Any social networks that have non-censored participants are. Usually, Chinaโs presence in social networks outside of its borders are for propaganda purposes.
some of the gymnastics in this thread are hilarious. critical support is a thing you can criticize chinaโs various Ls while still supporting the chinese people.
An intelligent conversation is not one that desires oppression, economic or whatever kind. That kind of dialogue you seem to refer to is basically pseudo intellectual hipster culture, the shit you see on reddit and in liberal spaces.
Meh, Iโm not the one aggressively trying to shut down any conversation which doesnโt go hard enough on ML fan service. I actually came to .ml at first hoping to find a more academically oriented leftist community which was willing to engage with topics other than โletโs relitigate the cold war.โ
You are obviously free to dismiss any criticism of this community as โNATO chauvinist propagandaโ or whatever, just as im free to roll my eyes and say that the world deserves a better class of socialist.
Itโs debatelord behavior. Performance of colonizer norms mores (got the term wrong) for the adulation of rest of the genocidal settler masses at the expense of every subject-of-empire whose neck bears that invaderโs bootprint.
Not only did I not stick to ML orthodoxy while I was there (I'm more of a peacenik anarchist at heart), I wrote some fairly rude things when I found out how insane some of the tankies on lemmy can be. I hadn't expected such people to exist in reality, I had thought it was just a caricature invented by enemies of communism or something. Nonetheless they did not ban me or complain at all when I said that sort of thing.
Eventually I left because their list of blocked instances got too long for my taste.
I donโt consider myself a Marxist, Leninist, or communist of any stripe and havenโt had a problem so far. Iโm far enough left that I refuse to call myself a liberal, but I suspect the folks who consider themselves Marxists probably think Iโm too far right to self-identify as a leftist. (Although I do.)
Shitload of downvotes a time or two, but thatโs about it. I just wanted to be on a Lemmy instance that was honoring the fedipact, and preferred it to have an instance ethos to the left of mine rather than to the right of it.
You believe in โrussian disinformation assetsโ, like hell you are lmfao. Yโknow what, letโs go for a walk.
Russia may try, but itโll never erase Ukraine nor the fact Ukraine made Russia.
No, theyโre not. Populism as a whole is a horrible political strategy which benefits only a few members of the political class.
Because it takes away the puppet Russia has been building and nurturing this whole time.
Thereโs an easy way to end this war: either kill Putin or have Putin resign.
If by โcoreโ you mean โcivilized worldโ, yes.
Your words; not mine. You are no Marxist. You are a western chauvinist, a genocidal settler, and so terminally, neoliberally treat-brained that I expect you to keel over after youโve been fed chocolate.
In a word, no. In a few more words, support for Russia (not Putin, as historical materialists donโt subscribe to great man theory) is only a partial, temporary, tactical one, in the context of imperialist liberation. Russia is still a capitalist state, though, so itโs a two stage strategy: first liberate colonized bourgeois states from colonizer states, and second revolution within those liberated bourgeois states.
Russia is an interesting case: it has already liberated itself from the post-Soviet โshock therapyโ neocolonizers. This occurred during Putinโs administration, which is why he is especially hated by the US. So now the support for Russia is in the context of keeping the colonizers from recolonizing it, and supporting Russia to the extent that it helps other states liberate themselves. But Russia isnโt trying to โliberateโ Ukraine, at least not all of Ukraine. Itโs trying to resolve the genocidal attacks on the people of the Donbas, and itโs trying to resolve the imperialist military expansion at its border.
Hardly; Iโve never known actual communists who uncritically supported that man. Itโs always critical support, at bestโ which is to say, he may do some things correct, but heโs still an absolute affront to what came before, and honestly a problem Amerika themselves created. Advocating for wanting to kill a man in the midst of denazifying a NATO-backed neighbor, out of self-defense from NATO encirclement though; thatโs beyond the pale, as is everything else Iโve found regarding that memberโs carriage.
Fair enough. I donโt believe this is what is happening (โdenazifying a NATO-backed neighborโ) and havenโt seen a source suggesting it is that doesnโt itself look like propaganda, but Iโm also OK agreeing to disagree on that. I asked only because without further context it seemed like not supporting Putin was a big component of your comment.
I understand your position now, even if we disagree on Putin also.
Yeah no, my support of Putin is critical at best, and only because Ukraine is the last piece of the puzzle NATO needs to assemble to have Russia at checkmate gunpoint. Allowing the Five-Eyed Empire to genocide more innocent civilians is not how we solve the Putin problem.
