- Lemmy
lemmy.ml

Why do I feel like so many people here support the USSR and the CCP?

Because most people here actually study the subject instead of relying on false narratives of the Western media.

Again, don’t get me wrong I don’t think the west is immune from any of this (and in fact I think there is a lack of criticism of the west), but anyone who claims the west is evil while simultaneously glorifying countries that implement concentration camps comes off as fascistic and ignorant.

You say that the West is not immune from any of the stuff you’ve mentioned, but your narrative relies on the falsehoods created by Western media. By doing this, you are uncritically glorifying the Western narrative and ignoring how these countries understand the issues you’ve mentioned. For instance, this is a list of countries which approve or disapprove of China’s Xinjiang policies:

Notice how the countries which disapprove is basically countries traditionally associated with Western hegemony. It’s the basically the Always the Same Map meme incarnated. The countries which approve of China’s Xinjiang policies includes countries with a Muslim majority. Do a research on why China adopted the re-education programs in the first place.

Xinjiang was filled with terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists, and they were hurting the Uyghur population in the process. China’s policies of re-education actually reduced the terrorist attacks and protected the Uyghur people. The Western narrative calls them “concentration camps”, but they are places with schools, art and dancing classes, where the Uyghur culture is actually promoted. They also learn about the country’s laws and ethical conduct. The people who are admitted to these centres are associated with extremism, and therefore they are restricted of movement, but once they go through the process of education, they are free and even receive incentive from the government to create their own shops and businesses.

This is a quote from the document created by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation:

Having considered the Report of the Secretary-General on the Situation of Muslim Communities and Minorities (Document No. OIC/CFM-46/2018/MM/SG.REP): (…)

Welcomes the outcomes of the visit conducted by the General Secretariat’s delegation upon invitation from the People’s Republic of China; commends the efforts of the People’s Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens; and looks forward to further cooperation between the OIC and the People’s Republic of China.

This is only an example of how your narrative is filled with Western narratives, falsehoods and outright propaganda. You call yourself an anarchist, but you parrot very obediently your government’s narrative on China and the USSR. To go against the Western narrative is to research and inquiry objectively what these countries are doing, instead of relying on what you see on Western media (which includes Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc.).

People here on Lemmy and Lemmygrad reject these views because most people here actually STUDY and RESEARCH on those topics. What about you? What sources do you use for your claims? Let’s check:

  • Wikipedia

From 2001 to 2010, 80% of edits on Wikipedia were made by 1% of editors/writers. It’s far from the “decentralized peer-produce” ideal that it markets itself as. Various analysis on the source of these edits have found that their IPs are linked to several US state organizations, such as the CIA, New York Police Department, along with government and corporate interests. There is even a company which offers Wikipedia edits, and they are hired by several corporate industries, including Facebook and billionaire groups which hire PR firms to whitewash certain articles. They have arbitrarily removed a community-elected member of Wikimedia and at the same time raised to the position of CEO and executive director (2019–2021) of Wikimedia Foundation a person called Katherine Maher, which had links to the US State Department and several corporate interests, such as HSBC bank, and has shady background in the Middle East. More info on her here. You can see why a country would ban the Wikimedia Foundation.

  • ASIA MEDIA

According to its own website:

ASIA MEDIA (and later ASIA PACIFIC ARTS) arose in 1998 from the nonprofit Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) at the University of California, Los Angeles. It was created by founder Tom Plate, then a fulltime Adjunct Professor in Communication Studies and in Policy Studies, and by his UCLA students.

Interesting how Asia media is located in Los Angeles, California, United States of America.

  • The Independent

According to the Independent itself, it is associated with liberalism:

In fact, The Independent always shared some of Mr Blair’s political blend of social and economic liberalism, but, true to our approach, we could never unconditionally endorse him or his party.

There will be an obvious bias towards countries which do not follow liberal (bourgeois) democracy, and therefore, you should never expect it to have an objective portrayal of China.

In conclusion

but anyone who claims the west is evil while simultaneously glorifying countries that implement concentration camps comes off as fascistic and ignorant.

