socialist revolutions, but these would be pushed back if they were to fall under the thumb of the US Empire.
This is why it’s critical for Communists to have strong understandings of Imperialism. Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism remains the most important work for understanding the primary contradiction and thus primary obstacle in the way of Socialist movements everywhere, of all stripes, today.
Question: if you check families of the top people, they all seem to be children of former high-level dignitaries. Are they somehow stopping birth of a neoaristocracy ruling class, or is the PRC simply too young (2-3 generations) for that to become noticeable yet?
Wasn’t Xi Jinping the son of a guy who got kicked out of the gov? Doesn’t sound very high level to me.
The NPC has over 3000 members, many of whom do not fit that description. I suppose it would be accurate to say beauracracy could form, but Xi Jinping’s campaign was built up off of strong anti-corruption protections and purging of opportunists from the party.
“As for Russia and Iran, it’s important to not just get swept up in the common enemy of the Western bourgeoisie.”
What are you talking about? You obviously don’t have friends or family from Ukraine or Georgia.
I spent the greater half of my comment elaborating on what I meant by that statement. If you have specific questions, please, ask away, but I already answered.
But it’s all about the US, and you seem to just ignore what Russia (Putin) is doing. Nobody is forcing Putin to murder Ukrainians.
A similar point can me made about Iran that has no problem killing or beating up women that try to get equal (human) rights.
Your entire point about the US, isn’t an excuse to just ignore the current leaders in those countries.
Bolded are the parts where I specifically stated why siding with the US bourgeoisie against Russia and Iran, ie getting them to capitulate to US demands and open up their markets for foreign plunder, is a bad thing for any Marxist. They aren’t paragons of good, but neither are US allies in the area, like Israel, Ukraine, or Saudi Arabia. Socialist revolution is far easier in a country combatting Imperialism than capitulating to it, as experience has shown.
As for Russia and Ukraine, we could push this back onto the Nationalist Banderites who were shelling the Donbass region for a decade before the Russo-Ukrainian War. What we have now is a Nationalist-controlled Ukraine that is being carved out via predatory loans from the US on one side, and Russia on the other.
Russia seeks demilitarization, the US seeks full control of Ukrainian industry and profits, the working class of Ukraine suffers and the compradors profit. Russia seeks to counter NATO’s millitant buildup on their border in order to threaten Russia into opening its markets to foreign plundering, and responded to Luhansk and Donetsk declaring independence from Ukraine.
This isn’t a situation where an evil leader wants to do evil and spread evil for the sake of evil, there are materialist factors at play. The US only cares about damaging Russia and profiting off of Ukraine, and Russia primarily cares about keeping NATO off of its border and protecting the ethnic Russians in Donetsk and Luhansk.
How familiar are you with Marxism? This is a Marxist community, so being familiar with Marxist analysis of Imperialism and Economics helps greatly when discussing the Marxist POV of current global events.
TBF this comm seems like it’s more for outreach to vague leftists to propagandize ML to them, not a place for followers of the immortal science to discuss among themselves like lemmygrad or hexbear. People with a vulgar understanding of class war chiming in is to be expected.
Completely fair, that’s the way I use it, that line was more of a springboard to segue the convo in that direction more than anything.
Honestly as a post left anarchist I’ve completely given up on Lemmy as a leftist space. Cowbee is literally just a standard campist who has twisted Marx into sixteen layers of dogma to justify their geopolitical premise.
“Oh you have to be familiar with Marxist analysis…” Ok buddy, but apparently not any of the more contemporary leftist theory which doesn’t buy into that campist slop. “Listen, Marxist” was published in 1968 but we just don’t talk about that. Nor do we entertain any of the century long criticism and revisionism of leftist theory. Marcuse who? Beauvoir? Gesundheit!
We’d rather just huff farts and yell “left unity” until Russia seems like an ally.
I don’t twist Marx into dogma, my analysis is very standard for Marxist-Leninist orgs around the world. I’m not a campist, either. I do agree with the Marxist-Leninist analysis of Imperialism, and those of Marxists well-after Lenin such as Fanon, Losurdo, Roderic Day, Nia Frome, Walter Rodney, and more. In my opinion, a coherent and consistent analysis of Imperialism is the number one most urgent issue on the Left to this day, and the Marxist-Leninist analysis as it has developed over the centuries and is actively developed to this day is the best answer.
