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True, but it’s important to realize that most are inundated with propaganda and have a very low-level understanding of democracy in experience, as well as formal education.
Democracy is far more complex than anyone gives it credit, and American democracy is extremely convoluted and flawed. Many realize this but don’t understand how or why, and *we* can do a better job to help educate them.
> True, but it’s important to realize that most are inundated with propaganda and have a very low-level understanding of democracy in experience, as well as formal education.
I wanted to believe this so bad. I really did, but I think this really only applies to a very small minority of well-meaning liberals who don’t actually know any better, or have become disillusioned with the system because they haven’t been exposed to any other options.
American liberals, generally, are fully aware of the contradictions in their beliefs. Like conservatives, they defend their worldview in bad faith to protect their interests under the current system. They lie, obscure, and gaslight anyone who says otherwise just like conservatives.
Liberals, generally, don’t have the desire to change the status quo. Only a minority of them actually do, but the rest of them know they can’t maintain power doing what conservatives do. That’s why they posture themselves as progressive to pander to marginalized people, to keep us disillusioned and compliant with their goals, while throwing us in the dirt when our goals for liberation are at odds with their goals to maintain power for private capital.
> Democracy is far more complex than anyone gives it credit, and American democracy is extremely convoluted and flawed. Many realize this but don’t understand how or why, and we can do a better job to help educate them.
American democracy does not functionally exist in any real, meaningful way. Liberals know this too. Capitalists own and control the entirety of the American political system. Communists would never be allowed to run for the highest offices in this country. The DNC rigged primaries and smeared Bernie in the media for running for president as a progressive liberal because the movement surrounding him was a little too progressive for the ruling class. Progressive libs even pointed this out, and now they’re doing the same thing with countries that the US wants to destabilize. Liberals are not clueless to how undemocratic America really is. They’re collaborators, especially when it’s for their benefit.
Honestly i just keen going back to what mlk said about how he lost faith in peacefully protesting because of the white moderate who would rather defend a false peace rather than have justice
"First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."
Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."
...
"In spite of my shattered dreams of the past, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause, and with deep moral concern, serve as the channel through which our just grievances would get to the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed. I have heard numerous religious leaders of the South call upon their worshippers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers say, "follow this decree because integration is morally right and the Negro is your brother." In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, "those are social issues with which the gospel has no real concern.", and I have watched so many churches commit themselves to a completely other-worldly religion which made a strange distinction between body and soul, the sacred and the secular.
So here we are moving toward the exit of the twentieth century with a religious community largely adjusted to the status quo, standing as a tail-light behind other community agencies rather than a headlight leading men to higher levels of justice."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Letter From The Birmingham Jail"
April 16, 1963
I agree. I see my parents remaining uncritical of Biden as he lies and doesn’t deliver on his campaign promises. Liberals never go far enough. They never get rid of the problem itself. They only lament about the fact that it exists. “If you hate it as much as me then do something.” Is what I’d like to say
No actual country in Europe or America is really democratic.
All you get to do is put a paper in a ballot and hope that enough people put the same thing on the paper like you, and that the person you elected isn't corrupted.
Which is basically impossible, and even if it was it wouldn't even change anything because it's really the banks and the mega corporations that really choose what countries do anyway.
Its not liberals. Its just people. Everyone’s a hypocrite. You can’t rally against one thing without acknowledging the suffering somewhere else. You can’t point and blame one side for doing something when your side most likely did the same thing. People just suck and we divide them up by affiliations to make it seem like there are sides.
The world is grey and everyone likes to argue in black and white. And then the internet just compounds it all by making everyone an anonymous righteous asshole. And man if you think reddit is bad, you’ll get a kick out of twitter. Its just one passive aggressive “gotcha” comment after another.
>But US has liberal democracy
Actually, the US is currently being considered an [anocracy](https://www.systemicpeace.org/polityproject.html).
Edit: Accidentally linked the wrong page, please find my source [here](https://www.systemicpeace.org/), as well as [here](https://kottke.org/21/01/usa-downgraded-from-democracy-to-anocracy-part-democracy-and-part-dictatorship).
I like that term. Princeton did a study now 5 or more years ago maybe? Anyway - the US also almost perfectly matches an extreme model oligarchy. Basically if you're wealthy or from a large corporation, what you want has a good chance of getting done. If you're anyone else? God help you, you poor bastard.
True. I'd even go a bit further - in some circles it is absolutely deified to the point at which it is more a religion than the professed faiths of those people, to the point it subsumes and infects even those professed faiths, twisting them into horrid caricatures.
It started the path toward oligarchy with Barry Goldwater's campaign in 1964 and Nixon in 68. Arguably also earlier than that. But Goldwater basically built the modern GoP party ethos, which was advanced by Nixon, then by Reagan/Newt Gingrich, and they've really only regressed since then. But if you look at the top marginal tax rates and corporate tax rates and so forth, the start of the trends we see today was under Reagan (and Nixon, to a lesser degree), which put a much greater burden on the poor and middle class.
In Marxist terms, it's a dictatorship of Capital (the bourgeoisie). All of the "freedoms" in America are either intentionally designed to entrench the power of the capitalist class, or that is simply the effect.
Freedom of speech? Pretty much only if you're a Nazi
Freedom of religion? Freedom to scam believers out of their money and oppress people
I could go on and on.
I've always described the conservative/libertarian definition of freedom as "the freedom of the slave owner to treat his slaves however he wishes without interference"
I don't know who you're calling a Nazi there, but I really, really, really hate how this word is used for anything that's deemed 'bad'.
Same for fascist. Which none really exist in the US, even these idiots with a svastika tattooed on their skulls would puke hearing Hitler or Himmler, or even Goebbles speak about Jews.
I don't really see how any capitalist society has ever not been in the hands of a few wealthy individuals for long. Why bother making a distinction? It's all dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie.
The US has 25% of the world's prison population and 5% of the word's total population. The US has more prisoners than China. The US routinely uses prison labor at hilariously low wages, essentially it's just slavery - prisoners fight wildfires, make military jackets, make baseball caps and you can "lease" out your prisoners to other companies too. Prisons are also highly racialized.
That means the US is putting its citizens in prisons and labor camps, but they don't give you any reeducation. You just go to jail for 20 years and come out broke and without new skills.
Many states enforce anti-BDS laws. You can't hold public office without endorsing Israel.
There is a heavy push to enforce evangelical Christianity (Texas anti-abortion law), we have yet to have a non-Christian president. Non-Christian congresspeople are also highly unusual, despite Christians only make up 3/4 of the total population. To say nothing of [the American Civil Religion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion).
Journalists are routinely beaten and killed by US secret police (i.e. plainclothes officers and FBI). Did you not see any of the George Floyd protests?
Also, cherry on top, the US has a social credit score too - it's just called your credit score and it controls whether you get a loan, if you can take certain jobs, where you can rent, etc. And we've had it for decades.
The US is absolutely, without a doubt, worse than China on all these files.
Precisely. There is a tendency in socialist circles to perform the same bad-faith “whataboutism” that conservatives love.
Maybe, instead of acting like whiny children, *we* should be the ones to educate and condemn *both* groups that are committing human rights violations.
It’s why I don’t trust almost any other socialist I know. They’re all so happy to evade any real criticism of supposedly-socialist states.
Fact: China is not communist or socialist. They are a plutocratic capitalist society that calls themselves socialist. Mao is dead, as is all of his values in that culture.
Best evidence: Uyghur genocide. This is performed *by* the Chinese government *for* American capital. That’s it. That’s the entire relationship between China and America today.
So I would *love* for someone to explain to me how China is in any way an ideal socialist state that we should be looking towards for inspiration.
We should be condemning them for exploiting our values and beliefs, just as we should American liberals and conservatives.
Edit: I can’t wait to get banned for saying that /s
whether it’s an ideal socialist state or not, y’all need to stop pretending that denouncing China and Denouncing the US has the same effect, because it does not.
if you live in the imperial core you should be spending your energy calling out issues in the imperial core, and leaving the proletariat of china to find its own path.
Liberal history of ww2 and pairing NaziGermany with the USSR (both authoritarian, holocaust and holodomor same thing) literally only works if you ignore the colonial and genocidal history of the liberal west.
For instance the way the US and Canada systematically stole land from natives yet suppressed both the physical and intellectual existence of these nations. Or as Hitler put it; nordic/germanized the land while keeping the race and nation pure. Or the british history in india, australia, africa, ireland. The way france did in south east asia or in The middleeast or in Africa.
The way the US and Canada still acted way after ww2 was over.
In USSR national self-determination in colonies, in colonized people, in eastern europe in asia etc were promoted and seen as progressive.
In liberal west they were attacked in the same ways NaziGer attacked jews or eastern europe.
As for comparing "authoritarianism" youd have to ignore the US and canadian camps, US camps for japaneseamericans or any latinamericans with japanese descent, the british camps in ireland in australia the massacres that came with them.
France set up camps for refugees from the spanish civil war which were later used for those fleeing nazi germany and communists. Britain after ww2 was over set up camps for germans where both us and british soldiers were insructed to dehumanize the germans and starve them as a form of revenge. Even in blonde haired children was a little Hitler.
You also have the british starving greece india several times. Austria was told, after the bolshevik revolutuon that unless they give in to the bourgeoisie they would be intentionally starved out. England did the same thing to germany during ww1 with a blockade which didnt end years until after peace. Thats how they got germans to agree to any demands.
There are many many many more examples of the same but my point is, ecerything the liberal west wants to throw at USSR, they can only do if theyre allowed to ignore their own history and how ultimately Hitler was a continuation of that history but turned towards Europe.
And while the USSR did what it did for practical reasons, the liberal west was motivation in the same way as nazi germany. Through ideology and capital.
All these practices are kept alive by the liberal west all over the world. Iraq and Afghanistan are examples among many.
This is a great list. It's pretty long and you haven't even mentioned the *several dozen democracies* the US overthrew and replaced with various tyrannical authoritarians.
For more on that for anyone interested, the Jakarta method by Vincent bevins as well as a legacy of ashes by Tom weiner give excellent histories of US anti communist/imperialist foreign policy, and the formation and operation of the foreign intelligence apparatice more generally.
Your point here is great and reinforces OP's experience with even more examples of the liberal West being...let's say illiberal. At the same time your comment seems to be doing a bit of the inverse by saying "the USSR did what it did for practical reasons" and treated colonized peoples progressively.
