Also, the officialdom gives license to hate. It’s a rubber stamp on bigotry, you can be a bigot all you like, but for Good™. Now you can dehumanise Russians, Chinese and any other targets of imperialism for free and remain a progressive liberal, shielded from any negative judgement.
And if on the rare occasion you are called out on it, you can just say that you hate the governments, not the people, ignoring all polling figures and support for these governments. After all, those support stats are fake anyway, you stupid tankie.
This is spot on. It’s wild how easily prejudice gets normalized here, seems like all it takes is a few news cycles for large swathes of the population to advocate for genocide.
Same thing with the approval to hate migrants who came to the US via the southern boarder from central American countries. Americans see news reports constantly about how they are “causing a crisis in the south” and are essentially given a license to hate them
It gets to reinforce their sense of racial/moral superiority and gives them the license to hate/blame an entire group for their own misgivings.
You ever read that red sails ‘brainwashing isn’t real’ article? Similar premise, similar conclusion.
Basically guy was spending a lot of time debunking anti China stuff and getting frustrated. Realized really the propaganda isn’t very sophisticated, wasn’t hard to debunk in most cases. So saying people are fooled is kind of a cop out, underselling their intelligence maybe flattering your own. They’re buying in consciously or otherwise because they see the benefit from siding with the propagandist.
Idk was an interesting read for me at least. If you can’t get past the writing style these points are more or less where he ends up:
Stop accusing the masses of being “brainwashed.” Stop treating them as cattle, stop attempting to rouse them into action by scolding them with exposure to “unpleasant truths.”
Accept instead that they have been avoiding those truths for a reason. You were able to break through the propaganda barrier, and so could they if they really wanted to. Many of these people see you as the fool, and in many cases not without reason.
Understanding people as intelligent beings, craft a political strategy that convincingly makes the case for why they and their lot are very likely to benefit from joining your political project. Not in some utopian infinite timescale, but soon.
If you cannot make this case, then forget about convincing the person in question. Focus instead on finding other people to whom such a case can be made. This will lead you directly to class analysis.
Oh yeah that’s a great article, and very much agree with his take there.
same, hard agree, but it’s also so easy to fall back into thinking people are dumb when frustration mounts
indeed
I actually don’t agree with this approach. I’m not in favour of calling people stupid for buying into propoganda, but is saying that they choose to buy it/take it at face value respecting their intelligence?
Saying they could break out if they wanted to is, and this is just my opinion, not intending to be insulting, an idealist approach. It’s like saying fat people could lose weight if they just wanted to, or procrastinators could work if they simply cared to. I would go so far as to say that it’s similar (though obviously not equivalent) to saying neurodivergent people can act like “normal” people if they really tried.
On the other hand I’m definitely not saying barraging people with analyses or factoids will bring them to our side. I take the scumbag centrist opinion here and say it’s both: For people unreceptive to our message, what we can hope is that a small part of what we said might stick, so that every time they’re faced with a contradiction inherent in capitalism, there’s a change that seed of an idea we planted might take root.
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Cards on the table, I think chauvinism is stupid. I think someone in a position to recognise their chauvinism and renounce it, but refuse to, have to be stupid. I don’t believe that the average person is inherently stupid, nor that idealism is an approach more in-line with human nature than materialism.
That’s all conjecture, admittedly, I’m basing this on the fact that huge swathes of a bunch of countries were taught and embraced materialism. This doesn’t make them correct in every issue or anything, but the comprehension that thing aren’t the way they are because they were meant to be, rather that they’re in a flux, a state of constant change, is the most crucial step in this. From this conjecture, which I can’t show to be true yet believe anyway, it follows that people of priviledge aren’t making a choice at all, they’re using the only tool they’ve got to come to a piss poor conclusion.
I also believe that by computing a sufficient number of schrödinger’s equations constantly we could predict literally anything, but that might just mean my brain’s a bit mush.