We can talk about critiques of Marxism, that’s valid. Marx was right, the tradition of all dead generations does weigh like a nightmare on the brains of the living. As a consequence of that, though, much of what I discuss with those unfamiliar with Marx is misunderstandings or distortions of Marx, once we get a correct baseline, we can discuss more coherently. Marx was wrong about some things, such as revolution happening in the advanced Capitalist countries first, after all, we now know that Imperialism delays that process and pushes it onto the Global South. Marx was overall very correct, though, and his framework of analysis continues to be the most useful for understanding the world around us. That’s why Marxism is a living framework, it didn’t stop at Lenin, but continues to this day.
Overall, if you want to have a discussion, I’m open to, but if you’re going to misrepresent me and my views then we can’t get anywhere.
I agree we are unlikely to get anywhere because this is a communist com and I am not a communist. You are quite taken with your modernist ideals so I will leave you to them, but the notion that Lenin’s imperialism is axiomatic geopolitics without wide debate on the left is either ignorant, naive, or argued in bad faith.
If anything, the struggle between post Soviet reactionary influence and the rise of western postmodern idealism has shown these concepts to be simplistic at best. Some sparks create infernos but most fizzle out. We have seen where the spark of ML thought takes us, and it is not setting the world on fire, regardles of excuses. Rather, it has twisted itself into a scheme of autocratic apology which too often insulates itself from introspection. Again, this is extremely basic libertarian left and post left theory which arguably traces itself back to Kropotkin, so pretending like these statements only exist as some ignorance of leftist knowledge is what makes me question your motivation. But it’s really a tale as old as time. Time, of course, being modernist chauvinism.
Yet we aren’t really enemies. Except I’m pretty sure you’d put me up against the wall if given the chance. But my final words would still be “To will oneself free is also to will others free.”
Yeah I don’t like the PRC either 😅
The PRC needs to stop comitting atrocities against the Uyghur and other Turkic muslims, and Tibettans, and stop brutalising and denying political self determination to the people of Hong Kong. Oh and stop being a authoritarian surveillance state.
Broadly speaking I don’t like the government of pretty much every country that matters on the world stage. If they matter, they wield enough power that they have used that power to do harm rather than just provide for their people. The only ones that haven’t are maybe some of the tiny or globally insignificant countries’ governments.
I don’t like the US government where I’m from, the UK government, Israel’s government, Iran’s government, most of the governments in the middle east really, excluding the ones I don’t know enough about. I don’t like the PRC, I don’t like the Russian government, I don’t really like the Japanese government, I don’t like the Australian government, I don’t like the Brazilian government, and I don’t like the German government. I don’t know a lot about most governments in Europe though, so I’m not inclined to have a stance on them until I have more reason to not like them. There are probably lots of others also worth not liking that I don’t know about, or forgot.
And I’m postive there are good, kind, earnest, compassionate civil servants working in all of those governments, but as entities I still have issues with them, and think they could better wield their power to help rather than harm the humans they’re supposed to provide for and/or their global neighbors.
Other people have done good jobs of recommending sources on the specific areas you mentioned, so I’ll pivtot to methodology and media literacy. In the western, English-speaking world, the media is dominated by Capitalists and corporate interests, the US State Department, and more. The common narrative threads against foreign countries that do not fully capitulate to the West are controlled. They begin with kernals of truth, omit critical context, and massage the quality and quantity of their events as much as they can while still remaining plausible, often using “anonymous sources” for reference.
The reason the West does this is because the West wants these countries to destabilize, so it can freely plunder their markets and resources, as is standard for the rest of the world. As a Socialist state, the PRC has strong sovereignty over its own markets, and this is a problem for Western Capitalists. That’s what I want you to focus on as you look into these countries.
Sorry this is so fucking long, I have a horrible habit of being incredibly long-winded 🥲
I already agree with pretty much all of that but I don’t really buy into the idea that therefore only sources that agree with China can be correct (which I don’t think you’re necessarily saying, I’m just clarifying the way I look at things)
Someone alluded to the human rights commission article I linked being written by someone it sounds like is very biased against the PRC but his name isn’t on the article anywhere and I have no way to validate that claim, and the HRC has been more than critical of western “free” market capitalist countries too.
In fact, most if not all of the sources I regard highly are extremely critical of the us government, many of our allies, and a variety of western nations.