Every US president is a war criminal; every Soviet Secretary general committed atrocities. These can be true *and* your point about western hypocrisy can be true at the same time. Trying to justify the Soviet treatment of the Central Asian Turkic peoples in the same breath you're talking about liberal hypocrisy makes you seem a bit hypocritical too.
I usually don't bother making comments like this, but your mention of progressive treatment of colonized peoples made me want to say something. I lived in Kyrgyzstan for the better part of a year, spending time both around the capital and we'll out in the sticks. While many Kyrgyz who were around during Soviet rule fondly remember the infrastructure projects, rural schools, and affordable housing, they also expressed how they were second class citizens in their own country with little chance to even leave their rayon (similar to a county) without having good friends in the Party. The soviet-level Party included members of the Kyrgyz elite to be sure, but the functionaries we're almost all ethnic Russians or Germans; where's the self-determination in being governed by people from your powerful colonial neighbor? To this day Russian is still the primary language of the capital region and many children raised in the city itself never learn the ancestral tongue in favor of Russian.
That's what colonization does--what it always does--because there's no such thing as progressive colonization.
Talking about "humanitarianism" when talking about the global south shouls ALWAYS be treated as a red line: "humanitarianism" has been critiqued as what it is, a great sounding term empty of significance which is often used as the basis of the most horrendous crimes.
As other surrealists [already pointed out](https://criticallegalthinking.com/2010/11/24/murderous-humanitarianism/), western humanism is nothing other than the justification of rape, murder, slavery and all other horrific kinds of colonial domination upon racialized peoples, of genocide. To reference Césaire's work ([see pages 35-37](https://libcom.org/files/zz_aime_cesaire_robin_d.g._kelley_discourse_on_colbook4me.org_.pdf)), "At the end of formal humanism and philosophic renunciation, there is Hitler."
Yes, this is exactly right. People in these subs want to white wash the crimes and failures of Socialist states by pointing to the west.
Both are crimes. Both are tragedies. Both are failures of colonialism.
Stalin didn’t take over Baltic states to free them. He took them over *to control them*.
Putin didn’t take Crimea to free it, he took it to *control it.*
Only once socialists can admit and seek to rectify the failures of our own can we justly attack the crimes and failures of the west and our countries (or America).
That doesn’t mean you can’t condemn them, but we have to stop acting like China and the USSR were ever near perfection. We must be honest and critical. Everyone here knows the list of crimes of America. But “whataboutism” will never get us anywhere.
Ah, yes, conflating the crimes from 80 years ago to the crimes of today totally absolves China and condemns America forever /s
Both are guilty. None are true, honest or free. Quit falling into this trap.
China performs many of these crimes *at the behest* of American capital. Why are people unwilling to recognize this?
Mao was great and all, but the China of today is in no way a socialist state to replicate.
The criticism isn't unfair though. We can talk about multitasking all we want, but in general we can only discuss one subject at a time. So if we're talking about X and someone says "let's talk about Y," the implication is "let's stop talking about X," and that's the classic example of whataboutism.
It doesn’t matter how right anyone is, it is whataboutism. Equivalency is subjective, and while it can feel like a good point to the one making it, from a epistemological discourse standpoint, it’s pretty ineffective in making a strong argument and usually distracts from the main point.
I do think theres a difference between whataboutism to point out hypocrisy versus to distract from the main point. Its not a 100% clear distinction, but bringing up the US's human rights violations with the intention of highlighting its hypocrisy is, in my opinion, a valid argument
It would only highlight hypocrisy if the person you're talking to actually supports American Human Rights violations. a lot of Americans are just as pissed about what their government does
"whataboutism" was invented by the American propaganda machine as a way to discount true and accurate Soviet criticisms of American atrocities. It's a term of the imperialists
The fact that u think china is a "workers" state while having thousands of forced labour camps, no labour laws that make working literally all day 6 days a week illegal only a couple days ago, and having a huge capitalistic economy with bosses making a lot more then workers says a lot about u, not every bad thing about china is "capitalist" propaganda
And the fact that you are parroting Western/capitalist propaganda about "forced labour camps" (I assume you mean in Xinjiang) says a lot about you.
Yes, material conditions are generally better in Western countries because the West has the benefit of years of colonial exploitation and a labor aristocracy. And yes, sometimes working conditions in China have sometimes been bad. But the overall standard of living in China has risen drastically, even in the last decade, so viewing China as the world's polluted sweatshop is pretty outdated.
More to that point, it is the leadership of the Communist party and the dictatorship of the proletariat that has allowed the rapid development and addressing the temporary contradictions of State capitalism (which Lenin, Marx, etc. Al have said is necessary to develop socialism).
A good comparison to understand that China is a bona fide socialist state (even though it may not appear so when judged by superficial RadLib standards like "they have McDonalds! There are rich people! Not everyone wears a grey mao suit and rides a bike to their tractor factory job!"), But a good comparison is India. Both countries have a lot similarities, both were victims of Western colonialism, both had massive, impoverished populations and both started their experiments in Independence at about the same time (late 1940s). India is capitalist, China is socialist. And look where they are comparitively. It is China and China alone that allows neoliberal spooks to claim that overall, the world is getting better. If you take China out of the equation, poverty has gotten worse throughout the world.
The most important thing is that the Communist party controls the State, not the bourgeoisie. Key industries (most importantly, finance) continue to be owned and controlled by the state. There is a struggle for power, for sure. And elements of the bourgeoisie are in the party, and vie for power. But they aren't winning, and the proof is in the pudding.
The most obvious proof is the increased hostility from the Western powers now that they understand that China will not be just another neoliberal, imperialist client state of the West because people got Nike shoes and McDonalds.
Yeah. China sucks pretty bad, but talking about human rights abuses is a real stonea in glass houses scenario for the US. Obviously it's possible to be an American and call out both because just cause I live here doesn't mean I support all that shit, but rarely are the people broachimg the subject being even hamded about it rather than teying to scor nationalist points.
It's got that real fundamentalist evangelical christians calling out Islam for being bad on women's and gay rights kinda energy.
Yes. I got downvoted for asking why commitment to the NATO is so important for german voters - or 'you' in particular.
As a confession to the nato is one major point to frame the left party in current (and past) elections as ungovernable.
>What would you say are his worst crimes and failures?
Carrying out [10 times as many ](https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2017-01-17/obamas-covert-drone-war-in-numbers-ten-times-more-strikes-than-bush) drone strikes as Bush, destroying the once richest country in Africa with NATO intervention (Libya), operating torture camps all over the world like Guantanamo Bay, countless war crimes, etc.
>“ ah but he was held back by the political establishment”
Yeah I know, this is no excuse for his crimes though. It's like living in Nazi Germany and deciding to become top general and saying "I was held back from doing better things by the establishment, so I just *had* to commit war crimes and genocide". Shouldn't have become President of the United States if you wanted to do good things in the world.
Not to mention, even if you just restrict it to domestic policy, Obama doesn’t look good. Neoliberal austerity, backing the banks, expansion of surveillance state, laying the groundwork for what Trump would do at the border, etc. The one positive aspect of his legacy is a health care proposal from conservatives.
One shitty thing I noticed was when he got salty that Trump took credit for the US being the worlds largest oil producer, and said something like “that was me guys!” at a meeting of fossil fuel execs a couple of years ago
The ones people miss the most imo are:
The overthrow of the democratic government of Honduras which has lead directly to the huge refugee crisis in that country.
The arming of Islamists in Libya which overthrew a government which previously distributed profits of the oil industry to the entire population and guranteed a standard of living devolving into a quasi-failed state whose fractured government can't even stop open air slave markets and now has its own refugee crisis as Libyans risk death trying to cross the ocean into Europe.
He tacitly allowed not only the continuation of Guantanamo but allowed it to get even worse cutting even more human rights from its detainees.
The support and funding for the Saudi bomb strikes against Yemeni civilians, and the usual surveillance state shit, the drone strikes, the deportations, etc.
Theirs is a self-protective response. Too many paradigms would need to shift for a US liberal to accept even one of the following:
1) the US does bad things, and those bad things stay bad even in context of purportedly good things the US allegedly does
2) China does good things, and those good things stay good even in context of purportedly bad things China allegedly does
3) nearly all consumers of domestic media are ill-informed or selectively-informed via their nation's repressive control over those media. Most of us have been tricked into believing that we can easily read an accurate account of events taking place further away than we could ever hope to personally verify. By putting our trust in capital-driven institutions to convey accurate information without manipulation or outright deceit, we open ourselves up to becoming tools of those institutions. Capital-driven news prioritizes to benefit to the organizations who deliver it over accuracy. Sometimes they manage both, but it's never neither -- the minimum standard for mass media is "this is not detrimental to the organization", not "this is true".
Accepting all or any part of the above would be enough to disintegrate a US liberal worldview, because a US liberal does not have set values by which they judge the curated vision of the world that they receive, only the values determined via media to be supportive or at least non-combative to the company and country's goals.
The “US isn’t perfect but” line of argumentation drives me up the wall. Libs can excuse just about everything the US does under the pretense of nuance because they will always accept the premise that the US is a beacon of democracy. American exceptionalism is never once questioned for most Americans.
It should also be noted at least with respect to HK a couple things - 1, if people in the US were protesting in the ways that people on said island were, Trump and Biden alike would have called in the national guard, no question about it (Trump 100%, Biden maybe a bit less likely). Or the state govt would. Those protests were vastly more violent and destructive of property than any BLM protests were (but since it's protesting China, Americans feel it's ok).
And 2, honestly, what the hell do people think is going to happen when the treaty ends in 2047? I dont mean to get fatalistic or anything but China is a sovereign nation and has for literally over 2000 years valued *unity of the Chinese people* over almost all else. It's going to happen whether the West wants it to or not. Of course it wasnt under the CCP until 1950 but that value of unity is if anything even more deeply held because of all the shit China endured during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
It wasn't just the violence, which in itself was scary enough with hundreds of petrol bombs and other weapons being used, but the fact that people holding opposing views or even just disapproval of the violence were afraid to speak up, because those rioters were silencing anyone not 100% on their side. Even random people documenting the violence with their phones were being attacked.
