I'm so tired of hearing about US police brutality and China being authoritarian. Why does it feel like everyone is a hypocrite here? Where are the posts about Chinese protests and police brutality?

I bet if the kind of things happening in the US happened in China, I wouldn’t be able to stop hearing about it. I mean, people are still criticizing the Tiananmen Square massacre, and hasn’t anything happened since then? It’s like still making conspiracy theories about Kennedy’s assassination or 9/11, those are old news.

Alice,
@Alice@hilariouschaos.com avatar

Removed

kava,

It’s because our media is manipulated. When Saudi Arabia commits war crimes, it’s more or less ignored. When Russia does it, it’s plastered all over the media. China suppresses protests, it’s an authoritarian hellhole. When we do it, it’s law and order. In China the great firewall is censorship, here when we ban TikTok it’s justified.

I suggest everyone read Chomsky’s manufacturing consent. It goes over many historical examples like above and the mechanisms by which it happens

rufus, (edited )

The Chinese internet is consored. And there is a language barrier. So you’re generally not going to read a blog post or independent article 99% of the time someone gets beaten or killed there.

Also it’s not focus or even within our perspective. And something not many people are interested in…

And thirdly, the US media and citizens perspective generally doesn’t extend beyond their borders. When have you heard of police brutality in ANY other countries than the USA? Or whats bothering people in other countries?

blargerer,

As a Canadian, I do see reports of police violence in Canada, and I imagine I'm largely seeing the same stuff you are, so you've also likely seen some. With that said, police violence per interaction is a pretty low % everywhere (to be clear, it should be 0), but its like 10x higher in the US than other comparable countries, and the US has a huge population. Because of a combination of those factors I wouldn't be shocked if like 90-95% of police violence happening in English speaking countries is happening in the US.

7uWqKj,

Police violence in Canada is, like, a cop not saying please?

Spaghetti_Hitchens,

Pushing their way to the front of the line to get the last jelly donut

blargerer, (edited )

Here is a noy-very recent example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7b62b4dbqw

DontTreadOnBigfoot,
@DontTreadOnBigfoot@lemmy.world avatar

Canada has a dark side bro.

The Geneva conventions are just a reproduction of Canada’s WW1 to-do list…

psvrh,
@psvrh@lemmy.ca avatar

China being authoritarian is a “Dog bites man” story. It’s expected.

Same with police misconduct in the US: it’s also dog-bites-man.

Trump and his team realized that outrage fatigue is a thing: fuck up daily and with such magnitude that being a corrupt fuckup becomes a non-story and then you can get away with anything.

Steve Bannon even had a term for it: “flood the zone”.

some_guy,

“… with shit,” was the full title. Not joking.

meekah,
@meekah@lemmy.world avatar

Reminds me of what happened on a bridge across the Chicago river in 2004

assaultpotato,

Majority of lemmy users are US based, and the overwhelming majority are western. Similarly, the majority of lemmy users are pretty leftist compared to the average citizen.

It shouldn’t be surprising that we’re not hearing much about bad stuff happening in China. And that’s not even accounting for the difficulty in getting trustworthy information out of China.

If you want examples of semi-recent stuff from China that largely got passed over, take a look at the civil unrest regarding the apartment fires during China’s COVID lockdown, the forcible repatriation of Chinese citizens abroad, suicide rates in major manufacturing hubs, the huge economic hits in real estate and public/private transportation infrastructure, etc.

There’s a lot going on that we simply don’t hear about because people tend to share what relates to them.

livus,
livus avatar

This. There's nothing in western news media about domestic issues in China. If @PumpkinDrama wants to know more they should look for books or articles about Chinese protests such as the anti PX protests and the anti nuclear plant protests.

theywilleatthestars,

You’d see a lot of them when those Hong Kong protests were going on

db2,

Xi Jinpoohng

FuglyDuck,
@FuglyDuck@lemmy.world avatar

Something about freedom of the press. (Or online at all)

You still can’t talk about the Tiananmen Square inside China.

