"Oh, this is calamity! Calamity! Oh no, he's on the floor!"
Welcome to MoG!
Meanwhile On Grad
Documenting hate speech, conspiracy theories, apologia/revisionism, and general tankie behaviour across the fediverse. Memes are welcome!
What is a Tankie?
(caution of biased source)
Basic Rules:
Sh.itjust.works Instance rules apply! If you are from other instances, please be mindful of the rules. — Basically, don't be a dick.
Hate-Speech — You should be familiar with this one already; practically all instances have the same rules on hate speech.
Apologia — (Using the Modern terminology for Apologia) No Defending, Denying, Justifying, Bolstering, or Differentiating authoritarian acts or endeavours, whether be a Pro-CCP viewpoint, Stalinism, Islamic Terrorism or any variation of Tankie Ideology.
Revisionism — No downplaying or denying atrocities past and present. Calling Tankies shills, foreign/federal agents, or bots also falls under this rule. Extremists exist. They are real. Do not call them shills or fake users as it handwaves their extremism.
Tankies can explain their views but may be criticised or attacked for them. Any slight infraction on the rules above will immediately earn a warning and possibly a ban.
Off-topic Discussion — Do not discuss unrelated topics to the point of derailing the thread. Stay focused on the direct content of the post as opposed to arguing.
You'll be warned if you're violating the instance and community rules. Continuing poor behaviour after being warned will result in a ban or removal of your comments. Bans typically only last 24 hours, but each subsequent infraction will double the amount. Depending on the content, the ban time may be increased. You may request an unban at any time.
It turns out all countries have an authoritarian desire and like to do horrible stuff to their civilians. At any point in time some may be better than others. But all of the problems stem from the same root problem of power. It's a human thing and it's unavoidable. Something that citizens will always need to fight against.
In America police violence is shown on tv and presented as a good thing actually, in china it's not on tv.
in china it’s not on tv
No shortage of crime dramas and procedurals on Chinese networks.
It's so weird to hear people talk about China like its this hermit kingdom. Visited there a few months back and... the biggest difference between Zhuhai and Houston is the number of people speaking Mandarin. Oh, also, lots of trains and buses.
But the idea that Chinese citizens are somehow oblivious to the country's politics, its security systems, its cultural strictures, or its relationship to western nations is fucking bananas. They know as much about the Chinese Civil War, Tienanmen Square, and the Hong Kong protests as you know about The American Civil War, 9/11 and the War on Terror, and the BLM protests. There's no shortage of young Chinese folks saying the Mandarin ACAB equivalent, listening to punk rock, and feeling unfairly persecuted. There's no shortage of stogie old MAGA conservatives who think liberals are ruining everything and the country was better 30 years ago. There's no shortage of middle-aged middle-income bureaucrats just going through the motions and getting their jobs done, without thinking to hard about what it means at a national socio-economic scale.
There's no shortage of people shitposting on the Chinese internet. There's no shortage of mods banning those people, either. And if you believe otherwise, go on RedNote and see for yourself.
Fully with you, just pointing out that they do have a higher standard of censorship. Tiananmen square is the obvious one but there's also things like when an accident happens where lots of people die the local governments often report 35 deaths because if more than 35 people die, a government official gets fired.
That's news to me. Certainly possible given what I've seen of domestic cya reporting.
But "nobody talks about the cops in China" is just... pure Western mythology.
As someone that's spent a lot of time in China with Chinese people I strongly disagree with this assertion, "They know as much about the Chinese Civil War, Tienanmen Square, and the Hong Kong protests as you know about The American Civil War, 9/11 and the War on Terror, and the BLM protests."
In my experience Chinese people know extremely little about world history as well as their own uncensored history. It's not a casual topic of discourse and many are hesitant to even speak about these things. They are not a truly free people but they are not ignorant of that. Often they believe that because of their size harsh controls are needed to prevent chaos and they now easily point at the US as an example of what they don't want to become.
That said I agree the Chinese and Americans are way more alike than they care to admit.
In my experience Chinese people know extremely little about world history as well as their own uncensored history.
We must be talking to different people. No shortage of history buffs and politics nerds in the neighborhoods I visited.
Often they believe that because of their size harsh controls are needed to prevent chaos and they now easily point at the US as an example of what they don’t want to become.
Well, the US has QAnon and other elaborate conspiracy theories. They've got all sorts of horrifying racist media that stokes tension and fear between communities and ethnicities. They've got a political system that rewards persecution of opposition and spawns enormous amounts of corruption and waste.
