Communism looks good on paper

and looks even better in the real world

  • StonksDiff13@lemmy.today
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    2 days ago

    How about 30-50 million dead from starvation while trying to implement communism under Mao? How about Tiananmen Square?

    Do you realize that the government punishes those who bring it up and leave it out of the history books for the younger generations?

    What about Uyghur genocide?

    You can walk around the campus of a Chinese university, ask person after person about the Tiananmen Square massacre and no one knows what the hell you’re talking about.

    You think this is the shining example of socialism that should be implemented across the globe?

    No thank you.

    • BeanisBrain [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 day ago

      What about Uyghur genocide?

      You mean the one a coalition of multiple Islamic countries investigated and all agreed wasn’t a genocide? The one the UN also investigated and did not call a genocide? The one for which Wikipedia changed its article name to “Mass detention of Uyghurs” because there wasn’t sufficient grounds to call it a genocide and doesn’t give a body count? The one which, despite allegedly occurring in a country with very high rates of cell phone ownership and internet access, has produced no evidence of kill sites or mass graves?

      • StonksDiff13@lemmy.today
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        1 day ago

        I’ll seriously consider what you’ve said with supporting evidence. It’s the first I’ve heard of this. I’m open to being taught.

        One of my experiences in China was witnessing an underground Muslim gathering and religious ceremony. We were warned about why they must operate in secret due to potential government action.

        If we do change the statement from genocide to persecution, I suppose China gets a better profile, but I don’t think it is a talking point that “China’s socialism is better than US Capitalism because of their religious freedom.”

        My initial argument is still that both systems suck.

        This one of the markers I would use for a “good” system:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_Human_Development_Index

        The Inequality Adjusted Human Development Index.

        Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland… these are the leaders in this index. How? A high-welfare free market economy.

        This is capitalism but with a foundation of human rights built on high taxes using examples like net wealth tax.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          1 day ago

          I already gave my sources on Xinjiang, so I won’t retread old ground.

          The nordic countries thay have high scores on the IAHD index are a part of western imperialism. They subsidize their safety nets by plundering the surplus value of the south, and rely on institutions like the IMF and NATO to protect them and facilitate their plunder. China is not imperialist.

          • StonksDiff13@lemmy.today
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            1 day ago

            This is your argument? That this is allowed in a great example of Chinese socialism?

            2022 report by the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) found that China’s arbitrary detention of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang may constitute “crimes against humanity,” citing credible evidence of torture, forced labor, and severe rights violations.

            While the UN report did not formally label the actions as “genocide,” it highlighted evidence of coercive policies designed to suppress cultural and religious identity.

            Key Findings of the UN Report:

            • Arbitrary Detention: The report confirmed that mass internment camps, termed “vocational training” by the Chinese government, functioned as centers for detention.
            • Torture and Abuse: Evidence was found of beatings, torture (including waterboarding), and sexual violence against detainees.
            • Coercive Labor: Evidence suggests a scope of forced labor, with detainees transferred to factories or high-security prisons.
            • Religious/Cultural Suppression: Policies aimed at “coercive Sinicization” forced individuals to abandon religious practices.

            Brother. China sucks. The US sucks. Just get over it.

            • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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              1 day ago

              Brother, CIA shenanigans in Xinjiang sucked.

              Previously:

              The US tried to foment division in China by funding and organizing Salafi terrorist into Xinjiang, and once its efforts failed, it made lemonade out of its lemon by concocting and promoting a genocide narrative.

              The only countries pushing this narrative are the “always the same mapimperial core countries, which just so happen to be largely the same ones supporting Israel’s genocide.

              Almost no predominantly-Muslim country buys the Uyghur genocide narrative, because they know it’s bullshit, because they talked to the Uyghurs themselves.
              https://twitter.com/un_hrc/status/1578003299827171330 #HRC51 | Draft resolution A/HRC/51/L.6 on holding a debate on the situation of human rights in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of #China, was REJECTED.

              Previously:

              Genocide is more than just killing, it’s the deliberate destruction of a people including its culture and institutions.

              (a) Show me the Uyghur bodies

              (b) Show me the serious bodily or mental harm

              (c) Show me the conditions calculated to bring about physical destruction in whole or in part

              (d) Show me the measures intended to prevent births within the group

              In accordance with China’s affirmative action policies towards ethnic minorities, all non-Han ethnic groups were subject to different laws and were usually allowed to have two children in urban areas, and three or four in rural areas.

