Title, I'm a leftist but after reading some things on lemmygrad and here it seems I might have been lied to all my life. I have talked with some people from Cuba and Venezuela (expats) that support the west narrative about poverty and mismanagement. I "believe" that Russia is attacking Ukraine for selfish reasons and that China censors access to foreign information using the Great Firewall, please prove me wrong. Furthermore, it ultimately depends who do you want to believe or there are hard facts from reputable sources that are simply a hidden by the mass media?
EDIT: Thanks everyone for your very civil responses. I'll answer as many as I can!
Respectfully, if you’ve just gotten to the point where you’re recognizing that you may have been lied to all your life by US/western media, then you’re kinda throwing yourself into the deep end here asking for sources for any specific event/issue/policy.
This kind of propaganda is meant to seep into the psyche and once its done that it’s incredibly hard to exorcise.
In lieu of providing some sort of internet content to consume, I suggest starting with a simple thought experiment. Ask yourself: do I firmly believe that other people, anywhere in the world, are just as complicated and imperfect as me?
This might seem extremely obtuse but I believe that a lot of this stuff is a journey within. Especially since I noticed a comment of yours suggesting people might be “brainwashed”. If I simply told you “stop swallowing western propaganda” you wouldn’t listen bc you don’t want to feel foolish. The fact of the matter is that material conditions shape the lives of the people in their specific time and place. Whether something is good or bad or “selfish” etc is up to you. However, the main theme here is left unity. What isn’t up to you is solidarity, that includes AES. It’s called “critical” support for a reason. Nothing is above reproach and nowhere is perfect.
Since a lot of people have answered your questions, I'd like to comment on a related topic. An important thing to understand about ideology is that it is often invisible to the people it influences. If somebody tells you they are nonideological, in all likelihood the extreme opposite is true. Ideology can be best characterized as the biases, presuppositions, and assumptions we take for granted without question. Common examples being American exceptionalism and American innocence. When broad swaths of news media and academia frame every issue as if capitalism were a natural, invisible force - for instance that homelessness is an issue of individual failings and not of massive privatization and enclosure - this is ideology at work.
There are countless publications about the enemies of the US empire which are written with malicious intent, but there are many more which are driven by ideology. Take the Great Firewall for instance. Many assumed the purpose was censorship. Indeed, it is used to censor some things, but because of this ideological framing, nobody was able to perceive it's even more important role as a matter of industrial policy. By prohibiting Western social media and tech firms from operating within China*, they have established their own domestic tech industry, the only one in the world which can hold a candle to Silicon Valley. And now they don't need to worry about these Silicon Valley firms, which are firmly under the thumb of the US intelligence and military aparratus, being weaponized to cause instability in their country.
*
More acurrately, they could have operated there, but those operations would have to be domiciled in China and follow Chinese law. The Western firms wanted to be able to operate from overseas with impunity, and the Chinese government was like lol no.
real talk, thanks. RE great firewall, and censorship in general. What happens if I, a chinese citizen (supposing) stand on a street corner and start calling for the voting out of the leaders? Is that tolerated? Ot for example, in Russia. If I stand on the street corner and call for Putin's removal. What happens to me? The one thing I hate, is being told what to say, what not to say. I'm a real pig-headed jerk that way. I get the rather strong sense that there is little tolerance for dissent in some of these countries. I am not saying the USA is much better, we seem always to stand but a hares breath from the void.
Local politics is very vibrant in China, at one point I translated and covered a protest group in Yunnan that demanded the demolition of botched capitalist housing projects in favor of low income housing in Kunming, and they succeeded in their demands and replaced the people in charge of the decision. Those demolitions were all over Western media as a sign of China failing, but in reality it was a sign of democracy in action and the failures of the capitalist class in China and the support of government action
I'm too lazy to search my own posts tho
Are you calling directly for the death of the leaders or are you calling for them to be replaced by election? The former is considered to be a crime in pretty much every country, with varying degrees of enforcement based mostly on local police tolerance, not federal policy, the latter is not.
For groups of protestors, both the U.S. and Russia have been pretty liberal in their cracking down on group protests and prosecuting those viewed in 'leadership' positions be they community organizers or trained protest medics, while the Chinese have been pretty good about not physically cracking down on protests unless they begin to physically threaten private property concerns (generally if because they are on-site of a business). That being said though, the Chinese do this weird thing where after a protest occurs, they send federal cadre members into the area to figure out what caused the break-down in law and order and then force through policy changes. For example, about a year and a half ago, there was a large on-site protest that was beaten down by police in Donguang because manufacturers had reneged on an advertised promise for double pay for workers, which was used to convince them to join the company. Although the protest was beaten down, there were no prosecutions, and cadre members came in and forced the business to hold to their original advertised contract with the workers on penalty of federal prosecution.
These systems are large and complicated with lots of actors with varying levels of agenda and commitments. Rarely are they as simple as the U.S. media loves to portray or pretend.
Are you calling directly for the death of the leaders or are you calling for them to be replaced by election?
Replaced by election, replaced fairly. In the case of Russia, I've heard those elections aren't fair, or transparent . For example, Putin in power for so long with huge voting polls in his favor, his opponents attacked and assassinated even. Another concern I have, given my connections with non-binary family members is little to no tolerance for gay people , for example. I'm more skeptical of Russia than I am of China, because I personally "feel" (through media reports) that the country is serious about making progress overall for its people, even though negative perceptions do make themselves known . Again, no argument from me that there are many in positions of power in the USA who are pushing for similar measures in the USA.