Our problem here is, we have a guy here who stands against the voice of the people, decrying populism as โa horrible ideaโ like all our favorite Amerikan neoliberals; replaces โthe imperial coreโ with โthe civilized worldโ in casual parlance, indicating a virulent and toxic western chauvinism at best and outright white supremacy at worst; an uncritical gamer too, so Iโm erring more toward the latter than the former, I could go on til Nimrodโs release day honestly.
Fair. I suspect it would be interesting to discuss these things with you over a beer, but also that itโs too likely to end up feeling like an argument here, so I wonโt press further. Thanks for the clarification.
I canโt quite tell if this is a parody, the trade union bit makes it seem sincere, but the self-importance to think that lemmy is too left for China to allow is just amazing.
Iโm looking it up, and I donโt see any โTienanmin Squareโ. Could it be โTiananmen Squareโ that youโre thinking of? The one protesting government corruption? Where unarmed soldiers were burned alive? Where Christian sickos were trying to get students in the line of fire to create atrocity propaganda? Surely there must be some confusion here!
What type of society do you think would allow you to burn other people to death and string up their corpses? Is it one that you think would be an improvement over modern China?
point is focus your criticisms on your own society thatโs 1000x worse than even the most exaggerated crimes about China, cracker. Chinese people arenโt children and they can handle their own country in their own way, they donโt need some forum poster condescending to them and you donโt need a warped preoccupation with a country that probably has nothing to do with you
You mean like that time white landowners firebombed Tulsa in response to Black Wall Streetโs creation and thriving? Or how about the time a PD in Philadelphia did the same thing to the MOVE Black liberation group some sixty or so years later? This shit keeps happening and the settlers think they have any room or moral high ground to talk shit ๐๐๐๐๐
January 6th already happened but no consequences did. The US will only deploy violence if the movement is left of whatever their crazy idea of center is.
What? I stand with the Chinese people against their oppressors. Criticism of an oppressive State is not criticism of its victims.
Said the anglo, eagerly parroting his three-letter-agency masters with his hands on his pearls and a breathless huff to his diction. I have never seen such eager catamites for fuckin genociders in my life; is this what living in Weimar Germany was like?
almost no one in China feels that their state is an oppressive force, they feel the opposite. The government has more than a 90% approval rating. The overwhelming majority of Chinese people view their society as legitimate and socialist. If you had any interest in democracy at all youโd respect this perspective instead of imposing your own
Sheโs literally correct; studies from even anti-Chinese partisan sources canโt help but find that satisfaction with the government is overwhelming. While you treat anti-imperialist movements like this sitting from your home in the imperial core, youโre not a revolutionary or helping anybody build towards anything better, youโre an active hindrance. Feel free to imbibe the actual opinions of people in China so you can understand the conditions there and not just your cracker conditioning. Itโs not perfect, but overthrow would be far; far worse.
The Western โfreeโ population is one of the most information censored/restricted populations in the world, and yet they are flabbergasted that China and many many other nations wonโt allow propaganda from western oligarchs into their country. It doesnโt matter that an information firewall is the single most important military defense against the Capitalist information war. Thatโs btw why the western world are propagandizing their population for โfree speechโ, so we all can see that wevil China donโt want free propaganda, sorry, speech.
The most amazing and Incredible is how hateful attitudes can be bought for a few propaganda dollars in the western for profit information market. So western people actually believe all the hateful things the western oligarchy says about China (and ALL the other enemies of the oligarchs).
How convenient and completely coincidental that the western population have the same opinions about nations and world leaders as the top eliteโฆ Could it be thatโฆ noooooโฆ no noโฆ Western news are the BEST, and no Capitalist elite would lie about something like that to their own population, oh no noโฆ
We see here for example the evolution of public opinion in regards to China. In 2019, the โUyghur genocideโ was broken by the media (Buzzfeed, of all outlets). In this story, we saw the machine I described up until now move in real time. Suddenly, newspapers, TV, websites were all flooded with stories about the โgenocideโ, all day, every day. People whom weโd never heard of before were brought in as experts โ Adrian Zenz, to name just one; a man who does not even speak a word of Chinese.
Organizations were suddenly becoming very active and important. The World Uyghur Congress, a very serious-sounding NGO, is actually an NED Front operating out of Germany [โฆ]. From their official website, they declare themselves to be the sole legitimate representative of all Uyghurs โ presumably not having asked Uyghurs in Xinjiang what they thought about that.
The WUC also has ties to the Grey Wolves, a fascist paramilitary group in Turkey, through the father of their founder, Isa Yusuf Alptekin.
