GarbageShootAlt2

Your position doesn't make sense. We know that testimony on atrocity propaganda is sometimes a complete fabrication:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

So that is one of the things worth considering, but that hypothesis isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card and needs to be weighed against other factors like the variety of sources and people involved, their history and material interests, etc.

Yes, I am saying things need to be scrutinized instead of just taken at face value if they comport with our prejudices, I apologize if that takes the wind out of your sails, but blind faith won't lead you to good conclusions.

What did they say?

It's nice to know there are cool people on blahaj zone. Near the start of the reddit migration I saw that there was a bit of a red scare going on there. Are things a bit better now?

Edit: I looked up that user's comment in the modlog a yeesh, they really went whole-hog with Park's spiel. As an aside, people say some really unhinged shit, like since then there was another comment about how the only thing to do about the DPRK is invade and diplomacy is a waste of time.

We got at least a couple of takers, and I expanded a little on some of my views. What do you think?

I should mention that one thing that probably skews matters is a prevalent thought (that I mostly agree with) among communists that the criticism of rivals of one's state to appease liberals is not a good use of time. The reasoning goes that you aren't really in a position to correct those problems, so spending time on these things when speaking publicly is only going to support the basis for a "left opposition" to those foreign states even if that's not your personal aim. A version of this has been used by the FBI.

Because of this, I think your sampling might have been sabotaged by people operating on that principle, because convincing a liberal to be an anarcho-bidenist [someone who claims to be a radical but supports US foreign policy and/or the Democrats] isn't really a useful effort.

Eh, I've seen errors here and there (and called them out, as you can see) but I think they are generally putting forward decent arguments with better evidence. The Yuri Gagarin stan for example is very well-read and intelligent, you just need to demonstrate good faith (and maybe catch him in a not-bad mood). Anyway, here's the thread that I just made. Feel free to upvote for visibility, we'll see how it goes.

Your "no u" line about how actually I am telling children's stories doesn't work as well as you think it does. The crux of my case is that these states aren't monoliths and potemkin villages but actually have complex internal politics where people of varying viewpoints are able to openly disagree and protest, as is observably true in these countries! Not everyone in the Russian legislature supports the war, and they generally did okay with this position. There are all sorts of left/right debates in China among various politicians and journalists and so on. To call this kabuki theater or totally inconsequential without any actual evidence is silly.

Also your timeline is bad. The Great Famine ended circa '61 and the Cultural Revolution began in '66. The Cultural Revolution certainly had its issues, but it didn't cause a famine. Deng did end the Cultural Revolution, sort of, but only after Mao's death and the purging of the Gang of Four (prior to Deng's re-ascent).

As an aside, I don't think Deng was ever imprisoned in connection to the Cultural Revolution, though he was half-purged and assigned to menial duties in one case and basically paid leave in another. It's quite interesting how pissed Mao and his clique were at Deng and yet they held their hand, relatively speaking. Wasn't it supposed to be a death sentence to oppose Mao, as the liberals tell it? Of course, Mao took pride in trying to rehabilitate people (even the last Chinese Emperor and captured Japanese soldiers!), so he would in almost all cases resist having someone killed or left to rot in prison.

There's a wild bias in western media in trying to make a Khrushchev out of Deng, but Deng himself vociferously refuted those comparisons while in office, calling Khrushchev a fool, a traitor, and so on, and saying that being compared to Khrushchev was an insult (which is true).

That's a little heartening. Lemmygrad is aware of this thread, but I'll try to word the post to not tip my hand too too much, and then I'll link it back here and you can watch it (actually, you can post in it if you want since you're on a lemmy.ml account, but that's up to you).

Let me tell you from experience that sometimes people only look ridiculous because of prejudices we are bringing into the interaction (though some people are ridiculous).

Should I include Russia or is that too easy?

As an aside in the meantime, what do you make of the fact that I am quite willing to talk about negative elements despite being a "tankie"?

Your comment got removed before I saw it. If you'd like to give it another shot, I guess maybe check the modlog to see what rule you broke and reword it a little.

You are pushing in the direction of "he said/she said". If I made a thread over on lemmygrad and actually asked about this, would you accept that as evidence?

