Welcome! Don’t let the ironic detachment fool you, this is one of the kindest and most well moderated places on the internet.

Be open to having your opinions challenged because if you’re from the anglosphere I promise you the propaganda and indoctrination run much deeper than you expect. No one challenging your views is doing so out of some desire to personally attack you. Feel free to report if that’s what it feels like because our mods are A1 best in the fediverse and they will attend to that shit. Most of us are just trying not to feel hopeless and powerless, especially those of us in the west. Sometimes that can manifest as vitriolic rhetoric but our mods are pretty good and catching and stamping that shit out.

We all believe that growth happens through struggle and we’ve all had to struggle a lot with each other and ourselves to arrive at the positions we carry. And do not mistake this for a hive mind because there’s actually a pretty wide range of beliefs here and we’re all the better for it.

And we all recognize that we are all fallible and so it’s ok to be wrong about things. We get stuff wrong all the time here. But often times the difference between correct and incorrect is not so much whether “X thing happened like this” vs “actually X thing happened like this” but “X thing happened like this” vs “I do not have the firsthand knowledge or resources to say how X thing happened or whether it’s happening at all”. This is especially true when it comes to current events. (Uyghur “genocide” being a great example of this)

Just keep an open mind and remember that the atomic unit of propaganda is NOT falsehood, it’s EMPHASIS.

And if that comment about Xinjiang is too spicy for you then DM me so I can set you up w/ my homie Mehmet. He’s no Authoritarian tankie totalitarian apologist and he can get you an incredible deal on some Iraqi WMD’s!

Oh and don’t clean the owl, we like them that way!

  • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]
    ·
    11 months ago

    Tbh idk if I agree with this approach we're doing of hitting everyone with our most controversial geopolitical takes as soon as they walk in the door. Like yeah that's part of what we're about, but there's so much more to us than that. Plus all that stuff is so far away, and we have so little influence over it, maybe we should focus on domestic issues where we might find more common ground.

    That's why my message to new users is this:

    If you harbor and abet a KKKat while allowing it outdoors to wage what can, by any reasonable standard, only be described as a campaign of stochastic terrorism against the indigenous bird population, then you will be second against the wall when the revolution comes.

    Second, because we will execute your cat first.

    This is not a joke. We never joke about outdoor cats here.

    • seawoowaes [comrade/them]
      ·
      11 months ago

      Based on how federation will work the news thread will show up on the front page of /all so having some sort of disclaimer included makes sense to me

      • LaBellaLotta [any]
        hexagon
        ·
        edit-2
        11 months ago

        Honestly I was hoping someone might have dropped some more Xinjiang info by now too because I do not have those resources on hand .

        I just find it so incredibly hard to take seriously the idea that the global community can get worked up into such a froth over something like this after the prolonged occupation and genocidal war of the Middle East conducted by the U.S. Of which the Iraq war is only one of the most recent installment. That fact and the fact of nuclear war as a possibility makes it obvious to me that even in the worst case scenario and something awful is being done by China, IT SHOULD NOT BE U.S. THAT DOES ANYTHING ABOUT IT. I mean fuck the Vietnamese stopped Pol Pot who knows what could happen.

        Being bordered with Tibet raises questions to me. There are open questions about the compatibility of Abrahamic religions with a communist society IMO. I would say each one contains positive, revolutionary traits, and negative, reactionary traits. How those things are approached is absolutely a crucial open question and one that was a major stumbling block for the U.S.S.R too in terms of maintains internal coherency. Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe the Chinese have been much more accepting of religious diversity and it has clearly helped in maintaining a more coherent and durable state.

        I don’t fucking know ultimately, it just smells like Taiwan and Tibet and Ukraine and myriad other state department conceived deliberate quagmires. I cannot in good conscience support the action of the U.S. military intervening in China because to me it spells the end of the fucking world. Sorry not sorry if that’s controversial to anyone reading.

        • blight [any]
          ·
          11 months ago

          [...] I just find it so incredibl[e] [...] the global community [...] conducted by the U.S.

          [...] nuclear war [...] is being done by China [...]

          [...] fuck the Vietnamese [...]

          [...] Pol Pot [...] knows what could happen [...]

          [...] I cannot in good conscience support [...] China [...]

          [...] China [...] spells the end of the fucking world [...]

          I can't believe you would say these things ooooooooooooooh

        • emizeko [they/them]
          ·
          11 months ago

          since you mentioned dropping Xinjiang info here's a p good summary

          https://redsails.org/the-xinjiang-atrocity-propaganda-blitz/

        • pooh [she/her, any]
          ·
          11 months ago

          Here’s another good resource on Xinjiang in addition to what emizeko linked: https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/xinjiang

        • terojo [he/him]
          ·
          11 months ago

          Makes sense to me. I think China will take some serious baiting to give the US what it wants in Asia (another (proxy) war). I don't think the US realises quite what democratic centralism means for it's ability to make this opponent act in a predictable way. Which is to say, I think we're safe from nuclear war for now, at least between China and the States.

      • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]
        ·
        11 months ago

        Fair, also that's gonna be wild, the first day of that is going create some incredible posting slop.

    • edge [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      11 months ago

      We gotta get that shit out the way ahead of time so we don’t have libs constantly whining about it because they didn’t all see it at once. I’d rather not have every news megathread filled with libs whining about “red fash authoritarian tankie rashist wumao genocide-denying Putin-loving vatniks”.

      • Nagarjuna [he/him]
        ·
        11 months ago

        When I was a lib, I'd have been on board with everything we say here except the foreign policy stuff. It was only because I respected the other stuff folks had to say that I ended up moving on foreign policy issues. The struggle sessions are part of the process of helping transform consciousness.

      • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]
        ·
        11 months ago

        There's going to be people whining about that regardless of what they see when.

        I think for most, or at least for a lot of people, our reputation precedes us in that regard and their imagination fills in the rest. I'd like to communicate that we're human beings with a sense of humor and self-awareness. When I meet new people, I'd like have a bit of "Hey, how's it going? How about this weather, huh?" rather than going straight into, "I'm not a genocide denier because the thing I deny isn't a genocide." And generally with negotiation/persuasion you want to table stuff like that at first and come around to it once you've established some rapport.

    • Apolonio
      ·
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      deleted by creator

      • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]
        ·
        11 months ago

        Partly I'm just setting up the bit. I do tend to prefer to let libs be the ones to bring up Xinjiang, just so it's clear the onus is on them to prove I should give a shit. I don't think we should censor ourselves, and ofc we're going to have those discussions, but personally I wouldn't bring it up in a welcome statement. Your point is valid, but it's not like it's Chinese nationals who are yelling about Uighurs, and I don't think there's anything wrong with saying that Westerners should focus on fixing our own shit and leave everyone else alone.

        • Apolonio
          ·
          edit-2
          6 months ago

          deleted by creator