Eh, he visited the USSR during the Cold War and had kind words for Cuba at a critical point in last year's primary. Calling him anticommunist is an oversimplification.
There seem to be a few recognizable trends in his foreign policy:
- Not toeing the hardcore anticommunist line that's the default position among mainstream Democrats
- Avoiding foreign policy stances that would put him too far out the mainstream (he went to the USSR, but he wasn't calling their government cool and good)
- Criticizing the worst aspects of U.S. foreign policy
- Not viewing the U.S. in imperial terms
- Naively thinking the U.S. can intervene in a country without ulterior motives, or without almost certainly making things worse
I think it's a combination of liberal tendencies and over-optimism with some good takes and instincts mixed in, all filtered through the compromises you make to have a mainstream political career. A decent amount of people probably have this sort of incoherent mix of foreign policy opinions, so it's worth fleshing out a bit.
- Starting your post with "Eh" is a mental holdover from the cursed Reddit days. You're free now, comrade. You can stop.
- I agree with everything else.
Like I said, anticommunist in practice. Who cares about saying a few nice things in between calling them authoritarian and voting to oppose them
The "in practice" part doesn't mean much because, in practice, individual congresspeople have virtually zero control over the imperial machine. The immediate decisions are all made by the president, and it'd take some enormous political sea change to get enough congressional support to even cut the military's budget 10%.
Further, Bernie's views are no longer relevant. What might be relevant are views of a bunch of Bernie-friendly Americans that are variations on this same mixed bag. They definitely don't have any actual control over anything. It really doesn't serve us to simplify them down to "anticommunist," because it's not that one-dimensional, and we need to convince millions of those people to move left.
Banning all products from Xinjiang is targeted at harming the citizens of Xinjiang and worsening conditions to create unrest there.
Pay attention to the playbook. This is Cuba and Venezuela again. The goal is harming Xinjiang citizens and finded people that are agitated enough to create groups they can fund via NGOs and build whatever agitator groups they can there to lead to a colour revolution and produce propaganda internationally. The same play as always.
If they actually cared about Xinjiang citizens and believed that Xinjiang citizens were being harmed this would be a China-wide ban. It's targeted because they only want to affect that area and affecting the rest of China is of absolutely no benefit to them, just lost money for no goal.
They do not care about Xinjiang citizens and are actively harming them. They are just a weapon to be wielded.
The supreme court just ruled that forced labor in your supply chain is okie-dokie as long as you pretend not to notice.
(Not even going into the mass forced labor in the US prison system.)
The supreme court will never ban or punish US prison slavery because it's explicitly constitutional lol :amerikkka:
IIRC the products of US prison labor are mainly used for domestic needs (don't quote me on that though)
Looked around a bit, funnily enough this Xinjiang stuff is the first thing that pops up :curious-marx: , but I found this article:
This might produce some funny court cases.
"Mr Kapital, you've built a factory in one of the SLAVE CAMPS of Xinjiang where 5 gobillion Uighurs are nuked every day, we sentence you to—"
"Uh Actually I didn't know the factory was there"
"Oh. OK."
That was fucking hilariously enraging to see, by the way. Half of lib Reddit was jacking off and singing in the streets about how great the first ruling that day was
Then you flip to controversial sort and see the 8-1 second ruling in favor of chattel slavery being fine in your supply chain
The thing that convinces me that there isn't slave labour in Xinjiang is that if there was, America would want to profit off of it, not ban it's products
BREAKING NEWS: CHINA TO RELOCATE ALL US-BOUND MANUFACTURING TO XINJIANG
:xi-god-emperor:
Redraw provincial borders so that a 5cm sliver of land is given to Xinjiang around ever port and airport.
No American consumers should be inadvertently purchasing products from slave labor
:side-eye-1: :side-eye-2:
inadvertently
Corporations are doing it knowingly and with diabolical glee, so. Mission accomplished I guess.
The US will continue to lose the shit out of this attempted trade war and I am here for it
Biden is trying to do a woke trade war and is somehow failing even harder than Trump.
"a Climate" crisis , like its a Temporary thing ... lol.... <--- Me drowning in the sea
Maybe that's actually a part of the strategy: stop doing business that would provide them with a normal lifestyle so they're more desperate and inclined to radicalize and do violence & terrorism to people in China?
gosh if the USA cares so much you'd think they would ban all Chinese imports
:deng-cowboy:
I know right? This is pure virtue signalling, the only thing Xinjiang exports is cotton and its not like America have any substantial textile industry or something. Meanwhile the rest of China still can exports all sort of bullshit consumer products Americans crave so much, while the US gov can pretends like they're being tough to China.
In china they say we Americans have no style. Wait till they see what happens when cloths get even cheaper because of the decreased price of high quality cotton.
Even the poorest people in the smallest villages that proverty alleviation hasn't got to yet will be lost in the sauce. While we gonna be sitting here all 土 lacking even the slight bit of drip.
wonder if an importer could get this overturned in SC because of the Nestle labor precedent, that'd be quite the contradiction
noting the House approved a similar measure nearly unanimously last year
:vote:
Also... God I would love to see the US try to prove in a court of law that slave labor is being employed in Xinjiang...
They cannot. Appart from the obvious reaons of it not existin'.
Creating a real international precodent about slave labor would hit us, our prisions, and our corporations way harder than anyone else
What court? What law even? I hate the assumption that some ghoul in a clown robe is somehow more capable then some other ghoul in a suit. By the time we even get together to make an independent and fair international tribunal they'd have to prove the US is even a legitimate state to begin with.
US really lashing out as they get overtaken these days.
The govt is looking towards the long-term trying to shut China down, but we all know the US govt is a slave to capital, and China is playing the capitalists like a fiddle.
It's a masterpiece in anti-american anti-imperialism.