The beliefs of Marxism / Leninism . . . or any of their offshoots (i.e communism / socialism)

I suppose it's just a matter of syntax, but I first read this as a very silly statement wherein "communism" is an offshoot of "Marxism / Leninism".

Anyway, don't worry, I'm familiar with the "real Marxism has never been tried!" line that some people have for various reasons, but I a) can't see how this is particularly useful as a distinction compared to other states and b) don't think this remotely answers my question.

I think you and I both know why the so-called marxists who say "real Marxism has never been tried" exist, or at least our beliefs on the matter are a close enough parallel that it's not a very enticing discussion, but what you have failed to do is explain the basic prompt of why a westerner would support a state like China.

I can give an internally-consistent answer for these groups and yourself coming to their beliefs: You all live to varying degrees in a bubble of western Discourse and pseudo-historical mythmaking.

The "never been tried" Marxist believes everything the State Department says about its enemies but still believes in some sort of ever-failing communism like a good little Trot because they are, for the time being and in part motivated by their social position, appalled by what capitalism has wrought even in the imperial core and want something better even if they struggle to conceive what that could be in practical terms, since every success of socialism has been transmuted into an ultimate failure. Nonetheless, "there must be an alternative," and that possibility, however hazy, is worth fighting for over the corrupt establishment.

The liberal believes everything the State Department says about its enemies and comes to the reasonable conclusion (if we assume the State Department is honest) that socialism has failed its many chances and therefore "there is no alternative". They are more likely to have a higher social position than the previous group because it is much easier to say capitalism works when it works for you.

The "tankie" is typically the worst off of the three groups in social position, with long term prospects that look pretty grim, and this has pushed them into a desperation to find a way to improve their prospects since they can't afford a hazy future and communalist circle-jerking but the invisible hand of the free market would crush them even faster, so they do something that these other groups are not driven to, which is some level of serious research, and by this means they were able to accept that the State Department lies as often as it speaks and that they have been born into the slightly unnerving position of being nestled in the imperial core as the empire runs roughshod over as much of the world as it can. Whether they simply concluded that states like Russia or Iran were plainly the lesser of two evils for their opposition to NATO, or they found a more extreme position like genuinely believing in the project of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, they were able to develop a framework that gives them a path forward where previously they felt they had none.

Of course, various biographical details can also be vitally important, like being the descendant of defectors vs generic diaspora, or knowing people who are. I'm white as the driven snow, but I know Chinese people from both groups. The "tankie" one didn't persuade me on very much (though I learned a lot about the Korean War and various elements of the 20th century PRC) but the diaspora descendant taught me things that I still am trying to process, because they made genuinely ridiculous claims (e.g. Mao burning down libraries during the Civil War) that I have not been able to find repeated by even the most ridiculous anti-PRC rag when I search online. There's a bizarre sort of cult to intergenerational trauma that seems to emerge where stories are embellished and exaggerated over time (deliberately or not) and the truth of these stories cannot be questioned because, in so many words, "it's their truth."

I meant it when I said I'm still processing it, because to me it's in many respects a bizarre behavior even though it's actually not that hard to explain sociologically (view it like religious trauma and it's trivially simple). I think there is more to learn from it, but I couldn't tell you what.

Pardon me, I thought you were responding to a different comment (I was replying in my inbox to many different disputes). Seeing the actual context, this is ridiculous. You accuse me of being a paid actor and then say that you have no reason to present evidence of the accusation?

Let us imagine that I was a paid actor and would behave exactly as you expect. Aren't there other people reading the conversation? Wouldn't it be worth proving to them that you aren't just going on paranoid rants because your ideology has no way to deal with the concept of westerners freely disagreeing with you on these issues?

You can visit North Korea and never see their work camps either.

Firstly, there is much more restriction on tourist movement in the DPRK for a litany of reasons, mostly pertaining to national security. Tourists in Xinjiang can move pretty freely, though if they are going all over the place they will cumulatively need to pass through many checkpoints.

Secondly, "work camps" here is what people call prison labor in Bad Country. The DPRK has prisons, certainly, and we can have discussions about penal labor, but it's much less notable than people pretend and much less secretive as well.

Thirdly, "work camps" are not remotely comparable to committing genocide against one tenth of the entire population of the region, which is the claim that was popularly made against Xinjiang before it got walked back to "cultural genocide".