Why do I feel like so many people here support the USSR and the CCP?
Because most people here actually study the subject instead of relying on false narratives of the Western media.
Again, don’t get me wrong I don’t think the west is immune from any of this (and in fact I think there is a lack of criticism of the west), but anyone who claims the west is evil while simultaneously glorifying countries that implement concentration camps comes off as fascistic and ignorant.
You say that the West is not immune from any of the stuff you’ve mentioned, but your narrative relies on the falsehoods created by Western media. By doing this, you are uncritically glorifying the Western narrative and ignoring how these countries understand the issues you’ve mentioned. For instance, this is a list of countries which approve or disapprove of China’s Xinjiang policies:
Notice how the countries which disapprove is basically countries traditionally associated with Western hegemony. It’s the basically the Always the Same Map meme incarnated. The countries which approve of China’s Xinjiang policies includes countries with a Muslim majority. Do a research on why China adopted the re-education programs in the first place.
Xinjiang was filled with terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists, and they were hurting the Uyghur population in the process. China’s policies of re-education actually reduced the terrorist attacks and protected the Uyghur people. The Western narrative calls them “concentration camps”, but they are places with schools, art and dancing classes, where the Uyghur culture is actually promoted. They also learn about the country’s laws and ethical conduct. The people who are admitted to these centres are associated with extremism, and therefore they are restricted of movement, but once they go through the process of education, they are free and even receive incentive from the government to create their own shops and businesses.
This is a quote from the document created by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation:
Having considered the Report of the Secretary-General on the Situation of Muslim Communities and Minorities (Document No. OIC/CFM-46/2018/MM/SG.REP): (…)
Welcomes the outcomes of the visit conducted by the General Secretariat’s delegation upon invitation from the People’s Republic of China; commends the efforts of the People’s Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens; and looks forward to further cooperation between the OIC and the People’s Republic of China.
This is only an example of how your narrative is filled with Western narratives, falsehoods and outright propaganda. You call yourself an anarchist, but you parrot very obediently your government’s narrative on China and the USSR. To go against the Western narrative is to research and inquiry objectively what these countries are doing, instead of relying on what you see on Western media (which includes Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc.).
People here on Lemmy and Lemmygrad reject these views because most people here actually STUDY and RESEARCH on those topics. What about you? What sources do you use for your claims? Let’s check:
- Wikipedia
From 2001 to 2010, 80% of edits on Wikipedia were made by 1% of editors/writers. It’s far from the “decentralized peer-produce” ideal that it markets itself as. Various analysis on the source of these edits have found that their IPs are linked to several US state organizations, such as the CIA, New York Police Department, along with government and corporate interests. There is even a company which offers Wikipedia edits, and they are hired by several corporate industries, including Facebook and billionaire groups which hire PR firms to whitewash certain articles. They have arbitrarily removed a community-elected member of Wikimedia and at the same time raised to the position of CEO and executive director (2019–2021) of Wikimedia Foundation a person called Katherine Maher, which had links to the US State Department and several corporate interests, such as HSBC bank, and has shady background in the Middle East. More info on her here. You can see why a country would ban the Wikimedia Foundation.
- ASIA MEDIA
According to its own website:
ASIA MEDIA (and later ASIA PACIFIC ARTS) arose in 1998 from the nonprofit Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) at the University of California, Los Angeles. It was created by founder Tom Plate, then a fulltime Adjunct Professor in Communication Studies and in Policy Studies, and by his UCLA students.
Interesting how Asia media is located in Los Angeles, California, United States of America.
- The Independent
According to the Independent itself, it is associated with liberalism:
In fact, The Independent always shared some of Mr Blair’s political blend of social and economic liberalism, but, true to our approach, we could never unconditionally endorse him or his party.
There will be an obvious bias towards countries which do not follow liberal (bourgeois) democracy, and therefore, you should never expect it to have an objective portrayal of China.
In conclusion
but anyone who claims the west is evil while simultaneously glorifying countries that implement concentration camps comes off as fascistic and ignorant.
By glorifying the narratives of Western imperialist countries, your “anarchism” comes off as fascistic and ignorant. The fact that you repudiate China’s sovereignty over Taiwan is an example of this. The only reason Taiwan suddenly became an issue after 2010’s is because the US has interests over the island and manipulate the people through their propaganda machine to make them believe they are fighting for a just cause, over “democracy” and “human rights”. The United States of America has killed millions of people under the banner of “democracy” and “human rights”. Don’t be fooled by that.
But then, do support to communism or those systems but not the actual governments which all of them are bad and evil. Still, there are other systems than communism that also worked fine until it got invaded and destroyed, like the anarchism in Ukraine for example, they got invaded multiple times if I’m not wrong, and they had a very good system for the people.
