“Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person”
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Funny, CIA wants them to revolt too.
People in countries like China don’t revolt because the system works for them and supports them. It’s ironic that you claim propaganda impacts all of us, while then immediately repeating the most bog-standard anti-communist propaganda straight from the US state department. I highly recommend reading False Witnesses, “Brainwashing”, and Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing” in order to better understand how people think, and how propaganda actually works. Propaganda works by providing justification for what people perceive to materially benefit them, not by simply convincing them of fantasy.
Thanks for your comment, it made me realize I mixed two things together. What I referred to is not really propaganda. It is lived experience. If you have not seen one person who successfully changed something and everyone who tried had to bear immense consequences - not just them but their loved ones - your motivation to try approaches zero. You get taught it’s not worth it. You’re powerless, and to be fair, it is rather true.
And yes, life in Russia is, for the most part, decent. You have a job. You have access to education, movies, you can build a family, buy an apartment, start a business. You can have fun. It’s not a free life with endless possibilities, there are suppressions, no free elections, all that jazz. But your everyday life is pretty ok. Why give that up for the pursuit of some higher ideal like freedom, especially when you get told over and over again that it will bring nothing good and no change. Yeah it sucks that other people die but it’s not you, and if you would so much as go outside with a piece of paper saying “No War”, your life as you know it is fucked, and the people who suffer won’t be any better off either. Solidarity is not worth the price of your sacrificing yourself and your loved ones. Basically, the struggle and pain isn’t big enough, there is still something left to lose.
Maybe I would call it self made propaganda, but this is just a gut feeling, not a real term.
All 3 of the countries you bring up are different. Russia is the most likely to have a revolution, while the PRC and DPRK are the least likely, less likely than countries like the US or UK.
Russia is currently in the position its in because capitalism was devastating for them. The west came in and plundered and looted the former productive forces until the nationalists kicked them out (Putin’s faction), running themselves into an even more hostile situation with the west. Communist party membership is rising, soviet nostalgia is rising, and now even the ruling class is paying lip service to Lenin, Stalin, and their soviet heritage.
China is not going to have a revolution because it’s socialist and the system works for the people. It’s plain and simple, the people support their system at a far higher rate than western countries:.
The DPRK is in a situation similar to Cuba. It’s heavily sanctioned, but does fairly well when considering just how devastating both the Korean War and the Arduous March were (in the 90s, when the Soviet Union fell). Its economy is growing around 3.5%-4% per year, and food is relatively secure now too. The people blame the US Empire for the lack of their ability to trade and sell outside, though they now do trade heavily with Russia and China, meaning they are less likely than ever to revolt.
Neither the PRC nor the DPRK are perfect, of course, but they are far from revolution, not because of something like “propaganda” but because their systems don’t work like you think they do.
“We need to help African kids!”
These often don’t know a single African country besides “South Africa”
Totally buying the touristy theme park version of whatever other culture. No, the people at the resort don’t actually think you’re great. No, tripping with a self-proclaimed shaman who charges a month’s local wage to resolve your mommy issues is not how the locals do mysticism.
Does the self-proclaimed shaman actually resolve mommy issues though? Asking for a friend.
They’re primary job is to take your money, and make you believe you’ve been initiated into the new-agey secrets of the jungle and enlightened so you recommend them to other aggressively white idiots.
I’d stick with the real mental health professionals.
“$1 million isn’t a lot of money.”
Have you seen “Crazy Rich Asians”?
That could be rich people from anywhere.
A close friend (bless his heart) asked me if I “really think China is more free than, say, France?” when talking about things like freedom of the press and journalistic integrity. I’ve seen a lot of that recently, that because we live in a country which had been once considered to be “socialistic” that the stories we are told and things we have been taught wouldn’t align as much with what global and local capitalists want us to believe is true. At one point I remember him critizising me for using the term “wage slave” (which I used jokingly but w/e) because “none of us here are actual wage slaves”. Because you apparently have to be an Asian child in a Nike sweatshop to actually be opressed by capitalism. My brother, no-one is free until all are free.
