• @[email protected]
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      1310 months ago

      I see it all over Lemmy unfortunately. I think it is because Lemmy is still relatively fringe and it is where lots of pro communism communities emerged. Normally, I find it actually pretty refreshing to see more left wing stuff but the pro China (or at least the kneejerk reactions to anything anti China) to be exhausting.

      To be fair, I used to see a lot of it on Reddit as well. I think they are just a bigger proportion percentage wise on Lemmy so you see much more of it.

      • @[email protected]
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        2710 months ago

        It’s a bit of a mixed bag. There are a lot of pro-China comments that are just… Well they either drank the kool-aid or are dishing it out. Especially when it comes to social policies.

        On the other hand, China has been making significant technological accomplishments that you just don’t hear about in Western media. They’ve made a lot of advancements in spaceflight and manufacturing processes that humanity as a whole could benefit from if we were more cooperative. And that’s not even mentioning Nuclear Power.

        China is WAY ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to new nuclear power. They’re the only ones with Gen 4 reactors, the only ones working on Thorium reactors, and are on track to build over 100 new nuclear plants over the next few years. China is to nuclear power as the US is to weapons; sure other countries might be tinkering with some stuff, but there’s really no comparison when they’re doing more than the rest of the world combined.

        I wish there were more unbiased sources. Unfortunately, there’s usually only one of two sides. Either you get news from China which usually boils down to “We’re amazing and nothing we do is ever bad or wrong. Anyone saying otherwise is just lying because they’re jealous/afraid of our wild success!” Or you get news from the US/West that’s basically “China is a totalitarian poo-country that’s on the verge of collapse. They contribute nothing to global advancement and the only thing they’re good for is making cheap, poor quality, crap.”

        • @MacroCyclo
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          010 months ago

          I guess you would have to sift the scientific literature to get a general idea. It would be the least biased source. Being totalitarian really helps with nuclear. Just look at what Germany has been up to.

          • @[email protected]
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            010 months ago

            Being totalitarian really helps with nuclear.

            China is reforesting desertified land, but at what cost???

    • @[email protected]
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      810 months ago

      I’d take the study a lot more seriously if the people financing it weren’t literally tied to the US/UK governments…

      • @yeather
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        410 months ago

        We’d all take China a lot more seriously if it wasn’t literally interring people in reeducation camps and ruling over people’s lives like it’s 1984.

        • @[email protected]M
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          -510 months ago

          You need to catch up with the narrative, rheyre claiming the crackdown is over now that tourists are coming in and not noticing anything.

          • @yeather
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            310 months ago

            Man it’s almost like the vast majority of tourists stick to coastal cities and big urban areas where the Uighur population isn’t and not the vast desert that these camps and people’s exist in.

            • @[email protected]M
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              -510 months ago

              Wait, do you think there aren’t people who tour Muslim cultural sites, of which there are many? Do you not think that anyone ever goes to interior spots? In the US, the rocky mountains and the Appalachians are both used a lot for tourism.

              Do you think there aren’t uyghurs in the cities in the region?

              It sounds like you dont know anything about the situation and are trying to justify already held beliefs by making rhetoric that doesn’t really apply to the reality of the situation.

              • @yeather
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                210 months ago

                Buddy, this was incredibly easy to search. The Uyghur population mainly lives in Xinjiang, composed primarily of the Gobi desert. While somewhat popular with domestic travel, it is at the bottom of the list for international travel statistics. This is also something you can very easily hide in the desert. You act like reeducation camps have to be placed next to cities. You can visit North Korea and never see their work camps either. I know more about the situation than you, as evident by your many replies that spout nothing and don’t cover your own base. You’ve been overtaken by propaganda, you should educate yourself and the many many problems the Uyghur population is currently facing from China.

                • @[email protected]
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                  010 months ago

                  You can visit North Korea and never see their work camps either.

                  Firstly, there is much more restriction on tourist movement in the DPRK for a litany of reasons, mostly pertaining to national security. Tourists in Xinjiang can move pretty freely, though if they are going all over the place they will cumulatively need to pass through many checkpoints.

                  Secondly, “work camps” here is what people call prison labor in Bad Country. The DPRK has prisons, certainly, and we can have discussions about penal labor, but it’s much less notable than people pretend and much less secretive as well.

                  Thirdly, “work camps” are not remotely comparable to committing genocide against one tenth of the entire population of the region, which is the claim that was popularly made against Xinjiang before it got walked back to “cultural genocide”.

    • @[email protected]
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      710 months ago

      I found this to be a decent enough primer: https://medium.com/@bobbyarlan/a-case-study-in-racist-anti-chinese-sentiment-fuelled-by-american-bots-and-western-propaganda-f0a69978d568

      A decent TLDR: The article argues that anti-Chinese propaganda spread by the U.S. and Western media is fueling racist sentiment. Claims of mass detention of Uyghurs are based on flawed studies and sources like Adrian Zenz, a far-right Christian fundamentalist. Atrocity propaganda is a common tactic used by the U.S. to justify wars. The U.S. is threatened by China’s economic rise and technological progress, so it is trying to portray China negatively and prepare public opinion for a potential conflict. However, most of the world sees China positively and as an economic opportunity, making a new Cold War against China unlikely to succeed

      In short, a lot of information about China that has come out of Western news media has been proven to be based on known biased sources, known anit-China rhetoric, and/or outright lies. It’s difficult to prove/disprove of any information specifically, that takes time and reporting, but a lot of people see the anti-China pattern in BBC reporting, and tend to dismiss it because of known history.