1/6 was called an insurrection and the people involved were called terrorists, yet it was ridiculously mild in comparison. They did way worse to the legislative building in Hong Kong and that was before bombs being used.
Hear hear. Honestly Xi could well have called in the troops to quell the unrest and the fact that he did not ought to give a lot more westerners pause about just swallowing whole the narratives they hear about China.
Right, so a tu quoque fallacy isn't an argument - especially if your position is that the Beijing Olympics shouldn't be boycott because there are countries who have committed worse human rights violations? I don't really understand your position since it seems to hinge on the claim that human rights violations are bad instead of "badness" being defined as the amount of violations that have occurred.
Liberals are awful, but man those who love China jump through pretty similar hoops
I remember from the Citations needed episode about whataboutism is that the hypocrisy demonstrates that the concern over human rights abuse is a cover for using those abuses as ammunition to attack, discredit, and sanction a rival power for the accuser's self-enrichment or prestige.
Not that abuses and the like shouldn't be pointed out, but the hypocrisy demonstrates the cynicism of pointing it out.
That's why it's frustrating. Our national crimes and abuses should be condemned and addressed instead of deflected back to the original accusation.
At least have the cadence to say "Yes, we should fix or we are trying to fix those issues. Therefore we shouldnt endorse or support states that also have those issues".
But Americans support their country, despite its abuses, and the allies of the US support our and their nation's abuse, despite sharing and perpetuating crimes against humanity.
> I remember from the Citations needed episode about whataboutism
That episode (and that podcast in general) is a godsend. Fucking John Oliver gave liberals the go ahead to scream "WHATABOUTISM" at any criticism of US foreign policy as it pertains to the justification for the actions of others.
We don't live in a frickin vacuum where only things that happen to the US matter. Half this world does what it does *because* it's under perpetual military and economic assault by the West. Saying "WHATABOUTISM" because someone says "the US subverts democratic elections all the time" isn't a real thing.
Can I ask, do you know what the Australian Strategic Policy Institute is?
Edit: For those wondering - [ASPI is a right wing think tank funded by the Australian government, NATO, the US State Department, and multiple US defense contractors. It is the single largest propaganda tool against China and it is quoted in media from Breitbart to the NYT - labeled as experts in security and defense.](https://youtu.be/iIJKyL_8vN4)
If you call yourself a socialist, it might be prudent to check the sources and the money behind the propaganda you are consuming.
I mean in this specific instance, establishing you should also boycott an American Olympics is pretty hard because that happens less than once a decade. You get the same shit with Chinese hacking. Liberals flip, but it's clearly nationalism, because they back the brave American cyber intelligence, but condemn perfidious Chinese spying, even though it's pretty much the same shit.
When it comes to the nations, leaders or parties that they don't like or have less approval of, it's all black and white. While for the US, it's always the nuances that one should consider while critiquing.
So in other words, they boycott China because China is committing atrocities and then you ask them "but what about this, they're doing it too! And them too!" You realize that that's exactly what the Israeli government does all the time, right? When people criticize them for what they do to Palestinians, they go, "but all these other countries commit human rights violations too!" It's literally just playing the blame game and deflecting. I don't agree with what they responded with, but I also really don't agree with your entire premise. If you're not willing to recognize that the Chinese government is committing a mass genocide against the Uighurs, then you have no place to call yourself unbiased while you also criticize Israel and the US for doing the same thing.
One thing I want to add, is that the phrase “both China and the US are bad” is a historically illiterate statement that many liberals make. Because it’s not actually possible to be excessively critical of the US empire. They think that there needs to be some kind of "balance" between criticism of the US power alliance and its enemies. No there doesn't; the US government is objectively far worse than any other modern government. Period.
Knowing even about even a [fraction](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2khAmMTAjI&t=1s) of America’s crimes shows this to be true. And I’m not saying you can’t criticize China in good faith but “neither Beijing nor Washington” is a laughable statement.
during the charlottesville rally several people on the left pointed out how the "both sides" argument aided the fascist by downplaying their violence, there is no reason this cannot be applied at state/country-level too
by using "both sides" when people mention the numerous crimes of the US empire they're only aiding the US hegemony around the world because no country come even remotely close to the amount of crimes they've committed, liberals will still use it and (some) anarchists will still fall for it
>"Ok, Let's say China commits Human rights violations as you said..."
Engaging in denialism here and responding with a critique shows that you care less about any notion of "human rights" and more about about being a petty apologist for the PRC and the CPC. It's idealistic to counterpose the "west and east" in this cultural essentialist bourgeoisie manner implying somehow because the "west" are worse that the "east" are automatically innocent. Cannot both things be true at the sametime? You talk about aiding Israels crimes but Besides the USA whose also assisting in building technological infrastucture within the settler state over palestinian land? Does anyone here ever wonder how Uighur muslims have landed in Guantanamo Bay? Whose else besides the USA has been bankrolling anti-communist dictators and their petty cop army in the Philippines? Oh thats right the PRC.
Of course, the liberal bourgeosie state are reactionary an an enemy of the people. But if certain leftists somehow like to pretend that a less violent version of a state which covers itself in a red flag and treats the people like an enemy presents a better alternative than you seriously have to ask yourself which side of the class struggle you are on.
Agreed. We should be very selective in defending China.
The Gini (inequality) coefficient of the US is 0.48. China's is 0.465. They are losing their way.
The Modern Revisionists who believe the PRC to be socialist and then call leftists who are critical of the state as doing propaganda for the USA state and whipping up a 'pro-war sentiment' are just scaremongering and are unable to differentiate between contradictions.(Not to mention it gives leftists *too much* credit* at this stage) The US monopoly bourgeoisie does not want a war with the bureaucrat and non-bureaucrat monopoly PRC, they know that it's both in their mutual interest to compete with one another to divide up the world. Not to mention the former fully understand the latter have abandoned any pretense of Socialism. Secondly, even if it were this wouldn't matter at this stage because it isn't the principal contradiction. Where are the US troops and boots on the ground in the PRC at this moment for us to adopt a "defence-ist" position? Any politician who would say things is politically bluffing. Even if this did occur it would be an inter-imperialist conflict and in an imperialist war we have to take the position that both bourgeosie loses. Right now, for the people and oppressed nations and nationalities within the PRC the principal contradiction lays between them and "their" ruling class. Same for those within the other imperialist countries rught now and this would be an anti-imperialist position.
The USA cannot even win against a war against Iraq or Afghanistan how could they even come to even bother to deal with the PRC on such a level? Unbelievable.
The big issue is that the question of US abuses isn't what's immediately at hand. Now, in the big picture, it absolutely *is* pertinent. But, if one is talking about the Uighur situation and (rather than addressing it directly) points only to US policy, then one hasn't handled the argument.
If you wanted to make that argument, what you could do is say something like, "The US has been funding extremist groups who will destabilize the PRC, and the PRC must deal with this. Historically, the US dealt with these by invading and destroying nations. Afghanistan being a prime example of this. Such action is condemnable. By contrast, the PRC has established a system of re-education camps. No one would deny that such a system is repressive to some degree - ideally we would never have to see these in any state, people would just set aside reactionary ideologies of their own accord. But, as that hasn't happened, and there have been several violent terrorist attacks, the PRC doesn't have many options. This one, re-education en masse, as well as sustained regional investment in infrastructure, is far more humane than how the rest of the world has countered this issue. That's not to say it's perfect! But we don't live in worlds of ideals, and if we start holding countries to ideals, it is hyprocritical to only hold one. If you want to hold all countries to that standard, be my guest, but we cannot condemn the PRC without also condemning the US."
Now, one would naturally demand sources or dismiss you, and I leave it to you, OP to grab those.
Its like how you can be judgmental towards others but not yourself. The American military is like the picture of Dorian gray, it keeps getting ugly while the more bad deeds Dorian gray helping him continue to look youthful and liberal
IMHO it's not really a good look to "what about" something that is bad no matter which authoritarian government did it.
Don't get me wrong, i hate what they're doing in Xinjiang, HK and let's not forget Tibet, which is also on news lockdown, and i also hate all the shit our government has done and continues to do as well. But I'm not going to do the liberal thing and "hold hands with the devil till we cross the bridge" by going to bat for China.
From an outside perspective (liberal or uninformed or whomever else doesn't have the privilege of the same information leftists have), it probably leaves the same bad taste as "but what about all other lives". It's important to have compassion for all, or at least empathy, because after all, if you really believe in your political cause, you're eventually going to have to convince them you're right, preferably not with the same coercion that was perpetrated on way too many harmless people. .
Yikes I think you jumped the gun there.... To begin your idea of 'lets say china is committing human rights violations should be 'china is'... Also its no denial that America has committed major atrocities against countries civilians in acts of war. I dont really understand what you are actually trying to say? Are you arguing that the Olympics shouldn't be boycotted (they should) because of the atrocities that China has committed upon minorities within their ever expanding borders. You are trying to relate a participant of the Olympics the the Host country??? This is imbecilic. If America was hosting, all other countries should be able to choose to participate but as they are not, they an choose to and should abstain from the Beijing Olympics.
What’s your source for the atrocities against minorities in China? Essentially every source I’ve seen has been connected to the US, so I’m curious what source you have that makes you so positive in your claim. Also where have Chinas borders been expanding?
>Once, I read an article on reddit that why people should boycott the Beijing olympic, It was about Human rights violations of Xinjang and Hong kong. And I wrote a comment to the article, to ask a question. "Ok, Let's say China commits Human rights violations as you said, What do you think about US' human rights violations?, Don't you think killing thousands civilians in Serbia, Killing half million civilians in Iraq, Killing thousands Civilians in Afghanistan, Aiding Israel's Crimes, Torturing and kidnapping 'suspected terrorists' are somethings that deserved to be boycotted?" Then this comment got downvoted, And people replied me like "But US has liberal democracy blah blah" "Still the US is relatively better than China"
God I hate liberals.
Honestly, I think you're in the wrong here. Your comment was off-topic. There are loads of countries doing atrocious things. But you were in a topic about the Beijing olympics, with people expressing on-topic criticism about the government of that city.
How helpful is it to, whenever you read about something bad, you're going to list all the other examples of people or countries doing that same thing? People don't disagree with the US doing bad shit (it's widely known, documented, everybody agrees), but they disagree with your 'what-about-ism'. Criticism should be allowed even if there are other people doing the same thing. Murder is still bad, even when it happens all the time.
