(…continued from previous message above) You have to really work to seek them out if you’re in the west for both the obvious reasons of locale and access as well as the fact that the system you live with in really doesn’t want you listening to those who aren’t them. Do you seek them out anyway?

Or do you just say they’re astroturfing [side note: lol, like China has people astroturfing for them on a niche reddit clone made by “tankies” (ideologically consistent communists, but Eglin Airforce base isn’t all over that shit. Give me a break, don’t be so absurd, don’t make such a joke out of yourself, seriously!] or say that they’re bOtS! Then shut down and call it a day? Because you can do that too. I mean… that is what you did. Can you do better?

The time I spent writing this may well have been wasted on you (though obviously I hope not, my advice was sincere). But even if so, I know other people will be reading this, including people who still vehemently disagree with me, but my time wasn’t wasted because for one, it’s always good for a writer to write, maybe especially when doing so is unpleasant. But also because I always have hope that when someone reads something written with authenticity of belief and sincerity of feeling, and they provide valid points on top, that it becomes almost certain that seeds have been planted in the thoughtful reader. Might take years for those seeds to germinate, but such a thing did happen for many of us who eventually did arrive at this position, after certain seeds grew, a position which is not an easy one to reach though, considering the constant struggle against endless western propaganda, flailing libs shutting down conversations of course, and all the reading, reading, reading. But those potential seeds that find their way into the lurkers who think about what they read, imo that is reason enough to comment, even when responding to someone who has chosen to close down their own mind. It may not be original to u/Cowbee, but around these parts, it’s those kind of sentiments among others like gentle but powerful persuasion that I think rightfully get called @Cowbee@lemmy.ml thought. He is nowhere near as boring or overly-verbose or rambly or addled as me and he’s much more prolific and well-read, so if you want more details but fewer text walls, or if you think you have what it takes to argue with the most patient of all the tankies (not to mention one hell of a smart comrade), then stalk his /u/ page and also check out his reading list to read the real tankies (ie, the most illuminating thinkers and practitioners of leftist thought and praxis).

I got three points into a measured response, arguing the merits and deficits of your reply,

I assure you, the deficits you argued, whatever they were, were faulty or not completely thought out. You are not as brilliant as you think you are. I’m not claiming brilliance either, but what I’ve explained to you goes beyond me, to writers who have dedicated their lives to understanding imperialism, power structures, unequal exchange, world systems, and white supremacy. The only deficits you may have spotted were due to being incomplete because there is only so much scope that an internet comment can take on. Since you refused to engage with me due to a thought terminating cliche, I would encourage you to take it up with them, simply by reading the things that have advanced leftism, even if you do not initially or ever agree. If you want to understand imperialism, agree or not, you must read Lenin. If you want to understand hegemony, you would do well to start with Gramsci. Though you don’t have to agree, you will have a better understanding about how any conflict against the imperial core can never be a contest between equivalent forces. If you want to understand post-colonial theory and critical race theory (which you are in particular dire need I might add), you must read Fanon, though you don’t have to agree. If you want to understand unequal exchange and how that has built the socioeconomic world circumstances we see to this day and how it has perpetuated imperialism and hegemony, you must read Edward Said. Your naive and immature (and I want to make clear that immaturity is not a crime, none of us weren’t at one time immature in our understanding of justice and leftism, but yours is an immature) framework for what racism even is will grow and benefit regardless of whether you believe all the things he says that to those in the liberal-lemmitor milieu make him “sound like a Tankie.” Even if you’ve been too inoculated by propaganda to recognize the truth behind the arguments being made, your comprehension will only have deepened. Worst case scenario is your root opinions remain unchanged, but at least you’ll get to come back here and make arguments against us evil authoritarian tankies, arguments that are at least cogent, so you don’t have to pretend everyone who has a differing opinion is a bot, the “you’re just a bot” defense being the last resort of someone who has no other avenue aside from admission of ignorance on the topic and needs an excuse to shut down the conversation, like you did.

That’s one of the big differences between and libs and “tankies.” Libs will just call you a bot, “tankies” will tell you to read.