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Yeah I mean to be clear I didn’t post it as a full endorsement of the conclusions it just seemed like OP was tugging on the same thread mentally. If nothing else made me want to be more specific than ‘brainwashing’ and a little more skeptical when that word gets thrown around
craft a political strategy that convincingly makes the case for why they and their lot are very likely to benefit from joining your political project. Not in some utopian infinite timescale, but soon.
This is great stuff. I’ll disagree a little with the “you figured it out and they could if they wanted to” part, though – it’s the same logic as “you’re successful and poor people could be too, if they wanted to.”
Most socialists in the U.S. were not raised that way. Of those who initially subscribed to other politics, I would bet very few (maybe none) came around to socialism entirely on their own. Someone out there at least laid down a path left, if they didn’t actively engage with you and challenge your ideas. You had help getting here even if you had to do some hard introspective work yourself.
Practically, this means we shouldn’t be too quick to write anyone off, and we should at least present socialist ideas everywhere. We have the internet; we can do this without tons of effort. Now when it comes to messaging that takes more effort, sure, it absolutely makes sense to focus that on the people most likely to be receptive, and the author is correct that showing people a near-term material benefit is the best way to do that.
There is a statue of a mighty woman located within the harbor of one of the cities of the West. At the time of its construction, it was described as “The New Colossus”, and a sonnet of the same name was inscribed at its base.
Its message was long forgotten as the ruling nobilities of the New World reforge its message to placate the populace, where indentured servitudes were substitute for liberty.
The statue is a figure of a mighty woman holding a torch, whose flame was imprisoned lightning, and her name, ‘Mother of Exiles’.
From her beacon hand once glowed a worldwide welcome, whose silent lips once cried ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free!’
Yet, an ocean away from where the statue stood, flames of imprisoned lightning burned not in a single torch, but across an entire nation.
A nation that for decades has provided hope and solution for the poor, the tired, the huddled masses of the world, looking for a way to break from the tyranny of the New World.
To all those yearning to breathe free, the People’s Republic of China is seen as a Mother of Exiles.
The West sees something different.
They see, and fear, a New Colossus.
- Just me blatantly ripping off from one Youtube video on a certain channel.
I actually had the username Emma_Lazarus on the old hellsite! Back when I was a lib, I thought reminding Americans of their ideals would make them stop being bourgeoisified settler-colonial pieces of shit. The sonnet:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she.
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
America always needed a bogyman, the Soviet Union did a perfect job for it, military menacing, but an economy which couldn’t challenge the US economical power globally, Perfect! But China? they’re scared shitless. Americans are witnessing the slow collapse of their economy and are puzzled, why is manufacturing gone? why is my government incompetent? Why is corruption more accepted now than ever before? Answer: China China China… Did I mention CHINA? Not to mention Jake Sullivan’s speech on how neo-liberalism has fundamentally destroyed America, no not the average American, that happened in the 1980s, but actually AMERICA. The US cannot compete with china, evidence is the shrinking manufacturing sector, the stagnation of innovative research and designs. Hell even the biggest banks aren’t american anymore, the top 4 are located in china.
I would like to add another thing, the west since 1991 has been experiencing its best prosperity in ages, with people fully buying into the capitalist dream, now its completely different. Even liberals recognize that the good times are over, and people are desperate for those good times to come back. The rise of china completely shatters the average westerner delusions, a country cannot preform better than their own, Afterall haven’t I been told that the west has the greatest, most wealthiest, and prosperous nations in the world? People need this lie to be sold to them, otherwise they’ll have to re-wind a life-time of propaganda.
Yeah, US empire is definitely entering uncharted waters now. It seems the realization of this is starting to set in now, as you point out with Sullivan’s speech, but they have no idea what to do. Honestly, it’s not really clear that there is anything that could be done even if US had a competent government in charge. China is simply bigger and has a more stable political political system that’s capable of long term planning. The fundamentals in China are much better than in US.
And very much agree that collapsing standard of living in the west makes it harder for people to swallow the propaganda that’s being pushed by the ruling class. People can see that what they’re being told doesn’t match their lived experience, and that translates into faith in the system collapsing. I think that’s actually one of the big driving factors behind stuff like qanon. Once people lose faith in central authority then they can just find a comfortable narrative that fits their preconceptions, and if they meet enough people who shares their beliefs that becomes their tribe.