I mean, france is more free when it comes to the freedom of the press
citation needed
Any of them indexes would certainly have France higher than China
If indicators or labels are used to rank Certified Bad Countries at the bottom (read: US State Department stamped list of countries tha the US is threatened by) and white countries at the top, then surely something somewhere has gone amiss, no?
Literally all of these rankings are created by Western imperial countries, whose economies are held up by robbing the freedoms of the Global South, that continue to uphold one of their many sacred democratic rituals of suppressing Pro-Palestinian liberation protests, and then some.
- Pro-Palestine activists are under attack in Europe
- Censorship in Europe: Major Palestinian news channels banned on Telegram
- Police send file on British independent journalist Richard Medhurst to Crown Prosecution Service
- Switzerland releases, deports Palestinian American journalist Ali Abunimah
- Louisiana immigration judge orders Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil deported to Syria or Algeria
That article no longer exists, for one, secondly, aljezeera is quite biased when it comes to certain topics, notably palestine, thirdly, I see plaestine flags in every goddamn french protest, and multiple political parties and news sites are pro-palestine.
It’s odd I don’t see a chinese political party or news site denouncing the treatment of the uyghurs or defending the hong kong activists.
Like come on.
What do you mean by “the article no longer exists”? What is an unbiased news outlet? What is an unbiased view of Palestine? What is the response of the Fr*nch state to “every goddamn french protest”? Which political parties and news sites in Fr*nce are Pro Palestine and why might that be deemed a problem? What is the “treatment of Uyghurs” that is denouncable and what are the Hong Kong activists doing that need to be defended? And defending against who?
And why are you lib?
What do you mean by “the article no longer exists”?
I get a 404 on that link, might be a me issue though.
What is an unbiased news outlet? What is an unbiased view of Palestine?
What I meant to say was that site gives qatar’s views on everything, and have a vested interest in making it look like the west is completely unable to recognize gaza and such
What is the response of the Frnch state to “every goddamn french protest”?
It is permitted, and the right to strike is strongly protected, unlike in china. Under the current administration the gendarmerie often, to put it bluntly, sends tear gas to scatter certain protestors, which is bad, but nobody is arrested unless they commit an actual crime, such as setting a car on fire.
Which political parties and news sites in Frnce are Pro Palestine and why might that be deemed a problem?
I don’t see why you think i think it’s a problem, but off the top of my head la france insoumise is a party that loudly supports palestine in the assemblee nationale, and liberation.fr and lemonde are news sites that are pro-palestine.
What is the “treatment of Uyghurs” that is denouncable
Forced labour, concentration camps and mass sterilization maybe?
Hong Kong activists doing that need to be defended?
They were protesting the erosion of Hong Kongs relative sovereignty within china, and were violently beaten down by police with batons, water guns and tear gas, journalists were forced to include more anti-protester viewpoints and press freedom was further limited following the incident. This is in Hong Kong btw, which ranks higher on free press indexes than china proper. Something that made the news in the west was china pressuring blizzard to ban a player who spoke out in support of the protestors from their tournaments.
And defending against who?
The government.
And why are you lib?
Someone can be both anti-china and not a liberal. I am notably not a fan of dictatorships and imperialism, even if it’s branded as socialist.
oh, somehow it’s georestricted? dafuq… Anyways better links/sources are available in the other reply.
What I meant to say was that site gives qatar’s views on everything, and have a vested interest in making it look like the west is completely unable to recognize gaza and such
But the Western nations, who engineered the settler-colony currently occupying Palestine, is incapable of recognizing Palestine. All the recent news about the West recognizing Palestine aren’t actually in any way meaningful when A) they’ve propped up and maintained the settler-colony for decades and continue to do so, while also recognizing the Euroanglo-Zionazi settler-colony that they themselves manufactured and B) the recognition itself is under the condition that Hamas is dissolved or anything to that effect.