By glorifying the narratives of Western imperialist countries, your “anarchism” comes off as fascistic and ignorant. The fact that you repudiate China’s sovereignty over Taiwan is an example of this. The only reason Taiwan suddenly became an issue after 2010’s is because the US has interests over the island and manipulate the people through their propaganda machine to make them believe they are fighting for a just cause, over “democracy” and “human rights”. The United States of America has killed millions of people under the banner of “democracy” and “human rights”. Don’t be fooled by that.

  • @lisko
    2•2 years ago

    In general I agree with what you wrote. What I’m trying to say is this, that the good and bad elements are/were there, and it’s not easy to make generalizations about it without going into detail about exactly what is going on. We may all have our biases, and I’m not merely complaining about bias, but the prevalence of extreme cases of bias, where we turn it into something that’s just black and white either for or against.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
      4•2 years ago

      I agree with that, it’s important to be able to honestly criticize things you believe in. Without criticism it’s not possible to recognize and address failures going forward.

      The problem is that it’s very hard to have a nuanced discussion about these things when mainstream view is poisoned. As soon as you mention anything negative about China or USSR then that’s all people will focus on. I think a lot of people went through that and learned to simply focus on the positive, and you can end up in a place where you stop being able to recognize the negatives yourself.

      It’s also important to remember that each system is a product of the conditions it arose in, history, culture, and so on. Each socialist project is unique in its own way. While there are many lessons to be learned from past and existing projects, it’s also important to keep in mind that new ones will also be unique.

      Focusing on what worked in USSR and what didn’t is only valuable as far as it applies to current conditions. If people agree that the goals USSR tried to achieve are worthy, then the focus should be on how to build on what worked and do better going forward.

      • @lisko
        3•2 years ago

        Right, your second paragraph is very important in my opinion. One may feel, that since the bad news is already out there and widely recognized, then what is the point of adding to it? Focusing on the positive makes sense because it’s possible that there just isn’t enough of it out there. I think unfortunately it’s hard for people to maintain a sufficiently broad perspective and say, OK, how do I put all this information together? Since the polarization occurred, if you have just negative sources of information and positive sources of information, and then they compete to see who can be more negative and who can be more positive, then kind of lose the plot.

        Constructive criticism is good, in any case. I think when we interact on Lemmy we should be mindful that Lemmy is already not a mainstream platform or audience, so let’s suppose if 80% of the user base already has sympathies for communism or the People’s Republic of China and can possibly be swayed, but they encounter too much of a push from overly zealous users, it might turn them off. In other words, there can be a sort of backlash that could occur if you are preaching to the choir and simultaneously making them feel, that they are in the wrong. People easily get stubborn and dig in.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
          3•2 years ago

          Right, finding a balance is tricky under such conditions and I think it’s something everybody needs to keep in mind and work on. Presenting ideas as being worthy of consideration and desirable to do without coming across as zealous and overselling them is definitely an art.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
          1•2 years ago

          I support existing systems such as seen in USSR and China because despite their problems, they’re still a vast improvement over capitalist systems. The notion that all governments are bad and evil is just false equivalence. The fact that these other systems got destroyed is the problem with these systems. Any system that can’t effectively defend itself will be destroyed because there will always be other competing systems. Anarchist projects consistently fail to protect themselves effectively, and this is a fundamental problem that anarchists continue to avoid addressing.

            • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
              3•2 years ago

              Maybe the problem is the system you support, as you said, your system can protect so also can invade and attack others.

              I support a system that provides a real workable path away from capitalism. I grew up in USSR, and I’ve lived in the west. I’ve seen first hand which system works better. Until anarchists can actually put up a working alternative, I’m going to stick with what I know to work in practice.

              Too much power in the wrong person can do a lot of damage. The problem with anarchist projects are that others system like the one you defend attacks them.

              And as I’ve explained in the previous reply, this will not change. This isn’t something anarchists can control. If anarchists can’t hold their own then they get trampled by others. Anarchists need to reconcile the fact that not everybody wants the system they want, there will always be competing ideologies and if people who follow these ideologies are able to organize more effectively then they will be the ones in charge.

