Everyone outside the imperial core is subjected to the American/European outside observer, the least you can do is return the favor.
Maybe it’ll stop some people from going “China bad this. China bad that” when they haven’t read a single letter from someone who lives there.
I don’t think America’s identify is centrally based on political value alone but that’s a point I’m not interested in discussing.
I’m objecting to you quoting the author and misscharacterizing his arguments based on the out of context quotes. The author is writing for a Chinese audience and it’s natural he would emphasis the Chinese situation. It’s also undeniable that the American discourse never entertains a systemic critique and takes the American and by extension the post-WWII Western system of governance a priori as infallible. It’s well within reason to want to interrogate why that is.
I don’t believe I"m mischaracterizing his arguments, but agree to disagree.
I guess in general I just wonder at the value of this kind of discourse. American media does China dirty all the time, making gross generalizations about a country of a billion plus people. The proper response to that is not to, in turn, make gross generalizations about a country of 300+ million (i.e. “American discourse never entertains a systemic critique and takes the American and by extension the post-WWII Western system of governance ipso facto as infallible”). Instead U.S. and Chinese leftists should be writing about each other’s work, learning from each other’s struggles and supporting each other’s efforts. Dismissing BLM in the way this author does is not constructive to an international left project.
tfw Sanders is the entire American left
I dunno, this kind of nihilism about the Western left may work for people who don’t live in the West, but it’s not politically useful for those of us who do. Ostensible “leftists” from other countries like the author of the article should be seeking to make connections with the people who are actually engaged in anti-imperialist struggle, not strawmaning Sanders as the leftward limit of American politics. The American left is weak, but it hasn’t always been, and it won’t always be. In my part of the U.S., being a Sanders stan is centrist. That’s my point–generalization bad, amplifying the voices of comrades good.
Fair enough. It’s just I think Tu Zhuxi is 100% right when he says no current American will ever advocate for burning the constitution and anything less isn’t enough.
Lol, I’m a current American, I’m here, I’m advocating for it! I know a few hundred other people in my local org who agree! More to the point, the American left has been advocating for it for centuries. You won’t get it from Hollywood movies (though Reds is fun), but there’s a long history from August Willich through Emma Goldman, Fred Hampton, London Meyer, the Lincoln Brigade, etc. etc. who all fought to get rid of the constitution in it’s current form. Hell, abolishing the senate was a mainstream position from the failure of the postwar anti-lynching bills until well until the 70s. Rep. Dingell, the longest-serving congressperson in history and no leftist by any standard, called for scrapping much of the constitution in his retirement speech just a few years ago. These things are up for debate, comrade, and if those voices aren’t appropriately amplified by the mainstream American media, they should certainly be amplified by a Chinese “leftist” writing about America.
