If you have taken western media's word for literally anything regarding China, then yes, you have absolutely, 100% been spoonfed imperialist lies. Western media is inherently tied to furthering western imperialist interests. It doesn't mean literally every single thing they say is a blatant lie, but it does mean that they will twist anything and everything they can in order to convince as many people as possible that "we are the good guys, they are the bad guys!" Even truths are so obscured and misrepresented that they may as well be falsehoods.

If you want to hone your sense of whether or not the media is lying to you, grab yourself a copy of Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti (or just read it here ), a book which you may have seen spoken about in your time on Hexbear. It's a relatively short book which will give you plenty of straightforward examples of the way that western media twists facts to serve their interests.

Or you can get the turbo short version and just read the infamous Parenti quote:

“During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.”

edit just to say: if you've bought the media line on China, you've been misled a hundred times more egregiously about North Korea

New site tagline right here:

when you think of NATO as a group of the world’s biggest governments jerking eachother off, it does start to turn some gears in my head

• AverageBernieZoomer

To understand Zelensky you have to understand imperialism. Imperialism in the age of capitalism is a process that happens naturally over time, as monopolies tend to form (big fish eat small fish) and new markets need to be found to keep the GDP growing.

The biggest imperial power in the 21st century is without a doubt the USA. It makes sense as they are the most advanced capitalist nation (I mean not technologically, but overall in their processes of doing capitalism). After WW2, they were left untouched and Europe needed rebuilding. With the Marshall Plan, the US lended money to European states with which they could only buy US-made goods. They also established the petrodollar: any transaction done to purchase oil has to be done in USD. This makes the currency strong and, moreover, needed all over the world (States need to keep a supply of USD).

Later they also established the IMF and the World Bank. These two international financial bodies essentially just exist to keep "developing" countries (ex-colonies) subservient, as a source of cheap goods and labour.

If the US decided to suddenly be nice and stop fucking up the world, billionaires would lose their money. Capitalism would enter a recession that would turn global (because the US has their hands in everything). It's never gonna happen willingly. What I'm saying is there's very rational and logical explanations behind why the imperial core and the USA want to keep this system going. It's not in the best interest of 75% of the world's population, and China in fact has shown that an alternative model exists -- at least for the time being -- but this is the world we've inherited post-WW2... and shit, even before WW2 colonialism was setting up the stage for this imperial hegemon to exist.

Speaking of finding new markets and bringing the developing world under the governance of the imperial core... isn't that Russia today? A country where, after the US spent literally decades trying to destroy (for being a threat to their imperial privilege), life expectancy plummeted, homelessness reached literally unprecedented heights (since there was no homelessness in the USSR).

Doesn't this look like a good target to bring under your governance? The imperialists thought so too, and that's what they've hoping to accomplish ever since the USSR was established. When Putin was running for President actually (after they realised Yeltsin wasn't going anywhere, despite funding his campaign in 1991), Blair met with him a few times. They were hoping to make him into a comprador: he controls his country but he makes very, very nice packages to US and UK capitalists, like mineral concessions or natural resource exploitation. The imperial capitalists win, the Russian bourgeoisie kinda wins (not as much as if they were fully independent but who cares, they still make money), and the Russian proletariat? Who gives a fuck about them. What matters is getting that fucking dough back home to the US so we can line our pockets with it.

Except of course that didn't happen as we know.

That's where this ties in to Zelensky. Zelensky is a fucking clown, and I doubt Washington takes him seriously. But where he's interesting is that both the US and EU knew that there was a possibility to provoke Russia into attacking Ukraine. Shit even Merkel said that the Minsk I and II agreements were only made to buy time for Ukraine to build up an army.

And so what the imperial core couldn't achieve 30 years ago, they hoped to achieve by bringing Russia in a war that a- would exhaust them and b- would give justification for further exhaustion. Like the many (silly) sanctions as soon as the war began, as if the US had a whole PDF prepared on it. Like "Day 7: ban Russian cats from participating in cat shows" type of silliness.

That's the real reason you get so many feel-good stories about Zelensky. That's the reason he comes across as a guy that can do no wrong and is just the purest person ever alive. The Iraq War really showed that the media was just a mouthpiece for the government (the NYT famously heavily supported the war), and further leaked documents showed later that sometimes, the CIA or State Dept. would just write articles for freelance journalists, and tell them to sell the article to publications like the Guardian, the HuffPost, etc. under their own name.

Meanwhile Zelensky was elected after a fascist coup in 2014 (the Euromaidan thing) that was also engineered by the CIA. He continued the shelling of the Donbas ethnic Russians (another thing the imperial media doesn't want you to know, because nothing short of outright suicide for Zelensky is acceptable (hey, as long as we're morally bankrupt and glorifying a stooge that used to play piano with his dick on stage, let's go all out!).

And what did the war achieve for us, by the way? It's great. Incredible, even. War is the best thing that can happen if you're a capitalist. Now we're used to worse living conditions (gas and electricity costs, general inflation for basic items like food), wages are not going up with inflation, and this is gonna be our future for the next few years at least.

But keep supporting Zelensky or Putin wins. Stop asking for a better life and just accept whatever we give you, because it's primordial that we keep spending money on this war. It's primordial that more Ukrainians and more Russians die. We won't stop until we've acquired every last coin from your cold, dead hands. Because it's never enough.

And if your life is crap because of our policies? That's not our problem.

But don't worry about your life. What are you, some kind of egoist? You should be very concerned about what's happening in China right now instead. They have it worse than you, trust me. This is really bad. We need to liberate China and start World War 3. It's gonna be great for them, while I fuck off to the Bahamas with my savings and international investment portfolio that exists as nothing more than an Excel spreadsheet.