      • @MacroCyclo
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        10 months ago

        I think this flies a bit too far in the other direction. China is totalitarian. It is not a democracy. It is also increasingly antagonizing nations abroad. I think it is valid to consider it a threat if you are any other nation, period.

        Edit: Kinda like Russia

        • @[email protected]M
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          10 months ago

          How many seats are in the highest legislative body?

          What rights and responsibilities do autonomous regions within China have?

          What is the most distributed government legislative committee type and what is their role in the government?

          • @yeather
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            10 months ago

            1, Xi Xinping and whatever he says, doesn’t matter how many show ponys you fill the room with.

            1. In the end they all answer to the whims of the central government, which can change or remove and rights and responsibilities autonomous regions within China have.

            2. See answer one.

            • @[email protected]
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              010 months ago

              1, Xi Xinping and whatever he says, doesn’t matter how many show ponys you fill the room with.

              Do you know what a legislative body is? Anglophones are almost all educated on “executive, legislative, judicial” aren’t they? Xi is the leader of the Executive branch in China, not the Legislative or Judicial.

              • @yeather
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                010 months ago

                You do know what a dictator is right? You can call yourself the head of this and that and have cronies technically control the rest, but it’s not fooling anyone slightly smarter than the average microwave. It’s inherently evident you do Xi Xinpings bidding no matter where you are placed or you will be replaced. Not a hard concept, even someone like you can understand.

                • @[email protected]
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                  -110 months ago

                  Such fierce condescension and yet you’re the one pushing a children’s story. All these hundreds and thousands of representatives, all the millions of Party members, are just puppets under the Bad Guy’s control. There was no violence to install him, the existing government put him there (since I assume you don’t endorse Chinese elections) and then he played an Uno Reverse and now they are all an extension of him, with all of Chinese politics then becoming merely being a matter of how much people chaff under the collars and fetters he fixes to them. When politicians fight each other? When journalists fire back and forth in the papers? When policy goes one way and then pivots? It’s all just a Potemkin Village with a few hundred million people as the staff.

                  So no, “someone like me” cannot understand how such a thing could exist outside of a children’s cartoon or a similar sort of story told to an audience that is very much suspending its disbelief.

            • @[email protected]M
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              -410 months ago

              So what I’m hearing is it doesn’t matter if you’re ignorant about the way China works because the US media told you Xi is an evil dictator who controls everything and you believed them. Got it.

              • @yeather
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                -110 months ago

                No, Xi is an evil dictator who controls everything he wants to. It doesn’t matter if you technically control something you will always end up doing the bidding of Xi or you will disappear. From reading your replies, it’s evident you have fallen for Chinese propaganda and now simp for an evil dictator and totalitarian regimes. Got it.

        • @[email protected]
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          -410 months ago

          So… No, it’s not like Russia at all. But that nuance is too long for me to explain right now. Short answer is that Russia is capitalist, and China is 50/50 capitalist/socialist, depending on definitions, and yeah a lot of nuance.

          But China is run by the people, their authoritarian politics keeps their billionaires and induatry in check. Their local politics is a negotiation with the national politics.

          And… How exactly is China antagonizing nations abroad? Because a lot of countries are choosing to work with China because they AREN’T antagonizing them as much as America and Europe. So… The reality is the opposite.

          • @MacroCyclo
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            510 months ago

            I mean, if you haven’t been there or don’t know anyone from there you could pretend they are a democracy, but they are authoritarian like Russia is authoritarian. Long term they will seek a wider swath to be authoritarian over.

            • @[email protected]
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              -310 months ago

              And the argument from ignorance continues.

              All I have to say is read more and be online less.

              • @MacroCyclo
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                110 months ago

                It’s not from ignorance. It’s based on the people I know from China.

                • @yeather
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                  -310 months ago

                  Quick tip, arguing with tankies gets you nowhere, let them waddle in their own filth and move on with your life.

            • @[email protected]
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              410 months ago

              If Taiwan is its own nation, they should really specify that in their constitution instead of claiming to be the rightful government of all of China and Mongolia.

              • @[email protected]
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                210 months ago

                That still makes it a nation… That claims to be the rightful government. These are not mutually exclusive haha

                • @[email protected]
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                  010 months ago

                  That claim is mutually exclusive with Taiwan being “its own nation” distinct from China. It is definitionally its own government, but it claims to be a superset of the nation of China (because of also claiming Mongolia and some smaller territories). Nations are a social construct based on historical group identities, so the PRC is the same nation as the ROC was back when the ROC controlled the mainland. The ROC claims to still be that nation (plus Mongolia) which the PRC currently administers.

        • Fazoo
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          1110 months ago

          Or the fact we literally have drone and camera footage of mass arrests. I’m not one to view Vice these days, but one of their reporters went there and saw some rather suggestive situations as well.

          After Trump was so nice (dumb) enough to showcase just how clear US satellite photos are these days, one has to question why some here are so quick to cry in China’s defense. Especially after the very public take over of Hong Kong, you think an ethnic cleanse is out of the question?

          I’m sure some pro-Chinese twit will come rushing in with some whataboutism or a crack on US history, as if that excuses things.

          • @[email protected]
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            -310 months ago

            Especially after the very public take over of Hong Kong, you think an ethnic cleanse is out of the question?

