• wtry@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    35
    ·
    8 months ago

    Have you not heard of the great firewall. Do you think Nike and iPhone factories are coops? Furthermore genocide does not explicitly have to be killing civilians. Xi did things such as forcefully reeducate children, force Muslims to eat pork, and forcefully sterilize them, thereby making them and their culture die out. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China

      • wtry@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        27
        ·
        8 months ago

        I’m not trying to own you. I’m trying to get a meaningful argument which isn’t me being talked about as an animal.

        • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          32
          ·
          8 months ago

          I’m sorry that some comrades here have been dismissive toward you, but you seriously need to educate yourself more on a subject before you speak on it thinking that you have understood it. There are plenty of resources that the Lemmygrad community can offer you to further your knowledge about China if you leave your preconceptions at the door and come at this with some humility.

          • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            24
            ·
            8 months ago

            This lib refusing to educate themselves is how this whole thing started, I doubt they’ll change their mind now, unless they want to prove me wrong about them.

            • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              19
              ·
              8 months ago

              Yeah, when i wrote that there were still fairly few substantial responses compared to mocking ones. But by now i see they’ve been offered plenty of good, comprehensive sources of information, and now that they’re banned and can’t waste as much time saying ignorant things here maybe they will have more time to read the material that they’ve been so helpfully provided with. Probably not though…they’re probably allergic to reading as most libs are…

              • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                17
                ·
                8 months ago

                I was hoping they’d be sincere and honest and would actually ask “how can you support such regimes?!” honestly and earnestly, but it wasn’t a question, it was smug pretending to be questioning.

                I find it hilarious that I dropped multiple sources that countered what they said, but because I didn’t treat it as a “gotcha” but just supplemental to what I was talking about, they didn’t even notice. 100% debatebro brained.

                • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  17
                  ·
                  8 months ago

                  Well, you did what you could. Can’t reach everyone right away. Sometimes people need to have time to stew a bit and process new information. Sometimes it takes repeated exposure to the new ideas before they become more open to them. Which is why we should never stop explaining, even if it’s frustrating.

                  • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    18
                    ·
                    8 months ago

                    I was very quick to start bullying them here, other people here were far more patient than I was. I think libs like this give their game away very early, and shouldn’t be coddled, but mocked for their smug ignorance, I do appreciate the people dropping actual sources, I didn’t make a big deal out of that because I’ve seen this liberal song and dance a thousand times, they demand sources, then either don’t read them at all, or skim just enough to know they don’t agree with them and demand “better” sources that confirm their preconceived notions. It’s a waste of time trying to get them to read, but hopefully people watching the conversation read them at least.

      • wtry@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        30
        ·
        8 months ago

        Whether it prevents bourgeois propaganda or western propaganda, it’s not worth it when the people aren’t free. I also find it to be very opposite to Marx implying that the Chinese government wouldn’t try to control their people if they could.

        • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          29
          ·
          8 months ago

          Here’s a paper covering the topic from a few years ago.. It goes through the history, motivations, and effects of the Golden Shield Project. It also briefly covers the opinions from people on both sides of the firewall and tries to remain neutral as it’s a research communication. Download the PDF to read.

          What the paper doesn’t cover deeply is what information the CPC has chosen to censor and why. Materials subversive to the stability of their country. From whom? Of what nature? What historical precedent exists that would have made them want to do this in the late nineties?

          Exploring the history of interactions between socialist countries and liberal countries will shed light on this. I’d also suggest looking into examples of censorship in western liberal countries and contrasting them with censorship in China.

          Your reply pointed to a lot of assumptions from the Western liberal perspective, which is actively antagonistic and hostile towards China. If the only perspective you ever consume is from states who consider China a threat to their power, then of course you will hold a negative bias towards China.

          The more you study, the better you will understand. If you approach the topic wanting to demonize China, you won’t learn anything. There’s a lot more to unpack here including Western media bias and leftist theory beyond Marx. This is just a stepping stone to understanding.

          If you don’t know the purpose and goals of the project that the firewall is part of, then you don’t understand why China has a firewall.

