this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2022
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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.

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[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.