I can't blame other countries' leaders wanting to avoid that.
But if you're a racist then hearing "the government says you're not allowed to post 'Black people are eating the dogs and the cats' to social media" will feed a combined sense of paranoia and self-righteousness.
And then you end up with people who double down, get louder, get more insidious, and start calling down a police response as a result.
Then you've got a group of ugly reactionaries buried in a "Freedom of Speech" movement, which poisons the idea on both sides of the issue.
Their narrative on the US goes back even when America and the world would have classified the US as rock solid. The current events is just them seeing that they were correct the whole time.
I'm more referring to the rank and file Chinese who don't speak or read any English.
There are far more Chinese English speakers than American Mandarin speakers. Not that it matters, as we've had translation software for decades and quite a few people doing the yeoman's work of manual translation for even longer.
But it might say something about the insightfulness of Chinese political analysis that they picked out the flaws in our system way back when the vast majority of Americans were fully blind to it. Perhaps the Reagan and Clinton Eras should have been a warning sign we heeded a bit earlier. Perhaps there's something to this historical materialism that you're not giving enough credit.
You can make an argument that they are correct, but most of America is panicked about the rise of fascism, whereas China sees fascism as a solution to chaos.
China sees fascism as a solution
???
And if you talk about police violence in China the police come to your house and tell you to stop.
If you don't stop you and your family dissappear.
At least it's not on TV, otherwise the public might get concerned!
Dont dare talk about communist crimes, cause capitalism murders like 10 million people a day. A day! No you can't see any proof and you wouldn't understand russian anyway if I did. Kill all landlords. T. Didn't finish highschool and get fired from mcdonalds every 3 months.
Dont dare talk about communist crimes
Funny thing is that you've got a new crop of YouTube streamers going to these regions in China and coming out of them immersed in the culture and lifestyle that we've been told repeatedly was exterminated.
We also had a UN Human Rights investigation into the region that came out woefully short of what western media sources reported, such that anti-China critics are now complaining that the UN isn't a reliable investigator.
It all reeks of the same march to war we heard with Iraq. IAEA investigators running through the country looking for nuclear weapons that don't exist. Hair-raising stories about babies being ripped from incubators and smashed to death by soldiers that turned out to be wild fabrications. Religious cult groups insisting they were being horribly persecuted, when its later discovered they were - themselves - caught up in all sorts of human rights abuses and financial scandals.
Didn’t finish highschool and get fired from mcdonalds every 3 months.
Its so weird to see the knee-jerk Lemmy response to skepticism of China Hawks boil down to "You're too stupid to work at McDonalds". Like, fuck me, man. That's so corporate-brained, it makes me nauseous. Even outside the realm of HailCorporate Reddit and psycho hustler culture Twitter, you've still got folks who value a human's intellectual capacity and innate humanity by how much money they can produce for shareholders.
Youre damn right a totalitarian dictatorship with history of mass murder would want to whitewash their reputation.
"OUR fair and just police vs THEIR brutal murderer cops"
They should learn that ACAB means "ALL cops are bastards", not "All cops in the US and not my beloved infallible glorious prc"
Well the USA doesn't have Execution Vans yet if we're comparing.
We still have police in vans running around executing people with guns. I think we should really stop splitting hairs and just settle on both police forces being authoritarian death cultists.
Well, at least they're civilized enough to use lethal injection instead of shooting them... /s
That's absolutely horrifying.
honestly im glad someone has called it out, the US is BAD and China is also BAD but with highspeed rail and some better ideas along the way which is tbf GOOD. and if we are criticising everyone i want to know why rent and housing is so unaffordable in most of europe and why landleeches can reap. i also want to know why the hell life is worse for women in so many countries, looking at you india, iran and others. problems dont go away because u ignore them and yes sometimes less bad or least worst is progress too but we must strive for the best hard enough that if we fail to hit it we achieve at least good.
Looks like universal Monk has a new alt.. or is it noted sociopath linkerbaans alt?
I have no alt names though--I'm just on a few different instances. I use my same name though.
Funnily enough, back in the day, people thought I was an alt of linkerbaans.
You guys seem to believe you see "alts" everywhere, especially if you disagree with someone.
You know, it could be, that there are more than one or two people that disagree with you. And that's ok. That doesn't mean they are the same person. lol