Documents came out from NGOs to further legitimize the media reporting. This is how a report from the very professional-sounding China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) came to exist. They claimed โup to 1.3 millionโ Uyghurs were imprisoned in camps. What they didnโt say was how they got this number: they interviewed a total of 10 people from rural Xinjiang and asked them to estimate how many people might have been taken away. They then extrapolated the guesstimates they got and arrived at the 1.3 million figure.
Sanctions were enacted against China โ Xinjiang cotton for example had trouble finding buyers after Western companies were pressured into boycotting it. Instead of helping fight against the purported genocide, this act actually made life more difficult for the people of Xinjiang who depend on this trade for their livelihood (as we all do depend on our skills to make a livelihood).
Any attempt China made to defend itself was met with more suspicion. They invited a UN delegation which was blocked by the US. The delegation eventually made it there, but three years later. The Arab League also visited Xinjiang and actually commended China on their policies โ aimed at reducing terrorism through education and social integration, not through bombing like we tend to do in the West.
Yes, that's a perfectly good explanation for why they need to block wikipedia, deviantart, archiveofourown, github, bandcamp, lemmy.ml, and mastodon.social: they're all just fronts in the Capitalist Information War
Largely unwittingly. Most of us are labor aristocrats of the imperial core who have been propagandized our entire lives in liberal imperialist ideology.
Then thereโs the media.
Joseph Kahn, the managing editor of the NYT, is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, as are the CEOs of NPR (hereโs Katherine Maher again) and PBS. These are just ones I know off the top of my head. The Council of Foreign Relations is a place where the government and the capitalist class hash out the mediaโs agenda. On its founding, Walter Lippman was its head of research. The title of Noam Chomsky & Edward Hermanโs Manufacturing Consent came from a quote in Lippmannโs book, .
A couple more I can think of: CNNโs Anderson Cooper was born into money and interned at the CIA. MSNBCโs Jen Psaki, who was also born into wealth, was Obamaโs and Bidenโs press secretary.
Well, theyโre all methods by which culturally-bankrupt, ideologically-hued art and tech from the West could potentially slip past, ESPECIALLY where settler techbros are concerned regarding github and NSApedia-- I mean wikipedia; but youโre being a deliberately-obtuse settler sinophobe right now, so of course youโre not going to absorb that.
Much as I enjoy arguments with strangers on the Internet, you've reminded me of my resolution to avoid the most silly ones. If you think I'm a sinophobe your judgement is very poor.
Suuureโฆ nothing to do with the fact that theyโre a decadent and corrupt failed socialist dictatorship, no sir. Not at all an attempt at stopping ACTUAL communists from toppling their government, oh no.
And thereโs the predictable, seemingly unavoidable Western need to project their own conditions onto anyone they declare an enemy of state. If you really believe CIA-backed color revolters are the โactual communistsโ, youโve done no investigation of your own, and as a result donโt deserve the voice you confidently, ignorantly speak with.
It might be discussion of piracy/VPNs or something like that. Chinaโs got rules about that stuff too AFAIK. Maybe if one of the admins can read/write Simplified Chinese they could reach out to the relevant government bureau and request clarification.
As the comment there says, the surprise is that not every instance is blocked yet.
But I've seen hardly any Chinese on the fediverse, so they probably don't care that much. And it's not just that I've stuck to the English-speaking parts, there's been lots of Japanese and various European languages. I suppose even if it otherwise would have a chance to catch on there, Chinese users know that if it did it quickly would get blocked.
I feel like I should say that a VPN isnโt a magic bullet. Even if its configured correctly to totally obfuscate the data and the final endpoint of the traffic itโs still blatantly obvious that a VPN is in use. Given that the CCP monitors all of this stuff it wouldnโt surprise me to learn that if you run a VPN long or often enough without providing stating why that itโll either end up blocked or youโll end up in trouble.
Given that the CCP monitors all of this stuff it wouldnโt surprise me to learn that if you run a VPN long or often enough without providing stating why that itโll either end up blocked or youโll end up in trouble.
How do you know this? I have friends living in China that states otherwise.
As far as I know there are specific legal provisions for foreigners living in China in regards to VPN use, so what might be true for your friends isnโt necessarily true for a regular Chinese person.
Even if its configured correctly to totally obfuscate the data and the final endpoint of the traffic itโs still blatantly obvious that a VPN is in use.
Which is why Chinese users donโt use standard VPNs, they use obfuscated proxies with protocols like Shadowsocks and V2Ray, which mask the tunneled traffic as innocuous HTTPS traffic.