But who are these opponents and would they stand a chance in a 'free and fair election'? If you really look into why and who these people are, the reason Putin goes hard on them is because they are likely mostly shells propped up by American and British intelligence services. I'm not going to argue that it's the correct way to deal with them, but generally speaking it serves as a warning. Don't deal with Western intelligence services and we will leave you alone. The former communist party operates electorally unscathed, if unpopular, as do several further right-wing parties who have been incredibly critical of Putin's Ukriane invasion (in that they want even further commitment of troops), even other members of the liberal opposition operate unimpeded, as long as they aren't directly involved with the West. However, more problematic than that is that the oligarchs control the media, even the opposition media, so creating any kind of real change in status quo between worker and bourgeoisie is going to be an uphill slog.
I agree that Russia has huge problems with the arbitrary prosecution of gay and lgbt activists. However, members of the protest group Pussy Riot were given light sentences that, if they had done the same actions (namely having public sex in a church) in the U.S. they would not only face up to 20 years of prison, but also mandatory sex offender registration, and likely a lengthy probation. Both Russia and the U.S. are incredibly arbitrary in their prosecutions and laws around these social things.
Russia is not a country that I would personally want to live in. However, portraying it as some sort of backwards nation of despots and savages is incredibly inaccurate. They are an oligarchic capitalist nation with huge interests in promoting their local bourgeoisie at the expense of foreign capital interests.
Again, no argument from me that there are many in positions of power in the USA who are pushing for similar measures in the USA.
I don't want to be too overbearing on this, but the most standard radlib position is "I disavow the USA while believing 99% of what it says about its enemies through its media mouthpieces". When people point to the US being bad, it's not because they think you wouldn't "disavow" it but that your perception of enemies of the US are necessarily mediated by the US and its allies, who control the vast majority of media you have ever been exposed to if you've lived your life in their borders.
Fair enough. That's why when I'm getting into a discussion, I always like to ask what constitutes acceptable sources. It's a bit of a negotiation I guess, but better that than shouting over one another. I'm totally willing to be shown new realities, for example with Russia. I would love to be shown that the country is a pillar of human and worker rights, and that the stories I've heard are all media lies. So far though, even as I search, I haven't found that. I actually find the topic of sources to be altogether vexing, fascinating, frustrating and interesting. It really is the rub of it, in my opinion.
You've gotten pretty consistent feedback on Russia and it's not what you propose as a counterfactual there. The Putin and the party that backs him are rhetorically rightwing on a range of issues and in practice seem impressively unideological in favor of cold pragmatism, but because of their position in the world order, with the US continuing to menace Russia with NATO even after the dissolution of the USSR and the gutting of every member state's economy and welfare infrastructure, Putin has found himself in a place where what benefits him the most is to oppose western hegemony, and the best strategy for that is pursuing multipolarity. At the core, that's all it is, but the US can never say that, so it just lazily paints him as another Hitler to rally the west against him.
I think he's a mafioso and, if one of us was in a room with him and he thought it beneficial to kill us (unlikely but whatever), he would not even blink as he signals to his secret service that we are to be stabbed with a ricin pin or whatever. But that is not so, and he is just as ready to help other states that the US has also made an enemy out of, including socialist states.
You’ve gotten pretty consistent feedback on Russia and it’s not what you propose as a counterfactual there.
Sorry I don't understand.
What gives you the sense there is little tolerance? Were you seeing people arrested for the zero covid protests that ultimately led to the change in policy? Compared with huge uprisings in the US that led to no change and actually in some cases the opposite of what the protests were about (more funding for the police). Paired with the incredibly violent reaction by American police and legal retribution against protesters
I'll respond, but what sources are you ok with? I don't want to waste your time. For example, some people might not be ok with main stream sources such as the LA Times, NYT, etc. I totally get that and I don't want to source something if you're not ok with the source. Other sources are sometimes welcomed, for example, in the USA with regards to civil liberties, the ACLU, Human Rights Watch etc. If you can give me an idea of which sources you're ok with, I'll do my best to support my speculation. thanks
Whatever you like, obviously if it has shaky providence I'll call it out, but I'm not going to dismiss an entire outlet outright. I'm not going to claim there aren't cases of people being arrested for actions, but I struggle to think of a country where that doesn't happen and I'm China primarily I would argue they are done for the betterment of the population as a whole who supports the government by a very very large majority.
Russia today is a different story and not a country I'd stick up for like China
Great Firewall
I can't see the specific propaganda and CIA+tech sector fuckery that we're trying to use against China. I have, however, seen enough South and Central American coups and color revolutions to know that it's absolutely incessant, and that you can't half-ass your defenses against it.
Basically, China would know better than you or I what they need to do to defend themselves. Just fucking blotting it all out and building their own internet with blackjack and hookers is working out pretty well for them, apparently :shrug-outta-hecks:
but chapo.chat is not :thinkin-lenin: it seems CPC did not approve of the name
I'm kind of curious if this is because of our indecipherable shitposting, or because we're routed through Cloudfare.
probably because it's routed through cloudflare, i think hexbear is too obscure to even end up on the radar of government censors
We’ve probably at least come across the desk of some American fed, but there is no way that anyone in the Chinese government has ever heard of this website
The thing is, Hexbear didn't used to be blocked. It happened a couple of months ago. Someone had to make a decision and add it to the list.
