Tankies support the more problematic empires such as Russia and China.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
They gettin into the overseas military bases; talkin’ bout Djibouti and a lil’ Cambodia as a treat
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).
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.
Goodness, thanks for reminding me, now I won’t sleep. Regardless, THAT empire is thankfully gone.
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
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!”
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.
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’.
anti imperialist/colonial supporters when they find out that the entire timeline of human history is conquest, colonialism, and imperialism.
the ones who prospered were the most aggressive ones, even conquering the whole world by force, it’s a survivorship bias situation.
not every group of humans is aggressive, but those eventually get conquered by the agressive ones, military power always ends up winning.
It’s unscientific to say that any country, given the chance, would do the same as the europeans or the US empire did to the world.
At least the Chinese century will prove or disprove this theory, given it’s the first significant power shift in the last 500 years, let’s see if they will be so brutal as the US and its allies (you know who) are to the world.
I firmly doubt it, there are no signs of brutality to other nations coming from the chinese, at most you could argue of some internal issues. There are no invasions, war or regime change operations done by China yet.
As someone from the global south, I don’t fear China or even Russia in the least, I only fear what the US or Europe will try to inflict in my country, like the recent regime change operations that I lived through, that was pretty harsh.
there are no signs of brutality to other nations coming from the chinese
China is literally committing genocide on the Uyghurs. What makes you think they wouldn’t do the same to other groups they dislike if they get into power?
Now they are buying all resources they can in Africa doing the same type of Colonialism Europe did a hundred years ago.
Even if your sources weren’t biased western rags and people that can’t speak a lick of Mandarin but can talk all the trash in the world about China in support of white settlerdom (adrian zenz has 23 citations on your bullshit-ass wikipedia article alone), at least China pays for the things they buy; rather than stealing it at gunpoint like the Americans, the French, any part of the countries that profited off the Transatlantic Slave Trade rly, other et cetera. While we wanna bullshit about ‘debt trapping’, since that’s obviously what you’re talking about, what’s the IMF again?
Deeply unserious; and DEFINITELY not beating the “weakest link” allegations.
That is pure empire/hegemon propaganda that gets to write your history. The same applies to Ukraine agitation Holomodor designation, and the writers would will tell you Hamas is responsible for existing and near future genocide.
China responded to terrorism through education and job creation, in what is now a free and prosperous sharing region. Empire has purely demonic intentions in its foreign policy and propaganda.
the ones who prospered were the most aggressive ones, even conquering the whole world by force, it’s a survivorship bias situation.
this is my fundamental gripe with the problem, yes it’s technically a survivorship bias, but how do you remove it, that’s the hard question.
If 10 people in a group agree to leave 10,000 USD on a table, such that after 20 minutes, they can all split it amongst themselves, and then turn off the lights in the room and plug their ears in the meantime, someone if not multiple people are going to try and take it all for themselves.
Evolution has fundamentally programmed in a form of survivorship bias within basically every species. I don’t think you can separate it unfortunately.
not every group of humans is aggressive, but those eventually get conquered by the agressive ones, military power always ends up winning.
exactly.
It’s unscientific to say that any country, given the chance, would do the same as the europeans or the US empire did to the world.
i wouldn’t say that they would explicitly, but i would argue that being in a position of that much power, over that much of the world, in that much of a volatile position, there is a very high likelihood that they would influence some amount of the world, in a similar manner.
At least the Chinese century will prove or disprove this theory, given it’s the first significant power shift in the last 500 years, let’s see if they will be so brutal as the US and its allies (you know who) are to the world.
if we’re talking about modern day china, they already do a lot of power projection in the sea, illegally, same in the air. I don’t know if they’re doing any predatory lending to other countries, but that could very well change in the future, so we can’t say anything about it now. It’s highly likely that china at least wants other countries to be dependent on themselves at the minimum, which i would argue is a form of this power projection.
They are 100% in a position to do things that are more predatory, time will tell, i predict they will, it’s inevitable, but i could be wrong. Either that or china itself implodes before we get to that point, so who knows.
personally i know nothing about their military presence outside of the previously mentioned stuff. So i can’t really say anything about it, but there’s probably at least one bad thing they’ve done. Again, time will tell.
I’m on mobile (and sleepy) rn, so I don’t think I can properly respond to all your points, but thanks for this comment, I found it overall very constructive!
I’d just like to question one point for now
If 10 people in a group agree to leave 10,000 USD on a table, such that after 20 minutes, they can all split it amongst themselves, and then turn off the lights in the room and plug their ears in the meantime, someone if not multiple people are going to try and take it all for themselves.
Where are these people from? Urban, Rural, which country, which region etc, culture can have a big influence on that, I’d guess more collectivist cultures would have a different approach to this experiment than individualist ones such as you described. The country I live is also individualist so I see your point, but is all of humanity really like that?
A Native American tribe of 10 people would probably coordinate to be able to split the money, or even to invest collectivelly in their own village for example. A group of 10 New York executives with survival of the fittest mentality would probably act like you described.
Just some food for thought, hope you or anyone reading finds this interesting.
how do you remove it
You can’t remove the bias in favour of aggression, but you can decouple aggression and oppression. You need to train the non-predators to get aggressive in defending one another. Look at elephants. They’re herbivores. They’re not out there attacking other species to exploit them. But no predator, not even lions, fucks with elephants. Because if you fuck with elephants, they’ll kick your ass.
It absolutely is, but my take on that is we’re just bad at doing community-based government and need more practice.
possibly, but i think it’s a sort of fundamental problem. I would be curious if history/anthropology has any sort of knowledge on societies that didn’t have a hierarchical power structure within itself. But i’m guessing it’s very uncommon, if not unheard of.
If humans could do a communal governance structure effectively, one would think it would have already been tried, and successfully implemented.
Democracy is probably the closest thing we’ve ever had, but it’s still not perfect.
I’m sure theres also a lot of psych and socio research on this as well.
there’s also the question of whether it’s even possible to have a communal government structure in the first place, the world is incredibly complex, and politics is even more complex, doing things correctly is very hard.
TL;DR i don’t think it’s possible, and i’m not sure it ever will, judging by how humans behave.
So true! All the peaceniks yapping about the a bomb, flowers and trees are just pinkos. I heard a guy call for ceasefire in Palestine the other day, and I screamed to him: “Fuck off to Iran, if you like it so much”.
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.
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.
Israel is a tankie country now? Don’t they support Palestine? Let’s not rob tankies of their only correct opinion!