In fact, this picture is banned because it was meant to get around the censors:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/1dcc81f8-fe71-4874-a3e3-4840df0cee38.jpeg

There’s other things, too, like Winnie the Pooh (guess why?)

Also, our protesters might get brutalized and slapped with some petty charges. Theirs disappear . After and during which they’re brutalized, too.

PumpkinDrama, (edited )

Also, our protesters might get brutalized and slapped with some petty charges. Theirs disappear . After and during which they’re brutalized, too.

And am I supposed to take your word or the one from the BBC for it? Why not link something from a less biased source, like from a country that doesn’t host any US military.

Alice,
@Alice@hilariouschaos.com avatar

Removed

marcos,

Full tanker mode, engage!

But yeah, you won’t see any of that on legitimate Chinese press.

You know that China is currently engaging in 2 different large-scale genocides, right? Or that they crushed (very literally) an entire city-worth of protests in Hong Kong just about 5 years ago, right? People don’t talk about those because people outside of China don’t spend their days criticizing China, and people inside China don’t spend any time criticizing China.

Alice,
@Alice@hilariouschaos.com avatar

Removed

idiomaddict,

Also, our protesters might get brutalized and slapped with some petty charges. Theirs disappear

Ours also disappear.

nbcnews.com/…/portland-protesters-being-detained-…

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homan_Square_facility

FuglyDuck,
@FuglyDuck@lemmy.world avatar

Not nearly on the same level as what China does.

Or as pervasive.

It should be noted we’re actually free to talk about that in a way that you’d never be in China.

Is the US authoritarian? Absolutely. But compared to China or North Korea, it’s almost nothing.

sbv,

people are still criticizing the Tiananmen Square massacre, and hasn’t anything happened since then? It’s like still making conspiracy theories about Kennedy’s assassination or 9/11, those are old news.

Lemmy skews old. For some of us, those are foundational events in our childhood.

(Kinda joking/kinda serious)

RightHandOfIkaros,

Lemmy skews a lot of ways, but I have a hard time imagining a sizable number of older users being here.

For example, if you said the stereotypical Lemmy user is a Linux Loving Left Wing Trans Environmentalist Programmer, then I think you’d be hitting the nail on the head, at least in terms of the other user interactions I have observed across Lemmy. But I dont believe that the types of people who fit into those categories are largely older, it makes more sense for them to be largely younger.

I think it more comes down to those events being new or known enough that people know a bit about them but old enough that jokes/conspiracy theories or whatever would not be considered so offensive as if they had happened very recently. Also, its the age of the Netflix Documentary, and those topics are popular among Netflix Documentary makers.

BlueEther,
@BlueEther@no.lastname.nz avatar

in the communities i hang in here there a a good few that must be in their 50s (and i’m one of them).

just look at the number of posts in the *nix and self hosting communities for comments about pre and early linus users, or selfhosting email back in the day , or bsd/unix usage

RightHandOfIkaros,

Oh absolutely, I am not saying that nobody that uses Lemmy is over the age of 30 or something. Just that the large supermajority are likely not to be older, in my observation.

idiomaddict,

Did you block the Star Trek communities? Serious question, just because you hit all the other big lemmy things.

I’m not a super fan, but I fuck with the next generation, but I don’t know many people younger than me (early thirties) who are into it (or were before the last couple of years of new series). That alone skews the age demographic for my head canon, but I don’t know if it’s especially based in reality.

RightHandOfIkaros,

No, I haven’t blocked any Star Trek specific communities (unless they are on the .ml, .grad, or hexbear instances). I only have seen the TenForward community in any regularity. But I do realize a sizable amount of Lemmy users are also Trekkies. Its just that the other demographics are larger, so I left Trek out.

Young people are into Star Trek, but usually only because their parents were cool enough to introduce them to it.

sbv,

Older than what? Here are self reported stats from lemmy.ca:

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/3eabba32-088a-41cd-a20f-de191e10fc1a.png

RightHandOfIkaros,

Interesting, but a sample size of 8% (531/6500ish) from a Canadian focused Lemmy instance that is so small isn’t what I would consider a good sample size of Lemmy as a whole.

I would consider someone “older” if they’re over 50.

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