I didn't know, what are you implying? Seeing that hexbear seems pretty communist and pro-china and etc.
I know and I'm against US sponsored coups and colour revolutions and I know the US isn't any saint. I also sure that China knows how to defend itself, however, is it defending it's people? or it's simply something similar to the US but in other part of the world?
their own internet with blackjack and hookers is working out pretty well for them
Love the Futurama reference, however, what would be "working out pretty well"? What are we measuring?
I know the US isn’t any saint.
This is the Westoid narrative: the US isn't perfect.
"Sure we toppled 20 democracies, backed 100 dictators, exterminated 30% of the population of North Korea, backed famines in Yemen, North Korea, Iran, supported war crimes in Israel, lock people in prison for profit, exterminated the Indians and Africans... but look, nobody is perfect, we're not angels. You have to overlook these little foibles, otherwise you'll get a regime like China, who do truly unforgivable, evil things like the Firewall".
I'm gonna go straight for your last point and address the "working out pretty well" bit - there's a really good Yellow Parenti clip (if you're a new lefty yellow parenti is a series of lectures from a famous and extremely rad Marxist academic named Michael Parenti) that talks about judging Marxist revolutions against why things aren't perfect the day after the revolution. Essentially, things like this take time and they're going to be messy.
China has a lot of reasons for implementing their Great Firewall: Outside propaganda attacks from adversaries, domestic capital-holders desiring to increase access to capitalist propaganda to steer state policy in a more capital friendly direction, radicalized individuals becoming more so because of maliciously crafted outside media, etc. Parenti's addressing this is "civil liberties for the fascists", which is a bit reductive, but "unfettered global access for everyone" falls in the same bucket: it's not something China is obligated to provide if it would adversely impact their ultimate goals of bringing quality of life to their people and increasing the dominance of socialism over capitalism.
Would it be nice? Yeah totally, I wish they could have what we do information-access wise. But the Chinese state believes that it would detrimentally impact their socialist project and I'm personally inclined to agree but they probably know their people better than I do anyways. Bringing it back to "working out pretty well", all we can judge them against is how well their socialist project is doing as a whole, and while there are a number of issues ranging from mild to serious, they have overseen a raise in life expectancy, literacy, health, education, access to quality medical care, and access to healthy nutrition that is basically unrivaled except by other socialist projects. Trying to judge this one policy in a vacuum would be hard even for native Chinese citizens, all I'm personally inclined to weigh in on is to say "Well, it looks like their chud brainworms per capita are a lot lower than ours so I guess it's going alright".
Thanks for putting in the effort I was too lazy to, I appreciate it :order-of-lenin:
or it’s simply something similar to the US but in other part of the world?
How many of the past 30 years has China spent at war?
Generally, you needn't be motivated to disbelieve every bad thing about every non-Western country to maintain some angels/devils narrative of the world.
I have talked with some people from Cuba and Venezuela (expats) that support the west narrative about poverty and mismanagement.
You should listen to people. People in Cuba and Venezuela are hurtin', no doubt. People experiencing poverty don't see the causes of it, oddly enough. Going through poverty doesn't give you insight into that part of the story.
Venezuela was definitely mismanaged, mostly by a lack of diversification outside of oil, and a lack of financial sustainability (blowing their money too quickly).
But I don't get how any of this rebuts the harmful effect of Yanquí sanctions. Problems usually have more than one cause.
I “believe” that Russia is attacking Ukraine for selfish reasons... please prove me wrong.
Russia is an ultra-capitalist regime, no need for leftists to defend it.
I “believe” that... China censors access to foreign information using the Great Firewall, please prove me wrong.
This is a tricky one. My friends in mainland China tell me they surf the web as they want, use VPNs as they want. It seems to be pretty commonly accepted there, like smoking weed in countries where that's illegal but everyone does it.
Russia is an ultra-capitalist regime, no need for leftists to defend it.
I’ve liked your other responses in this thread but if we can give critical support to Iran and Syria in their fight against imperialism, surely we can do the same for Russia, whose society is more progressive than the west’s on every single issue save LGBTQ+ rights (itself declining in the USA as we speak). Putin is basically a liberal opportunist battling NATO fascists. The situation isn’t perfect but situations rarely are.
My attitude towards the idea that Russia invaded Ukraine to defeat "imperialism" is basically summarised by this meme: https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/oJGsMk38SH.png
The EU censors Russia today and Sputnik, and the US government wants to ban TikTok. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. are tools for soft power and the management of public opinion. We know through the NSA leaks that the US security state is balls deep in all these companies and their operations, why would countries that the US is antagonistic towards and actively would like to overthrow the governments of allow those companies to operate freely in their territories? Social media platforms exist in China, but in a form that doesn't mean ceding control of public discourse to platforms owned by a hostile state (the US). I think the first step to thinking seriously about these problems is to get out of the implicit western-centric mindset that we are all conditioned into by our media and culture. The western media basically completely fails to offer accounts for why countries with antagonistic relationships to the US/EU make decisions. It encourages us to view politics through the simplistic lens of bad country does bad thing because they are bad. It does this for an obvious reason: it benefits those in power.