No research, no right to speak.
Tell us exactly where Al Jazeera is wrong, tell us exactly what an unbiased news outlet is like and what an unbiased view of Palestine is supposed to be. No research, no right to speak.
nobody is arrested unless they commit an actual crime [in Fr*\nce]
Is using the word “intifida” a criminal act and therefore should be followed up with an arrest?
I don’t know how you claim to see Pro Palestine protests and activism but don’t even know half the shit that the Fr*\nch state carries out under the banner of “protecting democracy”, and also somehow have the guts to claim China doesn’t have the conception of Right to Protest. No research, no right to speak.
liberation.fr and lemonde are news sites that are pro-palestine
These “news sites” use the terms “war on Gaza” and “Israel-Hamas War/Conflict” to pretend as if it’s a playing-level field of two equally matching opposing militaries and to downplay genocide. They are also owned by bougies whose shared material interest is keeping the settler-colony alive. No research, no right to speak.
Citations needed on the Hong Kong stuff. Championing universalizing ideals of “both the West and China are equally imperialistic and bad” is a reaction so meek, so infantile, that it doesn’t actually ideologically and materially go against Western hegemony or imperialism. Therefore, by also considering the other things you’ve opined, it makes you a lib.
No research, no right to speak.
“freedom” is such a vague concept though, mostly used for bullshit rhetoric
Yeah that’s true
“none of us here are actual wage slaves”
Bro is just cosplaying as one
It might have been a misunderstanding between how being unemployed doesn’t rule out being a wage slave, even if you live in a country with a relatively high standard of living because the means of production are still capitalistic, you just don’t have any income and the government tries its best to not give you any also. Or I used the term in a too abstract of a manner elsewise. Or a combination of all and some others.
Thinking China is the same as it was 10-30 years ago and that Chinese products can’t have superior quality.
We’ve reached a point where the US doesn’t even know how to manufacture some of the stuff China can.
It’s not just, but very much an american thing to say. It’s almost every video on youtube.“i bought this power tool for $4 from china and man it’s bad.” All the comments are: hahaha china only makes shit, who could’ve guessed.
You can buy the best literally everything from china. But it’s not gonna be cheap. But then it’s like:“that’s too expensive for something from china.” I’m worried when something is “American made” because it’s an absolute gamble and the chances are really high that they use their weirdo measurements where you need magically sized tools to taje it apart.
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Slave labor is illegal in China, and working conditions have continuously been improving year over year for decades. The upper-level comment applies directly to that type of thinking you’re doing here.
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No, this is closer to fantasy than reality, you need to turn off Fox News. Regarding the treatment of Uyghurs, read Xinjiang: A Resource and Report Compilation, and there isn’t excessice state violence against workers organizing for better conditions. In fact, the state most often sides with the workers against capitalists.
I’ve recently been getting some stupidly high-quality stuff from China for insanely good prices.
Essentially, I’ve been buying stuff from Walmart that has been marked down over $100. What I think is happening is no-name Chinese companies try to make a high quality product and sell it for a premium, but then nobody buys it because of the reputation no-name Chinese companies have. Then, they still need to sell their inventory so we can get great products at great prices.
These bluetooth headphones from a company I’ve never heard on straight up shit on the Sennheisers I used to have that cost significantly more.
It’s more that China already produces so much of what, say, Statesians consume. US-based companies offshore production and sell domestically at higher prices, but if you go straight to the manufacturers, you can get closer to the prices the US-based companies are already buying them for. These products are often made at the same factories, even, but don’t have the US branding, that’s about it.
I got my glasses from a Chinese company that owns the entire chain of production. Excellent quality, and even lower priced than “cheap” American stores like Walmart that just resell.
I see that clearly when i buy products from Aliexpress or Temu and shops in Poland are full of literally the same items but 3-5 times the price. Hell some of the internet shops openly does the thing that you buys something and only then they order it in China for you but you still pay 3-5 times the price.