Thatโs a fair point, but what you are talking about isnโt a โVPNโ, at least not as theyโre commonly known and understood. Please remember that my response was directed to a user whose comment boiled down to โGet a VPN, that will solve the problem.โ A regular VPN will absolutely not the solve the problem.
Seriously, I can find articles like that detailing different incidents in every major mainstream media source. So either all of them are lying to me -or- you are trying to gaslight me.
The correct response to someone claiming something is propaganda is to go find more sources for more and separate incidents. If you can find multiple sources showing that a situation has happened multiple times then it stops being โpropagandaโ and starts being information.
At this point I have a pile of independent sources documenting multiple different incidents that support my understanding of the situation. Iโm still open to counter evidence but so far you havenโt provided any.
Non-approved VPNs used to circumvent the great wall are absolutely illegal, though largely tolerated (and observed), but the authorities can and have used them as an excuse to bring people in.
Source: have actual been to China and played the whole โwhich VPN will work on which networkโ game many times.
I'm sure lots of people do, it's a big country. But for the vast majority I imagine that the risk of getting in trouble for it, plus the risk of the one you paid for getting successfully blocked, plus the difficulty of finding out which ones are allowed to operate only because they share all your data with the authorities, plus the cost, plus the usual difficulties in finding a good vpn outweigh any desire to communicate freely with foreigners.
If you mean communists that support capitalist states like China, then yes, unfortunately. Better than being around nothing but liberals or anti-communists though.
Arenโt you that guy who argued with your own community and played the victim over the use of AI art because you didnโt want to accept you were being an insufferable AI techbro who doesnโt understand consent? Like Iโve seen trolls flex more to criticism than you did there.
Used to mean someone who would support sending in tanks to crush capitalist rallies like in Hungary (which most people who get labelled โtankiesโ these days obviously donโt), but nowadays itโs just an anti-communist term for anyone that supports any socialist revolution that has successfully built a socialist nation.
All states are inherently โauthoritarianโ and enforce certain principles over others. What matters is if those principles materially prioritize workers over capitalists, which socialist states do.
You canโt create a stateless, classless communist society from capitalism without a transitional socialist state that breaks the monopoly on force and propaganda that capitalist states have โ specially in a world ruled by capitalist superpowers like the US which constantly coups and invades non-capitalist states. Thinking otherwise is just delusional and utopian.
No non-capitalist state will survive in the modern world if they donโt sufficiently get rid of propaganda and deal with capitalist funded insurgencies, which capitalist states will label as โauthoritarianโ; theyโd immediately be coupโd and overthrown by imperial core countries otherwise, as many socialist states have (Chile, Libya, etc).
And regardless, socialist states are a massive improvement over capitalist states when it comes to โauthoritarianismโ anyway, same as most other metrics. The US has 0.8% of its population in prison for example, while China has 0.1%. Similar stats on most metrics for the USSR vs USA; socialist Russiaโs human rights were also far better than capitalist Russiaโs, obviously.
You canโt create a stateless, classless communist society from capitalism without a transitional socialist state that breaks the monopoly on force and propaganda that capitalist states have โ specially in a world ruled by capitalist superpowers like the US which constantly coups and invades non-capitalist states.
Ask the Zapatista. Yes, the US tried to get rid of them, couldnโt, learned better and now is just letting them be. Rojava is an even better example as the US wilfully allied with them.
Figures if your revolution isnโt centrally organised by Moscow or China post-McCarthy US doesnโt actually care. Present-day US wouldโve also let Cuba be SocDem, as was the original intent of the revolutionaries, instead of pushing them into alliance with the USSR.
The Zapatistas are cool comrades who fought off the US and other capitalist forces as all socialist projects have to. Different from most successful socialist revolutions in that it didnโt establish a state (though it was managed centrally by the EZLN), but it has since succumbed to pressure from the government and cartels and has dissolved its municipalities last year โ so itโs not quite as successful of a revolution as those that establish a state, some of which have already managed to become nations of millions or global superpowers.
Cuba be SocDem, as was the original intent of the revolutionaries
โSocial democracyโ back then just meant socialism. The Bolsheviks who established the USSR were also โsocial democratsโ
And your fantasies of the US ever letting a US-backed military dictatorship be overthrown and develop are funny, specially when itโs currently committing a genocide in Palestine and not even letting them get rid of a western colony.
And the USSR was a centralised state capitalist system. China has even left the โstateโ part behind and is nowhere nearer abolishing class than it was at the start of the revolution. It actually regressed in that regard.