On the question of taking to Cuban and Venezuelan 'expats'. You have to bare in mind that these people are only representative of a certain section of their countries' populations, which is overwhelmingly speaking the very wealthy. This is also a problem with social media, is as much as the poorest sections of the populations of many countries just don't have an internet presence in anglophone world, and obviously that goes double for 'are able to live in the US/EU'. I can't speak to Venezuela because I don't know that much about it, but in the case of Cuba, the country is democratic in a deep manner that I think Americans and Europeans find hard to grasp because our experience of democracy is limited merely to the formal participation in elections every 4-5 years. For an example of how democracy functions in Cuba you could look at the recent passing of the 2022 Families Code, which entailed a mass democratic project relatively unimaginable in our bourgeois democracies and produced what is almost certainly the most progressive constitution in the world.
On the question of taking to Cuban and Venezuelan ‘expats’.
You might as well talk to New Yorkers who immigrated from middle America about their hometowns. Are you going to get a balanced viewpoint? Hell no, they'll tell you how horrible their old homes were and how right they were to leave. They'll even make up stuff: what, are you going to go there and check or something?
Meanwhile the people who live there like it very well and wouldn't move to New York City if you paid them.
Any durable worldview is a huge interconnected mesh of self reinforcing stories, notions, and vibes. One or two contra narratives is not going to shake a worldview constructed of (I presume) 2+ decades of constant work done by western media. The more directly antagonistic the contra narrative the more the instincts you’ve been instilled with will treat it with hostility and neutralize it.
I think you would be better served reading the academic praise for The Jakarta Method and consider giving it a read.
A smaller time commitment; read about Project Cybersyn and the coup in Chile. Read the Nixon tapes transcripts.
Those won’t prove wrong any of the things you asked above but if you earnestly want to test your worldview, start building that new mesh.
As one of the news mega sickos, I don't think anyone disputes that Russia is attacking Ukraine for 'selfish reasons' but that word does a lot of lifting here and of course is just sitting there without context.
After the fall of the Soviet Union NATO didn't disband although the organisation was initially formed to be a counter to the SU, in fact NATO actually expands by several countries and slowly inches closer and closer towards Russia, which isn't allowed to join so is very clearly the new target of the alliance. Putin shores up some neighboring countries because he doesn't Russia to border NATO, he makes that clear after George Bush talks about adding Georgia to NATO by attacking Ossetia. That is his red line.
2014 comes around and you have Euromaidan, Right Sector a nazi party are the biggest and most effective part of that whole thing, the former president who was somewhat agreeable with Putin is gone and a hardline anti-Russia president gets pushes through several policies targeted at ethnic russians. Luhansk and Donetsk declare themselves independent and a bloody civil war begins that Nazis use to form paramilitaries and gain more and more power. During the next 8 years there's constant conflict even though several attempts are made with Minsk I and Minsk II but they are not followed. Around the start of the War Putin is convinced that the USA wants to add Ukraine to NATO, the one red line he has, maybe he believes that the democrats want to get 'revenge' for Trump or that the USA has been working towards integrating Ukraine into NATO for quite some time who knows. But looking back after comments made by politicians like Angela Merkel saying that the Minsk agreement was made to buy Ukraine more time for this exact moment and how quickly the west was able to supply Ukraine with weapons and able to provide several logistics points nearby Ukraine for this whole thing. Putin seems to have been right.
After meandering back to the whole selfishness thing, Russia is selfish for going "I want security and I will kill for it" BUT I don't think it's unreasonable the USA and the west at large knew what they were doing this war largely is on them and the blood is on Zelensky, Boris Johnson and Bidens hands much more than Putin who at several points wanted to negotiate over and over again. And all of this is done to fucking sell some tanks, rockets and whatever other overpriced shit the USA is producing, again the 'aid' the USA has provided to Ukraine is around 110bn USD probably more since I havent' checked in a bit, that money could've solved world hunger for 3 years instead it goes to some CEO of Raytheon so he can buy another house.
If I punch you because you slowly approach me with your arms swinging that's on you and that's how I view this conflict in just one sentence.
Regarding the Euromaiden and Donbass stuff and the crucial role of fascist groups in them you can even find peer reviewd western academic analysis from before the war attesting to that
https://www.academia.edu/28203585/The_Far_Right_in_Ukraine_During_the_Euromaidan_and_the_War_in_Donbas
I hope every fascist on the Ukraine side kills every fascist on the Russian side and vice versa, preferably as simultaneously and instantly as possible :gigachad:
That's a really good metaphor, I'll need to research what you just wrote but it seems fair. The thing is that, if you read standard westerns sources they also seem fair, how to distinguish right from wrong?
Why would you uncritically believe the sources that riled up the public for the War on Terror? Why do they want you to care so much about the war in Ukraine vs any number of coups America has been involved in? Why did they all claim Russia blew up Nordstream with zero followup when it was uncovered that it was likely from the other side?
Get context, get ideological or tune out. There's not really a need to have position on everything as a leftist. I care about this because I've talked in person to Ukranians that have fled the war and have been devastated by it, I know quite a few ukranians and russians online as well so that's why I care more about it. On the other side I have almost no context on things going on in lets say south east asia so I'll let my ideology guide myself which is to side with pro-leftist stuff and being against american interests. If it's more complicated than that and I don't look at the context I don't think I should hold an opinion on it or speak on it.
It's very understandable to not be too into the comments of the news mega section but 72T does great updates during the week there which are very informative so you could check that out to get a bit more context overall.
Do those sources ever even mention Euromaidan? Or the eight year Civil War that followed and led directly knto the invasion?