I don’t think the US isn’t warping the perspective of everyone they can, at home and abroad (along with all the other western countries with the budget to do so), but china and russia are also always carrying out their own disinformation, propaganda, and espionage campaigns. Its the nature of being a big important country in a world where those things are standard.
Understanding that the vast majority of media I have access to is tainted by the filter of “they’re able to make money saying this, and are getting paid for doing so which shapes their motives and can reflect a capitalist bias”, doesn’t really change the fact that I still have to discern what’s propaganda, and propaganda produced by who, and that if it were easy nations wouldn’t spend billions all competing with eachother to shape narratives
Sidebar- just realized tankie is probably an insult, that didn’t occur to me… I should probably apologize to the person I called a tankie and clarify that I just meant to refer to their broad political perspective not insinuate it was less valid…
I don’t take the perspective of pro-PRC communists wholesale because I see that as being just as filtered as most of the narratives I have access to in western media, but going the opposite direction- BUT its still extremely useful to learn how y’all look at things, take a look at the sources y’all feel are relevant, and see how they might change or not change my perspective. Being in even slight different parts of the political spectrum, we kinda live in bubbles with different facts, and its really helpful peek into other people’s bubbles to see other people’s facts and compare them to your own. (Which is why I feel so strongly about trying not to smugly antagonize people I disagree with, you’re just as complex and intelligent a human as I am and I’d like to learn from you, which requires respect.)
But I generally feel that every powerful government in the world has skeletons in the closet. To the best of my knowledge the PRC still hasn’t acknowledged the Tiananmen square massacre and still cracks down on gatherings at the anniversary. If a source isn’t willing to criticize both the west and the “communist block” (sorry, I don’t have a better way to refer to those commonly lumped together countries, if there’s something better I’d be interested to hear it!) Then I’m unlikely to consider them an especially trustworthy source. Is that perfect? Undoubtly no, propaganda is extremely sophisticated these days, but I think it’s a valid starting place. I’m open to disagreement or critique
It’s okay to be long-winded. One thing with HRW, is that it was essentially founded to be an anti-Communist tool of propaganda, not an impartial judge of national character. Criticism of HRW is frequent for its US-bias, even if it also critiques the US or Western countries, it does so with far more kindness than it does for non-Western countries.
As for the PRC and Tian’anmen, they absolutely do acknowlwdge it. They call the event the “June 4th Incident.” They disagree with the debunked UK diplomat cable that alleged 10,000 people killed in total, and a massacre on the square, on the basis of the UK diplomat Alan Donald admiting to have made up the figure from various sources and that he fled the scene well-before. All reputable sources report a relatively consistent story, no deaths (or up to 3ish by some reports) on the square, around 300-500 deaths of PLA soldiers and rioters combined. I recommend checking out the links on this document for more.
This is what I mean by the West taking a kernal of truth, and distorting the quality and quantity of the events. To this day, BBC reports the 10,000 figure as though it’s accurate, while Alan Donald himself has reduced his own estimates to 2000-3000, a number much higher than other estimates but much lower than his initial, and leaked cables back up the CPC’s claim of no deaths on the square. The west calls the denial of the debunked aspects censorship of the entire event, when pretty much everyone in China is familiar.
You’re correct, every government has skeletons in their closet. What’s important is having the media literacy to look at all sides, and not taking Western Sources about their enemies too seriously, as its a massive propaganda regime.
As a side-note, “tankie” is a pejorative for Marxist, but pretty much no Marxist takes it seriously, just like “commie” or “pinko.”
Thank you so much for taking the time to collect some links for me, those gave me a lot more to think about! I had missed the history section on the HRW Wikipedia page talking about its founding to watch the USSR specifically and slowly expanding to include more regions and whatnot. I’ll have to take a look at that page of their criticisms more closely, thank you for the link! The criticisms section in the HRC page was much more limited, I didn’t realize there was a dedicated page
Thats super interesting regarding them acknowledging the tianamen square massacre, if that’s true that totally changes my perception of that part of China’s history. If nothing else, I didn’t realize how close in time that was to the death of Mao, being about 10-15 years after he died, and that the deaths didn’t happen in the square. I think the argument for it being a significantly lower death toll are interesting and fairly compelling, I’ll keep that idea in the back of my mind as I learn more in the future, thank you for the sources! Do you happen to know any reputable, relatively impartial sources where I can learn more about how the event is talked about in China, and the governments acknowledgement of it? If not that’s okay but I wanted to ask :)
Wait, so does tankie not even really include maoists? I thought it was maoists marxists, stallinists (is that a thing?) Etc.