I support existing systems such as seen in USSR and China because despite their problems, they’re still a vast improvement over capitalist systems. The notion that all governments are bad and evil is just false equivalence. The fact that these other systems got destroyed is the problem with these systems. Any system that can’t effectively defend itself will be destroyed because there will always be other competing systems. Anarchist projects consistently fail to protect themselves effectively, and this is a fundamental problem that anarchists continue to avoid addressing.
Maybe the problem is the system you support, as you said, your system can protect so also can invade and attack others.
Too much power in the wrong person can do a lot of damage. The problem with anarchist projects are that others system like the one you defend attacks them.
Don’t you think? So the problem is the system attacking the other, not the anarchist, which is more pacifist and respectful.
Your system will always get into wars and conflicts until they don’t stop arming and getting armies, those monies invested on army is money wasted that could spend on tech for our people.
EDIT: You say Anarchist problem is that they can’t defend themselves, I tell you, the problem of communism or capitalist is that they just use those armies to kill, invade and impose their rules (rules often made by a single person or by big billionaires). And that’s why your system (capitalism or communism) will never success. Violence = More violence.
I support a system that provides a real workable path away from capitalism. I grew up in USSR, and I’ve lived in the west. I’ve seen first hand which system works better. Until anarchists can actually put up a working alternative, I’m going to stick with what I know to work in practice.
And as I’ve explained in the previous reply, this will not change. This isn’t something anarchists can control. If anarchists can’t hold their own then they get trampled by others. Anarchists need to reconcile the fact that not everybody wants the system they want, there will always be competing ideologies and if people who follow these ideologies are able to organize more effectively then they will be the ones in charge.
The reality of the world is that it’s anything but pacifist or respectful.
China hasn’t been at war for the past 50 years last I checked, and has consistently been investing money in improving the lives of its people. Chinese communists lifted over a billion people out of poverty.
USSR, Vietnam, Cuba, Laos, and China are all examples of incredible success. These systems have lifted countless people out of abject poverty, provided them with food, housing, healthcare, education, and work. These are tangible real world achievements that communists have under their belt. Until anarchists show how their ideas can be put into practice, I’m not going to pay any serious attention to them.
China is waiting to invade Taiwan and Russia is already invading Ukraine… the excuse is just a cheap argument, on 2022 we can’t still expect to solve everything with violence (we need to evolve), there are always diplomatic and pacific ways to solve conflicts, but if they have an army bigger than Ukraine, why not just invade and blame USA?
Another problem with those countries is that you aren’t either free, you say successful, in a system that discriminates people for their sexual orientation, and those governments aren’t either transparent with the people I wouldn’t call it success. I just said a few examples, but that’s globalized, you have no freedom to be who you want to be. On capitalism, at least for now, you can say very loud and proud that you are GAY, and police aren’t going to put you on prison. (it’s an exaggerated example, but understand you can’t do a gay lifestyle)
You call success when China had to protection on their factories, so workers don’t commit suicide. And that’s why most big capitalist companies have their factories mostly in China, cheap work (or we can call it slavery). Still, those places have people living on poverty, so I think it’s more or less the same.
You might feel your system long time ago was better, as some capitalist people could also feel the old times on capitalism system was also better. We need to focus on fraternity instead of arming our troops for a possible war in a future(?)…
Taiwan is part of China. This is a well documented fact, and Taiwan’s legal standing is not in question. This is the position held by the UN, and it’s the fundamental basis for having diplomatic relations between US and China per Potsdam Proclamation that was signed 77 years ago between China, the US & the UK. This position has never officially changed.
Meanwhile, Russia hasn’t been communist for the past 30 years. In fact, looking at what happened in former Soviet republics after USSR dissolved is a perfect example of what was lost. The region became destabilized, standard of living dropped dramatically for most people, wars broke out.
Not sure what things like sexual discrimination has to do with communism to be honest. Meanwhile, people were certainly far more free in a meaningful sense. Freedom can be seen as the measure of personal agency an individual enjoys within the framework of society, and socialist countries provide tangible freedoms such as freedom from hunger, freedom from abject poverty, freedom to have education, and so on. All these things create meaningful freedoms for people allowing them to achieve their potential.
I’m also not sure how these governments are any less transparent than real world alternatives. What socialists states achieve has to be compared to what’s available in the real world as opposed to some Utopian ideas that have yet to be shown to work in practice.