              Don’t you think? So the problem is the system attacking the other, not the anarchist, which is more pacifist and respectful.

              The reality of the world is that it’s anything but pacifist or respectful.

              Your system will always get into wars and conflicts until they don’t stop arming and getting armies, those monies invested on army is money wasted that could spend on tech for our people.

              China hasn’t been at war for the past 50 years last I checked, and has consistently been investing money in improving the lives of its people. Chinese communists lifted over a billion people out of poverty.

              You say Anarchist problem is that they can’t defend themselves, I tell you, the problem of communism or capitalist is that they just use those armies to kill, invade and impose their rules (rules often made by a single person or by big billionaires). And that’s why your system (capitalism or communism) will never success. Violence = More violence.

              USSR, Vietnam, Cuba, Laos, and China are all examples of incredible success. These systems have lifted countless people out of abject poverty, provided them with food, housing, healthcare, education, and work. These are tangible real world achievements that communists have under their belt. Until anarchists show how their ideas can be put into practice, I’m not going to pay any serious attention to them.

                • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
                  2•2 years ago

                  Taiwan is part of China. This is a well documented fact, and Taiwan’s legal standing is not in question. This is the position held by the UN, and it’s the fundamental basis for having diplomatic relations between US and China per Potsdam Proclamation that was signed 77 years ago between China, the US & the UK. This position has never officially changed.

                  Meanwhile, Russia hasn’t been communist for the past 30 years. In fact, looking at what happened in former Soviet republics after USSR dissolved is a perfect example of what was lost. The region became destabilized, standard of living dropped dramatically for most people, wars broke out.

                  Another problem with those countries is that you aren’t either free, you say successful, in a system that discriminates people for their sexual orientation, and those governments aren’t either transparent with the people I wouldn’t call it success.

                  Not sure what things like sexual discrimination has to do with communism to be honest. Meanwhile, people were certainly far more free in a meaningful sense. Freedom can be seen as the measure of personal agency an individual enjoys within the framework of society, and socialist countries provide tangible freedoms such as freedom from hunger, freedom from abject poverty, freedom to have education, and so on. All these things create meaningful freedoms for people allowing them to achieve their potential.

                  I’m also not sure how these governments are any less transparent than real world alternatives. What socialists states achieve has to be compared to what’s available in the real world as opposed to some Utopian ideas that have yet to be shown to work in practice.

                  You call success when China had to protection on their factories, so workers don’t commit suicide. And that’s why most big capitalist companies have their factories mostly in China, cheap work (or we can call it slavery). Still, those places have people living on poverty, so I think it’s more or less the same.

                  Yes, I call China a success because quality of life in China continues to steadily improve and the government is actively working on doing things like eliminating poverty, creating public infrastructure, providing healthcare, housing, food, and education for all citizens. Chinese government practically eliminated poverty, and in fact China is the only place in a world where any meaningful poverty reduction is happening. If we take China out of the equation poverty actually increased in real terms:

                  If we take just one country, China, out of the global poverty equation, then even under the $1.90 poverty standard we find that the extreme poverty headcount is the exact same as it was in 1981.

                  The $1.90/day (2011 PPP) line is not an adequate or in any way satisfactory level of consumption; it is explicitly an extreme measure. Some analysts suggest that around $7.40/day is the minimum necessary to achieve good nutrition and normal life expectancy, while others propose we use the US poverty line, which is $15.

                  90% of families in the country own their home, giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. Real wage (i.e. the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country. This is staggering considering it’s the most populous country on the planet. Social mobility happens to be very high in China as well.

                  You might feel your system long time ago was better, as some capitalist people could also feel the old times on capitalism system was also better. We need to focus on fraternity instead of arming our troops for a possible war in a future(?)

                  Nah, the system I advocate for is demonstrably better than capitalism today and it continues to improve lives of over a billion people worldwide. Communists have fraternity, and our fraternity is growing every day.