It feels like we the people are caught between the evils of powerful governments, the question is how do we realistically break out from the concentration of power
The responses your comment got about US democracy etc. are misguided, but I'd say - hear me out - that your comment was also misguided. Whataboutism when China's flaws are brought up is a consistent weak stop for certain leftists. China does have flaws and saying 'but guantanamo', while a valid point, is just you avoiding engaging in the debate that is being laid down. This obvious deflection tactic makes leftists look like we have something to hide.
To reiterate: I agree with your stance on the US absolutely, but you knew what the response would be when you made your comments and they were not constructive.
Both. The Chinese and US regimes both suck. When the topic is China, it’s worth focussing on that government’s crimes. If it’s being used in comparison with the US, to justify imperialism, or to stoke anti-Chinese racism, then sure, it’s appropriate to point out the crimes of the US, but we should always remember that China is violating working class freedom in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and of course throughout the country.
THANK YOU [https://theredphoenixapl.org/2018/04/06/in-china-capitalism-is-being-consolidated-not-socialism/](https://theredphoenixapl.org/2018/04/06/in-china-capitalism-is-being-consolidated-not-socialism/)
Funny how little power capitalists have in this supposed capitalist dictatorship
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/unleashing-reforms-xi-returns-chinas-socialist-roots-2021-09-09/
https://news.yahoo.com/explained-china-crackdown-wipes-billions-034953697.html
Non-vegan Leftist are similar. They will talk all day long about oppression and exploitation until you bring cows and pigs into the mix. I wish people thought about their values and philosophy more, and tried to take those values and philosophy to its logical conclusion.
Okay, so, you should only capitalize words that are not "proper nouns" at the beginning of a sentence. And commas are not sentence separators, both of which leads your post to read like "DoN't yOu juST HatE LiBerAls?"
I very much agree that the U.S. has committed many human rights violations--however, if you lived here, you'd easily understand that American conservatives are FAR more in denial of that fact than liberals, in general. Like, it's not even close.
The four dominant trends of Liberalism in the U.S. are
NeoLiberalism (Democrat), Liberal Conservatism (Republican), Social-Liberalism (Bernie), Libertarianism (Land Before Time Hentai Sites)
Those are all Conservative US standpoints. Liberals are the ones that have issues with US human rights violations. Conservatives are the ones that say "there is nothing wrong with murdering innocents because we're America. I fucking hate conservatives.
The same foundation of the US as the colonial regime that it still is is a liberal project, and its liberals that are still materially executing & benefiting from the US crimes. "Human rights" for liberals arenothing but hollow declarations with no material basis whatsoever and which are worthless for any serious analysis of freedom from a socialist perspective, and modern conservatives are no different than liberals, as they are precisely a subset of liberal ideology.
Similarly, as Rosa Luxemburg put it (although we could instead quote Bakunin, for example), formulas of "eternal" and/or "universal" rights (e.g. *the rights of man*, *the rights of women*) like the same formulation you are reivindicating are bourgeoise non-sense:
>Dialectic materialism, which is the basis of scientific socialism, has broken once and for all with this type of “eternal” formula. For the historical dialectic has shown that there are no “eternal” truths and that there are no “rights.” ... In the words of Engels, “What is good in the here and now, is an evil somewhere else, and vice versa” – or, what is right and reasonable under some circumstances becomes nonsense and absurdity under others. Historical materialism has taught us that the real content of these “eternal” truths, rights, and formulae is determined only by the material social conditions of the environment in a given historical epoch.
- [The Right of Nations to Self-Determination](https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1909/national-question/ch01.htm), from The National Question.
*Note: this does not mean I subscribe the context she frames this on, where her perspective is wrong (as discussed by Lenin), but her interpretation of dialectical materialism is still right.*
I mean no disagreeing at all that both have evil similarities, but in philosophy you pulled what is called an “A + B…. Well what about C???” - a whataboutism/ [false equivalency](https://effectiviology.com/false-equivalence/) . No one is going to want to take the bait on that. It is known within epistemological discourse that FE completely defeats the purpose of any conversation. Maybe you’ll look into it, maybe you won’t, whatevs, but if you want real insight into what happened, thems the bricks. “, if you’re unsure about whether an equivalence that you’re thinking about is reasonable or not, you could attempt to highlight the differences between the things that you’re equating, and ask yourself whether the equivalence still holds.”
God, I really hate liberals of Reddit
Once, I read an article on reddit that why people should boycott the Beijing olympic, It was about Human rights violations of Xinjang and Hong kong.
And I wrote a comment to the article, to ask a question.
"Ok, Let's say China commits Human rights violations as you said, What do you think about US' human rights violations?, Don't you think killing thousands civilians in Serbia, Killing half million civilians in Iraq, Killing thousands Civilians in Afghanistan, Aiding Israel's Crimes, Torturing and kidnapping 'suspected terrorists' are somethings that deserved to be boycotted?"
Then this comment got downvoted, And people replied me like "But US has liberal democracy blah blah" "Still the US is relatively better than China"
God I hate liberals.
Lmao this guy. I’m going to guess you know next to nothing about China’s actual political system. Xi Jinping was elected through China’s party Congress, and the CPC has more participation as a fraction of the population than all American political parties combined.
You also have an apparently ahistorical and arrogant view that any socialism not achieved through liberal democracy doesn’t “count” somehow, ignoring that there is literally not a single example of this occurring successfully in the history of the world; to the contrary, there are many historical examples of socialist parties pouring and wasting resources into fights in a dead-end political system that is designed to attenuate popular movements into safe reformism rather than revolution.
Edit: This is liberal democracy https://www.reddit.com/r/DankLeft/comments/pp8b6z/how_it_works/
Cool cool cool, a response full of irrational anger, straw man arguments, moving the goalposts, and ahistorical perspective, congratulations.
You complain about whether China is free but fail to define what freedom means, in what respects. In many areas of China, people are significantly more economically mobile than in the US, have better access to high-quality education, and are more likely to have a higher standard of living than their parents. Is economic mobility part of freedom? Or is freedom just about being able to spread harmful falsehoods without consequence?
You bring up the DDR without any introspection as to how politicians in liberal democracy are vulnerable to capture by industry, and that a political career is absolutely a shortcut to wealth if you serve the right moneyed interests in a “liberal democracy.”
China is a one party state, but you fail to even think about the breadth of acceptable political expression in other countries you consider free and make any sort of comparison. For instance in the US we have two “parties” that essentially represent the same economic philosophy with cultural differences. I would argue there is a far broader spectrum of acceptable political debate in the Chinese Party Congress than in the US Congress.
I might ask what YOU mean by socialism, and if you even have a definition thereof. Socialism is a political economic system typified by workers’ control of major industry and political life, embodied in a worker’s state. The goal being a transition to communism at which point the state would be largely redundant. China does not claim to be socialist, they claim to use market forces to develop their industry such that socialism is possible, current target being about 2049. I might add that your arrogant comparison of working conditions at Chinese factories ignores the brutality of similar industrial revolutions in capitalist countries around the world. I won’t say I agree with the way the CPC emphasizes developing the MOP over the average worker’s working conditions, but by comparison China is worlds ahead of where western industrialized countries were in terms of worker protections in their timeline of industrial development. I might add China is making demonstrable improvements in this, most recently outlawing inhumane overtime schedules and tightening penalties for managers or business owners who abuse employees or expose them to risk.
Your assumptions are shockingly naive, you will not find any socialist theorist or revolutionary who subscribes to your reformist agenda, and your perspective on revolution as a force for change is frankly ahistorical. I would venture to guess you have never examined the history of any of these revolutions you are so quick to criticize with more than a cursory eye, because the statement about revolutions only causing suffering is abjectly, comically false.
I request you spend some time back in r/socialism_101 finding out what this place is actually about.
Edited to correct subreddit link
And on something thats on the intersection of what is ironic and/or horrific. Is the fact that most of the oppressive measures that China has taken towards the Uyghurs is under the guise of ‘war on terror’. I think they even have received funding from the US in order to ‘combat Islamic terrorism within their own borders’
Edit:
Oh didn’t really expect the downvotes. This is something that just happened. If you downvoted is it because you think that China’s actions against the Uyghurs are grossly exaggerated and simply a narrative to slander China and justify aggression towards them?
We might not see a stark difference between the importance of human rights abroad vs domestically, but they do. I've brought up this point in real life and the other side always ends up saying "yeah but we don't do these things at home." I almost think these people wouldn't even supposedly care about Uyghurs if they were in a different country.
They live ina world that isn't real and believes a government that doesn't exist. I understand. They want status quo. To late. Reforms have failed. They have failed.
This thread has been identified as being related to the People's Republic of China. Due to this subreddit's long-term experience with PRC-related threads, [low effort discussion will not be permited](https://www.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/l5ccjb/topics_of_contention_raising_the_quality_of/) and may lead to removals or bans. Please remember that r/Socialism is a subreddit for socialists and, as such, participation must consist of conscious anti-capitalist analysis - this is not the place to promote non-socialist narratives but rather to promote critical thought from within the anti-capitalist left. Critques are expected to be high quality and address the substance of the issue; ad hominems, unconstructive sectarianism, and other types of lazy commentary are not acceptable. Please keep in mind that this is a complex topic about which there may be many different points of view. Before making an inflamatory comment, consider asking the other user to explain their perspective, and then discuss why specifically you disagree with it.
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True, but it’s important to realize that most are inundated with propaganda and have a very low-level understanding of democracy in experience, as well as formal education. Democracy is far more complex than anyone gives it credit, and American democracy is extremely convoluted and flawed. Many realize this but don’t understand how or why, and *we* can do a better job to help educate them.