They’ve been riding the high of their supposed moral/national superiority that it infuriates them to see people (that they used to pity as inferior species) rising up to their level or even surpassing them. It shatters their image as the chosen ones, the “good and civilised” side.
This behaviour can also be seen in liberals from the mainland, HK and TW where they still regurgitate 30-40 year old talking points while their beloved western idols no longer maintain the utopia like image they’ve been promoting.
tbh rn the mainsteam coverage on China in the US is WAAAAYY less about what goes in in Mainland China, a lot more about their potential as a global threat and sabre-rattling to drum up anti-China sentiment. Think about the balloon, they didn’t give 2 shits as to whether it was actually a Chinese balloon, one of them was an Illinois Amateur Weather Balloon troupe’s device. They shot it down to drum up China hate, same with whenever they mentioned the war in Ukraine, they don’t talk about the internal debates within the CPC as to how they wanna deal with this diplomatically, they paint China as 100% pro Russia to scare Americans. They’re getting lazier and less creative. They barely even mention Xinjiang anymore because they’re quickly fucking off with the “Human Rights” narrative. Possibly because the US and allies are becoming less democratic and more brutal or possibly because human rights talk doesn’t whip up hatred like an active global threat does. Regardless of why, we can see a slight but significant change in US foreign policy (the way they sell it, the foreign policy itself isn’t changing)
Yeah, I think they’re realizing that countries are starting to increasingly align towards China, and the whole HuMaN RigHTs rhetoric falls flat outside the west. So now it’s all about China debt trap narrative.
ignorance is a great foundation for a fictional enemy
indeed
It’s often just white people being racist. They already had a negative opinion of them, so propaganda works well.
That’s a big part of it for sure, this is also what drives the whole Chinese people can’t innovate and steal everything from the west narrative.
Spot on.
100%
because racism.
As an Asian diaspora I’m pretty worried, better get out fast before the concentration camps rise up.
Same, comrade.
Good post!
+10 social rating
+1 rice ration
+1 cat wife
Glory to the strong jade rod comrade Xi!
+500 FICO credit score. You can now afford groceries for a week.
😆 🖤 (actually it’s sad)
Whoah whoah whoah! A whole week?! Don’t be greedy! This gets them a fries and small coke at best, we can’t have these greedy workers taking too much of the CEO’s hard earned money after all!
The least deranged westerner has logged on.
The shithead call itself Russian. But I doubt it too.
I actually suspect it could be true. The “jade rod” bit is a tell
Cracker moment
I can’t tell if you are a poe.
If they’re not from Lemmygrad, then it’s probably safe to assume they’re for real
Who is a poe?
Oh, I see. Thanks
That’s where my policy of being kind to people with opposing views ends. GTFO
Lemmygrad admins ban you. -800 credit score. Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 dollars.
Go home, you’re drunk.
Yeah, it’s weird that people prefer democracy to dictatorship. Freedom of speech is pretty important too.
I have a lot of issues with capitalism, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to give up on democracy as a whole. And China has just about as many of those capitalism problems as we do.
And China has just about as many of those capitalism problems as we do.
Do you really think China has all of the same capitalism problems?
China doesn’t have:
- a rampant and actively ignored homeless problem
- widespread food insecurity, including among children
- a disgustingly large and widening wealth gap, with the government bribery that comes with it
- inaccessible or unaffordable healthcare for a large portion of its population, especially those most needing of it
- reversal of child labor laws and increasing promotion of its use
- destruction of the education system and villifying those seeking to escape generational poverty
- a massive and increasing renting population (compared to those with outright ownership), spending an increasingly large fraction of their constantly decreasing wages on housing
- an incarceration rate nearly five times average developed nations driven largely by for-profit prisons and slave labor performed by the imprisoned
Does China have problems related to capitalism’s influence? Of course. Does it have as many, or do they permeate it so deeply and thoroughly? Of course not.