In my experience, the latter is rare and the former (since the invasion) is unheard of.
I “believe” that Russia is attacking Ukraine for selfish reasons
Every country's major decision is made for some self-interested reason agreed to by its dominant political factions. This means nothing.
and that China censors access to foreign information using the Great Firewall
Trivially and ubiquitously bypassed with VPNs. China's firewall is not about limiting information, generally, because it just plain doesn't do that. Chinese people know what's going on at least as well as people outside of China. Instead, it is a form of protectionism to stimulate domestic development of (tech) industry. Every industrialized country did this in order to industrialize. Given the uneven development that was imposed on countries outside the rich Western club through centuries of colonialism and imperialism, this is a very good thing and it's working.
Furthermore, it ultimately depends who do you want to believe or there are hard facts from reputable sources that are simply a hidden by the mass media?
The first rule of propaganda is that it's about emphasis. What is the focus, how are events described in one context versus anotger, snd most importantly: why was this article written and not a different one about a different topic?
You mentioned the great firewall, which is an example of China's ruling class (its government, itself led by socialists) imposing a protectionist market control. It is always described as censorship even though if it were, it has always failed at its job. But what of the ruling class in the US? Does it censor? Of course! The ruling class of the US are the bourgeoisie, the people who own and control business, and they don't even need to use the goverment for most of their own censorship. They own the media companies. They decide who gets hired and who does not, starting with the editors. They even make editorial decisions, though this is rarely reported. Is that censorship widely reported on? Does it even get described as censorship? Why does a host of petty dictatorships hiring and firing to bolster a political bent not called censorship? Well, who would tell you? The papers aren't going to do that, even if journalists wanted to. They don't even do media criticism in the first place. Their goal is to make money, not inform. That decision got made by the editors early in: no, journalist, you can't write about the censorship of this and other papers: (1) it's just normal goid editorial decision-making, (2) it will make us look bad, and (3) it will take too much time and money and won't sell papers.
Whereas countries run by socialists, or even just social democrat nationalists, must use the state to achieve their ends, the bourgeoisue in a capitalist country can and use their own dictatorial powers in their businesses to get what they want, then use the government to protect and increase those powers, and rally together to normalize these dictatorships as the exact opposite thing: just private individuals being free.
There is a lot more to media criticism, how economic forces work and impact everything else, history, and dominant bullshit narratives, but they kind of need to be explored piece by piece. Sometimes it is about certain sources being full of shit and just straight-up non-factual (e.g., Radio Free Asia), but more often it's much more subtle, like depending heavily on the reader not knowing history or geopolitics so that uncritically repeating a statement from the US State Department like it's just a fact.
Tbh getting around the firewall is trivial for many people, but it's hard for old people who are susceptible to insane boomer propaganda. Id rather my boomers listen to communist propaganda all day rather than listen to how they need to kill the local trans person down the street all day
In my experience the old people watched TV and read newspapers anyways.
Haven't been on Facebook for nearly 10 years and have only seen Facebook cringe posts on Reddit. However, I think that having access to any and all information is important (even if it's false), if someone decides what is the "truth" and bans the rest, how can you fact-check and choose what to believe?
Hundreds of millions of Chinese people access YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, FB, Wikipedia etc every day. No one gives a shit, not even the government. The point of the bans were
A. Legal. FB, Twitter etc weren't arbitrarily banned but they failed to meet a d follow domestic Chinese regulations regarding data collection and algorithms. PRC demands that you have to store your data of Chinese users IN China if you want to operate in china and you share your algorithms with the Chinese government. FB, Reddit etc didn't agree to that and so they can't operate legally on China. Hardly dystopian and a logical move to say the least. Obvious requirements Especially since they are in a new cold War against the US initiated by the US .
2.To cultivate domestic social media and information hegemony and sphere. Having Western social media freely operate on your soil means the convo and information war is de facto dominated by the Western dominated and led information and propaganda campaigns and narratives in social media. Hell even for random countries that aren't even designated US enemies we have seen just FB playing a big role in creating and spreading narratives and propaganda that determined elections. Not allowing FB, reddit etc in in a time where Chinese social media and online communities were still shaping up allowed China to create just as good or better domestic equivalent and have a sovereign internet, news and information sphere. No matter how influenced by domestic state propaganda it's undeniably much better than the alternative. And there was only one alternative. Chinese people getting their brains rotten by the hundreds of millions by FB etc and the West going 1000% all in to push anti-prc news and narratives that target them. There wasn't some magic secret third alternative of free non Western non state influenced billion people online environment
China heavily censors Weibo, too. Remember that train crash? And everyone was sharing the truth on Weibo, the official narrative was clearly lies, and then the director of the rail bureau said something like, "I don't care whether you believe it or not, I believe it" and was widely ridiculed for lying again? Yeah, they learned a lot from that. That will never be allowed to happen again, the Party's honesty being shown in a bad light like that.
guy got fired btw, when similar happened here stock prices went up and all was ignored
He wasn't fired, he was transferred to Poland to be the rail attache there.
I understand that if a company doesn't comply with reasonable regulations they can/should be banned. However, I'm not sure if asking for the algorithms is reasonable due to it being part of their competitive advantage (or so they would say).
I don't see the need of domestic social media, why not a global one? Why do you need a sovereign internet? If FB and other companies brain rot with lies, why can't other parties show the truth?