            After China followed the diplomatic agreement it had with Britain for decades to handle the transition from Hong Kong being a British colony back to it being under the jurisdiction of its own nation (as a Special Autonomous Region exempted, like other such regions, from a great portion of federal law), now that means China will do ethnic cleansing? Most of Hong Kong supports the mainland, but that falls very much along class lines. The protestors you saw on western news 24/7 for a while were mostly members of wealthier families who don’t represent the majority.

            I have mixed feelings about the protest itself in that I think back when it was more fragmented there were surely meaningful segments that weren’t concerned about an extremely normal (but now withdrawn anyway) extradition law, but once it became the Five Demands and begging for their white colonizers to return, the highest credit I can give them is that they still were at least dignified enough to turn away Azov fascists who visited them.

          • @[email protected]M
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            -810 months ago

            Especially after the very public take over of Hong Kong, you think an ethnic cleanse is out of the question?

            You’re projecting. China exempted ethnic minorities from the one child policy, that is how anti “han supremacist”(which itself is just white supremacist projection) they are.

            And the people of Hong Kong are 90 percent Han.

          • @[email protected]
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            -110 months ago

            I mean the nice thing about the internet is that you can at least find videos documenting what the article claims. I mean sure… it could all just be propaganda. But somehow there is a little much of it from so many different sources.

            • @[email protected]
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              110 months ago

              You say this and yet, what videos? How many have you actually watched vs assumed were there vs read the headline? I’ve seen a bunch of photos and videos and all of them were either hoaxes (calling normal buildings camps), ridiculous misunderstandings (like saying the screeching of brakes was screaming victims), or gross misrepresentations (e.g. normal prison transfers being a slate of new genocide victims). But if you just skim through what just so happens to trend on Reddit, you’ll see atrocity after atrocity and not stick around long enough to see the retraction, or the people in the comments debunking it, and so on.

              There’s a reason neoliberal outlets walked their claims back to “cultural genocide” over time, because there was nothing there except the testimony of like three people from a region of 15 million.

              • @[email protected]
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                210 months ago

                I mean I’ve seen a few recordings of Chinese officials calling folks abroad and making „suggestions“. That was more than just reading headlines.

                But I guess you are right. It’s likely all propaganda and China is a paradise.

        • @[email protected]
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          10 months ago

          Also your summary sounds like ChatGPT

          Nah they have a typo (“anit-China”) in their summary I think they’re fine.

        • @[email protected]
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          -810 months ago

          We put a lot of stock in personal stories, but we also pay a lot for incriminating evidence against China.

          Do you know about the 1 child policy (That was recently ended?) And how that affects this? Because I actually looked into it. But I bet an online personality won’t change your mind. So I won’t even bother.

          Remember America didn’t forcefully sterilize anyone. We just straight up bombed them, raped them, and shot them.

          Your biases are showing.

      • @[email protected]
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        -110 months ago

        Apparently there is a PRC smear campaign against Adrian Zenz - https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/pro-prc-information-operations-campaign-haienergy, including by creating what Mandiant describes as what they “suspect to be at least three fabricated letters based on obvious grammatical errors and typos” to smear him - so I’d take anything that is ad hominem attacks against him rather than debating his actual work with a grain of salt.

        However, even if you don’t accept his writings, there are plenty of other people who have done credible research into the plight of the Uyghur people - e.g. resources contributed to https://xjdp.aspi.org.au/, such as articles like this one by Gene A. Bunin: https://livingotherwise.com/2021/01/04/the-elephant-in-the-xuar-ii-brand-new-prisons-expanding-old-prisons-and-hundreds-of-thousands-new-inmates/.

        • @[email protected]
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          -110 months ago

          Ah yes, insults, the highest form of conversation. Always indicates you are correct. Good job.

    • @[email protected]
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      610 months ago

      This, my friend, is the absense of neocon/neolib censorship and propaganda that you were so used to on corporate social media.

      Isn’t it great?

        • @[email protected]
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          10 months ago

          As long as you don’t question that the enemies of US imperialism deserve it you should be mostly fine. The big geopolitical topics are more sensitive.

          I was permabanned from multiple subs for sharing this telegraph article for example:

          https://web.archive.org/web/20230701133656/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html

          It differs from sub to sub but the bigger and more political the stronger the imperial narrative is enforced.

          r/worldnews is one of the worst, and honestly suspect its astroturf and run by assets or a derivative of an imperial institution (council on foreign relation, think tanks, the likes)

          • @[email protected]
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            10 months ago

            There are literally pictures of bloodshed.

            I legitimately don’t understand why Leninists are so keen on making folk heroes out of tyrants. Why exert the energy to defend this shit instead of learning from it and building a better class of socialist??

            • @[email protected]
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              110 months ago

              There are literally pictures of bloodshed.

              Not in the Square itself, which was the scene of many absurd claims by defectors, like the “tanks crushing people to wash them down the gutters” cartoon bullshit.

              Here are interviews with some of the leaders of the protest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu3zmbFGwQA

            • @[email protected]
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              10 months ago

              I legitimately don’t understand why Leninists are so keen on making folk heroes out of tyrants.

              What a sentence! You’re jumping to conclusions all over the place!

              You’re conflating information with a desire to “make folk heroes out of tyrants”, trying to denormalise a desire to understand what was actually happening.

              There was bloodshed but not on the Tienanmen square and the conditions are less clear than you believe

              It is obvious that most peoples idea of what happened is heavily influenced by propaganda, I know mine was.