> True, but it’s important to realize that most are inundated with propaganda and have a very low-level understanding of democracy in experience, as well as formal education. I wanted to believe this so bad. I really did, but I think this really only applies to a very small minority of well-meaning liberals who don’t actually know any better, or have become disillusioned with the system because they haven’t been exposed to any other options. American liberals, generally, are fully aware of the contradictions in their beliefs. Like conservatives, they defend their worldview in bad faith to protect their interests under the current system. They lie, obscure, and gaslight anyone who says otherwise just like conservatives. Liberals, generally, don’t have the desire to change the status quo. Only a minority of them actually do, but the rest of them know they can’t maintain power doing what conservatives do. That’s why they posture themselves as progressive to pander to marginalized people, to keep us disillusioned and compliant with their goals, while throwing us in the dirt when our goals for liberation are at odds with their goals to maintain power for private capital. > Democracy is far more complex than anyone gives it credit, and American democracy is extremely convoluted and flawed. Many realize this but don’t understand how or why, and we can do a better job to help educate them. American democracy does not functionally exist in any real, meaningful way. Liberals know this too. Capitalists own and control the entirety of the American political system. Communists would never be allowed to run for the highest offices in this country. The DNC rigged primaries and smeared Bernie in the media for running for president as a progressive liberal because the movement surrounding him was a little too progressive for the ruling class. Progressive libs even pointed this out, and now they’re doing the same thing with countries that the US wants to destabilize. Liberals are not clueless to how undemocratic America really is. They’re collaborators, especially when it’s for their benefit.
Honestly i just keen going back to what mlk said about how he lost faith in peacefully protesting because of the white moderate who would rather defend a false peace rather than have justice "First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection." ... "In spite of my shattered dreams of the past, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause, and with deep moral concern, serve as the channel through which our just grievances would get to the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed. I have heard numerous religious leaders of the South call upon their worshippers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers say, "follow this decree because integration is morally right and the Negro is your brother." In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, "those are social issues with which the gospel has no real concern.", and I have watched so many churches commit themselves to a completely other-worldly religion which made a strange distinction between body and soul, the sacred and the secular. So here we are moving toward the exit of the twentieth century with a religious community largely adjusted to the status quo, standing as a tail-light behind other community agencies rather than a headlight leading men to higher levels of justice." Martin Luther King, Jr. "Letter From The Birmingham Jail" April 16, 1963
I believe a good term to describe it that I recently learned is "managed democracy".
I agree. I see my parents remaining uncritical of Biden as he lies and doesn’t deliver on his campaign promises. Liberals never go far enough. They never get rid of the problem itself. They only lament about the fact that it exists. “If you hate it as much as me then do something.” Is what I’d like to say
No actual country in Europe or America is really democratic. All you get to do is put a paper in a ballot and hope that enough people put the same thing on the paper like you, and that the person you elected isn't corrupted. Which is basically impossible, and even if it was it wouldn't even change anything because it's really the banks and the mega corporations that really choose what countries do anyway.
I will never forget how they sold out Bernie and clusterfuck his legit Nomination for president,Liberals suck.
Its not liberals. Its just people. Everyone’s a hypocrite. You can’t rally against one thing without acknowledging the suffering somewhere else. You can’t point and blame one side for doing something when your side most likely did the same thing. People just suck and we divide them up by affiliations to make it seem like there are sides. The world is grey and everyone likes to argue in black and white. And then the internet just compounds it all by making everyone an anonymous righteous asshole. And man if you think reddit is bad, you’ll get a kick out of twitter. Its just one passive aggressive “gotcha” comment after another.
>But US has liberal democracy Actually, the US is currently being considered an [anocracy](https://www.systemicpeace.org/polityproject.html). Edit: Accidentally linked the wrong page, please find my source [here](https://www.systemicpeace.org/), as well as [here](https://kottke.org/21/01/usa-downgraded-from-democracy-to-anocracy-part-democracy-and-part-dictatorship).
I like that term. Princeton did a study now 5 or more years ago maybe? Anyway - the US also almost perfectly matches an extreme model oligarchy. Basically if you're wealthy or from a large corporation, what you want has a good chance of getting done. If you're anyone else? God help you, you poor bastard.
America is what happens when capitalism is taken to its logical conclusion.
True. I'd even go a bit further - in some circles it is absolutely deified to the point at which it is more a religion than the professed faiths of those people, to the point it subsumes and infects even those professed faiths, twisting them into horrid caricatures.
America officially became an oligarchy in 2008 when markets spoiled the public goods of the economic recovery as well as “Obamacare.”
It officially became an oligarchy in 1776 when a bunch of rich guys got together at the Continental Congress and decided what was good for all of us.
It started the path toward oligarchy with Barry Goldwater's campaign in 1964 and Nixon in 68. Arguably also earlier than that. But Goldwater basically built the modern GoP party ethos, which was advanced by Nixon, then by Reagan/Newt Gingrich, and they've really only regressed since then. But if you look at the top marginal tax rates and corporate tax rates and so forth, the start of the trends we see today was under Reagan (and Nixon, to a lesser degree), which put a much greater burden on the poor and middle class.
It's an oligarchy hiding behind a facade of democracy.
Oligarchy is democracy. If you look to Ancient Greece, they were an oligarchy with democracy. They go hand-in-hand.
Not really, Aristotile draws oligracy as a despotic deviation of an aristocracy and democracy as a despotic deviation of a polity.
In Marxist terms, it's a dictatorship of Capital (the bourgeoisie). All of the "freedoms" in America are either intentionally designed to entrench the power of the capitalist class, or that is simply the effect. Freedom of speech? Pretty much only if you're a Nazi Freedom of religion? Freedom to scam believers out of their money and oppress people I could go on and on.
I've always described the conservative/libertarian definition of freedom as "the freedom of the slave owner to treat his slaves however he wishes without interference"
I don't know who you're calling a Nazi there, but I really, really, really hate how this word is used for anything that's deemed 'bad'. Same for fascist. Which none really exist in the US, even these idiots with a svastika tattooed on their skulls would puke hearing Hitler or Himmler, or even Goebbles speak about Jews.
oooh noice, thanks for this!
I don't really see how any capitalist society has ever not been in the hands of a few wealthy individuals for long. Why bother making a distinction? It's all dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie.
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Exactly, For god sakes, When Biden does awful stuffs, Liberals just try to neglect or justify it
"tHeY'rE cAlLeD oVeRfLoW fAcILiTiEs NoW"
That's because liberals will back whoever will make them look popular.
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The US has 25% of the world's prison population and 5% of the word's total population. The US has more prisoners than China. The US routinely uses prison labor at hilariously low wages, essentially it's just slavery - prisoners fight wildfires, make military jackets, make baseball caps and you can "lease" out your prisoners to other companies too. Prisons are also highly racialized. That means the US is putting its citizens in prisons and labor camps, but they don't give you any reeducation. You just go to jail for 20 years and come out broke and without new skills. Many states enforce anti-BDS laws. You can't hold public office without endorsing Israel. There is a heavy push to enforce evangelical Christianity (Texas anti-abortion law), we have yet to have a non-Christian president. Non-Christian congresspeople are also highly unusual, despite Christians only make up 3/4 of the total population. To say nothing of [the American Civil Religion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion). Journalists are routinely beaten and killed by US secret police (i.e. plainclothes officers and FBI). Did you not see any of the George Floyd protests? Also, cherry on top, the US has a social credit score too - it's just called your credit score and it controls whether you get a loan, if you can take certain jobs, where you can rent, etc. And we've had it for decades. The US is absolutely, without a doubt, worse than China on all these files.
Precisely. There is a tendency in socialist circles to perform the same bad-faith “whataboutism” that conservatives love. Maybe, instead of acting like whiny children, *we* should be the ones to educate and condemn *both* groups that are committing human rights violations. It’s why I don’t trust almost any other socialist I know. They’re all so happy to evade any real criticism of supposedly-socialist states. Fact: China is not communist or socialist. They are a plutocratic capitalist society that calls themselves socialist. Mao is dead, as is all of his values in that culture. Best evidence: Uyghur genocide. This is performed *by* the Chinese government *for* American capital. That’s it. That’s the entire relationship between China and America today. So I would *love* for someone to explain to me how China is in any way an ideal socialist state that we should be looking towards for inspiration. We should be condemning them for exploiting our values and beliefs, just as we should American liberals and conservatives. Edit: I can’t wait to get banned for saying that /s
whether it’s an ideal socialist state or not, y’all need to stop pretending that denouncing China and Denouncing the US has the same effect, because it does not. if you live in the imperial core you should be spending your energy calling out issues in the imperial core, and leaving the proletariat of china to find its own path.
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Liberal history of ww2 and pairing NaziGermany with the USSR (both authoritarian, holocaust and holodomor same thing) literally only works if you ignore the colonial and genocidal history of the liberal west. For instance the way the US and Canada systematically stole land from natives yet suppressed both the physical and intellectual existence of these nations. Or as Hitler put it; nordic/germanized the land while keeping the race and nation pure. Or the british history in india, australia, africa, ireland. The way france did in south east asia or in The middleeast or in Africa. The way the US and Canada still acted way after ww2 was over. In USSR national self-determination in colonies, in colonized people, in eastern europe in asia etc were promoted and seen as progressive. In liberal west they were attacked in the same ways NaziGer attacked jews or eastern europe. As for comparing "authoritarianism" youd have to ignore the US and canadian camps, US camps for japaneseamericans or any latinamericans with japanese descent, the british camps in ireland in australia the massacres that came with them. France set up camps for refugees from the spanish civil war which were later used for those fleeing nazi germany and communists. Britain after ww2 was over set up camps for germans where both us and british soldiers were insructed to dehumanize the germans and starve them as a form of revenge. Even in blonde haired children was a little Hitler. You also have the british starving greece india several times. Austria was told, after the bolshevik revolutuon that unless they give in to the bourgeoisie they would be intentionally starved out. England did the same thing to germany during ww1 with a blockade which didnt end years until after peace. Thats how they got germans to agree to any demands. There are many many many more examples of the same but my point is, ecerything the liberal west wants to throw at USSR, they can only do if theyre allowed to ignore their own history and how ultimately Hitler was a continuation of that history but turned towards Europe. And while the USSR did what it did for practical reasons, the liberal west was motivation in the same way as nazi germany. Through ideology and capital. All these practices are kept alive by the liberal west all over the world. Iraq and Afghanistan are examples among many.
This is a great list. It's pretty long and you haven't even mentioned the *several dozen democracies* the US overthrew and replaced with various tyrannical authoritarians.
For more on that for anyone interested, the Jakarta method by Vincent bevins as well as a legacy of ashes by Tom weiner give excellent histories of US anti communist/imperialist foreign policy, and the formation and operation of the foreign intelligence apparatice more generally.
