GarbageShootAlt2

Such fierce condescension and yet you're the one pushing a children's story. All these hundreds and thousands of representatives, all the millions of Party members, are just puppets under the Bad Guy's control. There was no violence to install him, the existing government put him there (since I assume you don't endorse Chinese elections) and then he played an Uno Reverse and now they are all an extension of him, with all of Chinese politics then becoming merely being a matter of how much people chaff under the collars and fetters he fixes to them. When politicians fight each other? When journalists fire back and forth in the papers? When policy goes one way and then pivots? It's all just a Potemkin Village with a few hundred million people as the staff.

So no, "someone like me" cannot understand how such a thing could exist outside of a children's cartoon or a similar sort of story told to an audience that is very much suspending its disbelief.

And yet surely these people must have a reason to believe it, don't they? Even if one assumes they are wrong, this doesn't just come from nowhere, it must have some cause to seem reasonable to them, right? They are like you, thinking human beings, and no progress can be made in understanding the disagreement if you start from them being, in so many words, intellectually inferior to you.

There are literally pictures of bloodshed.

Not in the Square itself, which was the scene of many absurd claims by defectors, like the "tanks crushing people to wash them down the gutters" cartoon bullshit.

Here are interviews with some of the leaders of the protest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu3zmbFGwQA

You say this and yet, what videos? How many have you actually watched vs assumed were there vs read the headline? I've seen a bunch of photos and videos and all of them were either hoaxes (calling normal buildings camps), ridiculous misunderstandings (like saying the screeching of brakes was screaming victims), or gross misrepresentations (e.g. normal prison transfers being a slate of new genocide victims). But if you just skim through what just so happens to trend on Reddit, you'll see atrocity after atrocity and not stick around long enough to see the retraction, or the people in the comments debunking it, and so on.

There's a reason neoliberal outlets walked their claims back to "cultural genocide" over time, because there was nothing there except the testimony of like three people from a region of 15 million.

Yes, thank you for being understanding. I think it's better to avoid calling people brainwashed because -- as one liberal in this thread pointed out -- it denies agency which our interlocutors plainly do have which makes them much more responsible for their bad epistemology than the theory of "brainwashing" allows for.

If we want to persuade people -- and I've seen that you have incredible enthusiasm for that cause! -- we must do our best to meet them where they actually are rather than where we imagine them to be.

I'll get off my soapbox here, I just wanted to mention it. I wish you all the best in your efforts!

You're changing the question, I mean the Chinese government and so did you in your previous comment. I'm sure you're aware that "tankies" don't just give a blanket endorsement of, for example, patriarchal social norms in China, and believe there are many cultural elements which must be the object of struggle. One must conclude that you didn't include that because it was beyond the scope of your claim when you said "China".

What was that about bad faith?

That claim is mutually exclusive with Taiwan being "its own nation" distinct from China. It is definitionally its own government, but it claims to be a superset of the nation of China (because of also claiming Mongolia and some smaller territories). Nations are a social construct based on historical group identities, so the PRC is the same nation as the ROC was back when the ROC controlled the mainland. The ROC claims to still be that nation (plus Mongolia) which the PRC currently administers.

There's no substance to this, you have no evidence and merely impugn my character.

My friend, I would like to remind you as gently as possible that brainwashing does not exist and was in fact an orientalist lie popularized to explain away why US soldiers would support China.

It's proof of your integrity that you admit good things about China . . . Because surely you will eventually, right?

Of having hysterical bullshit invented about them? True enough. Quick, does every man in North Korea need to have Kim's haircut or is no one allowed to have it?

Mostly they got banned wherever they congregated on Reddit. Not knowing they existed seems like a significant oversight, but to be expected with the way that China is depicted to you.