There is a sad irony here though, that I also want to address. It is ironic that what shut down your willingness to learn, what caused your mind (a mind I’m sure you would swear up and down is one dedicated to being open), to snap, close down, and clamp tight like some kind of steel overkill rodent trap against any further information or challenge to your beliefs, was the statement of a fact that there is a claimed genocide which is not happening. The irony is not in the fact you refuse to be educated on a topic that you clearly are not aware of, that’s just unfortunate and typical. The irony is that by insisting that something so profoundly heinous, arguably the greatest atrocity that it is possible for humanity to commit against itself, is happening, when by all relevant accounts it is not happening, well it is you who are engaging in genocide denial. It is a soft form of genocide denial, but it still fits the phrase, horrific as it is. To call something a genocide when it is not trivializes the genocide that is.

Your next objection and it’s a fair one would probably be “whose accounts are you calling ‘relevant’?!” In answer, I would say first and foremost the people who are, according to the claim, the ones being supposedly genocided. There are many accounts of Uyghurs in Xinjiang who will tell you upfront that no genocide is being perpetrated against their families or their people. You might find some who will use that word for their (perhaps justified, or not) hatred of the camps they had to temporarily go to for education, but even they will be reluctant at best to say that their culture is being erased, and you will be hard pressed to find any, let alone masses, who have been killed or anyone who knows of such things happening - because they didn’t.

Secondarily, for relevant accounts, I would say those parties with the greatest stake and the greatest moral interest in such a genocide, namely Muslims of other countries, including the leaders of countries denouncing and the few actively fighting the real genocide againt a Muslim-majority population. But no, all of those countries and Muslim investigators have concluded that no genocide is taking place. Because there isn’t. Even the UN refuses to call anything there a genocide because it is an absurd claim, despite the fact it would still be more politically expedient to go along with the world hegemon and call it a genocide, they simply can’t, opting to express their deference by using the less legally demanding of action, “crimes against humanity,” still a shameful untruth, but telling in that even they couldn’t do what you’re doing and use the word that trivializes the real thing.

Finally, for a “relevant account,” you could add your own if you actually went there. Which you can do. I don’t actually expect you to go to Xinjiang yourself to confirm this of course, but the point remains that you absolutely can. If you have the financial and other typical means required to travel to another country for a visit, you can go there and literally talk to Uyghurs there, investigate the claims of genocide being perpetrated. Not only is it possible to do so, many have, including acquanintences I have spoken to, confirming everything I’ve said here, confirming what you yourself can discover if you’re willing to look. Genocide though? It isn’t happening. It is a political fabrication drummed up almost entirely by one individual (Christian fundamentalist Zenz) with a zealous hatred of the Chinese people. It’s of course fashionable to say the hatred is for the CPC, the government, not the people, but that fashionable little get-of-sinophobia-free card falls apart when you consider the fact that close to 95% of the Chinese population, over a billion people, hold an entirely positive view of their government, (which is no surpise because unlike western “democracies,” the people of China are represented and do have significant control over the actions of their government) a poll done by Harvard, not Chinese government polling, confirmed this in-the-90’s percentage approval rating. There is no genocide in Xinjiang. When you tell people there is, you trivialize the real genocides, past and present. That is soft genocide denial. Do not be a genocide denier.

I don’t say all this as some sort of “gotcha” but as something I think you owe it to yourself to really consider, as someone who ostensibly cares about justice and human well being over their own egoistic desire to be right. First ask yourself, is it a soft form of genocide denial (as I say that it is) to perpetuate the idea, the stance, the belief that a genocide is taking place when it is not? Think of it in the abstract, as if on some other world, a circumstance where it IS true that many are making a claim there for political reasons that there is a genocide, but are either lying or ignorant of the truth. Are they engaging in soft genocide denial, by minimizing the severity of real ones, What does this act of perpetuating a falsehood, but one as significant to a sapient species as genocide, do to change the likelihood of it happening again, or the severity of it were it to happen regardless? Maybe you think it makes no difference.

But when you answer that question for yourself, if you have concluded that making false claims about a genocide that isn’t real is a serious, even heinous thing to do, then don’t you think it is imperative that you find out if you are indeed doing just that? Don’t you think it is your responsibility to dig into the truth of the matter to find out if indeed you have been perpetuating a myth so terrible as genocide denial? And what way can you go about that? Do frantically study it but stick to all the sources who are committed to the side that benefits from people of the world believing China to be a terrible authoritarian genocide-committing “bad guy”? Do you read all the western liberal rags who sold everyone on weapons of mass destruction in and subsequent need for war against Iraq? Do you listen to those sources who say that Libya is better off with open air slave markets than it was where every young person upon getting married was given a house for free by the government? Do you listen to those who have a vested interest in the west not falling further and further behind China economically, and need the world to turn against China’s equal-trade policies and track record of debt forgiveness? They wouldn’t have any need to smear China, no! (including the /s here just in case). Or do you dig into accounts from other Muslims who have investigated the situation, Muslims in the 3rd world who certainly would not benefit from a genocide of their sisters and brothers, but who likewise have no particular love for China? Do you consider the accounts of journalists who have a real track record for anti-imperialism? There aren’t many of them in the west, because they are never rewarded for their work (usually the opposite) and are absolutely not allowed to rise in any journalist ranks, and some of them even end up like Gary Webb or worse. Do you consider what the people and journalists of the 3rd world have to say?
(continued in a reply because this is at limit)