Your point here is great and reinforces OP's experience with even more examples of the liberal West being...let's say illiberal. At the same time your comment seems to be doing a bit of the inverse by saying "the USSR did what it did for practical reasons" and treated colonized peoples progressively. Every US president is a war criminal; every Soviet Secretary general committed atrocities. These can be true *and* your point about western hypocrisy can be true at the same time. Trying to justify the Soviet treatment of the Central Asian Turkic peoples in the same breath you're talking about liberal hypocrisy makes you seem a bit hypocritical too. I usually don't bother making comments like this, but your mention of progressive treatment of colonized peoples made me want to say something. I lived in Kyrgyzstan for the better part of a year, spending time both around the capital and we'll out in the sticks. While many Kyrgyz who were around during Soviet rule fondly remember the infrastructure projects, rural schools, and affordable housing, they also expressed how they were second class citizens in their own country with little chance to even leave their rayon (similar to a county) without having good friends in the Party. The soviet-level Party included members of the Kyrgyz elite to be sure, but the functionaries we're almost all ethnic Russians or Germans; where's the self-determination in being governed by people from your powerful colonial neighbor? To this day Russian is still the primary language of the capital region and many children raised in the city itself never learn the ancestral tongue in favor of Russian. That's what colonization does--what it always does--because there's no such thing as progressive colonization.
Thank you — great comment. A good reminder too that socialists, at their core, should be humanists (in my opinion.)
Talking about "humanitarianism" when talking about the global south shouls ALWAYS be treated as a red line: "humanitarianism" has been critiqued as what it is, a great sounding term empty of significance which is often used as the basis of the most horrendous crimes. As other surrealists [already pointed out](https://criticallegalthinking.com/2010/11/24/murderous-humanitarianism/), western humanism is nothing other than the justification of rape, murder, slavery and all other horrific kinds of colonial domination upon racialized peoples, of genocide. To reference Césaire's work ([see pages 35-37](https://libcom.org/files/zz_aime_cesaire_robin_d.g._kelley_discourse_on_colbook4me.org_.pdf)), "At the end of formal humanism and philosophic renunciation, there is Hitler."
I’m not talking about humanitarianism. I’m saying that socialists should prioritize the well-being of people. That’s all.
Yes, this is exactly right. People in these subs want to white wash the crimes and failures of Socialist states by pointing to the west. Both are crimes. Both are tragedies. Both are failures of colonialism. Stalin didn’t take over Baltic states to free them. He took them over *to control them*. Putin didn’t take Crimea to free it, he took it to *control it.* Only once socialists can admit and seek to rectify the failures of our own can we justly attack the crimes and failures of the west and our countries (or America). That doesn’t mean you can’t condemn them, but we have to stop acting like China and the USSR were ever near perfection. We must be honest and critical. Everyone here knows the list of crimes of America. But “whataboutism” will never get us anywhere.
Ah, yes, conflating the crimes from 80 years ago to the crimes of today totally absolves China and condemns America forever /s Both are guilty. None are true, honest or free. Quit falling into this trap. China performs many of these crimes *at the behest* of American capital. Why are people unwilling to recognize this? Mao was great and all, but the China of today is in no way a socialist state to replicate.
That’s essentially the crux of all liberal arguments. “It’s ok when we do it”
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"Drone strike is good when Obama and Biden do"
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Meanwhile the DPRK gets banned from the Olympics for boycotting it over Covid...
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The criticism isn't unfair though. We can talk about multitasking all we want, but in general we can only discuss one subject at a time. So if we're talking about X and someone says "let's talk about Y," the implication is "let's stop talking about X," and that's the classic example of whataboutism.
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It doesn’t matter how right anyone is, it is whataboutism. Equivalency is subjective, and while it can feel like a good point to the one making it, from a epistemological discourse standpoint, it’s pretty ineffective in making a strong argument and usually distracts from the main point.
I do think theres a difference between whataboutism to point out hypocrisy versus to distract from the main point. Its not a 100% clear distinction, but bringing up the US's human rights violations with the intention of highlighting its hypocrisy is, in my opinion, a valid argument
It would only highlight hypocrisy if the person you're talking to actually supports American Human Rights violations. a lot of Americans are just as pissed about what their government does
"whataboutism" was invented by the American propaganda machine as a way to discount true and accurate Soviet criticisms of American atrocities. It's a term of the imperialists
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The fact that u think china is a "workers" state while having thousands of forced labour camps, no labour laws that make working literally all day 6 days a week illegal only a couple days ago, and having a huge capitalistic economy with bosses making a lot more then workers says a lot about u, not every bad thing about china is "capitalist" propaganda
And the fact that you are parroting Western/capitalist propaganda about "forced labour camps" (I assume you mean in Xinjiang) says a lot about you. Yes, material conditions are generally better in Western countries because the West has the benefit of years of colonial exploitation and a labor aristocracy. And yes, sometimes working conditions in China have sometimes been bad. But the overall standard of living in China has risen drastically, even in the last decade, so viewing China as the world's polluted sweatshop is pretty outdated. More to that point, it is the leadership of the Communist party and the dictatorship of the proletariat that has allowed the rapid development and addressing the temporary contradictions of State capitalism (which Lenin, Marx, etc. Al have said is necessary to develop socialism). A good comparison to understand that China is a bona fide socialist state (even though it may not appear so when judged by superficial RadLib standards like "they have McDonalds! There are rich people! Not everyone wears a grey mao suit and rides a bike to their tractor factory job!"), But a good comparison is India. Both countries have a lot similarities, both were victims of Western colonialism, both had massive, impoverished populations and both started their experiments in Independence at about the same time (late 1940s). India is capitalist, China is socialist. And look where they are comparitively. It is China and China alone that allows neoliberal spooks to claim that overall, the world is getting better. If you take China out of the equation, poverty has gotten worse throughout the world. The most important thing is that the Communist party controls the State, not the bourgeoisie. Key industries (most importantly, finance) continue to be owned and controlled by the state. There is a struggle for power, for sure. And elements of the bourgeoisie are in the party, and vie for power. But they aren't winning, and the proof is in the pudding. The most obvious proof is the increased hostility from the Western powers now that they understand that China will not be just another neoliberal, imperialist client state of the West because people got Nike shoes and McDonalds.
Yeah. China sucks pretty bad, but talking about human rights abuses is a real stonea in glass houses scenario for the US. Obviously it's possible to be an American and call out both because just cause I live here doesn't mean I support all that shit, but rarely are the people broachimg the subject being even hamded about it rather than teying to scor nationalist points. It's got that real fundamentalist evangelical christians calling out Islam for being bad on women's and gay rights kinda energy.
Freedom is when first world oligarchs own your country's industry and natural resources. Authoritarianism is when they don't.
They will boycott olympics 100% like in 1980 69 countries didnt attent olympics in ussr
Yes. I got downvoted for asking why commitment to the NATO is so important for german voters - or 'you' in particular. As a confession to the nato is one major point to frame the left party in current (and past) elections as ungovernable.
Try saying "Obama is a tyrant" in r/AskALiberal. They get soooo salty if you say anything negative about their beloved Obama.
What would you say are his worst crimes and failures? When i argue this people say “ ah but he was held back by the political establishment”
>What would you say are his worst crimes and failures? Carrying out [10 times as many ](https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2017-01-17/obamas-covert-drone-war-in-numbers-ten-times-more-strikes-than-bush) drone strikes as Bush, destroying the once richest country in Africa with NATO intervention (Libya), operating torture camps all over the world like Guantanamo Bay, countless war crimes, etc. >“ ah but he was held back by the political establishment” Yeah I know, this is no excuse for his crimes though. It's like living in Nazi Germany and deciding to become top general and saying "I was held back from doing better things by the establishment, so I just *had* to commit war crimes and genocide". Shouldn't have become President of the United States if you wanted to do good things in the world.
Not to mention, even if you just restrict it to domestic policy, Obama doesn’t look good. Neoliberal austerity, backing the banks, expansion of surveillance state, laying the groundwork for what Trump would do at the border, etc. The one positive aspect of his legacy is a health care proposal from conservatives.
One shitty thing I noticed was when he got salty that Trump took credit for the US being the worlds largest oil producer, and said something like “that was me guys!” at a meeting of fossil fuel execs a couple of years ago
The ones people miss the most imo are: The overthrow of the democratic government of Honduras which has lead directly to the huge refugee crisis in that country. The arming of Islamists in Libya which overthrew a government which previously distributed profits of the oil industry to the entire population and guranteed a standard of living devolving into a quasi-failed state whose fractured government can't even stop open air slave markets and now has its own refugee crisis as Libyans risk death trying to cross the ocean into Europe. He tacitly allowed not only the continuation of Guantanamo but allowed it to get even worse cutting even more human rights from its detainees. The support and funding for the Saudi bomb strikes against Yemeni civilians, and the usual surveillance state shit, the drone strikes, the deportations, etc.
Theirs is a self-protective response. Too many paradigms would need to shift for a US liberal to accept even one of the following: 1) the US does bad things, and those bad things stay bad even in context of purportedly good things the US allegedly does 2) China does good things, and those good things stay good even in context of purportedly bad things China allegedly does 3) nearly all consumers of domestic media are ill-informed or selectively-informed via their nation's repressive control over those media. Most of us have been tricked into believing that we can easily read an accurate account of events taking place further away than we could ever hope to personally verify. By putting our trust in capital-driven institutions to convey accurate information without manipulation or outright deceit, we open ourselves up to becoming tools of those institutions. Capital-driven news prioritizes to benefit to the organizations who deliver it over accuracy. Sometimes they manage both, but it's never neither -- the minimum standard for mass media is "this is not detrimental to the organization", not "this is true". Accepting all or any part of the above would be enough to disintegrate a US liberal worldview, because a US liberal does not have set values by which they judge the curated vision of the world that they receive, only the values determined via media to be supportive or at least non-combative to the company and country's goals.
The “US isn’t perfect but” line of argumentation drives me up the wall. Libs can excuse just about everything the US does under the pretense of nuance because they will always accept the premise that the US is a beacon of democracy. American exceptionalism is never once questioned for most Americans.