But, fine, call Rojava that if you will. Just shows how you canโt see any possible roads to communism that donโt involve the failed experiment that is state capitalism.
though it was managed centrally by the EZLN
The EZLN does not manage centrally. The EZLN is not even a governing body. Itโs a decentralised milita that councils tasked with matters of military security. It is those councils which are the governing body, not the EZLN. Rojava operates alongside the same lines, though details differ because cultural, material, and other differences.
I know it might be incomprehensible to you: A literal army, with all the capability it could wish for to order the local population around, sat down with the local population and told them about their ideas. The population then told them about theirs. They discussed, mutually refined their ideas until there was a consensus on how to move ahead, leading to what you see now. No shot was fired, noone was sent to gulag. Theyโve also been capable of large organisational reforms, deliberated to consensus, implementation happened just a couple of months ago.
Maybe you should set aside some time and actually study those regions, not just read tankie cliff notes about how they supposedly work, or donโt, or are secretly authoritarian, or whatever.
The Bolsheviks who established the USSR were also โsocial democratsโ
The Bolsheviks were never democrats and the French social democrats still call themselves communists. But thatโs rather besides the point: The Cuban revolution was in the late 50, by then the split between SocDems and communists (both liberal and authoritarian) was not just done it had hardened. Heck the revolution ended in 59, after the word tankie had been established, which was 56, in direct reaction to the Soviet invasion of Hungary.
The point Iโm making here is that Fidel & Co came to the US, said โWeโre eyeing doing something like your European allies are doing and want to be friends, you know, unions, welfare, workerโs rightsโ, the US said โnope, canโt have you not be slaves to Bacardi and United Fruit youโre our colony after allโ, Cuba said โnever mind then we thought we could be friends then weโll go with our second choice, the USSRโ. The USSR, then, demanded from their allies a heavily authoritarian slant, so Cuba adopted it, in the interest of national survival not out of preference. Which is also why they are by far the furthest along among the surviving ML states when it comes to democratisation. Vietnam is second, with quite some distance, China makes no moves in that regard and North Korea, well, North Korea is only ever getting worse, not better. Oh, Eritrea. Same.
I made an account a long while ago when it was the only instance with any content but Iโm just a lurker looking for memes and tech news. Feeling like I should change instance these daysโฆ
lemmygrad is full of full-on tankies, the type who would willingly send birthday greetings to comrade Stalin while imprisoned in a gulag, lemmy.ml once was a default instance and thus has random folks on it but is admin-wise run by tankies and generally seems to serve as the preferred instance for lemmygrad folks to have alts on. Stay away from political communities there e.g. their worldnews community is a silly place. Hexbear is hit and miss, not so much hardened tankies there but wokescolds and random lefties who donโt quite realise who they associate with, why that kind of social dynamics is no good. Might have some inane takes, occasionally prone to dogpiling, but at least you can have a conversation with them.
What, the term โtankieโ? A term coined within the Communist Party of Great Britain? The CPGP is alt-right, now?
Calling the term โalt-rightโ is just a quick way of telling me youโre a tankie without telling me youโre a tankie.
Oh. โwokescoldโ is another possibility but thatโs rather unlikely, while the right has appropriated โwokeโ Iโve never heard them use โwokescoldโ which is precisely used by people who know and understand the original meaning and simply want to call out certain problematic behaviours done in the name of, but not to the benefit of, wokeness.
Iโll just quote Zena+Poppy on the term. You may not like it, you might prefer clinical analytical language such as โpuritanical progressiveโ or whatever, but from the context I used it in (making direct reference to social dynamics) it should be obvious that I used it in that sense.
And, no, tankie is not a โhorrible fucking wordโ. It is precise and succinct, also, tankies hate it.
Source on that? Iโm serious. I did a bit of googling and do see that the likes of Ben Shapiro have been using it, but thatโs definitely not where I have it from, and youโll also see plenty of left-wing uses of it.
I have zero patience for people who side with fascism.
I referred you to a quite precise definition of what I mean by the term. Can you explain to me how criticising the things encompassed by that definition would put me โon the side of fascismโ? Fascists have come up with plenty of terms leftists use all the time, an obvious example would be the word โfascistโ. Allegiance to fascism, Iโd say, cannot be inferred merely by use of some shared vocabulary, you have to go deeper than that.
In any case, and I hope you see the irony, going nuclear over the use of such a term, to drill down on syntax instead of semantics, is not unlikely to fit the wokescold pattern of behaviour. Depends a bit on how you do it but overall Iโd say itโs likely youโd hit at least some of the checkboxes Zena+Poppy are giving.
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