I’ve been writing under the assumption that the accounts that I gave the same name to would be connected (like a proto-federation thing), so don’t worry about that. I appreciate the concern, though.

I have criticized China, you can dig around on my Hexbear account if you really like and find that (@GarbageShoot)*, but China isn’t nearly as afraid of criticism as the “literally 1984” redditors say, it just has a practical sensitivity over issues of sovereignty that they fail to understand as part of a coherent ideology other than hyper-defensiveness (go figure, Redditors are politically illiterate).

China is a very diverse place with a wide spectrum of ideology – most of which I disagree with, going by rough estimations based on recent statements from their central committee. Speaking in terms of meaningful factions that have sway above the municipal level, I’d say they are much more diverse than the US in this respect, since the US is characterized more by the harshness of disagreement than the actual extremity of differences in overall policy. If we imagine Chinese politics on a spectrum from “Maoism” to “some hodgepodge of reactionary antiquarianism and desire to be a western vassal again, plus religious zealotry**” where the former is a 1 and the latter is a 10, our friend Xi seems to be at maybe a 4, I’m at about 3. I’m not a full-on ultra but I think there’s some right-deviation going on (not as much as in past decades, admittedly). Are you following?

It feels a little unfair to dismiss me as a “tanky,” I don’t think I called you names, but at least you aren’t being too mean beyond that. What do you mean “patriate”? That’s something that countries do, as far as I can tell.

*I am completely confident that you won’t actually find the remarks I’m talking about, but I think you’ll trust me that they are there.

**This last part is mainly among rightist minority groups rather than the Han Chinese rightists, who mainly stick to the first two categories.

Redditors will believe anything that supports “China bad,” even silly lies that were debunked decades ago. Here are some different testimonies from student leaders of the protests. You tell me what seems credible.

hmm, I guess it depends on your definition of disparage, but the thing is that even if I was out here in America hawking the most shameless bullshit, China wouldn’t do shit when I visited short of question me a bit harder in customs because arresting me for pretty benign actions I took in another country as someone with no affiliation with China would typically be considered kidnapping under international law. Of course, America calls most instances of its enemies arresting its citizens kidnapping, but China rarely arrests Americans (including when tourism to China was higher) or foreign citizens in general.

Reddit geopolitics work a lot better when they stick to vague insinuations and cartoonish hyperbole, because when you drill down and try to set realistic expectations based on the information available, it falls apart completely.

Lots of things happened in the square at that time, as the Chinese government discussed on TV the following days. One thing that did not happen was people dying, though some were struck with batons to force them to disperse after they declined to follow the demand to disperse (most left peacefully).

China is going to put me, an American in America, in jail using a game launcher?

Or, they simply lie and say that there is no genocide going on.

Even state department mouthpieces have walked back the lie of there being a genocide in Xinjiang. Leave it to Redditors to be to the right of the state department.

How is that relevant?

Also as a european, i don’t really care if the Data gets funneled to the USA or China, both equally bad imo.

This is super off-topic but since you have a more reasonable stance on this than I usually see in the wild, I need to ask: Do you truly think the US is no worse than China or are you speaking in terms of impact on your life personally? (the latter would be fair in this context too, just wondering)

That and they’re owned by China, so the chances of your data being funneled out to China is practically 100%

a) Tencent has a minority share b) what the fuck is China going to do with my data? Target ads a little more precisely the one time a year I go on newegg or whatever? Shouldn’t you be much more concerned about an entity like Amazon, Google, or Microsoft having that information? And it’s not like at least two of those don’t have a history of working with the US government and others, i.e. governments that actually impact your life.

we all (except republicans apparently) want to eat the rich

The dude in the headline sure seems upset about the “eat the rich” attitude, and however hard it is to see a practical difference, I am pretty sure he is not one of those Republican ghouls you are referring to. Perhaps you should reconsider how narrow the circle you are drawing is.

