A great way to tell if they mean "anti-imperialist" as "against the conquering and subjugating of other groups" or instead just "in favor of anyone that declares themselves to be against the United States and Western Europe."
Imperial Japan rather famously fought against the United States and various Western European colonial powers. Had you lived back during the second world war era, would you have viewed them favorably?
Russia was communist once and China pretends to still be that means I'm a bad leftist if I don't send death threats to people who support Ukraine and Taiwan.
Actual thought process some people have listed above
The funny thing about that is that Russia was never communist. Though many don't understand the difference between communism and Communism. The irony being that Communism was basically cosplay of communism. But never actually communism.
I mean, there was a pretty solid chance of actual communism before the Bolshevik coup. I think that if the Soviets overthrew the provisional government we’d have a fully socialist government, which could have eventually became communist.
It was still not communist, but lets remember that it could have been before the party communists made their state capitalist government in the name of communism
Adding to that, Russia was never communist or even socialist. Marx never intended ownership as a concept to be discarded, only that workers would always own what they needed to work.
I arrived at that conclusion by analyzing what ownership means. Ownership means that you either control something, or the person who controls it is accountable to you. In a state with an authoritarian dictator, such as Stalin, the dictator controls the means of production, if not directly, then through his subordinates, who are accountable to him. Therefore, in the soviet union, the workers didn't control the means of production, Stalin did. Basically, the Soviet Union was the endstage of capitalism.
Add Palestine in the US context to the list. Go into someone's post history and without a fail there is the same shit of russia did nothing wrong, nort korea normal country.
It is just another genocide as a political fodder topic. Fucking disgusting.
These “omg I’m so leftist” morons have been saying that for months. Odd how they spend so much time in activities that make Trump more likely to win and ignore all logic relating to that fact.
There are two choices in the United States 2024 election. No third party stands a ghost of a chance of winning. No, not even if the 30,000 people you can reach on Lemmy all vote for Timothy Greenparty.
A Trump victory in 2024 would not only be just as bad if not worse for the citizens of Gaza than Harris would, but also pose an existential threat to a large number of vulnerable Americans (trans people, immigrants, women seeking abortions).
Given the margins of victory in 2016 and 2020, Kamala might not win if leftists don't vote for her.
Snoozing fascism for four years is better than inviting it through the door now, and buys us time to build our defenses for when it comes back.
I'd like to focus my counterargument. Which of these statements do you disagree with?
Well, they managed to pull about a billion people out of poverty over the last 4 decades or so, which means that mainly they were following leftwing ideals.
(I come from a country which had actual Fascism until the 70s and what the Fascists did was the exact opposite of that: the vast majority of people were dirt poor and kept dirt poor whilst a tiny elite tightly interwined with the Fascist Government gorged themselves on the wealth of the country).
However, it's been some time since China did that lifting of the masses out of poverty, and they've been shifting to Capitalism whilst keeping the Authorianism from their implementation of leftwing policies (they called it Communism, but they never really reached such utopical state, so I'm wary of calling that Communism).
Are they even left of center nowadays? I don't know enough in detail how modern China operates to pass judgement on that - outside of China we mostly hear of what's done in domains that reflect the part of their ideology that falls on the Libertarian-Authoritarian axis, not the stuff that falls on the Left-Right one.
I don't think they've yet moved all the way to Fascism, though, even if they've kept the Authoritarianism going.
Fascism used State Capitalism. Political parties are corporations anyway
If someone questions their religion (like that mma guy who fought the larpers) then they lose their social credit…which leads to loss of income and property
I mean you can point out that you're not a fan of Putin but if you're for diplomatic solutions instead of total war you're a fascist. No matter if you try to explain that you're a pacifist and that war is not acceptable and arming for war just makes war that more likely. As soon as you mention NATO eastward expansion as a problematic policy you're a tankie. Or if you mention that people saw this war coming before 2022 and it could have been stopped. Or if you point out that calling Russians "orks" is racist. Just massive downvotes and the zerg moves on.
There is zero difference between the MAGAts and the leftists in regards to how brainwashed they are. And no I'm not a centrist either.
The issue with bitching about "NATO expansionism" is that at the end of the day it's still an alliance that countries ask to be members of due to concerns about being invaded or attacked.
If there is one thing life as a geek in highschool taught me is that the ONLY effective way of stopping the violence when facing a bully is to hurt the bully back, even if you don't hurt them as much as they do you.
The bully strategy is: violence, followed by concessions from the other side to stop the violence, followed by a period of non-violence, then one of threats of violence to get concessions, then violence again if there are no concessions or the bully finds them insuficient or simply wants more than they demande and then it all repeats.
This is exactly the pattern of behaviour from Russia towards Ukraine, clearly visible since their invasion of Crimea and subsequent events.