              (e) Show me the forcible transfer of children from one group to another group

              violent incidents in East Turkestan

              I wonder where those Salafi terrorists came from? Oh right: the US, UK, and Israel organized, funded, and trained them, as they did Al Qaeda and the various flavors of ISIS/ISIL, including the “moderate rebels” that just took over Syria. The blueprint of regime change operations How regime change happens in the 21st century with your consent.


              Relatedly, US shenanigans in Hong Kong five years ago and in Beijing in 1989 also sucked.

              Previously:

              The UK’s 99 year lease to subjugate the people of Hong Kong ended, a lease which had been forced upon Imperial China at gunpoint during the century of humiliation. Hong Kong reintegration after the lease expired was a foregone conclusion. The last minute, US-backed attempt at color revolution failed. It was the so-called “revolutionaries” who brought the brutality, by the way.

              Previously:

              I’ve already asked another commenter this but it’s valid here too: Would you class the western oppression of dissent to be on the same level as that famous student protest in China?

              Only someone misinformed about the 1989 protest and US/CIA/NED-orchestrated, murderously violent riot would ask this, which to be fair is 99% of Westerners.


              Edit to add: The link to images from Beijing is broken because Reddit has since censored that entire subreddit.

              • StonksDiff13@lemmy.today
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                1 day ago

                Holyy shit that’s a lot of reading. I got through a lot of it so far and honestly, I’m reaching a point where I don’t think I’m smart enough to have any real commentary. I will say the sources are pretty questionable. One of the sites you listed has a .cn address so it’s directly controlled by the Chinese government lol. Medium and YouTube and a website claiming to be an independent journalist…

                This is probably a conversation for another time, but what if we’ve entered a period where no information I have or you have is plain fact? It’s increasingly likely. We could be both horribly wrong with no other way to prove anything except what is happening with the 5ft circle around us. It makes sense if most media available is controlled by two opposed governments trying to influence their people a certain way that neither have good intel.

                It makes sense to me that a country attempting to unify itself in terms of language, economy, politics, etc. would be harsh and even persecute minority religions. It has happened everywhere in history. But it also makes sense the US would deploy destabilizing propaganda and assets into all foreign nations.

                Anyways, I’m fine admitting this is beyond my paygrade as a socio-economic and political enthusiast.

                I’ll concede on the idea that neither of us were there and both of us believe our sources are correct.

                • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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                  1 day ago

                  I don‘t expect you or anyone to turn an instant 180º away from a lifetime of understanding. It took me well over a decade, first because I had to look into most of it myself, and second because it took a lot of evidence for me to accept them and reject the many layers of unexamined priors I’d grown up with.

                  Another place to start, rather than diving head-first into the China question, is the history of propaganda, which developed starting in the early 20th century in the US.

                  Previously:

                  But muh Media Bias/Fact Check says it checks out!

                  https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/contact/

                  Dave M. Van Zandt obtained a Communications Degree before pursuing a higher degree in the sciences. Dave currently works full time in the health care industry. Dave has spent more than 20 years as an arm chair researcher on media bias and its role in political influence.

                  Van Zandt is some hobbyist who was in the right place at the right time: the “post-truth” moment of Clinton’s loss to Trump and the string of Russiagate conspiracy theories and Kellyanne Conway’s alternative facts and the Cambridge Analytica hysteria.

                  The whole concept of the “left” or ”right“ “bias” being inversely correlated with factualness is garbage. These kinds of graphs, which try to convince us that centrism equals factualness, are garbage:

                  The core bias of corporate media is the bias of the capitalist class, but people like Van Zandt don’t seem to understand this.

                  The inner workings of corporate media were explained about forty years ago in Inventing Reality and Manufacturing Consent.
                  A five minute introduction: Noam Chomsky - The 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine


                  Previously:

                  I said “these kinds of graphs,” of which there are many https://duckduckgo.com/?q=media+bias+chart&iax=images&ia=images

                  But you’ve sparked an idea for an interesting project: use MBFC’s API to create one of these graphs from their own data. Doing a little googling, it seems that scripts and data dumps aren’t hard to come by.

