God how true this is for all the America bad people
Lemmy has wayyyy to many people who can’t understand that America bad ≠ China good.
Yeah it’s annoying when any criticism of Occupied China results in them talking about America
Well given how Lemmy is mostly American ultra-leftwing it’s weird when they talk about changing China when they can’t even change their own neighbourhood, or even their own home.
Drag noticed something after the election: All the non voters say it’s not their fault, because Kamala is more to blame. They think blame is a limited resource. They think you can only blame either the DNC OR the voters, not both.
It’s the same as with China. They think if America is bad, then China has to be good. If there’s evidence of China being bad, the counterevidence is that America is worse.
Tankies think only one thing can be bad at a time. It’s the same with genocide, too. We can’t care about Ukraine and trans people and West Bank, because WhAt AbOuT gAzA.
The tankie mind only has room for one single bad thing in each subject. Only one bad genocide. Only one bad empire. Only one bad politician. They can’t conceive of two things being bad at the same time. It does not compute. When they say they understand two things being bad, they’re lying. They can only understand it in short term memory. They can’t internalise it and apply it to long term memory. Fifteen seconds after they admit two things can be bad, they forget it. It’s like clockwork. “America and China are both bad… 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15… China can’t be bad because America is bad! I’m not to blame for Trump’s win because Kamala ran a weak campaign! Gaza is the only genocide that matters!”
Gets it in one.
There’s a reason everyone is currently demonizing liberal ideology instead of standing up for the rights that the conservatives are working to strip away.
Liberal ideology is a regressive conservative ideology.
It was progressive three centuries ago. It’s not anymore, it’s outlived it’s usefulness.
Unfortunately tankies throw out the good parts of liberalism along with the bad, and endorse throwing people in gaol for wrongthink.
Idk man, I feel like a lot of us “America bad” people are from Europe and don’t support China or Russia either.
Yeah the problem isn’t “America bad”, it’s “America bad, therefore China/Russia good”
I’m Black; what reason I have to think the country that murders my people not only in the streets, but sometimes in their own beds, is a good force on the world? It is a very easy calculus for me:
“ain’t no Chinese, Cuban, or Russian that ever hard-r’d me. Plenty of Americans have. Ain’t no Chinese, Cuban, or Russian that ever side-eyed me for just walking down the street. Plenty of white Americans have. Ain’t no Chinese, Cuban, or Russian that ever held me at gunpoint unjustly, either. More than one sallow American pig has.”
If that meterstick was good enough for Muhammad Ali in reference to Vietnam, it’s good enough for me in reference to the people the white moderate claims should be my ‘enemies’.
That’s why I don’t support governments or countries, I support people and anarchist liberation movements :3
Exactly! I’m so tired of being accused of being a liberal and/or a fascist every single time I note that China or Russia isn’t some perfect leftist utopia, but in fact just another empire that is a pain in the ass not only to other countries but also their own citizens.
China is a fascist ethnostate, Russia is another neoliberal capitalist state, North Korea IMO cannot be described as socialist, Vietnam is pretty cool but mixed and only partially socialist, Cuba is not great tbh just in general, Venezuela is horrible, the Nordic states are just Social Democrat states, Israel has multiple worker co-ops but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re still a genocidal ethnostate, that just about covers all the tankie countries.
Israel is a tankie country now? Don’t they support Palestine? Let’s not rob tankies of their only correct opinion!
If you think China is fascist, you’re brainwashed. There isnt another explanation for thinking the most democratic nation currently on the planet is fascist.
It’s something that really bothers me about communism and socialism being derisive in the US, even in 2024, about 35 years after USSR fell.
The alternative to community-centric society is autocracy, typically devolving into monarchism.
Death to monarchists!
I mean “atheism” is still a dirty word in politics, thousands of years after the prejudice against that started. Apples to oranges, sure, but just goes to show how long it takes for public opinion to shift sometimes.
[LONG RAMBLE]
TLDR: Atheism wasn’t really regarded as a threat (other than the thing that USSR enforced) until the aughts and the New Atheism movement, at which point right-wing religious ministries turned from hating on other ministries to hating on atheists and secularists.
Atheism has some fascinating recent history. In the 1970s and 1980s atheists were disregarded almost entirely since it was an asserted position mostly by hard-line scientists and philosophers. Most of the none population instead went to (or at least associated with) left-wing churches. My parents (my Dad who is a rocket scientist and was atheist except in name) joined my mom and I at the Church of Religious Science (later the Science of Mind Church) which is pretty darned lax and easy to accept as religions go.
And the religious right (then, the Southern Baptist Church and the rising Evangelical movement) hated us and declared us false. They also did this to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (still regarded as a dangerous cult) and the Roman Catholic Church. John F. Kennedy got a lot of flack for being Catholic, and Republicans insisted he’d be beholden to the Holy See – and they tried to pressure him! – but he demonstrated he could serve the US as president and keep the Vatican at arm’s reach. Romney was still getting crap for his Mormonism in his 2012 presidential run, but it blended seamlessly into all sorts of other biographical anomalies that suggested character problems.
I should add there was a pro-religion sentiment in the US that was really anti-USSR. Marx recognized religion as the opiate of the people a symptom that the masses were suffering from precarity or scarcity, but Marx was saying the response of the community should be to feed them and keep them free of want, and as the dispair fades the need for religious practice will fade as well. (We’re not sure if he’s completely right.) So Lenin and Stalin’s response was to ban religion, which didn’t actually address the issue, but it gave the US justification to push church-going in the mid 20th century as a thing that pinko commies didn’t do.