The strategy for dealing with non-bullies was the one tried after the Crimean invasion and the result was a typical bully pattern of behaviour from Russia in response - keep the gains, rebuild military strength, make more and continued demands from Ukraine under thinly veiled threats of violence, eventually initiate more violence with a further invading of Ukraine - which is why any Thinking Pacifist has by now concluded that unfortunatelly a response of "concessions" to Russian agression will result in a temporary pause of Russian agression and even more Russian aggression at a later date, whilst a strategy of responding to Russian aggression with the most hurtfull possible response in all senses (including militarilly) to make it be a negative for Russia to act agressivelly will dissuade Russia from acting aggressivelly for a long, long time, possibly forever.
Unfortunately the most simplistic strategy of Pacifism, which is to find a way to balance the interests of both sides, doesn't work with actors who purposefully and repeatadly use violence and the threat of violence to extract gains, because their "concerns" are not genuine fixed issues that need addressing, they're goalposts which they move every time they're addressed because they're really a mechanism for extraction of gains from the other side.
I predict this will anger people but while I think fascists and auth-left communities share significant commonalities it’s at least a little misleading to call them fascists.
I'm of two minds on the matter. On one hand, one can very seriously argue that fascism and authoritarian 'left' groups are distinct in their proclaimed thought processes. Fascists very much hearken to the idea of an eternal conflict and a single national leader, while authoritarian leftists, in theory, are seeking an actual end goal of a stable society without a strongman.
On the other hand, in practice, there's very little difference not only in policy, but also little difference in justification by actual pracititioners. Tankies go all-in for the same cultural chauvinist and hegemonic arguments that fascists do, they just call it 'anti-imperialism' instead of 'national vitality' or whatever the newspeak neonazi euphemism of the day is. Tankies proclaim that they aren't in it for eternal conflict, and then break out the death-cult-of-heroism eternal ultra-martyrdom common to fascists and religious fanatics anyway. Tankies talk a big game about making a united front, but then immediately shut down all opposition, no matter how minor the disagreement, as 'reactionary' and call for them to be shipped off to re-education camps.
Insofar as there is a difference, it's like paint of chartruese and bile-green. Side by side you might be able to differentiate them, but seeing either one spilled onto a perfectly good table, you probably aren't going to care all that much about the distinction; they're both pretty vile, and both in nearly the exact same way. In that vein, I prefer to emphasize that tankies and fascists are really not that differently, fundamentally and practically, than to emphasize the minutiae of theory that differentiates them.
Their approach to government is fairly similar, though fascism seems to be a bit more strictly totalitarian on average. They also focused their violence towards different groups which makes a difference, although the murder of dissidents is a prominent element of both.
However, they have quite different economic policies with fascists being generally pro-capitalism and tankies being anti-capitalism, at least to a degree.
But I mean I get it, it’s a meme. This kind of nuance doesn’t fit in 10 words or whatever.
Fascists very much hearken to the idea of an eternal conflict and a single national leader, while authoritarian leftists, in theory, are seeking an actual end goal of a stable society without a strongman.
The idea of "class struggle" (being an eternal conflict) and proletarian dictatorship (afaik always with a single national leader) sounds pretty fascist based on this definition. Of course intentions matter, but I'd say end results matter a bit more.
Zizek said it quite eloquently:
"[China] adopts the basic idea of fascism, which is conservative modernisation: 'we need capitalist dynamics, but we need to control it, and to control it we turn to our own national tradition'. [...] This is the problem with Chinese communism: there is a direct link with the fascist tradition."
I agree. I should also note that it is not useful to treat them as fascists. Right-wing and left-wing authoritarianism spring from different mindsets and combatting them requires different approaches.
That being said, there are intersections. The most notable are the nazbols, patsocs, and strasserites. It is absolutely appropriate to refer to such groups as red fascists.
Had this discussion with a friend today, because the Confederation of German Trade Unions (the umbrella-organization of all German Unions), which he works for, and lots of other workers-rights and left-wing organization, along with the Alliance for Peace are having an anti-war-day on September 1st in my region with concerts and demonstrations and stuff.
And some groups (but not all) from that alliance are having a public demonstration for a ceasefire in Gaza (which is good) and in Ukraine (which is bad) where they will criticize the German military help for Ukraine and demand peace with Russia by making Ukraine cede territory to Putin.
The "all war are bad and everyone must immediately stop" crowd has brain rot. They don't understand that some people have no choice but go to war, because they are being invaded.
It probably aligns with the kind of thinking that can assume the MIC produces only defense and protection: under certain parameters they're right but under others it can be quite naive.
This Russia affinity of the left is so rediculous in 2024 and shows how lost these people really are. It shows they are at least off by 4 decades or so when this stance would have made the tiniest bit of sense.
They act as if they are idiologically aligned but Russia has turned into a worse than capitalism system. When? In the last 40 years!
My deal with China is this, The CCP is posing as a communist regime to gain more control over its citizens, it is not communism because there is no democracy.
They have elections in China, but yeah, as an outsider it is clear to see that the establishment significantly controls who is allowed to run. I just wish people realized that entrenched solid red and solid blue states in the US aren't much better.