          Tell me, are you really free or do you assume you are free because you’ve always been told you are free and you’ve only ever heard one definition of freedom? To me, the illusion of freedom of speech, the illusion of freedom of choice, and being told to choose between a handful of shitheads who don’t represent or act according to how I would like to see our society run is not freedom. It’s just authoritarianism from a different source. It’s who has power that matters to me. I’d rather be held accountable by my peers than by a bunch of chucklefucks who only see me as an expendable resource.

          • RedClouds@lemmygrad.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            25
            ·
            8 months ago

            This weak ass liberal may not be reading anything, but I am eating up all these sources. Thank you, everyone. Also, God damn it, now I have hours more of reading any to do. At least I’ve covered some of these topics before, so some of them might be review.

          • ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            25
            ·
            edit-2
            8 months ago

            “Becuase Carl Mank is whatever I say he is. Have I ever read his work? No. But I’m sure he said something similar to my position somewhere.”

          • wtry@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            25
            ·
            8 months ago

            Marx said that the state was inherently oppressive. But I guess I missed the part where he said that it doesn’t matter if the party brands itself as communist.

            • ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              28
              ·
              edit-2
              8 months ago

              If you bake a cake and you have this magnificent idea in your head; do you gather all the ingredients and then presto magic you have a beautiful cake in front of you? Or is there some sort of process that’s missing? Some sort of transitionary period?

              There’s a reason it’s called Marxist-Leninism too, older works can be superseded or reanalyzed by newer works in a more refined context.

              • wtry@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                23
                ·
                8 months ago

                Baking doesn’t cook down the ingredients and claim it’s heating them up.

                  • wtry@lemm.ee
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    arrow-down
                    17
                    ·
                    8 months ago

                    You could call any machine anything, yet it doesn’t become the thing.

              • wtry@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                17
                ·
                8 months ago

                The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

                • the Communist manifesto
                  • wtry@lemm.ee
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    arrow-down
                    20
                    ·
                    8 months ago

                    While this quote does not encapsulate marx’s entire view on the state, it shows that Marx sees that the state is bourgeois and therefore antagonistic to the proletariat.

                  • wtry@lemm.ee
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    arrow-down
                    21
                    ·
                    8 months ago

                    The state is inherently antagonistic to the proletariat, because their controlling society gives rise to them creating their own class within the bourgeoisie.

                • ExotiqueMatter@lemmygrad.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  15
                  ·
                  8 months ago

                  That very out of context quote is saying that under capitalism the state is used by the bourgeoisie to advance their common interests, not that the state “is inherently oppressive”.

                  • invalidusernamelol@lemmygrad.ml
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    7
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    8 months ago

                    The hurdle a lot of illiterate liberals have to get over when they read Marx is that his use of oppressive isn’t a moral assertion, it’s a dialectic.

                    Yes, a state is opressive. It is the oppression of one class for the benefit of another. As long as a state exists, there is an existing class divide in the place that state exists.

                    Do you think the bourgeoisie care that the state is oppressive? No. Because the current form of the state serves their interests. Should workers care that a bourgeois state is opressive? Yes. Because a bourgeois state will actively sabotage any attempt by the body of labor to free itself.

                    As long as this dynamic exists (either domestically or internationally) states will continue to exist, and the form of that state will take on the character of the class that controls it.

                    In “The Civil War in France” Marx directly condems the revolutionaries (though respects their lofty aims) for not taking over the State in Paris. For not opening the banks, exploiting the existing power structure, and then destroying the bridge behind them. The Paris Commune is one of the first direct examples of a suddenly stateless society failing in the face of an organized bourgeois state.

                    If you want a socialist project to survive, you have to learn from the mistakes of the Parisians and take hold of power and use the oppressive nature of the state to cement the new order or you risk reactionary movements that aren’t afraid to wield that oppressive power destroying all you’ve built.

                    And this is a hard thing for liberals to get their heads around because it’s something that Marx changed opinions on the second he saw what had happened in Paris. Unlike most liberal political economists who are dogmatic in their beliefs and theories, Marx was driven primarily by the state of things and analysis of reality. His theories changed as he saw them practiced.