“White” isn’t an ethnicity. Whiteness is a social construct manufactured (and manicured) as a means to enforce the very in-group privilege and out-group hatred you say (and I do believe you) that you despise and oppose. Whiteness is a nebulous and ever-shifting line that allows or disallows membership depending on what most benefits the core members (the ruling class) at any given time, under whatever given material circumstances. “White people have a racism problem. Full stop" is a 100% true statement because whiteness itself is an inherently racist construct. I am confident you mean well and are genuine in your desire to tear down racism, but doing so means recognizing the racism you still, perhaps unknowingly, believe and perpetuate.

But even if we set all of that aside, and go back to that little list you made as a frankly terrible comparison to other poster’s correct statement that white people have a racism problem:

“Mexicans/Colombians have a drug problem”
“The Chinese have a genocide problem”
“Black people have a crime problem”

And add to that list the statement you had a problem with. Again,

“White people have a racism problem."

Can you spot the glaring difference? Why one of the 4 items of that list does not belong among the rest? If not, let me spell it out: Mexicans and Colombians (LATAM people in general) are a group suppressed by white people and white supremacist global hegemony. Chinese people are a group suppressed by white people and white supremacist global hegemony. Black people are a group suppressed by white people and white supremacist global hegemony. White people are a group who all benefit from the historic and current suppression of others and white supremacist global hegemony. White privilege is real, and whether one is opposed to it or not, every white person benefits from it.

You mention “tribalism” as being this foundational problem, but looking at it that way misses the most important aspect of the vast majority of conflicts of this world. Tribalism implies groups of more or less equal standing both otherizing their outgroup, but that’s not really an issue in the world in which we live, but it does benefit the ruling class when people mistakenly think it is. We don’t live in a world of tribes with equivalent power, coming into conflict starting from roughly equal footing. We live in a world of oppressors and oppressed. A world of tremendous asymmetry of conflict. The oppressor perpetrating violence upon those they oppress will never be justified, but the violence of the oppressed against its oppressors in its struggle to free itself from that oppression nearly always will be.

Finally, it is tangential to everything else in my comment, but there is actually one of the three items you listed that also stands out in the list and doesn’t quite fit, but for reasons that are… peripheral to the everything else being discussed, but still deserves to be pointed out.

“Mexicans/Colombians have a drug problem”
“The Chinese have a genocide problem”
“Black people have a crime problem”

The nations of Mexico and Columbia do have a problem with drugs being produced in and distributed from their countries, not inherently because of their people but because of the nature of US imperialism in those countries. Despite the sick joke we all know the “war on drugs” to be, it is literally because of the US enforcing drug production in these countries that they have this “problem.” It is a problem of US imperialism. Likewise “black people have a crime problem” is also true in that US white supremacy has strictly imposed and enforced poverty on black people, with “crime” (in the problematic traditional sense of the word) is always an issue where there is poverty. So those two list items are problems, but they are themselves rooted in the fact that white people have a racism problem. That middle item in your list though? It is wholly fabrication. The Chinese do not have a genocide problem. I suppose we can still say that item exists because of racism, but where items 1 and 3 do exist in some real sense (but are rooted in the material effects of white supremacy), item 2 is just a grotesque fantasy without any material basis.

Last microwave pizza I ate wasn’t impressive, it’s true. But the pizza wasn’t committing genocide or actively suppressing any of the things I am fighting for my life for (like healthcare that doesn’t make me homeless and the right not to be shot by fascist street gangs with state backing), all while telling me I had to eat it or else another pizza that was even more freezer burned would do all those same things but worse.

Yeah your analogy kinda sucks ass.

I don’t pretend to know everything about Leftist theory, but it doesn’t seem complicated.