              If you could stop sabotaging efforts to cut through the disinformation that would be great thanks

              Also: “They are tyrants” thanks I’ll defer judgement as long as the evidence you present us with turns out to be propaganda, there are other “tyrannical governments” much more in reach

              • @[email protected]
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                -110 months ago

                A big part of my gripe here is precisely the idea that one can engage in critical analysis of statecraft, while hand waving away inconvenient statecraft. Or worse - supporting broad censorship of inconvenient statecraft.

                • @[email protected]
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                  10 months ago

                  A big part of my gripe here is precisely the idea that one can engage in critical analysis of statecraft, while hand waving away inconvenient statecraft. Or worse - supporting broad censorship of inconvenient statecraft.

                  I have no idea what that sentence is supposed to mean.

                  My gripe here is that nobody can have an informed opinion on foreign policy if they do not acknowledge the tons of pro US propaganda that surround them on EVERY issue in this category and dominate most of it.

                  It is important to call you out on your power-serving statements.

                  You tried to push critical thought out of the overton window when you painted it a kind of sacrilege (“make folk heroes out of tyrants”) and everyone engaging in it someone that needs to be shunned by society (a “tankie”).

                  Mind you all without addressing, let alone contesting, the facts.

                  With all due respect: As long as your actions are indistinguishable from those of a US intelligence social media asset, don’t expect any good will engagement.

                  Have an open mind and start to reflect a little more

      • @[email protected]
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        -110 months ago

        Isn’t ironic how tankies are entirely fueled by propaganda but they always bitch about propaganda (aka anything they don’t like including facts)

        • @[email protected]
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          9 months ago

          Lol standard halfwit take:

          Adopting the “tankie” slur for everyone without substance and obviously no knowledge of what they are talking about - check

          Being embedded in propaganda and blaming others who point it out - check

          “You’re not including facts” - lol for what? Am I responding to a factual argument? Am I demanding facts from you?

          But sure have some facts:

          Guardian from 2011 - Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media

          Intercept from 2014 - HACKING ONLINE POLLS AND OTHER WAYS BRITISH SPIES SEEK TO CONTROL THE INTERNET

          Believe me it has only gotten worse in the >10 years since

          Twitter files revealed pentagon bots were whitelisted as well

          If you miss your propaganda friends that hard reddit is still there for you

          Edit: I realize your missing punctuation threw me off, I read: “(aka anything, they don’t like including facts)” …doesn’t change much though

    • ArxCyberwolf
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      410 months ago

      This is lemmy.ml, which has a reputation for being full of tankies who are unreasonable and love to consume pro-CCP/Putin propaganda while railing against the western world. Basically a bunch of morons.

      • @[email protected]
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        110 months ago

        I really wish Lemmy supported defederation of instances by individual users (so I’d auto-block anything that came from lemmygrad or its users for any reason). I have been threatened with death by communists enough and just want to be left alone to my far-left-but-not-communist devices.

          • @[email protected]
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            -310 months ago

            I’d love that, but as I said elsewhere I have communities I run and a post history. Are we talking about me just making myself a mod elsewhere and cutting all my post histories? I mean, it’s not the end of the world, but it’d be nice to keep my post histories coherent.

            Instrance transfer would be wonderful.

    • @[email protected]
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      First day on Lemmy? There are quite a few suspiciously active trolls on here, especially on worldnews communities

      Edit - ah right on cue

    • @[email protected]
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      -410 months ago

      Lemmy was literally a tankie shithole before the Reddit influx, and even then not much changed

    • @[email protected]
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      -910 months ago

      They’re paid astroturfers and they don’t belong on Lemmy. Why the server admins refuse to police them, I just don’t know.

      • @[email protected]
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        10 months ago

        Wow, talk about conspiracy theories…

        “Every person who doesn’t participate in Sinophobi is paid off by the Chinese government”

        Like, really? You actually believe that? Was 911 an inside job? How hot DOES jet fuel get??? Is Q-anon real? Is the earth flat?

        If you’ve ever debunked a conspiracy theory, you should reconsider the idea that maybe, just maybe, not everyone hates China. It’s probably more likely than you think…

        Edit: And then they edited their comment to be more defensive instead. Perfect.

      • AEHNH
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        10 months ago

        Me and the boys waiting for the ccp checks liberals said we were getting:

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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        510 months ago

        Imagine thinking there are paid astroturfers on a tiny niche platform with a few thousand users. We have some utterly insane people here after reddit migration.

        • @[email protected]
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          -510 months ago

          Imagine thinking governments, fascists and PR agencies wouldn’t migrate to wherever people choose to hang out and continue their decades-long campaign to brainwash people into believing whatever is convenient for them.

          • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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            010 months ago

            I see you don’t understand the concept of niches. Governments, fascists, and PR agencies are going to spend their effort where it makes the most impact. Only a brainwashed person couldn’t comprehend that people could legitimately disagree with their world view, and anybody who thinks different from them must therefore be a paid troll.

            • @[email protected]
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              -210 months ago

              PSA: these kinds of threads are a great way to create blocklists of western bootlickers and trolls.

              This you?

            • @[email protected]
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              -410 months ago

              And now you’re defending the practice.

              How about, you and the rest of the dumbasses pushing your propaganda garbage go find another place to peddle it? Like hell?

                • @[email protected]
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                  -210 months ago

                  How about you go fuck yourself instead? That’s all you can do anyway. We’re not going anywhere and we outnumber you.