Thank you for taking the time to engage with me, I think these kinds of conversations are exhausting but I really appreciate them. O think it’s really important to be able to talk to people who’s perspective you don’t share and learn why they see things differently.
No problem!
Regarding “unbiased sources,” you’ll find that there’s really no such thing in general. Bias is like perspective, everyone has it. Here’s a ProleWiki page section going over state media directly speaking about the “June 4th Incident” as it’s called in China. ProleWiki is a Marxist-Leninist Wikipedia, so definitely biased, but also has sources backing it up for most claims.
As for “Maoists,” Mao himself was a Marxist-Leninist. His contributions to Marxism-Leninism are called “Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.” Maoists are a subsection of Marxists after Mao that believe certain individual characteristics of the Chinese Revolution are universal, rather than individual, ie they see Maoism as a higher stage of Marxism surpassing Marxism-Leninism. They get called “tankies” just as much, even if they reject most Socialist states as “valid.” “Stalinism” isn’t really a thing either, Stalin took the writings of Marx and Lenin and synthesized it into Marxism-Leninism, but didn’t really create any new theory. Those calling people “Stalinists” are generally trying to fearmonger around the name of Stalin, even if Marx, Engels, and Lenin are the broad majority of Marxism-Leninism, and Stalin more the first person after Lenin to really collect how Marxism and Leninism had changed and developed over time.
I would urge you to think about the question of wether or not there is a “correct” way to attain socialism. I am not talking about hypothetically in a synthetic environment, but in the real world where the material gain of the proletariat comes at the expense of the bourgeoisie (and will until we arrive at gay space communism, which is again purely theoretical).
How would you nationalize the resources and means of production of your country so as to distribute it fairly among the people? How would you stop those that resist on some stupid basis of “inalienable rights to private property” (🤢 btw)? If you are thinking about a country other than the US, how would you stop the hegemon from coming after you, either by assassination, invasion or both?
It is easy to critique AES states based on a comparison to fantasy. If you think that you have theory that is not just pure speculation that can never be realized due to it inherently ignoring material reality, please share it.
Note that I am not asking you to prove anything to me so that I can pick it apart at the seams while providing no viable alternative myself (that would be hypocritical with regards to the point I am trying to make). What I am asking is for you to consider this line of questions along with the specific historical material reality that have given way to say the PRC in particular.
That idea of what a practical implementation of left wing ideology would look like is something I think is super important! Though I should clarify, I don’t actually know if I’d describe myself as a socialist, my political ideology is still very much changing and evolving, there’s a ton for me to learn about still, but there are aspects of socialism, anarchism, and libertarianism (not anarcho-capitalism) that I have felt resonate with me. But my perspectives on political ideology are really fragmented and I’m still trying to learn enough to put together an actual image of each system and what I’d ideally want the world to look like
I think the most practical idea I have on how I’d like to see problems solved in the immediate short term is communalism, which if I understand right is more of a school of anarchism. But that’s a very small piece of a practical whole, that’s just how I think I’d like goods and services to be provided. I don’t really know enough to have meaningful answers to a lot of the other questions around how you build a better world, but I do like to think about it
It took me a long time before I engaged much with politics so I still have a fuckton to learn. I still don’t even really grasp what exactly communism is in an applied sense, and most schools of anarchism don’t really seem to make any sense to me in terms of how the world would actually work if they were implemented.
Maybe someday I’ll have more answers, but today I’m content to just learn when I have energy and remain cognizant of the fact that I don’t have an idea for how I’d like a nation to work in its totality. I just keep assembling small policy stances until I get a bit more complete of a picture, bit by bit.
But I do think that pragmatic, “what would this actually look like in practice, complete with how you would solve major pitfalls” discussion doesn’t happen enough in left wing spaces, a lot of it feels super “pie in the sky”
By the way, what does AES mean in this context, all I could find is “Alliance of Sahel States”, is that what you’re referring to?
AES referer to acutally existing socialism in this context. I think most socialist have to go through some traumatic internal development in order to mature and and grow their political views. The main part of Marxist theory, as per my understanding of it (still learning), is to analyze the means of production through the view of historical dialectial materialism.
