I appreciate that. It’s not lost on me that a lot of communist regimes got really fucked up by trade embargos, sanctions, counter-intelligence campaigns, etc. Power is rarely ceded willingly, of course. However, my primary concern lies with improving the quality of life for everyone, or at least maximizing the well being of the population. Part of that equation, for my point of view, includes the ability for people to think and speak freely without fear of reprisal by the government. Say what you will, but I’ve hosted eight different exchange students, including one from Russia; none were concerned about answering questions about their home country except for the kid from Hong Kong. I asked them whether they identified as a citizen of Hong Kong or of China first, because I was hoping to get an irl sample for how Hong Kongers actually felt, but let them out of the question when I confirmed with them that that was a sensitive question.
If you’re living with a boot on your throat, does the distinction really matter if it’s a capitalist’s boot or a communist’s boot?
If you’re living with a boot on your throat, does the distinction really matter if it’s a capitalist’s boot or a communist’s boot?
Try looking at it from the point of view of the oppressed class who is benefiting from communist rule, and being harmed by capitalist rule, rather than from the point of view of the super rich people.
Unless I happen to be mistaken, poor people get the bullet, too. We just don’t hear about it because they’re not famous. I’m taking a wild guess here, but I suspect that the muslims in Xinjiang aren’t exactly what you would typically think of as the capital owning class. You can’t even (practically, I’m sure there’s some loophole or asterisk here) be critical of the bad ideas of your government, just shut up and kill more sparrows. As far as I can tell, it’s trading oppression for sparkling oppression.
Nobody has been killed in Xinjiang. There is a reason its original liars had to specify it was a “cultural genocide,” which it isn’t, either. Like the full break down?
If your concern is quality of life, then you should be glad to know that all socialist countries, including of course the USSR and China, have radically improved the living standards for their massive citizenries in every metric that matters.
What use is being supposedly free to criticize the U.S. gov’t when 1) every living standard is worse, 2) our education and media feed us so much lies we blame our woes on everybody BUT the gov’t, or for the wrong reasons, 3) you secretly can’t because if you effectively do so you will be blackbagged and disappeared or assassinated?
Your singular Hong Kong kid is not a representative of an entire country or even Hong Kong. Why was it sensitive? Because he feared CPC would come and turn him into meatloaf…or because he feared his parents would? In MY personal, anecdotal experience, fascist parents/grandparents are the greatest source of anticommunist fear.
These are all pretty good points. I’m trying to do better about regulating my social media time, so I’ll use that opportunity to consider them. Thanks for the discussion.
Part of that equation, for my point of view, includes the ability for people to think and speak freely without fear of reprisal by the government
This is like the people who say “We’re freer than the Chinese because I can call Trump a peepee poopoo pants on Twitter without being arrested!” when that doesn’t actually do anything at all
but if you try and protest and change conditions materially and meaningfully, you can absolutely bet your ass you will be disappeared like the horror stories you find on reddit about “totalitarian regimes”. The only reason why Americans don’t think it doesn’t happen in the West is either because it’s so completely internalized that it becomes memeified (“Haha, I hope the FBI agent watching me through my camera is having a nice day!”) or none of the media that they engage with reports on it.
IMO, this entire point is just a liberal ideological bludgeon, a condition that can be applied at-will to any government they want to criticize because no government will be good enough all of the time. it’s one thing if you’re an anarchist and oppose every government equally for not fulfilling that condition, that I can understand and respect, it’s quite another when you’re like “Oh, no, I hate authoritarianism! That’s why we need to constantly criticize a country on the literal other side of the planet 99.7% of the time, and then only criticize our own country when somebody calls us out on it by saying ‘Oh, yeah, America also does bad things too!’” Especially when America’s role in the world for the last century at least, and more accurately really since its conception, has been a source of capitalist reaction across its whole hemisphere and later the whole planet, with hundreds upon hundreds of military bases and tens of millions directly and indirectly killed in wars. Criticizing, say, Cuba or DPRK for these sorts of things is effectively zooming in on a single corpse in righteous indignation while ignoring the seas of blood spilled by America behind you.
I mean, yeah, I am anti-authoritarian before anything else. That’s basically where my problem with China, among many others, begins and ends. The US has a lot of big problems that need fixing immediately on that front, and that’s without getting into the bodies under the front porch. We could go into that, if you like, I just didn’t think it was particularly relevant at the moment.
In this post: what you get when your brain attempts to synthesize the concept of socialism on top of its liberalism instead of trying to discard everything you know first (liberalism) and learning again from zero to grasp Marxism.
If you’re living with a boot on your throat, does the distinction really matter if it’s a capitalist’s boot or a communist’s boot?
“Does it really matter if I can expect to live to 75 instead of 30, if I can’t call the president a doodoo head on social media?”
Yes, it matters a lot.
Another commenter shared an article by the AP where the reporter got to ask people in Xinjiang how things are. One lady at a shop casually mentioned that business was slowing and got talked to by a party minder. You can’t even have idle chat without getting invited to camp. That’s not quite the same thing as being able to talk shit on social media.
You can’t even have idle chat without getting invited to camp.
Source?
Also I give AP News zero credit when it comes to reporting on China.