Yes, I call China a success because quality of life in China continues to steadily improve and the government is actively working on doing things like eliminating poverty, creating public infrastructure, providing healthcare, housing, food, and education for all citizens. Chinese government practically eliminated poverty, and in fact China is the only place in a world where any meaningful poverty reduction is happening. If we take China out of the equation poverty actually increased in real terms:
90% of families in the country own their home, giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. Real wage (i.e. the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country. This is staggering considering it’s the most populous country on the planet. Social mobility happens to be very high in China as well.
Nah, the system I advocate for is demonstrably better than capitalism today and it continues to improve lives of over a billion people worldwide. Communists have fraternity, and our fraternity is growing every day.
Thanks to god Taiwan is already part of China, so China don’t need to worry or invade Taiwan, right? If china is so successful, they don’t need to worry about Taiwan and USA.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=NOTh6jiRNxU
The Lockdown they did is a good example why China isn’t successful, but an oppressive system that restrain your freedom. They were dying on the streets, China needed to force everyone to stay at home.
A home or food don’t make you free if you are still forced to have a lifestyle your government imposes.
I am from a place where we are colonized by fascists and our government is still that right now. They still say a phrase very used, “we lived better with the dictatorship rules”. That dictatorship was a friend of Hitler and killed a lot of people from my culture. Still, people say we were living better on those times.
They still want to kill us, but Europa is stopping them, as they already stopped when they sent a lot of police to beat and hit us.
If you were going to be born as gay, which country are you going to stay? One where you can date with people you like, or a place where you need to hide it from a mass surveillance for the rest of your life?
Capitalist system sucks, but they don’t care if you are gay or whatever you do, unless they start losing money.
You don’t believe in the USA/Europe news, but you believe in a government news and data which is the most controlled, manipulated and surveilled from the world. Their data and statistics aren’t transparent (there is no independent study).
The problem with Communism is that it can be as bad as Capitalism (or worse), only depends on the leader.
The part you might want to wonder about is what the USA is doing spending billions manipulating opinion and influencing politics in a Chinese province half way across the world. I certainly can’t see how US meddling in Taiwan is in the interest of the people living there. This notion that the west gets to do these things around the world and everyone just has to accept it is quite strange.
More people died from covid in US than were infected with covid in China. Think about that for a bit, especially given that China has over three times the population.
The governments impose quite a bit more under capitalism, which is what the current state of the world is.
Are you trying to conflate communism with fascism here or to claim it’s some sort of a dictatorship?
Once again, I have no idea what this has to do with communism.
Communists don’t care if you’re gay or whatever you do. This is a cultural phenomenon that has absolutely nothing to do with the political and economic system. Plenty of western capitalist countries have been extremely hostile towards gay people. Go look up on what happened to Turing as an example.
There are plenty of independent studies, lots of them done by western organizations. Here’s a Harvard study for you. And of course, people regularly travel outside of China, foreigners travel to China and live there. We see plenty of people who study abroad come back to China.
That’s an incredibly ignorant statement that shows profound lack of understanding of how communism actually works. Please educate yourself on the subject you’re attempting to debate here. Some resources for you here.
I might have not the right words, but you should be able to understand what I mean. Too much power on few people is always bad. It can turn to be better than capitalist or turn into a China forcing you to be the person they want you to be.
Seems like the communism you defend is the same as what you criticize about anarchism. The biggest communism system I know right now is china, and as I am telling you, not everything is so good on China.
I thought China was communist. (with a bit of capitalism controlled by the communist government) If you are gay there, you have much more difficulties than other countries.
I know Turing perfectly, and that’s why I blame China and Russia for their laws against LGBT right. At least in Europe, you can have a gay marriage right now.
I’m not trying that, I’m comparing the feeling of the old times. You do the same as them with arguments about how well they were living, but it is basically because they didn’t get oppressed, and they followed their news and their education where got brainwashed and still now they still hate us and our culture. The important thing here is, you have a feeling that the past has been better than the current present, any fascist can feel the same.
At least they don’t force you to throw all trash on the bin container, or you don’t get kidnapped on a “center of re-education”.
What happened on China Lockdown is horrible… USA is a shame, they don’t even have public healthcare… but there are countries where they did better without using any kind of violence to their citizens. Still china news about their death rates can’t take it seriously, they can lie like western media lies. Never seen a place outside China with so many people laying on the street or inside buildings, and you don’t know if they are still alive or dead unless they cough again.
Maybe because they are scared about China control and surveillance, as happened with Hong Kong. USA can use that to seduce them.
And how do you expect China to seduce them then? Can’t china spend the same money to seduce them? This makes not much sense if china is so successful.
I remember you saying Russia will not invade Ukraine, you were wrong. You trusted them and ops… They lied to media news and still invaded Ukraine. You know a lot about communism, but I don’t think you have a better vision of the reality than other people.