I will explain these terms after a quick digression. The kernel of my belief in socialism is just the basic belief that every person by birth has the same right as me to have a good life. I also understand that earth’s resources are finite and that our means of production are as well (although increasing, historically).
Thus the crux of the problem is this: If we both want something that is finite in supply, how does my gain not come at your expense? The answer is that it is not possible, which begs the question of who gets the pie? The easy answer is that we share it, but then how? This is where we begin to move away from morals and ethics and should start to analyze this objectively, more as a social contract. For me, that is what the origin of socialism is.
Now, anyone born today has no part of any pie by right. Sure, some get bestowed something by their parents, but the truth is that all of earth is owned by someone or something (with few caveats). Who owns what is clearly a matter of history (usually those that owned something yesterday owns that and maybe even more today).
So how does this fit in with the idea of a social contract that should serve the goal of an egalitarian society? It does not. It is clearly not in the direct personal interest (from a materialist point of view) for the people that own something to just give that stuff away and so we see that they don’t.
I am already now hinting at the core Marxist idea of dividing people into classes according to ownership, since after all the poor have in common that they deserve a larger share and the rich have in common that they do not want to lose their wealth (after all it is finite at a global scale, so without the development of the means of production it is static). The unadressed term dialectical is in essence the study of contradictions within societies such as these, in order to solve them.
From the historical point of view we see the rise of capitalism as a bourgeoisie revolution (against the prior feudal economic structure on which another societal structure rested). Marxists do not believe that the vehicle of this revolution was that some people started nailing messages on doors nor that somebody just woke up and wanted to free themselves of feudal tyranny and so did. They instead argue that the technological and material development forced a shift in power away from those that held landed power and over to the mercantilist bourgeoisie.
Thus we only need to view the historical trend that the powerful rule, and the fall of feudalism seem almost inescapable. If we return to actual Marxist theory again, we can recognize that the means of production is dependant on a social class that does not really reap the full benefit from it: the workers. Analogously to the bourgeoisie revolution, we believe that the technological and materialist development of capital (i.e. the means of production) are what is needed for everyone to have enough to share, and that it must be wielded by the workers (the proletariat), whose interest it actually is to divide fairly among all people.
I have tried to make this more colloquial, at the unfortunate expense of accuracy. However, if parts of this story resonates with you, you might just be a budding socialist yourself. I would either way implore you to analyze the world from the pragmatic point of “what if everyone did/had the same as me” even if you do not believe that we are all more or less equal. In the same line, if you think you are entitled to more than anyone else, how would you stop those that disagree they deserve less from taking your wealth? If you think you are entitled to defend your wealth by force, why are those that need commodities not entitled to take what they need by force.
And thus we return to the necessity of a social contract or maybe just plain socialism.
Or by funding, organizing, and fueling internal unrest/insurrection, which is what the US did in Beijing in 1989, in Hong Kong in ~1999, and in Xinjiang in ~2000–2015.
Of course you dont like the PRC. After all, they are better than the west at almost everything. They make trades with countries that were previously looted by the west. Those countries might free themselves soon. And then… No more treats!
We’re doing this again?
Good thing China wasn’t and isn’t doing that, unless you consider jailing of US-backed radical Salafi terrorists to be an atrocity.
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I’m pretty sure virtually all of the Tibetan people are happy to no longer be suffering under theocratic feudalism. Happy to no longer be illiterate serfs and slaves living in depredation under a god-king. I doubt many of them are sad that CIA asset Dalai “suck my tongue” Lama is in exile.[1]
The UK’s 99 year lease to subjugate the people of Hong Kong ended, a lease which had been forced upon Imperial China at gunpoint during the century of humiliation. Hong Kong reintegration after the lease expired was a foregone conclusion. The last minute, US-backed attempt at color revolution failed. It was the so-called “revolutionaries” who brought the brutality, by the way.
Hey, thank you for the links! I don’t consider all of them impartial enough to weigh very heavily for me personally, but several of them have made me more informed or changed how I see certain global issues!