                • @[email protected]
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                  -210 months ago

                  First, I will take the compliment with grace.

                  Second, this forum deserves a better class of communist. This shit is just intellectually lazy.

              • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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                -910 months ago

                If you don’t like it here then feel free to go somewhere else. Lemmy was a community of sane people who were capable of having civilized discussion, and then a bunch of reddit chuds flooded here and started acting like you own the place. Get over yourself.

                • @[email protected]
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                  10 months ago

                  Bahaha look at you. “Everyone who disagrees with me is a bootlicker/troll/westerner.”

                  Edit for the bootlicking troll below: Ahem A straw man fallacy is the informal fallacy of refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be “attacking a straw man”.

                  You don’t understand what a straw man is.

                  You’re really bad at this. You even tried to copy my comment and failed miserably! Congratulations, you’re stupid in two languages!

      • @[email protected]
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        010 months ago

        Can you provide even circumstantial evidence of people like myself being paid, or are you resorting to unhinged conspiracy theories to explain people vociferously disagreeing with you?

        • @[email protected]
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          210 months ago

          It literally wouldn’t even matter, you’ll just deny it and refuse to concede even the most minor of points because for you, debate is not a means to find truth, it’s a power play. We’ve all seen it countless times. We know your game, your patterns of behavior, and since you do not want to play fairly because you’ll know you’ll lose, you don’t get to play at all. You don’t get to participate in discussions with us, especially not me. You’re isolated to your cult now. I hope you find happiness in choosing genocide.

          • @[email protected]
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            110 months ago

            Pardon me, I thought you were responding to a different comment (I was replying in my inbox to many different disputes). Seeing the actual context, this is ridiculous. You accuse me of being a paid actor and then say that you have no reason to present evidence of the accusation?

            Let us imagine that I was a paid actor and would behave exactly as you expect. Aren’t there other people reading the conversation? Wouldn’t it be worth proving to them that you aren’t just going on paranoid rants because your ideology has no way to deal with the concept of westerners freely disagreeing with you on these issues?

  • @[email protected]
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    3110 months ago

    I’m just gonna sit back and enjoy the tankies from lemmygrad denying or trying to justify this one as well. 🍿

      • @[email protected]
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        10 months ago

        Is there a way to jump instances and bring all your content/moderation with you? I really didn’t sign up for tankie voat, but I have growing communities in this instance.

        • @yeather
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          -210 months ago

          Unfortunately not right now, maybe in the future. You can make the community on the new instance, stop all posting on the old one and pin a link to the new one so users are forced over, but that might not work and you could lose a largish portion of your userbase.

            • @yeather
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              110 months ago

              Oh I thought he wanted to completely move his community to another instance. My bad

          • AEHNH
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            -210 months ago

            I think that’s exactly what happened to c/unixporn migrating from .ml to .world

      • @[email protected]
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        410 months ago

        That’s true.

        However, I feel like the ones from lemmygrad are slightly more unhinged.

        • ArxCyberwolf
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          210 months ago

          The downvotes say a whole lot. At least one of them is known for botting downvotes.

  • iknt
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    2010 months ago

    Sample size: 58 people

    18 in the U.K., 28 in Turkey, and 12 in Thailand.

    The authors wish to extend their gratitude to the individuals and organisations who supported this research by providing concrete feedback for revisions on the report, offering suggestions and advice at the planning stages, and offering ongoing collaborative and moral support while conducting this research: Elise Anderson, Campaign for Uyghurs, Freedom House, Tim Grose, Ondřej Klimeš, Julie Millsap, David O’Brien, the Rights Practice, Radio Free Asia, Isabella Rodriguez, David Stroup, Hannah Theaker, Emily Upson, the Uyghur Human Rights Project, the Uyghur Transitional Justice Database, the World Uyghur Congress, the Xinjiang Documentation Project, the Xinjiang Victims’ Database, and Adrian Zenz.

    Author

    Yes, very trustable! /s

    • @[email protected]
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      110 months ago

      This is so key to propaganda. When researchers do a study on 58 people, you can barely claim you have a good representation of the population. And even in that case, if they are good, high quality researchers, they aren’t pushing any opinion, just stating facts. It’s just that 58 people can’t represent the population well, It’s just a starting point.

      Now if we’re talking about an opinion and not just stated facts, 58 people is hardly representative, easy to manipulate, especially when you don’t have to cite specifics, just conclusion.

      Okay, let’s assume these are facts. 58 people were threatened, etc. This is still propaganda. Opinion, and interpretation can push the conversation in one direction or the other very heavily.

      For example, let’s draw a comparison to a system that people find more familiar (For westerners, at least), such as the united states police system or the FBI. How many US citizens are threatened to stop talking when pushing the limits of conversation publicly (Say, about calling out the inhumane treatment of others by the US military)? How many people have talked publicly about being approached by the FBI, or said they can’t comment on their interactions with the FBI, or of some private corporation that paid them off to keep their mouths shut about some insider deal, money laundering, or underage sex scandal? Governments and even private citizens coming after people who are talking shit publicly happens in capitalist states all the time.

      And that’s just taking into account regular people who live in western countries. How about an even more direct comparison? The Uyghurs are Muslims that participated in terrorism in China, but the United States had Muslim terrorists of their own, what did they do? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_post-invasion_Iraq You can find all kinds of resources about the human rights violations that the united states participated in against the muslin people, even in western sources such as wikipidia, and others https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/03/iraq-20-years-since-the-us-led-coalition-invaded-iraq-impunity-reigns-supreme/ have lots and lots of facts surrounding this.

