• Revolutionary_Apples@lemmy.ml
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    9 hours ago

    Do not confuse Technocracy with Socialism. While Chinese Technocracy is Socialist, Technocracy alone can be a massive problem.

  • يا ليتني كوري شمالي @lemmy.ml
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    13 hours ago

    Democracy is only as good as the voters. The average Chinese is better educated and a better citizen overall than the average USAmerican. Thus the difference in results. My experience with Chinese and USAians confirm this, even if anecdotal. I could have just missed the bad Chinese and was overexposed to bad USAians.

    • DornerStan@lemmygrad.ml
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      11 hours ago

      Also bourgeois/liberal democracy is the quintessence of adopting democratic aesthetics, forms, and language without any actual democratic function. No one can vote according to their interests, and no one’s votes actually influence policy.

      The reason most modern imperialist states have evolved their own form of liberal democracy is because of how effective it is at mediating domestic capitalist contradictions so they can be externalized.

      If the US were somehow a true functional democracy it would have evolved beyond capitalism decades ago.

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
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        9 hours ago

        “To decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament - such is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarianism, not only in parliamentary-constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics.”

        ― Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution

    • Bilb!@lemmy.ml
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      9 hours ago

      I am deeply concerned that this is getting worse, not better. I sincerely hope I’m totally wrong about this, but I see young “educated” Americans more and more being unable to think at all. The kids in university now are liberally using commercial LLMs to finish assignments. People are surrendering their ability to think to private corporations. Imagine in 10 years from now, a man who can’t pay his AI bill can no longer survive on his own. And even if he could, he could only ever do what the corporate model deems acceptable. Just fully giving up agency because agency is friction.

      I can’t respond to this email without paying Sam Altman! I can’t wipe my ass without Grok!

      I’m drunk. I’m sorry. I hate what is happening, and I am helpless to stop it.

    • Revolutionary_Apples@lemmy.ml
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      9 hours ago

      This, I would much rather take a full blown Monarchy if the Monarch was suitable then a Democracy full of subperson voters.

    • Riverside@reddthat.com
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      16 hours ago

      Everything you consume is propaganda and has an agenda, you just see this as propaganda because it counters the propaganda that’s already internalized and invisible to you

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
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          9 hours ago

          Propaganda is just messaging, there’s nothing inherently evil about it. The question is what message is being propagated.

        • Dearth@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          China executes pedophiles and America elects them and worships at their churches. It’s really not a complicated comparison. There is no gotcha here

        • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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          10 hours ago

          Again, there is no cultural artifact that does not serve a propaganda purpose or espouse a worldview

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          21 hours ago

          Leftists have regularly been advocating for organizing:

          The problem with liberals is that they still think the democrats are a path to progress, rather than slow death.

          • postcapitalism@lemmy.today
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            10 hours ago

            Cowbee I like the chart, but respectfully a lot of the rhetoric on ML instances reads closer to trolling than engaging to build a “sympathetic base” , just my 2 cents not worth much more than that ;-)

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              1 hour ago

              Lemmy.ml isn’t an org, I’m not trying to suggest that it is. Leftists make memes and shitposts here, but when it comes to actual action, organizing in real life is always recommended.

            • EldritchFemininity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              5 hours ago

              Every time I see Cowbee in a thread like this, it’s like I walked into a restaurant to see someone trying to explain to somebody else why their friend who just spat in their food is actually a cool dude doing great solidarity because the owners of the restaurant treat their employees poorly.

              ML in my experience has very little to do with engaging with leftists and more to do with bashing the “decadent West.” Anytime I see memes.ml pop up in my feed, it’s a 50/50 shot between me finding something funny or something that makes me debate blocking the instance as much as I can at an account level.

              • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                1 hour ago

                I think what you’re describing is the difference between leftists shitposting online and actual real-life practice.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              19 hours ago

              Your entire argument is based on the idea that shitposting online is the primary means by which leftists organize. I organize with a communist party in real life, online memes and shitposting are by no means what people advocate as “practice,” it’s just a thing to do in free time. Take a step back and rethink what you believe is going on.

                • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                  15 hours ago

                  What on Earth are you talking about? All real communist orgs use online agitation, newsletters, social media, and more. I’m not saying that shitposting is valuable, I’m saying it’s not what I mean by practice. You’re deeply confused.

  • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
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    1 day ago

    Ngl, the fact that the US lied about masks and had such a clusterfuck response while China listened to the science was a major step in me becoming China-pilled.

          • StarvingMartist@sh.itjust.works
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            7 hours ago

            Great Leap Forward famine Anti-Rightist Campaign Cultural Revolution Tiananmen Square massacre Annexation of Tibet Tibetan uprising crackdown Xinjiang internment camps Xinjiang forced sterilization allegations One‑Child Policy coercive enforcement Crackdown on Falun Gong Great Chinese Famine repression of reporting Hong Kong democracy crackdown Suppression of the 1987–1991 Tibetan protests Strike Hard Campaigns Laogai forced labor system

            Nice troll post, respect the grind

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              50 seconds ago

              This is just gish-gallop.