Well at least you can admit that much. But that admission, while surprising to no one here, essentially invalidates the rest of your following comment, not to mention most of the others you’ve posted in this thread. You don’t have to know “everything” but you do have to know something about the topic you’re trying to speak on, which you’ve made clear you don’t. You don’t seem to know anything about leftist theory, and saying “it doesn’t seem complicated” reveals that is in fact the case. It’s like saying “I don’t know everything about biology, but it doesn’t seem complicated.” It’s just a vapid statement on its face.

There is a certain well known phrase that you should consider taking to heart: “No investigation - no right to speak.” In other words, if you haven’t bothered to take the initiative and time to learn about the topic you’re trying to expound on, don’t try to expound on it. All you will do is reveal your ignorance and make people who HAVE taken the time and done the work to educate themselves roll their eyes at you in frustration, which is exactly what has happened here. Go read some books (at the very least) and then come back. You call yourself an anarchist but you don’t even know what actual anarchist thinkers and theorists have accomplished, discovered, argued for, etc beyond slogans apparently. If you want to have even the tiniest hope of developing a credible, realistic, non-batshit political framework for yourself, let alone one you advocate that other people should adhere to, you are going to have to learn about the others that already exist, particularly those with centuries of hard work built upon by many individuals not just through their own education and intellectual rigor, but also through literal application in the real world. At the absolute very fucking bare minimum least you need to “lurk more.”

Did I hit a nerve ?

Ah, “hit a nerve,” the age-old adage of the smuglord redditor child. No, you merely took a shit on the floor, and just because the adults in the room were disgusted by the stench, that doesn’t mean you were onto something.

It depends on how much of your surplus labor your employer is stealing. It varies by many factors, not the least of which what kind of work you do, and very importantly, where you are in the world in relation to the imperial core, but in many cases, yes it is absolutely that much more, potentially even worse. But the graph isn’t meant to be read as an absolute metric, it can’t be since the size of each circle will vary so much depending on an individual’s circumstances. Rather the image is meant as a generalization to express some economic facts, basic Marxist principles that too few people understand.

Yep, I think you found it.

Was this supposed to be a response to a different post or does this meme have a more direct connection to Obama and Biden than I am able to see?

There’s plenty of podcast piracy. For example, look on SoulSeek. Slskd is a FOSS client. Use it to search for user “podking.”

Podcasts seem to be the only type of media impossible to find on torrent indexing sites.

I haven’t looked, but I’m not surprised because podcasts aren’t really the kind of medium people would tend want to keep a large local archive of.

If you’re just looking for premium feeds there are sites like piratefeeds.net

Is the existence of absolute power itself not a restriction
I just don’t see how dialectical materialism is consistent with unchallenged and unjustified power.

Well there’s your problem. Did you even read the rest of what Cowbee said in this thread, explaining much of how governance in China actually works? You come here basing your questions around this false assumption of “the existence of absolute power,” when no one in China has absolute power, rather power is vastly more evenly distributed there than in liberal “democracies.”

The fact that there is a single party is not (as western propaganda would have you believe) evidence of “dictatorship,” but instead functions as a bulwark preventing reaction and the destruction of the revolution by capital - something I would hope you would be able to recognize even with a very basic understanding of dialectics. There is no reason the will of the people can’t be enacted via a single party that exists to ensure it is their will and not that of capital that rules, indeed it makes more sense to have a single party when the rule of the people is the goal.

Consider how the approval rating for their government across the population of China, well over a billion people, is above 90%! And now consider the U.S. with it’s “two party” system, where both parties represent the interests only of the political donor class (capital) and the government is largely despised by the population. The power there is concentrated in a small number of ultrawealthy bourgeoisie and it is continuously getting worse, more and more concentrated, while the people of the US are losing more and more of their so-called rights every day.

Yet you frame your questions under this base (and false) assumption of “unchallenged and unjustified power” in China without even considering how power is constantly challenged there (see Cowbee’s explanation further up of the many direct elections in China) and through that challenge, its justification is consistently being reestablished.

Since people here seem to disagree

Since people here have seen all this sinophobic propaganda countless times already and thoroughly debunked it all, you’re going to go ahead and confidently spew tired, gullible U.S. State Department talking points and lies to be debunked yet again for the umpteenth time because you’re either painfully naive and depressingly uneducated or you have an explicit pro-U.S. anti-China agenda you’re desperately trying to spread.

Yeah, we know, dronie.