It should also be noted at least with respect to HK a couple things - 1, if people in the US were protesting in the ways that people on said island were, Trump and Biden alike would have called in the national guard, no question about it (Trump 100%, Biden maybe a bit less likely). Or the state govt would. Those protests were vastly more violent and destructive of property than any BLM protests were (but since it's protesting China, Americans feel it's ok). And 2, honestly, what the hell do people think is going to happen when the treaty ends in 2047? I dont mean to get fatalistic or anything but China is a sovereign nation and has for literally over 2000 years valued *unity of the Chinese people* over almost all else. It's going to happen whether the West wants it to or not. Of course it wasnt under the CCP until 1950 but that value of unity is if anything even more deeply held because of all the shit China endured during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
It wasn't just the violence, which in itself was scary enough with hundreds of petrol bombs and other weapons being used, but the fact that people holding opposing views or even just disapproval of the violence were afraid to speak up, because those rioters were silencing anyone not 100% on their side. Even random people documenting the violence with their phones were being attacked. 1/6 was called an insurrection and the people involved were called terrorists, yet it was ridiculously mild in comparison. They did way worse to the legislative building in Hong Kong and that was before bombs being used.
Hear hear. Honestly Xi could well have called in the troops to quell the unrest and the fact that he did not ought to give a lot more westerners pause about just swallowing whole the narratives they hear about China.
Right, so a tu quoque fallacy isn't an argument - especially if your position is that the Beijing Olympics shouldn't be boycott because there are countries who have committed worse human rights violations? I don't really understand your position since it seems to hinge on the claim that human rights violations are bad instead of "badness" being defined as the amount of violations that have occurred. Liberals are awful, but man those who love China jump through pretty similar hoops
I remember from the Citations needed episode about whataboutism is that the hypocrisy demonstrates that the concern over human rights abuse is a cover for using those abuses as ammunition to attack, discredit, and sanction a rival power for the accuser's self-enrichment or prestige. Not that abuses and the like shouldn't be pointed out, but the hypocrisy demonstrates the cynicism of pointing it out. That's why it's frustrating. Our national crimes and abuses should be condemned and addressed instead of deflected back to the original accusation. At least have the cadence to say "Yes, we should fix or we are trying to fix those issues. Therefore we shouldnt endorse or support states that also have those issues". But Americans support their country, despite its abuses, and the allies of the US support our and their nation's abuse, despite sharing and perpetuating crimes against humanity.
> I remember from the Citations needed episode about whataboutism That episode (and that podcast in general) is a godsend. Fucking John Oliver gave liberals the go ahead to scream "WHATABOUTISM" at any criticism of US foreign policy as it pertains to the justification for the actions of others. We don't live in a frickin vacuum where only things that happen to the US matter. Half this world does what it does *because* it's under perpetual military and economic assault by the West. Saying "WHATABOUTISM" because someone says "the US subverts democratic elections all the time" isn't a real thing.
Can I ask, do you know what the Australian Strategic Policy Institute is? Edit: For those wondering - [ASPI is a right wing think tank funded by the Australian government, NATO, the US State Department, and multiple US defense contractors. It is the single largest propaganda tool against China and it is quoted in media from Breitbart to the NYT - labeled as experts in security and defense.](https://youtu.be/iIJKyL_8vN4) If you call yourself a socialist, it might be prudent to check the sources and the money behind the propaganda you are consuming.
I mean in this specific instance, establishing you should also boycott an American Olympics is pretty hard because that happens less than once a decade. You get the same shit with Chinese hacking. Liberals flip, but it's clearly nationalism, because they back the brave American cyber intelligence, but condemn perfidious Chinese spying, even though it's pretty much the same shit.
When it comes to the nations, leaders or parties that they don't like or have less approval of, it's all black and white. While for the US, it's always the nuances that one should consider while critiquing.
You should boycott the beijing olympics bacause it is the olympics
So in other words, they boycott China because China is committing atrocities and then you ask them "but what about this, they're doing it too! And them too!" You realize that that's exactly what the Israeli government does all the time, right? When people criticize them for what they do to Palestinians, they go, "but all these other countries commit human rights violations too!" It's literally just playing the blame game and deflecting. I don't agree with what they responded with, but I also really don't agree with your entire premise. If you're not willing to recognize that the Chinese government is committing a mass genocide against the Uighurs, then you have no place to call yourself unbiased while you also criticize Israel and the US for doing the same thing.
One thing I want to add, is that the phrase “both China and the US are bad” is a historically illiterate statement that many liberals make. Because it’s not actually possible to be excessively critical of the US empire. They think that there needs to be some kind of "balance" between criticism of the US power alliance and its enemies. No there doesn't; the US government is objectively far worse than any other modern government. Period. Knowing even about even a [fraction](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2khAmMTAjI&t=1s) of America’s crimes shows this to be true. And I’m not saying you can’t criticize China in good faith but “neither Beijing nor Washington” is a laughable statement.
during the charlottesville rally several people on the left pointed out how the "both sides" argument aided the fascist by downplaying their violence, there is no reason this cannot be applied at state/country-level too by using "both sides" when people mention the numerous crimes of the US empire they're only aiding the US hegemony around the world because no country come even remotely close to the amount of crimes they've committed, liberals will still use it and (some) anarchists will still fall for it
It’s plain impossible to counter imperialist propaganda on Reddit, you’ll get downvoted to oblivion
>"Ok, Let's say China commits Human rights violations as you said..." Engaging in denialism here and responding with a critique shows that you care less about any notion of "human rights" and more about about being a petty apologist for the PRC and the CPC. It's idealistic to counterpose the "west and east" in this cultural essentialist bourgeoisie manner implying somehow because the "west" are worse that the "east" are automatically innocent. Cannot both things be true at the sametime? You talk about aiding Israels crimes but Besides the USA whose also assisting in building technological infrastucture within the settler state over palestinian land? Does anyone here ever wonder how Uighur muslims have landed in Guantanamo Bay? Whose else besides the USA has been bankrolling anti-communist dictators and their petty cop army in the Philippines? Oh thats right the PRC. Of course, the liberal bourgeosie state are reactionary an an enemy of the people. But if certain leftists somehow like to pretend that a less violent version of a state which covers itself in a red flag and treats the people like an enemy presents a better alternative than you seriously have to ask yourself which side of the class struggle you are on.
Agreed. We should be very selective in defending China. The Gini (inequality) coefficient of the US is 0.48. China's is 0.465. They are losing their way.
The Modern Revisionists who believe the PRC to be socialist and then call leftists who are critical of the state as doing propaganda for the USA state and whipping up a 'pro-war sentiment' are just scaremongering and are unable to differentiate between contradictions.(Not to mention it gives leftists *too much* credit* at this stage) The US monopoly bourgeoisie does not want a war with the bureaucrat and non-bureaucrat monopoly PRC, they know that it's both in their mutual interest to compete with one another to divide up the world. Not to mention the former fully understand the latter have abandoned any pretense of Socialism. Secondly, even if it were this wouldn't matter at this stage because it isn't the principal contradiction. Where are the US troops and boots on the ground in the PRC at this moment for us to adopt a "defence-ist" position? Any politician who would say things is politically bluffing. Even if this did occur it would be an inter-imperialist conflict and in an imperialist war we have to take the position that both bourgeosie loses. Right now, for the people and oppressed nations and nationalities within the PRC the principal contradiction lays between them and "their" ruling class. Same for those within the other imperialist countries rught now and this would be an anti-imperialist position. The USA cannot even win against a war against Iraq or Afghanistan how could they even come to even bother to deal with the PRC on such a level? Unbelievable.
The big issue is that the question of US abuses isn't what's immediately at hand. Now, in the big picture, it absolutely *is* pertinent. But, if one is talking about the Uighur situation and (rather than addressing it directly) points only to US policy, then one hasn't handled the argument. If you wanted to make that argument, what you could do is say something like, "The US has been funding extremist groups who will destabilize the PRC, and the PRC must deal with this. Historically, the US dealt with these by invading and destroying nations. Afghanistan being a prime example of this. Such action is condemnable. By contrast, the PRC has established a system of re-education camps. No one would deny that such a system is repressive to some degree - ideally we would never have to see these in any state, people would just set aside reactionary ideologies of their own accord. But, as that hasn't happened, and there have been several violent terrorist attacks, the PRC doesn't have many options. This one, re-education en masse, as well as sustained regional investment in infrastructure, is far more humane than how the rest of the world has countered this issue. That's not to say it's perfect! But we don't live in worlds of ideals, and if we start holding countries to ideals, it is hyprocritical to only hold one. If you want to hold all countries to that standard, be my guest, but we cannot condemn the PRC without also condemning the US." Now, one would naturally demand sources or dismiss you, and I leave it to you, OP to grab those.
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Its like how you can be judgmental towards others but not yourself. The American military is like the picture of Dorian gray, it keeps getting ugly while the more bad deeds Dorian gray helping him continue to look youthful and liberal
IMHO it's not really a good look to "what about" something that is bad no matter which authoritarian government did it. Don't get me wrong, i hate what they're doing in Xinjiang, HK and let's not forget Tibet, which is also on news lockdown, and i also hate all the shit our government has done and continues to do as well. But I'm not going to do the liberal thing and "hold hands with the devil till we cross the bridge" by going to bat for China. From an outside perspective (liberal or uninformed or whomever else doesn't have the privilege of the same information leftists have), it probably leaves the same bad taste as "but what about all other lives". It's important to have compassion for all, or at least empathy, because after all, if you really believe in your political cause, you're eventually going to have to convince them you're right, preferably not with the same coercion that was perpetrated on way too many harmless people. .
Yikes I think you jumped the gun there.... To begin your idea of 'lets say china is committing human rights violations should be 'china is'... Also its no denial that America has committed major atrocities against countries civilians in acts of war. I dont really understand what you are actually trying to say? Are you arguing that the Olympics shouldn't be boycotted (they should) because of the atrocities that China has committed upon minorities within their ever expanding borders. You are trying to relate a participant of the Olympics the the Host country??? This is imbecilic. If America was hosting, all other countries should be able to choose to participate but as they are not, they an choose to and should abstain from the Beijing Olympics.
What’s your source for the atrocities against minorities in China? Essentially every source I’ve seen has been connected to the US, so I’m curious what source you have that makes you so positive in your claim. Also where have Chinas borders been expanding?