      “rules for thee, but not for me” comes to mind.

      Sorry didn’t mean to unload on you. I’m vehemently agreeing!

  • 001100 010010
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    1810 months ago

    How would that work if they have a toxic family and decided to kill 2 birds with one stone?

    I mean if the CCP threatened my family while I’m abroad, I’d just go: “Lol go ahead, idgaf. They’re toxic anyways. Thanks for getting rid of them for me.” 😎

    But too bad my toxic family is already here and I had to endure their abuse. 😥

    • bane_killgrind
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      710 months ago

      That does assume that person’s with a toxic FOO have been able to emotionally distance themselves from them.

      That’s a tall order.

    • @[email protected]
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      310 months ago

      I mean I have some pretty toxic family members as well, but at least a few of them are decent or innocent people. Pretty much everyone is going to have at least one family member that they care about even if most are shit heads.

    • @[email protected]
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      310 months ago

      Of having hysterical bullshit invented about them? True enough. Quick, does every man in North Korea need to have Kim’s haircut or is no one allowed to have it?

  • @[email protected]
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    1310 months ago

    This is pretty crazy if true. I wonder if it has any connections to the alleged “ghost” CCP police stations that were reported around in Canada. I believe it was being claimed the stations were being used to bully Chinese people that were in Canada.

    • Freeman
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      510 months ago

      Just saw an investigative piece about the chinese shadowpolice in germany by a reputable reporter-team. I am convinced they exist.

    • @yeather
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      110 months ago

      Didn’t know these kinds of people existed until I showed up here. They must have been hiding on reddit or something it’s insane how braindead these people are.

      • @[email protected]
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        410 months ago

        Mostly they got banned wherever they congregated on Reddit. Not knowing they existed seems like a significant oversight, but to be expected with the way that China is depicted to you.

        • @yeather
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          -210 months ago

          I didn’t realize people like legitimately fell for such obvious lies from an authoritarian government. I can understand closed of citizens inside the country but people with access to so much I formation that prooces otherwise and yet they cling to a totalitarian regimes commiting genocide. It’s sad honestly.

          • @[email protected]
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            310 months ago

            And yet surely these people must have a reason to believe it, don’t they? Even if one assumes they are wrong, this doesn’t just come from nowhere, it must have some cause to seem reasonable to them, right? They are like you, thinking human beings, and no progress can be made in understanding the disagreement if you start from them being, in so many words, intellectually inferior to you.

            • @yeather
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              -410 months ago

              The beliefs of Marxism / Leninism are fairly noble, but never once in the history of them or any of their offshoots (i.e communism / socialism) have they ever worked. In the end the revolutions all colapse into themselves and turn into authoritarian capitalist regimes. China has been an authoritarian government since the beginning and is run by an evil dictator.

              • @[email protected]
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                510 months ago

                The beliefs of Marxism / Leninism . . . or any of their offshoots (i.e communism / socialism)

                I suppose it’s just a matter of syntax, but I first read this as a very silly statement wherein “communism” is an offshoot of “Marxism / Leninism”.

                Anyway, don’t worry, I’m familiar with the “real Marxism has never been tried!” line that some people have for various reasons, but I a) can’t see how this is particularly useful as a distinction compared to other states and b) don’t think this remotely answers my question.

                I think you and I both know why the so-called marxists who say “real Marxism has never been tried” exist, or at least our beliefs on the matter are a close enough parallel that it’s not a very enticing discussion, but what you have failed to do is explain the basic prompt of why a westerner would support a state like China.

                I can give an internally-consistent answer for these groups and yourself coming to their beliefs: You all live to varying degrees in a bubble of western Discourse and pseudo-historical mythmaking.

                The “never been tried” Marxist believes everything the State Department says about its enemies but still believes in some sort of ever-failing communism like a good little Trot because they are, for the time being and in part motivated by their social position, appalled by what capitalism has wrought even in the imperial core and want something better even if they struggle to conceive what that could be in practical terms, since every success of socialism has been transmuted into an ultimate failure. Nonetheless, “there must be an alternative,” and that possibility, however hazy, is worth fighting for over the corrupt establishment.

                The liberal believes everything the State Department says about its enemies and comes to the reasonable conclusion (if we assume the State Department is honest) that socialism has failed its many chances and therefore “there is no alternative”. They are more likely to have a higher social position than the previous group because it is much easier to say capitalism works when it works for you.

                The “tankie” is typically the worst off of the three groups in social position, with long term prospects that look pretty grim, and this has pushed them into a desperation to find a way to improve their prospects since they can’t afford a hazy future and communalist circle-jerking but the invisible hand of the free market would crush them even faster, so they do something that these other groups are not driven to, which is some level of serious research, and by this means they were able to accept that the State Department lies as often as it speaks and that they have been born into the slightly unnerving position of being nestled in the imperial core as the empire runs roughshod over as much of the world as it can. Whether they simply concluded that states like Russia or Iran were plainly the lesser of two evils for their opposition to NATO, or they found a more extreme position like genuinely believing in the project of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, they were able to develop a framework that gives them a path forward where previously they felt they had none.