I don't think nationalism is good, taken to the extreme you will only care about your closest family and see everyone one else as enemies.
Every country should set up domestic sites to protect themselves from US surveillance.
I extrapolated from this, if what you want is non-US, why not create a neutral one insted of a hundred per-nation ones?
The marketplace of ideas is fake. Debate doesn't work. People either leave on the side they came in with or go with the side they hear the most. Letting cognitohazards just float about consumes the time of good people to fight, and the brains of everyone else to consider. There is no upside to having garbage everywhere.
Are you asking me if it is fascism to not waste time hearing out fascists?
Debate doesn’t work. People either leave on the side they came in with or go with the side they hear the most.
That sounds like “don’t think and don’t hear anyone else”
I don’t see the need of domestic social media, why not a global one?
People have mentioned restricting western ideology and propaganda, but imo the more important reason for this is money. The PRC doesn't want all the potential money in tech and social media to fly across the globe to California. "Global" social media are nearly exclusively based in the US.
Why should anyone in the left sympathize with American companies' competitive advantages?
However, I think that having access to any and all information is important (even if it’s false)
Why is having access to false information important? False information can only cause harm. When scientists publish studies that are wrong (like the doctor that claimed vaccines cause autism), they get censored because it's not good to have false information out there that can be interpreted as true
This is similar to the argument that everybody deserves free speech but that just means letting Nazis and fascists spread their hate which can only cause harm
if someone decides what is the “truth” and bans the rest, how can you fact-check and choose what to believe?
That's not the reason why foreign websites are banned. There's another comment that already explains this nicely
Why is having access to false information important?
What I mean, is that if you can't fact-check and hear different versions it's difficult to know what is true. I understand science censorship of false things but it isn't as clear cut in ideology and politics, or you can say 100% you are in the true and everything else is wrong and should be banned? Who decides what is true in things outside of science?
In terms of ideology and politics that China censors, it's fascism and other related ideologies and politics that aim to harm the working class people for their own benefit
Sure, there's no mathematic formula to say fascism is bad but why would you give fascists the ability to spread whatever they want to spread?
This applies to all parties that mean harm including America, Europe, and all the other Anglo countries that have colonized the entire world, bombed countries to dust, sanctioned people to starvation. couped governments for natural resource access, ruined economies for their own companies, etc. etc.
You should probably read more philosophy and politics if you question that fascism might not be bad and deserves free speech. No coming at you. Just genuine advice
In terms of ideology and politics that China censors, it’s fascism and other related ideologies and politics that aim to harm the working class people for their own benefit
Chinese call their censorship red, yellow and black. Black is crime, criminal activity, mafia, that sort of thing. Yellow is porn, in China yellow is the color of sex, in the way we used to say "blue movies" for porn back when it was shown in movie theaters. No T&A, and if you even show cleavage (of T or A) it gets censored. Red is anti-Party activity, organizing against the State, Falun Gong, Eastern Lightning, that sort of thing.
No T&A, and if you even show cleavage (of T or A) it gets censored.
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In terms of ideology and politics that China censors, it’s fascism and other related ideologies and politics that aim to harm the working class people for their own benefit
They would probably answer with a similar argument but saying that they are capitalist not fascist and that it's communism that does all that, who do you believe? they are saying the same thing but changing the suspect. Does China allow Anarchist ideologies? or that also goes against the working class?
You should probably read more philosophy and politics if you question that fascism might not be bad and deserves free speech. No coming at you. Just genuine advice
Hate speech and fascism shouldn't be allowed, you can't be tolerant with the intolerants because they will use that tolerance against you.
Funny thing about this question is that Marxism seeks to be scientific to the point that it's really the basic foundation of the ideology. Marx was at the forefront of what would be called sociology today along with his pioneering economic and historical theories. Determining what is true and pushing the boundaries of where we can say that there is predictable truth is vital to Marxism.
So if you think that there is such a thing as misinformation on psychology and not merely physics and chemistry and math, then the Marxist contends that we should continue to make a science out of as much as we can, being careful not to declare something a "science" that is not adequately developed but also not shying away from considering a category of event in the physical world something that can potentially be analyzed scientifically.
A favorite example of mine is that somewhere in the preambles of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Engels goes on a tangent about science and the evolution of paradigms over time. During his own age, life was often considered to be founded on what would later be coined Elan Vital ("vital impetus" or "vital force"), such that the presence or absence of this nearly-unquantifiable thing was what separated a living body from a fresh corpse. Engels rejected this notion and claimed -- as some scientists and philosophers certainly did at the time -- that there is no evidence for living organisms having in them anything that isn't irreducible to physical phenomena (setting aside the body-mind problem, which is a slightly different domain). Because of this, he says that there is no reason to believe -- and great reason to think it virtually inevitable -- that people will be able to create living organisms whole-cloth out of non-living material in laboratories one day! Of course, he turned out to be right, but the clarity of reasoning to see that in the mid-19th century is very impressive to me.
No, it actually isn't. It is for us in the west because we are given things free of context and education. We are specifically feed disinformation propaganda all the time so we can't develop informed opinions on matters.