As soon as someone says “China’s capitalist too” it’s a sign that they are sorely lacking information on how Chinese system actually functions and it makes me wonder if they’ve even bothered trying to learn about it at all. The comparison is ludicrous at this point.
In general I agree, it’s just from the specific comment I replied to it isn’t immediately obvious if they’re saying “China is suffering from the same problems as capitalist states (despite not being one)” or if they’re saying “China is suffering from the same problems because it’s also capitalist”.
I’m gonna guess it’s the latter, given the democracy comment.
But even more importantly than this is, the issues China does have are being solved. This isn’t true for the west. China is on an upward trajectory in almost every way and the west is going down in almost every way
Dog we are communists, we don’t get “freedom of speech”, if we become an actual threat to state power they have and will again in the future imprison and kill us
In America your words have no weight, so the government can let you say whatever you want. What value is there then in “freedom of speech”?
Yeah, it’s weird that people prefer democracy to dictatorship.
That’s why I support China and want to destroy the burger empire.
Good luck changing anything in this world in bourgeois democracy if you’re not wealthy and influential… It’s a dictatorship of capitalist class, not more nor less.
Where did you get the notion that it’s a dictatorship? Did it ever cross your mind how the world’s largest population has agreed to live in a dictatorship? Same is the case with DPRK.
Did you ever asked yourself how is this possible in 2023 that no news ever comes out about people’s revolt in these countries ever when even one of their leader’s haircut becomes a news.
China does not have parliamentary democracy doesn’t mean it doesn’t have democracy instead it’s more democratic then the western lib dems.
If you never has had a chance to have an alternate view, you are welcome to lurk and learn. We have all been there where you are now. Probably one day you too would see the world for what it really is instead of what its shown to be.
Did you ever asked yourself how is this possible in 2023 that no news ever comes out about people’s revolt in these countries ever when even one of their leader’s haircut becomes a news.
If the sheer number of slave and colonial rebellions were general knowledge, the idea that 1.4bn people would meekly do as they’re told by a dictator would be obviously bullshit.
Unfortunately, acknowledging that slaves and colonies constantly fought the masters and colonisers doesn’t fit the narrative that they all ‘enjoyed the experience’—a little something to put on the CV. And this rebellion is ongoing; the US might install puppet regimes but still the people rise up. Everywhere in the world.
Apparently, we’re supposed to believe that the only people who don’t rise up are those under communist ‘dictatorships’. They must be very effective. Is suppose this is what happens when you force everyone into housing, fill up their fridges, and provide them with energy—they become too confused and dazed to think about acting out.
And what exactly is the definition of democracy are you basing that of?
https://www.newsweek.com/most-china-call-their-nation-democracy-most-us-say-america-isnt-1711176
When asked whether they believe their country is democratic, those in China topped the list, with some 83% saying the communist-led People’s Republic was a democracy. A resounding 91% said that democracy is important to them.
But in the U.S., which touts itself as a global beacon of democracy, only 49% of those asked said their country was a democracy. And just over three-quarters of respondents, 76%, said democracy was important.
For instance, some 63% in the U.S. said their government mainly serves the interests of a minority, while only 7% said the same in China. Asked about whether their country held free and fair elections and offered all citizens the right to free speech, nearly a third of respondents in the U.S., 32% and 31%, respectively, said they did not, while just 17% and 5%, respectively, in China answered the same questions negatively.
And in China, a mere 5% also said not everyone enjoys equal rights in their country, as opposed to 42% who identified this same issue in the U.S.
Yeah, but the sign of a healthy democracy isn’t how much the people feel like their voices are being heard, it’s entirely dependent on how much people are allowed to complain about things! (But not actually change them of course, let’s not go crazy here).
World you participate in a mild, painless experiment? Would you carefully read Roland Boer’s Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, and then come back here with an honest review? You don’t even have to agree with him. All I ask for is a fair treatment.