I’d like to point to some things that still support my original perspective and see if you have thoughts to share, additional sources, reasons to consider those sources with skepticism, etc. I’m not really here to argue, I expect I won’t walk away with the same perspective you have but I’d still love to learn from how you see things and see what you know that would change my view of world politics (if that’s okay with you :) and no pressure for a fast reply or anything, I understand I’m essentially asking a lot of intellectal labor from you)
The nature of global information is such that I can’t really treat any sources as being free from propaganda fueled narratives. I’m of the belief/understanding the west and the “communist block” countries both engage in information warfare and propaganda to shape narratives to their favor, so I just do my best to sift through things, refer to well respected sources with various perspectives, and do my best to integrate it into a world view as best I can 😅
That first article in the first linked comment was very interesting and I appreciate that it was from independent academics
When I double checked the info about the ugyhur Muslims the source I went to to make sure I had the spelling and broad nature of the conflict right was the human rights watch, who has been very critical of the US government, and our close allies in Israel https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/19/break-their-lineage-break-their-roots/chinas-crimes-against-humanity-targeting its a loooong document with a ton of claims and sources, it seems fairly robust.
Their page for China also includes articles describing continued preemptive crackdowns on the anniversary of the tianamen square massacre, and other human rights issues. https://www.hrw.org/asia/china-and-tibet do you believe the hrw isn’t a reputable or trustworthy source? They’re very critical of the US, and when I looked for criticisms they’ve faced it was mostly just countries being unhappy that they were criticized. Including groups criticising them for being too harsh on Israel, who the US is extremely close with. If you have additional context or perspective I’d be interested in your thoughts :)
In the article about the dali lama having made an agreement with the CIA to undermine China it says
Which suggests that Tibet would still like independence and to be considered independent from China. I still learned a lot from it though!
In the article about protesters initiating violence in Hong Kong, after doing a lot of reading to make sure I get the involved parties correct, the article is saying that the violent attackers in white shirts were pro hongkong government triad, or pro China, triad members and they victims were train riders and pro democracy protesters who were returning home from protest regarding the extradition treaty that would allow for the Hong Kong government to extradite people to mainland china (but there were a lot of victims that were just people). That doesn’t really support the narrative you were describing at all. Additional thoughts welcome :)
If you actually read all this I appreciate it! Thank you for the original group of links also. We don’t see the world quite the same way but I think it’s really important to not be hostile towards people with different perspectives from you. If people put together what we know we stand more of a chance of understanding the world as accurately as we can, and I appreciate your perspective even if I walk away with a different perception or understand of the narrative :)
You seem to like them enough to fully accept everything they say about China, though
Hey, sorry for yet another reply, it just occurred to me “tankie” probably kind of implicitly suggests I think your perspective is less valid or that I look down on it
If that’s what “tankie” communicates, I’m really sorry about that, it’s probably more apt to say pro-PRC communist, I was just being lazy and didn’t wanna type that out but it honestly didn’t occur to me tankie might be an insult until just a moment ago 🙃
As a side-note, if you want to actually get a view of what Communists are saying on Lemmy, consider making an account on Lemmygrad.ml, Hexbear.net, Lemmy.ml, or an instance that can view them like Mander.xyz.
Its not the highest priority for me, I just value talking with people who’s perspective I don’t share when I get the chance (including to the right of me, when I can manage the cognitive dissonance of forgetting out how their ideology and voting record are harming me) but I have been meaning to potentially migrate to another instance again for various reasons. It was gonna be .ee, but they’re shutting down now 😅
Lemmy.zip (absolutely hate the .zip as a thing that exists, but oh well) is one I wanna investigate and maybe make an account on to check out, but I haven’t made any real decision. I’ll have to go look into mander.xyz, thanks for the suggestion :) Previously I was on .ee after decinding beehaw was a bit more defederated than I wanted, but the mirroring from reddit swamping the “all” feed was the biggest reason I stopped using it
Though, I will say, the folks on exclusively communist instachoicese often EXTREMELY difficult to talk to and find common ground with as an outsider. Even folks from .ml are hard to have good discussion with at times; the more of an echo chamber people spend time sitting it, and the longer they spend there, the harder I find it is to engage with them and have a real conversation about what people think and why without it becoming antagonistic. Which is why I hate echo chambers and I’m thinking I’d like a instance that federates everyone and I can moderate as I need to.
Though I can appreciate being defederated wasn’t necessarily the communist instances choices, and being in your own space where you don’t deal with outsider has it’s merits as well as disadvantages
Thanks for the suggestion and I hope you have a lovely day :)
One thing, I’d say that Communist spaces can’t really be real echo chamberd, as in the English-speaking internet and world liberalism is by far the most dominant ideology. Communists cannot avoid exposure to liberalism.