So yeah, I dunno. Maybe Iraq had nukes. They didn't, anyone with the context would know they couldn't, and the drumbeat of it only served to help Americans support the war and make the world worse. In every possible way simply preventing that from being as widespread would have been an improvement
You have 2 posts, one that says that imperialism is good and one that says it's bad. What do you do? This is the realistic situation in most socialist experiments, and that's why most have implemented forms of censorship. The US puts astonishing levels of propaganda out to wealthy/petty bourgeois in anti or non-US-aligned countries to convince people to do a counterrevolution and invite US imperialism. If you want to protect your people from this destructive force, you censor and inform about the censored info. This is what China does.
I'm just going to ignore your request of sources tbh, because you've likely just never investigated the resources that claim otherwise. Try to prove to yourself that your position is right first. If i come across mean, it's only because I'm not very excited to deal with educating on basic points for redditors that recently left and decided to try this place. Want more people always, but just not excited for this process and this exact question coming up 100 times this coming month
you censor and inform about the censored info
Do you mean that the chinese government tells people what they have censored? how?
If i come across mean
No worries about that, I totally understand your reasons, I'll document myself looking around
I mean generally inform about the imperialism and the need for the great firewall. People there aren't dumb, they've seen the color revolutions around the world and even within China attempted. I'd prefer if my state censored books that support racism and imperialism, but they won't because they tacitly support it
Access to what information? What do Chinese people, in China, not know or understand? Have you asked them?
There is another force at work that is at least as important: the largesse of different media sources. The idea of sampling varied information and making an informed position is nice, but are you really going to be able to practically do that when 90-100% of the sources you will ever see are massively biased and themselves working with and communicating very little verifiable fact? Despite its pretenses, news media tends to uncritically repeat narratives favorable to those with power over them and their society and simply cannot verify the claims even if they wanted to - or would need to spend 10X more time per article.
I'll describe another angle: pick a topic concerning a foreign power that the US powers that be don't like. Take a sampling of articles about the same event in that topic. Now, check the sources. Which government officials are cited? Is it all of the equally relevant counties? Are the officials from the "bad" countries treated with the same skepticism and language as those from "good" countries? Who else is cited? Are they anonymous? What reason do you have to believe those anonymous sources? Does the paper have a track record of uncriticalky repeating US intelligence personnel to get a "scoop"? Are any people from think tanks cited? Why were those think tanks contacted and not others? Why is the Cato Institite cited so often, or The American Foundation for Eagles and Freedom and Democracy and You Losing Your Pension? Who is on the board of the think tanks cited and what is the history of that think tank? Where does it gets its money? Were think tanks from "bad" country cited? Was there any skeptical investigation by the journalist at all? Did the article do any research at all or is it just a rewriting of someone else's article?
Lots of questions to investigate, but the answers will have a pattern: uncritical repetition of US State Department talking points, seeking informstion exclusively from right wing sources, and almost zero skepticism against "good" country sources and intense skepticism towards "bad" country sources.
So in that ecosystem of information, if you were to sample those articles and not be intensely critical of them, you'd almost certainly get misled. What value has been provided by the illusion of openness snd choice? A false sense of knowledge. And a huge pile of homework if you want to engage critically with the media.
Only wanted to say, WOW, thank you very much, you have given a very solid argument. thank you!
Gusanos aren't exactly reliable sources. You don't know why they left their countries (even if you think you do, you don't really). Many of them are just enamored with muh treats (see the old :so-true: defector in a supermarket!! BS) because of Western propaganda and don't have a real ideological reason for leaving.
I know a Cuban lady that unironically told me that her nannies raised her in a mansion and evil Castro took them away from her by exiling her family, and it was like losing her mothers. Unfun fact, those nannies were unpaid slaves because their husbands were employed by her family in some other facet and were a 'package deal' as she called it
I know a very nice gusano who goes back to visit family every year. But the best answer I've ever gotten out of them is "its different there"
I am a trans Czech whose grandma was a high ranking communist union member in Czechoslovakia (and was the first person in our family to support me) lmk what specifically you want to know about how that went if you want
China blocks foreign websites so that there will be a domestic solution created. And they're right to. Idk if you live in the US, but if you don't, seeing Google, Facebook, Apple just do whatever they like and not face any consequences really makes you remember you're the vassal here.
Different platforms in China have different rules, for example Andy Borham said a US official was dumb I think? And his post was removed on one platform because of that word, but the same post on another was not.
Social media is so popular that it's become increasingly important to develop domestic solutions. In Europe we need our own platforms too, far from US meddling. Like where did the anti vaxx movement come from in Europe?
Truthfully the firewall protects us more than it protects China lol, people love the Cpc over there, if they turned the wall off libs would not be ready for the bullying they would take when they say shit about China.
It's true that those big companies do nearly anything without much consequences. I don't really see the need for each nation to have domestic social media, what's the point? I think that something global would be better (global and not heavily tied with US or any other).
Regarding anti vaxx, I don't know where it came from and it's wrong but why would you censor it? Once you begin to censor, where exactly is the limit? On lies? Who decides what is truth?
Regarding anti vaxx, I don’t know where it came from and it’s wrong but why would you censor it? Once you begin to censor, where exactly is the limit? On lies? Who decides what is truth?
You say the above here. But...
Hate speech and fascism shouldn’t be allowed, you can’t be tolerant with the intolerants because they will use that tolerance against you.
You say this elsewhere in the thread. Why is it okay to not allow hate speech and fascism, but anti-vaxx should be allowed? Anti-vaxx rhetoric has made the world considerably more dangerous for everyone. Why does censoring that warrant a "where exactly is the limit?" from you, but hate speech and fascism does not? Personally, I would consider anti-vaxx rhetoric the same as eugenics. Its hate speech brought into real action. It advocates for the death of the disabled.