I think their richness factors in pretty significantly, actually – both to how tragic their deaths are and whether or not Obama wants to jump to their defense shaming leftists for being “too radical”.

He hasn’t “evolved his stance on immigrants,” that’s pure wishful thinking. He’s a rich asshole who’s always been principally interested in defending the rich and wagging his finger at people who are too mean to his corporate masters.

Spare me when one of the countless butchers for the American Empire has something to say about “tragedy”. Maybe take a few million from your endless funds for your Martha’s Vineyard parties with dogshit celebrities and pitch in to help instead of giving us a lecture, you sanctimonious, neoliberal prick.

You’d be better off without them, they (the runners of the instance, not the userbase) are a bunch of absolutely cowardly little liars. They were more than happy to accept the massive boon this instance gave them and at the same time agitate and concern troll here to try to drive a wedge in the userbase. I find that shit deeply irritating, especially since they claim to be apolitical and merely blocking instances for “hate speech” which (aside from being a political concept) was seemingly the false pretext they have for also blocking hexbear.net, which is currently forked but is the only instance with substantial usership to mandate pronouns and has much more aggressive anti-racist moderation.

If you simper enough, I’m sure they’ll be happy to have you back since they seem the type to feel they are never receiving enough sycophantic flattery, but that’s a bad trade for you.

I reposted it above

Another user, holygon, posted from an instance that lemmy.ca blocks and someone else requested a lemmy.ml account repost it. If you want my own opinions, ask and I’ll discuss it, but on this comment everything forward is from that user:

Alright since there is a claim here that you are cool with political opinions being voiced, I’m gonna assume that you mean this, and you’re not just saying so.

Now since you say that you are pro-left/socialist, I’m gonna assume that you are aware that the west/The US has lied in the past about other countries, and their atrocities? (Iraq, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc.) Please follow me here, read, and then judge afterwards. I’m not asking you to believe me fully after a single post, I’m just gonna give you some articles from providers that you probably trust, and I’m going to let you form your own opinion afterward.

Tiananmen Square:

1. The Telegraph reports on WikiLeaks source, that there was no actual bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square. Read the entire thing, there is of course nuance. Link is through 12ft to get around paywall

2. The BBC admits to being wrong about a lot of their reporting. Quote: “There was no massacre on Tiananmen Square.”

3. Interview with one of the protest leaders of the Student Protest movement. He is still critical of the Chinese government. He says that there was no tanks in Tiananmen Square, and that it is dangerous to lie just to try to win.

Now these are just the sources that explain this. If you look far enough you will also find pictures of dead Chinese soldiers burned to a crisp, strung up by the neck. These pictures are hard to look at. But maybe you think that the protest was just. Okay. But please understand that even western media does not actually think there was a massacre in the Square.

Meanwhile anarchist organizing doesn’t have cops, it has Agents of Community Defense who definitely aren’t cops!

I have nothing against anarchists, but you need to see past slogans to be anything but a useful idiot to neoliberals.

This seems like a non-sequitur. Anyway, since audiobooks are still too much, let me just give a basic summary:

Marxists are not anarchists or communalists. Marx saw the failure of the Paris Commune and of the Utopian socialists and sought to create a theoretical framework that could be used in conjunction with practical political programs to resolve class struggle over time, which he predicted would ultimately produce a stateless society. This transitional society, to contrast with Marx’s name for liberal capitalism – the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie – is referred to as the dictatorship of the proletariat.

“State communism” is, uh, just made-up as far as I can tell. Marxists support the destruction of dictatorships of the bourgeoisie and their replacement with dictatorships of the proletariat. Generally they would like to see a stateless society one day, but they understand that a simple commune would get steamrolled the instant it became politically important enough, so they are principally concerned with making states democratic in a truer sense of the word than liberal democracy – which is de facto controlled by the rich – in order to end “capitalist encirclement” and make things like communes more viable.

I would strongly recommend researching . Marxism before declaring self-proclaimed Marxists to not be Marxists.

Now do “State Communism”