                Of course, various biographical details can also be vitally important, like being the descendant of defectors vs generic diaspora, or knowing people who are. I’m white as the driven snow, but I know Chinese people from both groups. The “tankie” one didn’t persuade me on very much (though I learned a lot about the Korean War and various elements of the 20th century PRC) but the diaspora descendant taught me things that I still am trying to process, because they made genuinely ridiculous claims (e.g. Mao burning down libraries during the Civil War) that I have not been able to find repeated by even the most ridiculous anti-PRC rag when I search online. There’s a bizarre sort of cult to intergenerational trauma that seems to emerge where stories are embellished and exaggerated over time (deliberately or not) and the truth of these stories cannot be questioned because, in so many words, “it’s their truth.”

                I meant it when I said I’m still processing it, because to me it’s in many respects a bizarre behavior even though it’s actually not that hard to explain sociologically (view it like religious trauma and it’s trivially simple). I think there is more to learn from it, but I couldn’t tell you what.

                • @yeather
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                  110 months ago

                  Unlike some people I do understand history and the recorded history of these revolutions and dont believe “Marxism has never been tried.” Russia is a whole clusterfuck I don’t want to get into but with Mao it can be a genuine Marxist revolution, or Maoist if we want to be pedantic. Through the early civil war I would consider it a true revolution. Until the time of the long march and reconstruction of the red army, after that point it goes totalitarian. After the great leap forward it becomes capitalist.

                  I may have worded my first bit wrong, Marxism is the overall process, the transition of revolution to socialism, and then socialism to communism. In this way Socialism and Communism are the offshoots or subcategories of Marxism. The problem lies in the transition from Revolution to Socialism, never once has this process happened that could then lead to Communism, only totalitarianism and then economic ruin.

  • @[email protected]M
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    Its a very weakly sourced state sponsored media article reporting on their state enemy. You have to be willfully credulous to believe their claims without further proof.

    • @[email protected]
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      1110 months ago

      It doesn’t mean that reports are false just because two states are enemies (which is an exaggeration).

      • @[email protected]M
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        10 months ago

        It doesn’t mean that reports are false just because two states are enemies (which is an exaggeration).

        If they were strongly cited I would not be criticizing people believing them. All sources are biased, the question is how factual a source is.

        The BBC is strongly biased against China. If they make claims without proof the most logical course of action is to not assume they are telling the truth and not incorporate what they say into your beliefs. (Note that this is different than “assume they are lying”)

      • @[email protected]
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        -110 months ago

        Aren’t these threads wild? These people don’t want to engage in actual discussion here. They just want to remove your agency by calling you brainwashed, do the sealion “source” thing, and then ad hominem away any sources you do provide.

        I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - the world deserves a better class of communist.

        • @[email protected]M
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          It isn’t sealioning to expect a government or corporate news agency to provide strong citations when making contentious claims.

        • @[email protected]
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          310 months ago

          They just want to remove your agency by calling you brainwashed

          Unlike when the liberals in this very thread accuse people of being brainwashed or paid shills, because then it is righteous!

          do the sealion “source” thing,

          lmao what dastardly trolls they are to care about sourcing

          and then ad hominem away any sources you do provide.

          Like you’d ever accept People’s Daily or whatever. The “tankies” need to mostly rely on liberal outlets because you will discard reporting out of China (etc.) out of hand.

          the world deserves a better class of communist.

          If we had a better class of communist, you’d hate them too because you’d believe everything you’re told about them, just like you do with the existing breeds.

      • @MacroCyclo
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        -310 months ago

        Yeah, China was a major ally, but it is showing its dark (autocratic) side lately.

    • Freeman
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      510 months ago

      I saw a piece about the shadow police in germany lately. I am sure that the chinese foreign police exists.

      • @[email protected]M
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        -710 months ago

        I have no doubt, every nation has secret police. I simply doubt they are doing what the article suggests theyre doing. It seems to me the article is interested in explaining why there aren’t many uyghur Muslims joining their narrative and why a lot of them are supportive of China and feel their culture is respected.

  • queermunist she/her
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    10 months ago

    Yes, the reason diaspora isn’t speaking out against China is because there’s a conspiracy to silence them.~

    There can’t possibly be any other explanation.~

    • 001100 010010
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      Well I, as a former citizen of China, do “speak out” against CCP as in family discussions, in online forums, and sometimes with classmates in school, but I don’t “speak out” as in actually participate in protests. Demonstrations just isn’t my thing. Protesting against CCP gets you labeled a “race traitor”. I mean honestly, with all the racial problems in the US, and having to deal with my abusive family, I really don’t have to energy care about CCP anymore. It’s dead to me. I view China just like how an anti-fascist German view Nazi Germany. There’s no point of protests. It’s beyond anything a protest can fix. Like… why do I even care, it isn’t even my country anymore.

      Edit: Also, it isn’t a conspiracy that ethnic Chinese (I’m gonna use the term “ethnic Chinese” because this applies regardless of citizenship status) people don’t “speak out”. People just value “Social Harmony” more than being correct. Like if you live abroad, why care about what happens back in China? Most ethnic Chinese people who lives abroad don’t really feel welcome in their new country, so why be against your former country if you aren’t even sure if you are actually safe in your new one? You don’t end up in a situation where you have no safe harbor in the world. Ethnic Chinese people living abroad believe China will accept them again in-case their living situation abroad goes south, so they don’t want to get on the bad side of the Chinese government. Like what happened with the Chinese Exclusion act in the US more than 100 years ago, and also the Japanese Internment Camps. Maybe you disagree with the thought process, but that is what most ethnic Chinese people think.

