ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them] @ ShimmeringKoi @hexbear.net

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3 yr. ago

In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, gouging out eyes, breaking off hands, and hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling. The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master’s cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who wasremovedd and then had her nose sliced away.23

Earlier visitors to Tibet commented on the theocratic despotism. In 1895, an Englishman, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the populace was under the “intolerable tyranny of monks” and the devil superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama’s rule as “an engine of oppression.” At about that time, another English traveler, Captain W.F.T. O’Connor, observed that “the great landowners and the priests… exercise each in their own dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal,”

Liberating people from inhumanly cruel and merciless theocratic overlords is good actually, and I hope we can cultivate more of that energy here in the US.

Exerpts are from "Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth" by Micheal Parenti. The whole essay is quite good and not very long. https://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?t=88773

What's a non-authoritarian state?

The slack in what?

Yeah, he is dumb enough to do it but why is he being allowed to?

Real talk, I take comfort in knowing that the high tech future we were promised at the turn of the millennium isn't dead after all, it's just happening in China

I have some news about Stalin courtesy of, no shit, the CIA

Sam Altman? The guy who's currently on the wrong side of the dirt for SAing his sister?

A very funny NGO report on "net-enabled anarchist extremists" that talks about the SRA like it's the PLA

Seriously.

What's authoritarianism, and how does a country do it?

I know when I'm bested.

This is not true

Can you name a single non-"authoritarian" state, please?

They're still comrades even if they are miss guided

This is unironically the nicest and most reconciliatory anti-tank post I've ever seen. We have different assessments but neither of us are writing off the other as stupid or an LLM, which is actually a breath of fresh air. The bar for political discourse may be in hell these days, but I still appreciate your clearing it.

As for where our views diverge, I would like to understand the nature of the divergence. I guess my main question is: what decides your ideology's position on the spectrum?

Flips to page one Ah, we should pull their funding! Why didn't I think of that?

The "Heh, but I'm not a member of the national socialist party in Germany from 1940-1945" that you hear from teenage nazis online is basically also the US cultural norm

As the Axis, yes

All of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, JK I've got that shit on lock already

Have we become a hated, moribund party of billionaire lobbyists and genocide profiteers?

No, it's the voters who are wrong.

The world arbiter of freedom and goodness

It’s all propaganda from both the US and China

Well, one large company based in China that saw a PR opportunity anyway, it's not like TikTok is acting at the direction of the CPC lol

I mean yknow, different kinds of intelligence. Guy's dumb as a rock in most things, but clearly has a deep unconscious understanding of performance and manipulation