So it just feel hypocritical when we criticize China for having a shitty democracy and yet we tolerate our deeply undemocratic two party plutocracy. If we truly valued democracy then we would demand a modern proportional multiparty system like they have in Europe
Justification from their site on why they don't go to International Court of Justice:
'There is no such possibility not least because China/the PRC, although a signatory to and ratifier of the Genocide Convention, has entered a reservation against ICJ jurisdiction.'
These are easy with anyone who's not a tankie. Ukraine is on the "western" side and not so weak. Uyghurs are Muslim (it's a safe bet to support Muslims). There's no challenge in picking the right side there.
How about Artsakh?
How about Assyrians and Yazidis?
Also do people even think about actions and not "filters" for their internet politics? As in - how many people arguing about this have written to their representatives, donated to victims, yadda-yadda?
Yeah I agree. So many people just blindly agree with whatever the US foreign policy propaganda apparatus tells them without employing any critical thinking whatsoever, so much so that I think it might actually be impossible to change someone's mind on their long-held propagandized beliefs about foreign countries, they've gotta somehow come around to opening their mind themselves.
We are living in a world with an ongoing genocide, and it's impossible to be blind to the evidence of it. So many tiktoks of devastation in Gaza, so many tweets of fascist Israelis celebrating the violence - and there is nothing comparable coming out of Xinjiang. There is no wave of refugees, no doctors or journalists turning up dead, nothing but a handful of people who made testimony five years ago and have done nothing since.
Even the US state dept gave up the ghost on this narrative after China ended the reeducation programs (because they achieved their goal of peacefully eliminating religious extremism in the targeted communities). The only people grasping to the Uyghur genocide narrative are terminally online debatebros who can't accept that they were wrong.
I used to believe this until I went on a hunt to support that belief with evidence.
It's not there. The various news reports are a giant chain of references to other news reports.
Most of them ultimately reference one of a few sources.
Adrian Zenz is one of the most referenced "experts" on the "Uyghur Genocide". He used to just write about Jesus https://www.amazon.com/Worthy-Escape-Believers-Raptured-Tribulation/dp/1449769063 until God sent him on a mission to take down China. His two big works are "the Xinjiang Cables" (which don't say what he says they say) and a report where he interviewed about a dozen people for their opinions, took it as fact and extrapolated it to the entire population of Xinjiang.
There are also a series of papers from the ASPI. A quick look at their funding list makes it pretty obvious what their agenda is (tl;dr a bunch of defense contractors).
There was a pseudonymous Canadian law student, Shawn Zhang, who pretended to be a satellite image expert and "identified" a bunch of detention centers. According to him it's easy to tell because you can see the barbed wire. I've looked at the images he claimed to reference and there's no barbed wire.
Most of the rest of the "evidence" is from organizations which receive over 90% of their funding from the US government.
The UN thing is a perfect way of finding out how serious someone is.
Genocide apologists will say "The UN did not call it a genocide," or even stronger, "The UN determined it is not a genocide." The thing they leave out is that the UN did call the treatment of Uyghurs crimes against humanity.
Seems like a pretty big thing for them to leave out, huh?
The UN doesn't claim there's a genocide in Xinjiang. They've gotten flack from people who assume there must be a genocide and that the UN is lying.
It ultimately has nothing to do with "Westoid". It's all about the evidence. Mere claims of "having credible evidence" don't count for much if they can't produce it.
Have you ever considered using some of the time you spend repeating stuff over and over on actually investigating whether there's evidence behind your claims?
Last time I asked for a source regarding the Uighur stuff he just banned me lol. I guess it works on a lot of people to just apply social pressure on made up shit with zero concern about what's true or not.
It's cool how you can just make up a claim of genocide, then anyone who questions it at all is automatically a genocide denier and therefore a fascist and therefore operating in bad faith, and therefore it's completely unnecessary to provide even a shred of evidence for anything. Very reasonable.
But that's about what I'd expect from someone who denies the Sugondese Genocide, you fascist.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with denying that something is happening when there's no evidence of it happening. You can use whatever social pressure or rhetorical tricks you want to paint me as a bad person, and downvote me all you want. At the end of the day, none of that matters because there's no evidence, so I'm right and you're wrong, simple as. If you think it's more virtuous to believe nonsense than to base your beliefs on what's actually true, you do you I guess, but I want none of that.
Honestly the word gets thrown around so much that it's lost its power, especially when it's not backed up by anything other than 'i know they're doing genocide because I already dislike the people I'm accusing!'
It's not something people seem serious about, you'd think if actual genocide was happening in China people would want to share the evidence and it'd be a big thing and stuff but it's apparently been over a decade of industrial scale murder and no one has anything substantial or tangible to prove it, just 'trust me bro, my sworn ideological enemies are super bad in secret!'
Don't you think? I mean off the top of your head name the three bits of evidence that actually convinced you china is committing genocide- you can even cheat and Google