      • queermunist she/her
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        10 months ago

        No, clearly the Chinese government has your family hostage and that’s why you aren’t out protesting.~ Didn’t you read the article? 😏

        • 001100 010010
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          If your comment (the top-level one) was supposed to be sarcasm, you need a /s tag because there are people actually being serious saying that “it’s a conspiracy, couldn’t be any other possible explanation” stuff.

          But also, the “hostage” thing is not entirely false, just very exaggerated. They only take your family “hostage” if you are like a leader of a protest or something. But I doubt they care if you are just some forum user that has no followers and “protesting” online. They got too many dissidents within their jurisdiction to care about those abroad.

          • queermunist she/her
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            10 months ago

            I prefer the snark mark actually, but sure, I’ll be sure to ruin the joke by using Reddit sarcasm syntax next time.~

            EDIT Actually that’s not fair, I’m just mad lol

    • @[email protected]
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      As someone who legitimately has family in China and who visits them and speaks to them in Mandarin, there is 100% a chilling effect caused by CCP autocracy.

      But I am eager to hear how a bunch of people who have never been and don’t speak the language know more about this because they read a pamphlet.

      • @[email protected]
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        410 months ago

        Yeah, as someone who merely visited I got enough eyefulls and earfulls to know you don’t want the Chinese government to know you exist for any reason.

  • @[email protected]
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    -510 months ago

    Such cowardly actions befit a gang of criminals, not the righteous leadership of a proud nation. The Chinese people deserve far better.

    • @yeather
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      -310 months ago

      “He’s a little confused but he’s got the spirit”

    • mub
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      910 months ago

      Curious. Seems to work both ways.

      • @[email protected]
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        Don’t feed the troll. He’s an actual professional troll who will try his hardest to drag you into a debate. I like to just keep editing my comments with new links that refute his claims, and that’s when he totally loses it and gives me -30 and himself +55 updoots on a post with a grand total of 18 votes. He’s really aggressive but he’s not very good at his job.

        Edit: I can see he has gone through my post history and downvoted everything so I have 0 or negative karma or whatever it’s called… and he did it a week afterwards. He’s a spiteful little troll, isn’t he? I don’t care about updoots. You can’t silence the truth, you dumb fuck.

        • @[email protected]
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          210 months ago

          Most notably, they will not actually engage in any real discussion on these topics. They only want to shut down discussion by calling everyone brainwashed. They will offer not a single critical word against China or Russia, past present or future. Obviously this analysis is very noteworthy, and the conjecture that these societies are above reproach makes for a very good faith argument. Especially when combined with the intellectually honest strategy of removing their opponent’s agency by calling them brainwashed. Truly a master debater.

          • @[email protected]
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            110 months ago

            It’s proof of your integrity that you admit good things about China . . . Because surely you will eventually, right?

            • @[email protected]
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              I have no idea where you get that idea from. I have tons of praise for China - the culture, the people, the food, the history. I speak ok Mandarin, have family in China and visit once a year typically. I probably have more direct experience with China than anyone on lemmygrad. Unlike those folks, I’m not just here to troll and disrupt conversation. I want to have real conversations about the good as well as the bad. It’s the tankie trolls who will never actually engage in good faith. It’s the surest sign someone is, in fact, just a troll imo.

              • @[email protected]
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                310 months ago

                You’re changing the question, I mean the Chinese government and so did you in your previous comment. I’m sure you’re aware that “tankies” don’t just give a blanket endorsement of, for example, patriarchal social norms in China, and believe there are many cultural elements which must be the object of struggle. One must conclude that you didn’t include that because it was beyond the scope of your claim when you said “China”.

                What was that about bad faith?

                • @[email protected]
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                  10 months ago

                  The tankies on Lemmy absolutely give it a blanket endorsement. Trust me I’ve tried many times to seek a real discussion on this topic. Specifically with regard to the hukou caste system and lack of public trials. I think this is very low hanging fruit tbh.

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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        -610 months ago

        I don’t have any issue with that, the less toxic people I have to interact with on here the happier I’ll be. I encourage anybody who finds my comments and posts upsetting to block me and move on.

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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        -710 months ago

        Nah, just people who uncritically regurgitate propaganda, and screech about everybody who disagrees with them being a Russian puppet and a tankie whatever that means.

          • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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            -410 months ago

            Yeah, that’s a fair point. It’s important to keep in mind that people are accepting the propaganda because they want to believe it and they understand that it serves their selfish interests.

            • @[email protected]
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              710 months ago

              Yes, thank you for being understanding. I think it’s better to avoid calling people brainwashed because – as one liberal in this thread pointed out – it denies agency which our interlocutors plainly do have which makes them much more responsible for their bad epistemology than the theory of “brainwashing” allows for.

              If we want to persuade people – and I’ve seen that you have incredible enthusiasm for that cause! – we must do our best to meet them where they actually are rather than where we imagine them to be.

              I’ll get off my soapbox here, I just wanted to mention it. I wish you all the best in your efforts!

        • @[email protected]
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          010 months ago

          And which of those things were you responding to when you yelled “bootlickers” into the void just now?

          Because from my point of view, you are the only one engaging in bad faith personal attacks here.

        • OKRainbowKid
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          -510 months ago

          So yourself basically, just replace Russian puppet and tankie with bootlicker or NAFO supporter.