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China courts Germany's far-right populist AfD (www.dw.com)

submitted 10 months ago by tintory@lemm.ee to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml

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[-] ElHexo@hexbear.net 122 points 10 months ago

Let's lay out the events:

AfD travels to China
AfD says they'll pursue a neutral foreign policy approach with China
AfD says their getting twenty percent of the vote has "sparked interest from China"
AfD says they'll keep lines of communication open with China

Headline: "China courts Germany's far right populist AfD"

[-] TBooneChickens@hexbear.net 35 points 10 months ago

Probably a key piece of context is that they were invited

[-] ElHexo@hexbear.net 53 points 10 months ago

There's no information about that, so presumably given the slant of the article it was an innocuous invitation.

I have tried to find any other references but haven't.

It is not unusual for members of parliament to be invited to other countries, so information needed would include:

who specifically invited AfD
was this invite open to other parliamentarians
what was the nature of their 'invite'
was this part of a broader diplomatic program (such as China's invites to EU representatives and diplomats to tour Xinjiang)

China would deal with AfD just like they deal with left, right, far right and theocratic governments and absolute monarchies all over the world.

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[-] aaaaaaadjsf@hexbear.net 50 points 10 months ago

Much more of these cursed alliances will happen in future unless the left and/or socially progressive forces in the west develop a coherent anti imperialist stance. As in anti NATO, anti IMF, anti World Bank. Traditional left wing positions based on global historical materialism.

Until that happens, the right wing and/or social conservatives, like the AfD here, will steal their lunch from them and form these kind of alliances. The primary contradiction globally is the disparity of living standards and wealth between the west/imperial core/triad, and the third world/global south, orchestrated by modern day imperialism and neocolonialism. Countries in the global south are prepared to work with anyone willing to end that, or at least show some support for ending it.

In short, the left in the west needs to get it's stuff together, actually practice internationalism, and actually practice anti imperialism instead of selling out to the biggest institutions of modern day imperialism on the planet, such as NATO. If the left does not do this, alliances like this will continue to happen as the right occupies, or pretends to occupy, a space the left should be occupying.

[-] Redcat@hexbear.net 44 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Not really surprising that german state media would fall in line when it comes to China reporting. The chinese have a history of playing ball with pretty much anyone from Israel to the EU and beyond. If there's even any basis to the article's thesis, it is the rabidly pro-US faction that rules Germany today which is making the main choice in this matter.

[-] Wage_slave@lemmy.ml 39 points 10 months ago

Is everything world news on lemmy about China? Like I've seen everything from crap articles saying China has a declining population like its a bad thing, or how the west looks like shit compared.

Like, it's nothing racist or offensive. Not to me at least. Just lots and lots of it being the primary topic in ways that I'm ain't too familiar with.

[-] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 61 points 10 months ago

Remember that a huge part of the lemmy (and derivatives) userbase just came from Reddit, and Redditors are obsessed with China.

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[-] ElHexo@hexbear.net 54 points 10 months ago

Since 2016 we've slid into "China bad" reporting, so there's a lot on that.

The reporting is usually pretty weak and facile, and rarely touches some of the real issues over there.

[-] Maoo@hexbear.net 49 points 10 months ago

They're a target of the US Empire and folks that can't do media criticism gladly take the bait.

The first rule of propaganda is emphasis, which is what you're astutely picking up on. Why are stories about X and not A, B, C? When they're about X, what context is emphasized, what is fact and what is allusion, who is interviewed and given the opportunity to comment and who is not? "World news" stories are very frequently just stenography of various think tanks, often ones that are more or less in agreement with one another.

The entirety of China's actions reported in this story are that China (exactly who isn't stated, not even a group) invited an AfD delegation to meet with them. No source is cited, but maybe it's Weidel. From this they create an entire narrative by retelling past articles about AfD's foreign policy statements and ask one person to comment: "political scientist Wolfgang Schroeder from the University of Kassel". They don't mention that he's also an SPD politician and associated with a government-funded research institute with a dodgy past. Maybe his takes are good, but why they asked him and not others isn't stated, of course.

This is just folks getting easily hoodwinked by a propaganda push. Same as folks were suddenly very concerned about WMDs in Iraq or the political powers in Afghanistan and so on. They weren't, not organically - a network of think tanks, government stooges, etc all rally to provide jobs for these kinds of nerds to write these kinds of articles and have these kinds of takes. Several think tanks in Washington have converted from focusing on Syria or Iraq to focusing on Russia or China, as they know who butters their bread.

Anyways that's a long ramble in response to a simple question.