Anyway, atheism became significant movement thing due to two factors. One was the new atheist movement which orbited Richard Dawkins and the top atheist guns. Dawkins motivation (as he tells it) was the 9/11 attacks, which showcased the power of religion as a force multiplier in violent conflict. But there was also a certain privilege that religious movements and religious institutions were given that secular ones were not, which was a favored topic of Douglas Adams. And so bringing atheist and secular organizations to equal status as churches was a big early goal of the new atheist movement.
The other factor bringing the rise of popular atheism was the rise of the internet which allowed us all to actually talk about things and confront that a lot of us already had awkward relationships with our respective religious institutions. Myself, this was a period for me to naturalism, ruling out supernatural elements until one comes and bites me on the butt. (This is the dream for IRL ghost hunters, to have a poltergeist beat them with their own duffel. Pain is temporary but evidence lives forever on the internet!)
That said the aughts marked the spread of atheism (and the consequential collapse of left-wing church attendance. Right wing church attendance has been falling less quickly but noticeably, and ministries continue to be in panic about it. And this was when anti-atheist pro-Christian and pro-Muslim movements (who absolutely don’t ally) started organizing to scare everyone how terrible we godless folk are, as if our interest in intellectual exercise and not the hypocrisy endemic to right-wing Christian ministries is what is driving parishioners from their pews.
[/LONG RAMBLE]
Tankies support the more problematic empires such as Russia and China.
Did you not read the meme? Imperialism is bad no matter who is doing it, and arguing over which empire is more ‘problematic’ is counterproductive, as we should oppose all empires instead of wasting all of our time and effort on getting on each other’s throats.
And in doing so they may have pushed large parts of the Chinese-American community to the right. Tankies caping for the CCP were not a good look for the moderate immigrants who had been fucked over by the Chinese government in various ways.
they may have pushed large parts of the Chinese-American community to the right.
That’s just the Gusano effect, frankly. Why would someone who supports the ML regime move to China’s self-nominated existential enemy, after all?
No, those who oppose just come over here and Yeonmi Park themselves all over the place. You see it in ever single “Castro took my grandfather’s plantation” wannabe-settler who conveniently leaves out that el viejo’s plantation was staffed by slaves; I expect exactly the same out of Chinese expatriate capitalists afraid they’re next (when there’s actually still hella billionaires that haven’t been milled yet).
More problematic to whom? The US literally changed the political direction of my country and fucked us over real hard.
Where are the chinese wars and regime change operations? At least Russia only attacks its neighbors at most so countries far away have nothing to fear, unlike the US invading and destroying countries all around the globe.
Call them empire or whatever, but being unable to admit that the US is the bigger threat to real freedom in the world only contributes to the causes of the biggest and arguably most brutal empire in history, that is in constant state of war since it was founded.
Well, at least global south countries are gonna have to choose between them or play both sides at best to survive the foereseeable future, so at least in some instances it does matter.
What will Nigeria choose? Chinese or US exports, loans, cultural influence etc
No country can be fully independent from the world around, so they do have to choose allies and foes.
More problematic to whom?
people living under the threat of them
Where are the chinese wars and regime change operations?
cold war (they did the same as the us, but just lost), tibet, uigurs, taiwan, mongolia, and don’t forget their brutal mining operations in africa
At least Russia only attacks its neighbors at most so countries far away have nothing to fear, unlike the US invading and destroying countries all around the globe.
but in return the us only conqueres nations far away from them (at least in the last 100 years), also that’s not really better, russia got a lot of neighbors
the US is the bigger threat to real freedom in the world
imo, it purely depends on the region you’re looking on
most brutal empire in history
historically britain outcompetes them imo, but in the 20th century, yes they were, now I’d say china tho, just look at their actions in africa, they’re kinda repeating briyish history there
but it’s nice, that you have manners and don’t want to ban everyone disagreeing with you like some on grad
You just went through a regime change operation of Russia. Or did you think Trump and all those extremist right-wing governments in Europe won all on their own?
Putins propaganda machine made those happen. They infiltrated so many social media groups spreading lies to make everyone more xenophobic so they can invade Ukraine and all previous USSR regions without them getting help.
On Lemmy, they are mostly hiding in your instance.
Goodness, thanks for reminding me, now I won’t sleep. Regardless, THAT empire is thankfully gone.
I wonder why a westerner who gets their news from english speaking western sources which profit off of the same wealth extraction as the empire they are part of would think like this? Surely the western free press would not be influenced by the whims of capital and empire. Obviously China and Russia must be the “worse empire”, my empire told me so!
Well, just personally speaking, I know Russian, and reading Russian news sources (state-owned as well as those that have been banned by the Russian state) from time to time, and talking with Russians directly, hasn’t even remotely convinced me that the “Russian empire” is equally bad as the “western empire”.
The vile Russian Empire, with its Romanov dynasty, super problematic. If Peter is so great, why does he look so wimpy compared to Joe Rogan? Hah, those stupid tankies don’t even realize the Chinese empire has been abolished for over 110 years!
Sorry for being snarky… Of course modern China is an empire. Just without overseas military bases. A soft empire, one might say.
They gettin into the overseas military bases; talkin’ bout Djibouti and a lil’ Cambodia as a treat
without overseas military bases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Garrison
And if you’re gonna say Hong Kong doesn’t count because it’s already been assimilated into the empire, that’s not great evidence against it being an empire.
I’m anti-imperialist and pro-metricist.