Thats a perspective I really hadn’t considered but that’s very fair, at least in some ways. I think that’s an issue for any minority group.
But I will say that still being exposed to outside voises as noise intruding on your space doesn’t really mean you can’t become increasingly hostile to outsiders. If anything, I think it makes it harder to remain open to talking to folks you don’t agree with because you’ll constantly be subjected to hostility and context collapse where outsiders step in to interject, often with hostility or antagonism, and even when it’s not antagonistic, it’s probably exhausting. When youre hugely outnumbered other perspectives are more likely to feel “inescapable” vs being just one more in the conversation. I can appreciate that I basically stepped into other people’s space and started a debate that takes everyone involved a huge amount of emotional and intellectual labor (though I feel a bit less bad about it given this comm seems like it’s kinda intended for persuading people and outreach)
I can both agree that patience is a good method of outreach while understanding the frustrations from comrades. Plus, outreach is better done in orgs and parties directly, engaging in mass media such as on YouTube. We have to be where the people are. Lemmy is more of a place to not have to worry about censorship.
I mean there literally are no global impartial sources. The us government isn’t my source for deciding how I feel about foreign governments, but if everything is western propaganda surely you can see China participates in that propaganda just as much as every other country. I do my best to cut through the noise and understand the high level patterns and ongoings globally, but there’s not exactly anyone truly impartial. Lots of people buy wholesale into US propaganda that we’re the most free nation in the world and have done no wrong abroad, I don’t really have any more reason to listen to tankies about geopolitics than those people. I have no way to know that you aren’t a victim of literally just another propagandized narrative
There’s not any great way for me to tell truth from propaganda other than listening to well respected journalistic sources with a variety of perspectives, and doing my best to sift through the common elements, but I live in the us and only read English. I do my best 🤷♂️
On just the subject of the uyghur Muslims the human rights watch has been very critical of the PRC, and they regularly criticize the US government and Israel, one of our current close allies https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/19/break-their-lineage-break-their-roots/chinas-crimes-against-humanity-targeting
It does take a bit of work to develop real media literacy.
No, they just fund your sources that do.
And yet you’re only repeating the anti-China propoganda…
Is there a single piece of anti-China propaganda you don’t believe?
And yet you somehow do have a reason to listen to those people over leftists, apparently.
Let me guess: all western, english speaking, liberal, and anti China.
See? You just showed how much all your previous claims about not just accepting all claims against China were hollow by posting an article that uses Adrian fucking Zenz as it’s main source. So you’re willing to trust ultra far right pundits from the “Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation” who are literally paid by western governments and claim to on a mission from God to destroy China, but I’m guessing even the most mild pro-China source is too much for you.
The antagonism is uncalled for, I literally just replied to the other commenter who provided lots of sources in hopes we could discuss further, some of which definitely made me more informed. You don’t have to attack me just because I don’t see the world the same way you do.
You literally could have just said “hey, the person who wrote that article or was the primary source has background you might want to research”
I didn’t see an author listed on that article so instead I looked at what the hrc has been criticized for, and it led me to believe they were fairly willing to criticize both the west and the PRC. What tells you that Adrian Zenz is the source for the paper? His name is never mentioned in it, so it’s not like there’s any good way I could have known that, or check it now that you’ve said so.
I’m happy to discuss and learn why you have a different perception of things than I do, just dont be a dick to me. I’ve read the bulk of two Wikipedia pages (linked by another pro PRC commenter in this thread), read a couple additional articles, and done my best to get some background on like 4 sources/authors now just trying to run down what y’all think and why it’s different from what I do because I’m interested in talking to people I don’t already agree with, I don’t see how acting like I’m a fucking idiot for having any perspective other than yours is productive or helpful to anyone’s cause
If everyone can tell what’s propaganda and what’s not, and which narrative is fake, it wouldn’t be very good propaganda. That was my point. It’s extremely difficult to discern whether your beliefs are propaganda, or mine are. But I’m fucking willing to try, I do my best. Don’t be a dick.
Actually, there is. It’s called “licensing”.
The information fits into my class interest -> truth
The information doesn’t fit into my class interest -> fake enemy propaganda
Its super intuitive and easy, and everyone does it instinctively