              Xinjiang

              Uyghurs are not being tortured and killed.

              The best and most comprehensive resource I have seen so far is Qiao Collective’s Xinjiang: A Resource and Report Compilation. Qiao Collective is explicitly pro-PRC, but this is an extremely comprehensive write-up of the entire background of the events, the timeline of reports, and real and fake claims.

              I also recommend reading the UN report and China’s response to it. These are the most relevant accusations and responses without delving into straight up fantasy like Adrian Zenz, professional propagandist for the Victims of Communism Foundation, does.

              Tourists do go to Xinjiang all the time, yes. You can watch videos like this one on YouTube, though it obviously isn’t going to be a comprehensive view of a complex situation like this.

              Tibet

              Tibet was a feudal slave society backed by the CIA. The PLA liberated Tibet. Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth:

              Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries rested in the hands of small numbers of high-ranking lamas. Most ordinary monks lived modestly and had no direct access to great wealth. The Dalai Lama himself “lived richly in the 1000-room, 14-story Potala Palace.” [12]

              Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, a member of the Dalai Lama’s lay Cabinet, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. [13] Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some Western admirers as “a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma.” [14] In fact it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served mainly as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order, protect their property, and hunt down runaway serfs.

              Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their peasant families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they were bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeatedremoved, beginning at age nine. [15] The monastic estates also conscripted children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.

              In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. There also were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. [16] The majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than slaves, the serfs went without schooling or medical care. They were under a lifetime bond to work the lord’s land — or the monastery’s land — without pay, to repair the lord’s houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand. [17] Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners lease them out to work in a distant location. [18]

              As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no responsibility for the serf’s maintenance and no direct interest in his or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their masters, guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could neither organize nor strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a market context. The overlords had the best of both worlds.

              One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: “Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished”; they “were just slaves without rights.” [19] Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a “liberation.” He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord’s men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he claimed. [20]

              The serfs were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. They were taxed for religious festivals and for public dancing and drumming, for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being cast into slavery. [21]

              The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.

              -Dr. Michael Parenti

              Great Leap Forward

              China successfully doubled life expectancy and rapidly developed.

              Falun Gong

              As for the Falun Gong, they are a cult akin to Scientology, not an ethnicity, and the PRC isn’t killing them en masse, just repressing it as an anti-communist and western-funded cult. Same as the idea of Uyghur genocide, atrocity propaganda akin to claiming that there’s “white genocide” in South Africa, Christian genocide in Nigeria, or that Hamas sexually assaulted babies in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

              Tian’anmen

              Of the few hundred people that died in the riots and fighting, the square was dispersed peacefully. The truth about Tian’anmen is that hundreds of protestors and PLA officers were killed in Beijing that day as the PLA advanced towards the square, but that the square itself was evacuated peacefully, which matches leaked US cables and the CPC’s official stance on what it calls the “June 4th incident”. This is a rejection of the commonly reported story of 10,000 people being killed on the square itself, which originated from a British diplomat’s cable. Said diplomat was later confirmed to have evacuated well before.

              Western nations intentionally sensationalize the quantity of deaths and the character of the events. This is also why Western Nations don’t frequently report on the South Korean Gwang-Ju massacre that occured around the same era, where the South Korean millitary murdered thousands of High School and College students protesting against Chun Do-Hwan’s dictatorship. All of what I said is backed up by the Wikipedia page for Tian’anmen Square Protests and Massacre, such as Alan Donald revising his estimate from 10,000 to the low thousands yet BBC continuing to report the 10,000 figure:

              In a disputed cable sent in the aftermath of the events at Tiananmen, British Ambassador Alan Donald initially claimed, based on information from a “good friend” in the State Council of China, that a minimum of 10,000 civilians died,[237] claims which were repeated in a speech by Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke,[238] but which is an estimated number much higher than other sources provided.[239][240] After the declassification, former student protest leader Feng Congde pointed out that Donald later revised his estimate to 2,700–3,400 deaths.

            • m532@lemmy.ml
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              2 hours ago

              Increasing life expectancy ??? ??? Yankee attack Slave liberation Slaver oppression Anti-yankee-terror campaign Adrian Zenz ??? Outlawing of dangerous cia-backed cult Increasing life expectancy British colonist whining ??? ??? Projection

              Now try this for usa&lackeys: genocide in america, genocide in palestine

              Counter those, I dare you

  • pineapple@lemmy.ml
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    21 minutes ago

    Waiting for Liberals to actually have a thought out response to the excellent resources the MLs of this community provide.