Xi Jinping does not “look like” Winnie the Pooh at all. It’s not some universal truth you are only making an innocent observation of. The entire reason the connection exists is because of a racist meme depicting Xi as Pooh and Obama as Tigger. I’m going to trust I don’t have to explain the racism of the Obama depiction, but only for the sake of brevity not actual confidence in your understanding.

But as for Xi, there really is no resemblance beyond the extremely racist stereotype of Asian people being “yellow” which is itself only a thing in racist circles because white supremacists had to make up a color scheme to categorize and otherize ethnicities that were not part of the in-group, despite the fact that many Asian people are “whiter” in actual skin tone than that of countless pinkish hogs and dead salmon gammons, Asian people and all the people “of the Orient” (more racism) are yellow according to the pathologically racial-category-obsessed white supremacist.

But before I get too tangential, I’m explaining all this to show you how thoroughly you’ve absorbed that background racism with shit like “it’s not my fault he looks like Pooh!” Yes, yes it is your fault you are choosing not to examine your internalized racism and fall back on a racist trope as some simple matter of fact when it’s clearly not.

And speaking of things taken as simple matter of fact that are bullshit, the whole “banning of Winnie the Pooh in China” is just more Sinophobic lies easily proven as such, with things like this. Oh shit, what is a whole Winnie the Pooh themed ride doing at a Shanghai theme park?! Call the See See Pee immediately and report this heinous crime against censorship so their social credit score turns negative!

lol who is downvoting this? Is it just because it’s not funny since it’s a 1:1 representation of reality, so not really anything satirical?

Evergreen:
https://leftypol.org/edu/src/1662026001627.webm

The excuses that libs will insist on making for loudly openly self-procliamed nazis will never cease to… disappoint me.

the real primary goal of the project is to coopt and destroy the only corner of the internet where communists have any sense of sovereignty.

If more lemmy users, mods, and of course the devs are made aware that this is the piefed goal using the strategy you just described (and I very much agree with you that it is), is there anything in particular that can be done to try to counter it? Other than spread awareness, of course.

Yeah, FWIW, having a viable non-chud alternative to reddit 6 or so years ago was nothing short of a godsend. And that it was made by actual comrades was just icing on the community cake. Though clearly the libs will never be able to forgive you for making the best federated social media platform while being principled and ideologically consistent in ways they never can be.

So I figure what better place than yet another thread soiled by a tantrum-throwing toddler screeching about how mean the tankies are who made the platform he’s screeching and sobbing on, to sincerely thank you & Dessalines for what you’ve made and for the work you do.

This is unironically the big moral dilemma presented by so much western entertainment media it’s nauseating. “Would you pRoTeCt yOuR FaMiLy even if it meant the world/everyone else would die?” and the correct moral position, after much soul searching and garment rending is usually presented as: “Yes, fuck the world, you gotta protect you and your own above literally ALL else.” And it’s always so contrived, with such manufactured scenarios to ignore the fact that in the vast majority of both real and imagined cases, the better option for the world is also going to be the better option for your family. But constantly pitting the individual and their immediate family’s interests over the well being of the community and society is fundamentally necessary to maintain the capitalist mode, so they gotta keep reinforcing that false dichotomy as some kind of universal conundrum that is best answered by being as self centered as possible “for your family.”

Or maybe try telling it to all the people of color shot by cops from 2020-2024, or the kids in cages that never went away when a Democrat was elected president but just silently forgotten about and suddenly ignored by the same media that had been using them for cheap political points during election season, or the thousands of people in NOT brand-new concentration camps but the ones that have existed the whole fucking time. Or are you saying that none of that shit mattered then since your blue team was in the big boy chair, but only matters now that a cheeto is office and it was a white person that got executed by the bipartisan fascists this time? Despicable.

That’s just not voting but with extra steps.

So voting for who or what we actually want is the same as just not voting. Got it. We HAVE to vote for fascists we’re opposed to or our vote is meaningless.

Sounds like a pretty fucking airtight argument for not voting then, dipshit.

The original version of this meme was problematic but my god this version of it is spot on accurate. And it still would be accurate for countless other things that could be put in the Biden/Trump speech bubble. Despite what Democrats pretend, and how they like to (ineffectively) play the role of opposition to Trump, they are fine with 90% of what he does, he just does it without any deference to the liberal theatrics of “law,” with too much bombast instead of fake personal difficulty making “hard choices,” and because he’s not on team Blue. Granted, there are a few significant things I think it’s safe to say would not have happened under a Democrat president, but vanishingly few of those are things they wouldn’t have wanted to do.