                  I think armchair media analyst Dave M. Van Zandt is going on vibes. I don’t think he understands corporate & think tank media. Does he know who Walter Lippman or Edward Bernays were, or what the Council on Foreign Relations (“least biased” 🤡) is or made note of its prominent media members? Does he know about the Powell memorandum or the Trilateral Commission’s report, The Crisis of Democracy?

                  No results found for site:mediabiasfactcheck.com "manufacturing consent".

                  I’ve seen The Grayzone debunk the New York Times’ lies many times, and yet:

                  Also, in what universe is the neoliberal, anti-labor NYT center-left? And if the Grayzone in the ultraviolet territory, where does that leave the explicitly Communist Monthly Review, outside of MBFC’s Overton window? Surprise, it’s to the right of it:


                  Previously:

                  The first step is to understand the media, which Media Bias/Fact Check and the Ad Fontes Media* are never going to teach you. The only people who are taught it are those who get degrees in marketing, public relations, political science, history, and journalism; and even then only some of them.

                  The new post-Trump/“post-truth” media literacy curricula won’t teach it to you either, because it was paid for and crafted by the US military-industrial complex: New Media Literacy Standards Aim to Combat ‘Truth Decay’.

                  This week, the RAND Corporation released a new set of media literacy standards designed to support schools in this task.

                  The standards are part of RAND’s ongoing project on “truth decay”: a phenomenon that RAND researchers describe as “the diminishing role that facts, data, and analysis play in our political and civic discourse.”

                  None of it is a secret, though, and it can be learned.

                  • StonksDiff13@lemmy.today
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                    23 hours ago

                    Wow I’m discovering we’re more alike by the second. I’m certainly in my personal journey of discovering truth beneath the corporate fed slop. I unsubscribed to NYT in 2017.

                    I have thought for years that many people bounce their minds between the left and right extremes only to falsely convince themselves the middle must be the reasonable place to be when in fact the truth or ethics are on a different spectrum entirely.

                    I’m thankful my brain has a natural tendency to know logic and morality that aides my search, but you’re right. It’s questioning everything from the beginning just to have a starting picture. Propaganda from childhood forward. History written by the victors.

                    Manufactured consent is the hot topic amongst some of my friends at the moment. We’ve abandoned all “sides” in US politics searching for a solution to the ever strengthening tyranny of evil.

                    Thank you for sharing these sources and information. I’ll happily research further.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              1 day ago

              You asked an AI without even reading China’s response to the allegations? You just had an AI summarize the allegations alone, without reading China’s counter-evidence. I asked you to read the OHCHR report so you could understand the allegations, not as definitive evidence, which China’s response thoroughly debunks a large majority of it or contextualizes.

              Plus, I’m not the one you were responding to here, I linked you Xinjiang: A Resource and Report Compilation.

              • StonksDiff13@lemmy.today
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                1 day ago

                Sorry, I thought you or someone else had said the UN report confided it wasn’t genocide. So I went and found the UN report to point out what it did say. If that wasn’t you, I apologize. There are a lot of parallel conversations going on.

                But still, wouldn’t the UN collective organization have more credibility than the individual accused nation when claiming their side of things?

                “The man accused of says he didn’t do it. The group of investigators determined it was voluntary manslaughter…”

                Since you want to discuss the details of the report and China’s response, I will look into both. Please hold.

                For some reason your link is not working btw. I will copy the title and search for it.

        • BeanisBrain [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 day ago

          If we do change the statement from genocide to persecution, I suppose China gets a better profile, but I don’t think it is a talking point that “China’s socialism is better than US Capitalism because of their religious freedom.”

          The US is actively militarily aiding Israel in its genocide of Palestinians. So yes, there is a basis to decide which country is better on the basis of “who treats Muslims better,” and it is China, because China isn’t genociding them.

          Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland… these are the leaders in this index. How?

          Imperialism. All the countries you listed are NATO members.

          • StonksDiff13@lemmy.today
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            1 day ago

            I don’t disagree that the US is blood soaked. It’s sickening to think many people work so hard every day to support their healthcare-less lives only for their taxes to go towards the interest of the debt the government builds killing children.

            This however, has nothing to do with Chinese socialism vs US capitalism.

            China and the US are practically dependent on each other economically. China is the one that allows some if the worst working conditions of any super power on earth. All in the name of “the greater good.” People throwing themselves from the roof just to escape it. Hope much microplastic is generated from China’s manufacturing plants? Doesn’t China lead the planet in pollution?