Glass shops are the same way.
They order their inventory on DHgate then mark it up at least 100%.
I think some Chinese brands need to own their premium prices. It might be difficult with electronics however.
There are steels that premium Chinese brands can make that are objectively better that nobody else has produced yet and they are VERY expensive.
They literally own the means of production
“They” just doesnt seem to be the average Chinese citizen.
The large firms and key industries in China are overwhelmingly publicly owned:
State owned to mean public owned depends on the robustness of the democratic pratices of the state to me
China is comprehensively democratic as well, and has high approval rates for it:
They literally own the workers
Their attitudes towards elderly parents. I’ve been told I shouldn’t worry about helping them in their old age because they had their chance to work and save for retirement and so it’s their responsibility of it’s not enough. Except… They didn’t. They migrated here with nothing, provided for THEIR parents their whole lives, and did the best they could for me, which left them with next to nothing. Westerners assume everyone boomer aged or so had the same opportunities that their parents had. The nuclear family is also very hands-off about caring for the elderly. That’s not how most of the world operates. Plus, it’s so sad!
Yep, same in the UK. We’ve abandoned our elderly and seemingly can’t wait for our kids to leave so that we enjoy maybe 10 years of watching TV and not working before we die.
In other, less ‘developed’ countries the family is a unit. The elderly help with the infants (which has been proven to be mutually beneficial), while the rest of the family works or helps maintain the household. There’s way less likelyhood of abandonment or lonliness in old age, which in my country is endemic.
Jaysus
Acting that everyone on Reddit/Lemmy is American.
The Netherlands is just as much a part of the West.
“immigration is why our lives are getting worse”
Very clear indicator that someone has barely attempted to understand how the world works
I mean yeah thats a good indication, but thinking about it, many asian countries also have this same feeling. So is it a westernized thought process or just “people are stupid as fuck” problem. I lean on the latter.
It’s a racism problem, which one might argue is people being stupid as fuck.
It’s a capitalist problem. As long as the billionaire class keeps us fighting a culture war amongst ourselves, we won’t realize that the actual war is a class war against them.
There are only two classes. The billionaires and the rest of us (that they call “labour”). If you can convince the labour class that they are divided by race, religion, etc… they’ll be too busy blaming each other to come burn down your mansion.
“If your poor its because you didn’t try hard enough”
Even in the west that one doesn’t stand. We have systemic unemployment and tons of hard working family owned business lost everything when Amazon took their market share
Yeah that one is less a ‘westernism’ and more a ‘1%er-ism’
I agree that’s the reality here, but that doesn’t mean people will acknowledge it. I mean… look at what people who are willfully ignorant and/or intentionally hateful have done to the west. They’re still saying shit like “better work harder, scrub” even though that’s complete bullshit and applies just as much to them as anyone else.
Failing to have a coherent understanding of how imperialism works. A lot of westerners seem to think they live in developed countries developed purely by their own industry, while not realizing how financial capital continues to plunder the global south.
Any resource you could recommend for someone who wants a better understanding of this?
Yes, actually! I wrote an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list, you can skip straight to the “imperialism” section. It’ll be a bit difficult to jump straight there without the other sections, but it won’t be impossible. If you only read one, it should be Lenin’s Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism | Audiobook, which is by far the most clear and important work on the subject. The only problem is that imperialism has developed quite a lot since Lenin wrote it, and the US Empire is now unquestionably the top dog. For more on that, I recommend Michael Hudson’s Super-Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance.
If you only want a quick overview, though, Prolewiki’s article on imperialism is really good by itself.
Thank you for the quality resource! I realized I already had this saved but haven’t gotten to that section yet o7.
No problem! It’s a fair bit into the list because imperialism is both the number 1 most important contradiction in the world today, and quite an advanced topic when first delving into Marxism. If you already have the list saved, and have the time and willingness, I suggest following it the standard way - it’s much easier to understand when you have the background info!
