I have been a lurker here on lemmy for a while and I have hesitantly made an account because I wanted to create a post on politics.

I want to preface this by saying, I lived a childhood being indoctrinated on politics. I was constantly being told that free markets are the pinnacle of human intellect and that free markets (in literally an absolutist way on every aspect of life) is the only way that leads to progress. It honestly took me a while to challenge these beliefs with I attribute to Shaun and Hbomberguy on youtube, and eventually embrace leftist ideas in my personality.

When the recent drama regarding the Uighur muslims occured recently I was a bit let down. I have looked around and saw posts that I understand to be supportive of the CCP in China and other communist states.

So here is my question. Why? Even if we forget about the Uighur, what about the Tianamen square massacre? Is that also false information? China’s tightening grip on hong kong despite being met with resistance from people of Hong Kong, is that also false information? The repercussions of Mao’s leadership? The complete absence of gay and trans rights in modern day China? China being a police state? Is that all false propaganda?

If your answer might be that western states have also failed to protect the interests of common people, I agree. I think western states do see a resurgence of far right movements exactly for this reason. But this is not a comparison of who is the worst.

Why exactly do people here (at least that is what I perceive) turn a blind eye to the brutalities of an authoritarian government such as the CCP?

  • SFloss (they/them)@lemmy.ml
    41·
    3 years ago

    When you say “extremist” belief, while you may assume a view is extremist based on how far down some imaginary political number line it is, that’s not the case. What you truly mean is someone whose ideas are outside of the acceptable list of ideas put in place by liberal hegemony.

    From my perspective, however, a liberal is just as much of an extremist as I am. Liberalism has left in its wake untold destruction, death, and genocide and done a very good job of obscuring or whitewashing that history to declare itself the superior moral ideology. To support that is extreme, in my opinion, but to go around declaring liberals extremists outside of communist spaces would only get me funny looks.

    At this point, anything I say or learn about communism and history outside of the mainstream liberal interpretations of it will get me labeled an extremist, so why stop trying to learn about these different perspectives? It’s not like it makes me close-minded. On the contrary, it takes a pretty open mind to even begin to learn about communism in good faith.

    I do self-doubt and self-criticize what I believe in, by the way. You would assume I don’t because why would “extremists” do such a thing? Well, think about how much self-criticism and self-doubt pave the way when learning about communism in a world dominated by liberalism. You learn the Cold War narrative of communism all of your life and it’s not something you can easily escape, so I always have self-doubt in my mind about what I believe in, but that’s why I have to keep an open mind and be both critical and self-critical when I learn. It’s self-criticism, though, not present-your-criticism, so it’s a private process, but that doesn’t mean you should assume it doesn’t happen.

    Anyways, I didn’t address any of your specific points. I really just wanted to paint you a picture of why some people may be the way you’re describing and how the term “extremist” in this context is loaded with a lot of assumptions about people and politics. People like to immediately jump to psychologically profiling “extremists” and I think that’s rather annoying.

    • CutePlatinumAsteroid@lemmy.mlOP
      11·
      3 years ago

      I would actually like discussing communism, and if someone would point out some books, I would like to study a few things around it. If you can recommend bibliography that explains the wrongdoings of liberalism, I am interested in that well.

      • SFloss (they/them)@lemmy.ml
        41·
        3 years ago

        Sure! Here are a couple of books that discuss some of the history of liberalism and its wrongdoings:

        One’s I’ve read:

        • Domenico Losurdo’s Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend (this has sections that describe the genocidal history of liberalism. You don’t have to like Stalin to read this, and if you want just skip to the parts about liberalism’s history)
        • Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
        • Thomas Frank’s Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? (this is a more US-centric book that talks about liberalism’s shortcomings in the US rather than its genocidal wrongdoings. I’m assuming you’re from the US.)

        Ones I haven’t read:

        • Domenico Losurdo’s Liberalism: A Counter-History
        • William Blum’s Killing Hope

        For a starting point in learning about Marxism, I’ll point you to a comment I made the other day. I very very highly recommend reading anything in these lists that discusses historical or dialectical materialism, including Georges Politzer’s Elementary Principles of Philosophy. Dialectical materialism is the tool Marxists use to analyze the world. Marxism without a good understanding of dialectical materialism won’t do you any good. Huey Newton said as much in his autobiography Revolutionary Suicide, so I think more importance needs to be placed in teaching newcomers dialectical materialism.

        On the topic of Huey Newton, I think reading about his life and the life of all other black revolutionaries is incredibly important to understand liberalism’s wrongdoings. They all had to live through those wrongdoings and were able to understand them well.

        Finally, just read philosophy in general. It’s fun, it helps you see the world in new ways, and it’s just mentally stimulating.

        Huey Newton on his journey learning philosophy in college and how he incorporated it into his revolutionary programs:

        I was also impressed with A. J. Ayer’s logical positivism, particularly his distinction between three kinds of statements—the analytical statement, the synthetic statement, and statements of assumption. These ideas have helped me to develop my own thinking and ideology. Ayer once stated, “Nothing can be real if it cannot be conceptualized, articulated, and shared.” That notion stuck with me and became very important when I began to use the ideological method of dialectical materialism as a world view. The ideology of the Black Panthers stands on that premise and proceeds on that basis, to conceptualize, articulate, and share. Some key aspects of Black Panther ideology and rhetoric, like “All Power to the People” and the concept “pig,” developed out of that. They were not haphazardly introduced into our thinking or vocabulary.

          • SFloss (they/them)@lemmy.ml
            2·
            3 years ago

            Sorry, I got a bit carried away. I hope you find my responses to be adequate. Feel free to ask any questions here or on any of the Lemmygrad communities.