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!

  • NephewAlphaBravo [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    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:

      • Bnova [he/him]
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        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Well you know, the CPC doesn't want libs on their internet.

      • kristina [she/her]
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        edit-2
        1 year ago

        but chapo.chat is not :thinkin-lenin: it seems CPC did not approve of the name

        • wopazoo [he/him]
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          edit-2
          1 year ago

          probably because it's routed through cloudflare, i think hexbear is too obscure to even end up on the radar of government censors

          • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
            ·
            1 year ago

            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

            • Retrosound [none/use name]
              ·
              1 year ago

              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.

      • marderbot [none/use name]
        hexagon
        ·
        1 year ago

        I didn't know, what are you implying? Seeing that hexbear seems pretty communist and pro-china and etc.

    • marderbot [none/use name]
      hexagon
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      edit-2
      1 year ago

      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?

      • Vampire [any]
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        1 year ago

        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".

      • aaro [they/them, she/her]
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        1 year ago

        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".

        • NephewAlphaBravo [he/him]
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          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Thanks for putting in the effort I was too lazy to, I appreciate it :order-of-lenin:

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        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?