I knew I had you tagged as Marxist - Leninist Bro for a reason ;P, properly appreciate the effort you’ve put into it. Yes, following the list as outlined is my intent - excited to delve into the imperialist section now, it’s something I’ve not put much intention towards learning beforehand, as such it’s awesome you’ve put together something so comprehensive.
Appreciate the kind words, thanks!
sometimes not acknowledging it even exists.
Definitely true as well.
MM/dd/yyyy date format by default on software
this is just the USA, not the whole west
Case in point
Worst format ever. It should either be dd/mm/yyyy or yyyy/mm/dd
yyyy/mm/dd
YYYY-MM-DD
Standard is for dashes in ISO8601.
- >>>>>>>>>> / . Fite me
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ISO-8601. Accept no compromise.
The worst?? Try mm/yy/dd, and you’ll regret everything in your life. Another “great” one is yyyy-dd-mm; it’ll infuriate anyone using the ISO standard.
MM/YY/DDD (Ordinal date)
What fresh evil is this?
Okay now that IS the worst, good point
Omg who uses that?
No one who survived the attempt to require others to use it.
Me, for a future April Fools release in one of my projects.
Goodness gracious, it gives me an aneurysm every time I set up a new computer with the en_US locale or have to fill out forms with that date format.
This is just the madlads in the US
date +%s
Maybe more of a US bubble but American software never considers that people might be multi lingual and public transport is always disregarded.
Examples include: Google knows that I speak German and English since I put it in my settings and yet it tries to auto-dub German YouTube content and auto-translates German comments in Maps.
Public transport stops only appear in Google Maps when you zoom in quite a lot despite being some of the most important points of interest when using public transport. Public transport navigation is also very lackluster.
Those are just examples, there are many more examples in software where you can notice some 20 year old US tech bro came up with it who has never been to a different country.
Examples include: Google knows that I speak German and English since I put it in my settings and yet it tries to auto-dub German YouTube content and auto-translates German comments in Maps.
I actually have the opposite problem. Sometimes when googling something I get auto translated results (mostly reddit posts tho), and a week ago the YouTube app on my phone decided to auto translate English video titles.
No, I DON’T want your shitty Dutch auto translation. Give me the original English. I am not English illiterate and you 100% know it, Google.
Even worse. Recently I was watching a video in Dutch, and it decided to automatically translate the sound to English. AI generated. That was just…it sounded so fucked up.
And why does YouTube think it needs to do that? If I want that, I’ll so it myself.
happens to me all the time, and sometimes trying to select the original audio track does nothing, especially in shorts
What the fuck, I’m glad that hasn’t happened to me yet
Public transport navigation is also very lackluster.
This reminded me of a few months ago when I went to Milan with a friend. I used Organic Maps for getting around and they used Gmaps. Their phone was always trying to get us to walk as little as possible, using EVERY possible combination of metro, tram and busses for even the shortest trips, it was insane. Change bus here, ride one stop, get on the metro, change to the other line, get back on a bus, take the tram, it never ended. Same trip on organic maps was 3 changes on the metro and a 5 minute walk at the end.
Public transport stops only appear in Google Maps when you zoom in quite a lot despite being some of the most important points of interest when using public transport. Public transport navigation is also very lackluster.
Maybe its a personal experience or a US problem, but when I was in Japan Google Maps was a godsend for navigating the subway and railway system. I learned quickly to trust that system because they had rail cars coming and going constantly. Ignoring the system caused me to get onto the right train, but that train was a full service train saand stopped at each individual station. Had I waited 2 minutes as directed I would have gotten on the limited service train and arrived at my destination many minutes faster.
I had never noticed public transport stops being missing in maps, but that is probably because there are no public transport stops where I live. I had noticed it always greys out the bus when I ask for directions though.
Literally anything MAGA says