            China is the world’s biggest emitter of carbon gases** – and by some considerable distance: the country is responsible for 90 per cent of the growth in CO2 emissions since 2015. Today, its share of total emissions is [32 per cent], far ahead of the US (13 per cent), India (8 per cent) and the EU at 6 per cent.

            https://energytransition.org/2026/03/china-the-worlds-checkered-trailblazer-in-climate-protection/#%3A~%3Atext=Today%2C+its+share+of+total%2Cto+Belinda+Schäpe+of+CRECA.

            Lastly, don’t misunderstand. I’m sure the US is better than China in things like pollution, while China commits less global genocide (if any).

            The reason I don’t think it’s a talking point isn’t to diminish those facts. It’s because my argument is still: both systems suck!!! We the people of earth deserve better than what either of these governments have been producing. And those changes can happen now if we all work together. Chinese people and Americans, hand in hand to overthrow these bullshit con artists.

            • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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              18 hours ago

              China is the world’s biggest emitter of carbon gases**

              Yeah, because it’s the second-largest population in the world and it’s producing & exporting the world’s products. You don’t get to de-industrialize, import your products, and then chastise your producers for using more energy than you, when they’re using that energy for you.

              China is also the largest green energy user and producer of green energy technology, which it also exports.

              The Economist: China’s clean-energy revolution will reshape markets and politics

              Why are you still spouting off tired, old bullshit that we’ve already investigated and found wanting? Why don’t you just stop now, and investigate before you speak?

              No Investigation, No Right to Speak

              Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Isn’t that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense. Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak? Quite a few comrades always keep their eyes shut and talk nonsense, and for a Communist that is disgraceful. How can a Communist keep his eyes shut and talk nonsense?

              It won’t do!

              It won’t do!

              You must investigate!

              You must not talk nonsense!

            • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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              20 hours ago

              .I’m sure the US is better than China in things like pollution

              “I’m sure about [thing that is wrong]”

    • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      Yup, that’s what I thought: you’re as propagandized as everyone else in the imperial core. Just as propagandized as I was 20 years ago.

      • StonksDiff13@lemmy.today
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        2 days ago

        You want to know who taught me about these things? My Chinese native guide that I traveled with to Tibet, Beijing, and all over rural / urban areas inbetween.

        But I guess this real person talking to you with actual experience will just disappear in your thoughts as a nothingburger.

        Fine. Tragic, but fine.

        • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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          1 day ago

          Funny how, when they disagree with you, Chinese people can’t be trusted because they’re all kept in the dark by their government, but when they (allegedly) agree with you, they can’t be questioned

          • StonksDiff13@lemmy.today
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            1 day ago

            I live with someone who is Chinese currently. So my personal experience and opinions are constantly being validated and corrected in some cases.

            Frankly, I’m just not the person who can be assumed as an ignorant idiot on this topic. I lived there, I speak the language, I stay updated.

            Statistics are released by their government controlled media. It’s not all that funny. The US is waking up to realize their media is completely controlled as well. They just didn’t admit it as openly as China. But the independent journalist is now dead in America. Or buried by 30 million AI generated articles per day.

            • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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              1 day ago

              , I’m just not the person who can be assumed as an ignorant idiot on this topic.

              Don’t worry, I didn’t need to assume it, you’ve demonstrated it.

              The US is waking up to realize their media is completely controlled as well.

              You say, believing everything they say about China

              • StonksDiff13@lemmy.today
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                1 day ago

                I was taught what I know about China by last generation Chinese people while living there. Again, your assumptions and trying to paint me with a broad brush simply don’t work. There are a lot of idiotic Americans on the left and right. I’m not one of them.

                • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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                  22 hours ago

                  Lol. Elsewhere you’re saying we can’t trust Chinese people because the government controls what they know.

                  And you are platonic ideal of the idiotic American, who’s vindicated every assumption I’ve made about them

                  • StonksDiff13@lemmy.today
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                    20 hours ago

                    I recommend you find some greater value with your time than these wasteful insults. It’s clear you’re only seeking dopamine from the fake rush you get criticizing strangers from the safety of your anonymity. There’s better things like sports or socializing you could be doing.

            • m532@lemmy.ml
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              1 day ago

              “Independent journalist” is libspeak for “cia stenographer”