You will never ever get a bad faith liberal like this to read unfortunately
Just in case they might read a few lines:
… This whole framework and its usually unquestioned assumptions produces strange works that seek to analyse China as an emerging capitalist market economy, with a rising middle class that would demand its liberal ‘freedom and democracy’ were it not for a repressive Communist party…. It certainly leads to circular research ‘results’. A good example is the search for ‘evidence’ of ‘democracy’, focussing on grassroots democratic practices. Since the whole perspective for what counts as ‘democracy’ is the rather thin Western liberal notion, they typically fail to find ‘evidence’ and so must conclude that such an absence is due to an ‘authoritarian’ political structure that ‘represses’ such ‘democracy’. You cannot find what is not there, especially when you ignore the reality of a relatively mature socialist democracy.
… For Chinese scholars, those who peddle Western perspectives and models fall into the trap of yixi jiezhong, seeking to understand China with Western eyes. …
Roland Boer’s Socialism with Chinese Characteristics
EDIT: Please normalise all book recommendations with links to copies.
Out of interest, what’s the legality of that? It’s not the same as torrenting, but does anyone know whether there are implications for sharing links to databases?
I would imagine it would be frowned upon by the Vogons in the copyright cartels. But I doubt they’ll toss up any roadblocks for a small site like this.
Plus there’s https://lemmygrad.ml/c/leftpiracy for example.
Probably technically illegal but unlikely to result in any action beyond a cease and desist letter to the people running the site I’d imagine
I think I’m going to read this next. Do you have any other recommendations on Chinese history, the revolution, socialist development or honestly anything China related?
Well, tbh, this is a relatively new topic for me, so I don’t have a wide range of sources. I plan to slowly work through the sources cited in Boer’s book.
Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China is a good book about the start of the revolution. Snow was a US journalist but all things considered, he gives a fair account.
And I’ve read some of the link in Dessalines’ link-list, On Mao, Maoism, and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and the PRC.
And the Qiao Collective publishes some great videos: https://yewtu.be/channel/UCPi2i0AZTD2IkENqN3GAbsA. Their ‘China and the Left’ conference was especially enjoyable: https://yewtu.be/playlist?list=PLQFBO6UUfDCQoIxtdxX5dVRwl1kS9IhnV.
There’s also the works of Mao, Deng, and Xi.
CGTN has some good stuff but its a bit of a chore to find the documentaries, etc: https://yewtu.be/channel/UCgrNz-aDmcr2uuto8_DL2jg/playlists.
News with Jingjing has some good videos: https://yewtu.be/channel/UCPvWHbIwTHbXX9Jo_Vephdg.
There are some good Chinese movies on YouTube. There’s an old thread about some on here. I’ll try to find it and share the link. It’s really strange to watch movies where US soldiers aren’t the heroes. You just get a completely different sense of perspective, which is required to fully understand China.
Edit: I’m unsure how good this is just there’s a section of resources in China, here: https://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/.
Would honestly recommend reading some of Deng’s works the most when it comes to learning about socialist development
Roland Boer’s Socialism with Chinese Characteristics
Thank you for this. I’ve only just read the first chapter, and it’s already eye-opening how it addresses the Western approach to discourse about China.
Its a huge book for me and after reading it I felt like I actually knew something and had a foundation to learn more. The sheer amount of sources and citations makes it possible to really expand your knowledge on these topics in ways many westerners simply won’t.
“but muh freeze peach!”
Dictatorship… of the proletariats!
I get that you are arguing from a place of good faith but China absolutely has less problems economically (for the average person) than the US does. For example I had a pretty tough familial loss recently and the medical bills were a whole nother level of suffering for my family. If we lived nearly anywhere else (let alone in China) the cost would be not only more affordable, but usually treatment is more affective as well(also related to cost tbh, bc you have better health outcomes the more time you spend in the care of good medical professionals and doctors, and the more time you spend with them, the more money you spend with them). I just wanted to give my 2 cents on how living in the US is a bit of a punishment in some ways and that you can draw comparisons between the US and China’s capitalist elements but end of the day, USA is a way worse form of capitalism. I hope I didn’t come off rude or anything, I wish you a good day😊