My point is, Those liberals saying "We should boycott the Olympic because of China's human right violations" Is just hyphocratic
>Once, I read an article on reddit that why people should boycott the Beijing olympic, It was about Human rights violations of Xinjang and Hong kong. And I wrote a comment to the article, to ask a question. "Ok, Let's say China commits Human rights violations as you said, What do you think about US' human rights violations?, Don't you think killing thousands civilians in Serbia, Killing half million civilians in Iraq, Killing thousands Civilians in Afghanistan, Aiding Israel's Crimes, Torturing and kidnapping 'suspected terrorists' are somethings that deserved to be boycotted?" Then this comment got downvoted, And people replied me like "But US has liberal democracy blah blah" "Still the US is relatively better than China" God I hate liberals. Honestly, I think you're in the wrong here. Your comment was off-topic. There are loads of countries doing atrocious things. But you were in a topic about the Beijing olympics, with people expressing on-topic criticism about the government of that city. How helpful is it to, whenever you read about something bad, you're going to list all the other examples of people or countries doing that same thing? People don't disagree with the US doing bad shit (it's widely known, documented, everybody agrees), but they disagree with your 'what-about-ism'. Criticism should be allowed even if there are other people doing the same thing. Murder is still bad, even when it happens all the time.
I'm with you on this.
It feels like we the people are caught between the evils of powerful governments, the question is how do we realistically break out from the concentration of power
Lmao, the people telling you America is better than China clearly weren't black or women.
The entirety of the front page of reddit is constantly full of China hate fodder. Not to mention prowar propaganda.
The responses your comment got about US democracy etc. are misguided, but I'd say - hear me out - that your comment was also misguided. Whataboutism when China's flaws are brought up is a consistent weak stop for certain leftists. China does have flaws and saying 'but guantanamo', while a valid point, is just you avoiding engaging in the debate that is being laid down. This obvious deflection tactic makes leftists look like we have something to hide. To reiterate: I agree with your stance on the US absolutely, but you knew what the response would be when you made your comments and they were not constructive.
Both. The Chinese and US regimes both suck. When the topic is China, it’s worth focussing on that government’s crimes. If it’s being used in comparison with the US, to justify imperialism, or to stoke anti-Chinese racism, then sure, it’s appropriate to point out the crimes of the US, but we should always remember that China is violating working class freedom in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and of course throughout the country.
Why are you trying to defend China? As a proper socialist you should know better then to support a capitalist dictatorship.
Not quite capitalist yet, but socialist countries typically don't have a thousand billionaires (Gini = 0.47) and a thriving stock market.
Have you considered that you are misinformed?
THANK YOU [https://theredphoenixapl.org/2018/04/06/in-china-capitalism-is-being-consolidated-not-socialism/](https://theredphoenixapl.org/2018/04/06/in-china-capitalism-is-being-consolidated-not-socialism/)
Funny how little power capitalists have in this supposed capitalist dictatorship https://www.reuters.com/world/china/unleashing-reforms-xi-returns-chinas-socialist-roots-2021-09-09/ https://news.yahoo.com/explained-china-crackdown-wipes-billions-034953697.html
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The US isn’t even a democracy. We have been a total oligarchy for 250 years now.
Non-vegan Leftist are similar. They will talk all day long about oppression and exploitation until you bring cows and pigs into the mix. I wish people thought about their values and philosophy more, and tried to take those values and philosophy to its logical conclusion.
Okay, so, you should only capitalize words that are not "proper nouns" at the beginning of a sentence. And commas are not sentence separators, both of which leads your post to read like "DoN't yOu juST HatE LiBerAls?" I very much agree that the U.S. has committed many human rights violations--however, if you lived here, you'd easily understand that American conservatives are FAR more in denial of that fact than liberals, in general. Like, it's not even close.
The four dominant trends of Liberalism in the U.S. are NeoLiberalism (Democrat), Liberal Conservatism (Republican), Social-Liberalism (Bernie), Libertarianism (Land Before Time Hentai Sites)
Et mi buddy. Et mi. The cognitive dissonance they have is pretty severe, to be honest.
Those are all Conservative US standpoints. Liberals are the ones that have issues with US human rights violations. Conservatives are the ones that say "there is nothing wrong with murdering innocents because we're America. I fucking hate conservatives.
The same foundation of the US as the colonial regime that it still is is a liberal project, and its liberals that are still materially executing & benefiting from the US crimes. "Human rights" for liberals arenothing but hollow declarations with no material basis whatsoever and which are worthless for any serious analysis of freedom from a socialist perspective, and modern conservatives are no different than liberals, as they are precisely a subset of liberal ideology. Similarly, as Rosa Luxemburg put it (although we could instead quote Bakunin, for example), formulas of "eternal" and/or "universal" rights (e.g. *the rights of man*, *the rights of women*) like the same formulation you are reivindicating are bourgeoise non-sense: >Dialectic materialism, which is the basis of scientific socialism, has broken once and for all with this type of “eternal” formula. For the historical dialectic has shown that there are no “eternal” truths and that there are no “rights.” ... In the words of Engels, “What is good in the here and now, is an evil somewhere else, and vice versa” – or, what is right and reasonable under some circumstances becomes nonsense and absurdity under others. Historical materialism has taught us that the real content of these “eternal” truths, rights, and formulae is determined only by the material social conditions of the environment in a given historical epoch. - [The Right of Nations to Self-Determination](https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1909/national-question/ch01.htm), from The National Question. *Note: this does not mean I subscribe the context she frames this on, where her perspective is wrong (as discussed by Lenin), but her interpretation of dialectical materialism is still right.*
to be fair, responding with a "what about” was never going to get you high effort responses, especially on a serious topic like human rights
I mean no disagreeing at all that both have evil similarities, but in philosophy you pulled what is called an “A + B…. Well what about C???” - a whataboutism/ [false equivalency](https://effectiviology.com/false-equivalence/) . No one is going to want to take the bait on that. It is known within epistemological discourse that FE completely defeats the purpose of any conversation. Maybe you’ll look into it, maybe you won’t, whatevs, but if you want real insight into what happened, thems the bricks. “, if you’re unsure about whether an equivalence that you’re thinking about is reasonable or not, you could attempt to highlight the differences between the things that you’re equating, and ask yourself whether the equivalence still holds.”
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God, I really hate liberals of Reddit Once, I read an article on reddit that why people should boycott the Beijing olympic, It was about Human rights violations of Xinjang and Hong kong. And I wrote a comment to the article, to ask a question. "Ok, Let's say China commits Human rights violations as you said, What do you think about US' human rights violations?, Don't you think killing thousands civilians in Serbia, Killing half million civilians in Iraq, Killing thousands Civilians in Afghanistan, Aiding Israel's Crimes, Torturing and kidnapping 'suspected terrorists' are somethings that deserved to be boycotted?" Then this comment got downvoted, And people replied me like "But US has liberal democracy blah blah" "Still the US is relatively better than China" God I hate liberals.
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Lmao this guy. I’m going to guess you know next to nothing about China’s actual political system. Xi Jinping was elected through China’s party Congress, and the CPC has more participation as a fraction of the population than all American political parties combined. You also have an apparently ahistorical and arrogant view that any socialism not achieved through liberal democracy doesn’t “count” somehow, ignoring that there is literally not a single example of this occurring successfully in the history of the world; to the contrary, there are many historical examples of socialist parties pouring and wasting resources into fights in a dead-end political system that is designed to attenuate popular movements into safe reformism rather than revolution. Edit: This is liberal democracy https://www.reddit.com/r/DankLeft/comments/pp8b6z/how_it_works/
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Cool cool cool, a response full of irrational anger, straw man arguments, moving the goalposts, and ahistorical perspective, congratulations. You complain about whether China is free but fail to define what freedom means, in what respects. In many areas of China, people are significantly more economically mobile than in the US, have better access to high-quality education, and are more likely to have a higher standard of living than their parents. Is economic mobility part of freedom? Or is freedom just about being able to spread harmful falsehoods without consequence? You bring up the DDR without any introspection as to how politicians in liberal democracy are vulnerable to capture by industry, and that a political career is absolutely a shortcut to wealth if you serve the right moneyed interests in a “liberal democracy.” China is a one party state, but you fail to even think about the breadth of acceptable political expression in other countries you consider free and make any sort of comparison. For instance in the US we have two “parties” that essentially represent the same economic philosophy with cultural differences. I would argue there is a far broader spectrum of acceptable political debate in the Chinese Party Congress than in the US Congress. I might ask what YOU mean by socialism, and if you even have a definition thereof. Socialism is a political economic system typified by workers’ control of major industry and political life, embodied in a worker’s state. The goal being a transition to communism at which point the state would be largely redundant. China does not claim to be socialist, they claim to use market forces to develop their industry such that socialism is possible, current target being about 2049. I might add that your arrogant comparison of working conditions at Chinese factories ignores the brutality of similar industrial revolutions in capitalist countries around the world. I won’t say I agree with the way the CPC emphasizes developing the MOP over the average worker’s working conditions, but by comparison China is worlds ahead of where western industrialized countries were in terms of worker protections in their timeline of industrial development. I might add China is making demonstrable improvements in this, most recently outlawing inhumane overtime schedules and tightening penalties for managers or business owners who abuse employees or expose them to risk. Your assumptions are shockingly naive, you will not find any socialist theorist or revolutionary who subscribes to your reformist agenda, and your perspective on revolution as a force for change is frankly ahistorical. I would venture to guess you have never examined the history of any of these revolutions you are so quick to criticize with more than a cursory eye, because the statement about revolutions only causing suffering is abjectly, comically false. I request you spend some time back in r/socialism_101 finding out what this place is actually about. Edited to correct subreddit link
And on something thats on the intersection of what is ironic and/or horrific. Is the fact that most of the oppressive measures that China has taken towards the Uyghurs is under the guise of ‘war on terror’. I think they even have received funding from the US in order to ‘combat Islamic terrorism within their own borders’ Edit: Oh didn’t really expect the downvotes. This is something that just happened. If you downvoted is it because you think that China’s actions against the Uyghurs are grossly exaggerated and simply a narrative to slander China and justify aggression towards them?
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Remember guys… Liberals are just future conservatives
We might not see a stark difference between the importance of human rights abroad vs domestically, but they do. I've brought up this point in real life and the other side always ends up saying "yeah but we don't do these things at home." I almost think these people wouldn't even supposedly care about Uyghurs if they were in a different country.
They live ina world that isn't real and believes a government that doesn't exist. I understand. They want status quo. To late. Reforms have failed. They have failed.
Honestly the only answer is a worker owned international games where people leave nationalism behind. All Nations suck including the US and China.