https://twitter.com/JoshuaPHilll/status/1759775949636407730?s=20

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    10 months ago

    The average westerner believes they have a higher quality of life than the average Chinese citizen, but that's slowly changing I think. I think the propaganda is getting more tenuous and more difficult to maintain by western countries. It's becoming blatantly obvious how developed China is.

    Also the USSR's threats were things like military defectors and brain drain. I haven't heard of any high profile instances of spies defecting to China or selling state secrets or whatever. If that started happening, I could maybe believe there's enough discontent among western proletariat to do something like demand concessions.

    • StellarTabi [none/use name]
      ·
      10 months ago

      The average westerner believes they have a higher quality of life than the average Chinese citizen, but that's slowly changing I think.

      restaurants cost 2x what they did earlier in my lifetime, rent probably 3x. I remember learning about career options in highschool that essentially stopped existing less than a decade later. I'm not that old. How fast is slow suppose to be?

      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
        ·
        10 months ago

        Racism is a powerful buffer to prevent anything good happening. Westerners need to go through a lot before admitting they're worse off than non-whites

        • nohaybanda [he/him]
          ·
          10 months ago

          In the gardeners’ minds better off and just better are the same. To admit they’re not doing as well materially as the Chinese would require dismantling white supremacy first.

          • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
            ·
            10 months ago

            I know you probably meant westerners but I want to imagine an evil group of racist gardeners stalking around

            • Leon_Grotsky [comrade/them]
              ·
              10 months ago

              Calling them gardeners is referencing this:

              After days of mounting international backlash, Josep Borrell, the European Union's outspoken foreign policy chief, has apologised for his controversial remarks in which he described Europe as an idyllic "garden" of prosperity and the rest of the world as mostly a "jungle."
              "Some have misinterpreted the metaphor as 'colonial Euro-centrism'," Borrell wrote in a blog post on Tuesday evening. "I am sorry if some have felt offended."
              But he did not reject the figure of speech and instead doubled down on it, arguing the term jungle is an apt illustration of the lawlessness and disorder that currently rule world politics.

    • RyanGosling [none/use name]
      ·
      10 months ago

      The CIA’s entire network in China was exposed a few years ago and all of their agents were executed or imprisoned. This was done by a supposed mole in the CIA. He confessed to everything, but the CIA had no evidence against him. He was convicted anyway.

      Brain drain is slowly happening. After the racist investigations against Chinese/Chinese American professors in the US that found no spies, China has been offering positions at Chinese universities and some people who joined said China offered more staff members and funding for research compared to the US. But again it’s not happening on an alarming scale.

      All of these things are too niche for the average American to care about, so it doesn’t have any affect on public perception of china. Yet anyway.

      • PeeOnYou [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        10 months ago

        this was due to a completely insecure online network that the CIA was running that was open like swiss cheese.. Iran, Russia, and China were all watching it and marking down operatives and cia human int networks before they rolled them up

        • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          Yeah I was going to say, I thought the spies in China got revealed because Iran gave them a list of names.

          • RyanGosling [none/use name]
            ·
            edit-2
            10 months ago

            It’s a combination of different things. The US admitted that Iran shared info with China and Russia after cracking their websites, but the case with China was much more severe. I think the supposed mole was a patsy, but I don’t think Iran caused it.

            The cause of the leak that killed the agents was disputed by investigators, with some believing a mole was responsible, others believed the CIA comms system was hacked.

            The CIA and FBI has and always will be racist. They usually suspect non-white agents of being the mole while ignoring white agents lol.

        • RyanGosling [none/use name]
          ·
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          I believe that’s a different situation, or at least it contributed to the CIA’s downfall in China but not entirely. The west reported on Iran helping China after that debacle, but it’s possible that the reporting was limited hangout.

          Admit that your spies have died and say because someone snitched or because Iran hacked your websites and helped China, but don’t admit that China had the capabilities to do it themselves or that your agency is compromised to maintain morale.

          https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/us/politics/jerry-lee-china-spying.html

          I’m leaning on the limited hangout theory because they had no evidence on the supposed mole even though he “admitted” to everything.

    • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      10 months ago

      I think you overestimate the willingness to consume bullshit of the average westerner. Any developments in China are likely to be dismissed as Potemkin villages, A lot of westerners would rather pretend the entire country was faked to trick them rather than admit that they're living better lives than us.

      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
        ·
        10 months ago

        if there's anything I believe about white Anglo westerners, it's how tightly they will grip onto racism as the last thing they'll give up.

        • Teekeeus
          ·
          edit-2
          2 months ago

          deleted by creator

        • SkingradGuard [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          10 months ago

          if there's anything I believe about white Anglo westerners, it's how tightly they will grip onto racism as the last thing they'll give up.

          I hate how right you are about this, it's so true and I see it all the time sadness

        • DragonBallZinn [he/him]
          ·
          10 months ago

          if there's anything I believe about white Anglo westerners, it's how tightly they will grip onto racism as the last thing they'll give up.

          This, Even many libs point out that racism is like the magic trick they need to turn the white proletariat back into their loyal lapdogs. I never really interacted with CHUDs as friends, but do white CHUDs see racism as like a security blanket? Like they're so insecure they're the inferiors so they need the government to help them to even keep them competitive?

          • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
            ·
            10 months ago

            I grew up in the south in a deeply racist white area, so I can speak about those types at least. They see racism as an intrinsic, intractable part of reality that governs every interaction. They don't see non-whites as full human beings and don't believe white people can have meaningful interactions with them. I don't think it's an inferiority complex at all, they're fully convinced every non-white is like bacteria and will destroy all of civilization.

            • DragonBallZinn [he/him]
              ·
              10 months ago

              That's...kind of what I feared.

              But that explains why I get the same reaction about not being racist in the same way vegans get for supporting animal rights.....they literally see us as livestock at best.

              • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
                ·
                edit-2
                10 months ago

                with the people I grew up around, they did use the term racist negatively, but they defined as something more like "saying slurs around non-whites." They only see as manners, which is why they'll deny being a racist if you ask them. They'll be polite to non-whites in day to day interactions, but they do not perceive poc as full human beings. They'll smile politely as they endorse genocidal policy.

                The white folk from my hometown are the worst racist scum on earth and a big reason for why I believe we'll need widespread re-education.