Not to mention some diseases and cancers are regional and have treatments that help certain social and geographic groups more than others. So not only is antivaxx ableist, it's also frequently racist and queerphobic
I'm assuming you're from the US or Canada, feel free to correct me.
The point of having domestic social media is to have sovereign solutions. Why should Europe be beholden to Facebook? is the better question. Facebook leaks personal data, brings it back to the US with their abysmal laws on privacy, runs unethical tests on their users (since they don't need an ethics board, as a private company). And we're just supposed to accept that?
It's too late for us now, the free market will never compete with Facebook, it's too engrained in our daily lives. But China had the right idea.
Regarding anti vaxx, I don’t know where it came from and it’s wrong but why would you censor it?
Because I don't want to die from COVID because some ignorant USians who have never gone through bio in high school start spreading their bullshit to my country.
Yes I do, I know that you need to have a job to have healthcare and that a lot of people are a payment away from being thrown out their houses, I'm not saying that the US is an example of anything.
I "know" about indian reserves but I know nothing about their conditions but I suppose they are allowed to leave. That fact about the sterilization, I have read something about it somewhere but it was not exactly vetoed by the government I think. I have checked some sources online like this one endhomelessness and it says around 600k, not millions, however it's a very big number nonetheless.
I’m not from the US, and honestly don’t get why you get personal. I get that indigenous people have been mistreated constantly but what would you do in that situation? I would leave any place with those conditions and try to get a better life. Good point regarding people in cars and RVs, do you have some data about how many?
I have talked with some people from Cuba and Venezuela (expats) that support the west narrative about poverty and mismanagement.
Expats from LatAm to the West is a very biased sample that tends to be massively biased towards people that have more affluent backgrounds, identify with privileged racial and ethnic identities, and already idolized rich Western countries, often to a self-hating degree. You'll have the exact opposite impression if you visit those countries and speak to theb people there.
Their idolatry of the rich West usually makes this pretty easy to identify because they will eventually say things that align with sociopathic right wing American talking points. Let's say you're talking about economic conditions in their country of origin. If it's in the context of blaming the leftish government, they will describe them in the most extreme terms and try to get you to empathize with their own personal plight as some business owner or privileged college kid. If you point out the US' primary role in creating those conditions, e.g. via sanctions, they will eventually justify those sanctions, even saying their country deserved it, showing that their empathy doesn't extend much past their own socioeconomic background. This contradiction is fundamental to US propaganda, the way it vilified designated enemy countries (where being an enemy can be as simple as nationalizing your own country's resources). Those countries must be made deserving of violence, you can't just tell Americans that you're imposing poverty on a country because it means the US won't be able to extract as much value from it and your tool of choice is economic terrorism, all part of a coup attempt.
So, to be deserving, there needs to be a media campaign about how bad the country's government is, and false pretenses about what sanctions do. There is an entire lexicon used almost exclusively for designated enemies' governments, even a dedicated writing style, and it's consistently employed by US government institutions and their helpful sycophantic journalists employed by newspapers whose owners always see value in aligning with the pro-US position. The enemy government mustn't be called a government, it's a regime. Its popularity in the country cannot be mentioned, this would conflict with calling it authoritarian or totalitarian. The leader(s) must be depicted as power-hungry dictators at all times. If term limits are removed in a "bad" country and he leader is repeatedly elected, this is automatically because the leader is just extending their own rule. When a "good" country, like Germany, elected Angela Nerkel fir a much longer time, this isn't even described in negative terms, it's ignored. When a different leader is elected but is still of the leftish government, the idea of democracy must still be undermined - oh they're just a "hand-picked successor". Note that Biden does not get this label. But even with independent observers showing the transition from Chavez to Maduro was highly democratic and legitimate, that's how he's described.
All of this language serves a single purpose: to villify a country so that it is deserving of the violence the US wants to impose on it to achieve "regime change". It is applied in an incredibly biased way and is usually targeted at Americans so that they don't push back too much when the violence starts. Unilaterally-imposed sanctiobs against everyday civilians, depriving them of foid, shelter, medicine, stability. Coup attempts on the government, forcing it to take more defensive posturing. Funding of the opposition and right wing media to build up domestic terrorism, up to and including death squads. The unluckiest "enemies" will be bombed and possibly occupied. They must be made deserving, otherwise Americans would need to confront the evil they consistently support.
The people you've spoken to are almost certainly extremely gullible towards these narratives and have a self-serving means to rationalize their own decisions, which usually amount to a very simple thing: they idoluzed the rich West and wanted more money.
There was this documentary on Cuba on Netflix that one of my housemates (whose family was Cuban) wanted to watch. We watched it. It was basically a white dude from the US going to Cuba, pointing at the lack of food and endemic poverty and going, "Muy malo, verdad?" Literally at no point in the nearly 2 hour documentary are sanctions and the military blockade brought up. I was fucking baffled.
That's what propoganda looks like.
This stuff kinda depresses me. Not the content, but realizing that to be an outspoken online socialist one has to basically keep a separate drive filled to the brim with dated and itemized news reports from everywhere in the West just to point out memory holing later down the line
yeah... and then the people just never reply anyway or get insulting because its sometimes to "different" or something..
:deeper-sadness:
Bookmark aswell and get started ...
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