cfgaussian @ cfgaussian @lemmygrad.ml

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3 yr. ago

Excellent article. I hope this is widely circulated in western leftist and communist circles, because I have seen way too often well-meaning but severely misinformed comrades parrot the talking point that the PSUV should not be supported because some Venezuelan communists said so.

As we all know, just because someone calls themselves a communist doesn't mean that all their takes are automatically correct, or that they are actually on our side. You have to pay attention to what people do and who they align themselves with more than what they say or claim to be.

If you see "communists" align themselves with right wingers and imperialist proxies against an anti-imperialist government, even if said government is not necessarily a socialist or communist one, alarm bells should start going off and having you question what their real agenda is.

I guess it depends whether you're just looking at the damage caused by western imperialism or if you also include the Japanese occupation. China was never completely colonized like India but it's still going to be an astronomically large amount of wealth that they were deprived of by the imperialists. I mean just look at the relative wealth between China and Europe in the pre-colonial era, and then compare that with where China and the West were at in 1948. There was clearly an enormous transfer of wealth that took place in those few centuries, not just from China but from the entire global south to the imperial core. A big chunk of that stolen wealth came just from India and China.

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Exactly! Always approach sources with a known history of operating as vectors of disinformation and psychological warfare with extreme skepticism. Always look for evidence and corroboration from reliable sources before taking anything they say at face value. And I would also like to add that this same skepticism and caution should be extended to so-called "OSINT" as well.

The OP has written an excellent piece about this subject. I've been disappointed to see some folks in anti-imperialist circles base geopolitical and military analysis on data put out by these so-called "OSINT" sources with insufficient skepticism as to whether they are really what they claim to be, or why this information in particular has been made available and what narrative those who control the flow of this information are trying to shape.

Too many people still haven't grasped this basic truth: if it's in a pro-Zionist or pro-imperialist publication, it is likely, in some way or another, bullshit. It doesn't necessarily need to be all lies, but it can and very often is a case of twisting half-truths, misleading framing and intentionally deceptive choice of language. The same applies to analysis derived from so-called "OSINT" sources, which can sometimes appear trustworthy but very often are a tool of Zionist and imperialist psychological warfare. It is easier to be deceived than most people think.

I also think some people are just so paranoid about "their side" not being pure enough that they will jump at any opportunity to have their fears validated, because it feels good in a sort of masochistic way to wallow in negativity than risk later disappointment or embarrassment. In my opinion it is the same emotional mechanism that leads to the toxic cycles of alternating defeatism and triumphalism that we observe sometimes in anti-imperialist circles which is not productive but feels more emotionally cathartic than maintaining a sober and level head.

An outstanding piece! This really is the perfect case study to illustrate how the mainstream media function as an imperialist disnformation laundering network on a systemic level.

This was very entertaining to read. Also completely unsurprising. This is pretty much what i expected. Basically a normal, diverse society with diverse viewpoints and varying levels of historical, scientific and political literacy. As communists we should not expect that everyone in a socialist society is going to be a Marxist. It was not the case in the USSR and it is not the case in any of the AES states today. You're always going to have a certain percentage of wackos. What matters is that support for the socialist project has sufficient critical mass (which has a lot to do with the performance of the government in delivering tangible material results for the people) and that there are still enough people being properly educated in Marxism-Leninism to form the next generation of vanguard cadres.

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As I said, I don't think the poster was intending to promote them in any way.

Neutrality Studies is not a communist outlet and i hope that everyone here is aware of that and approaches any content that they put out with an awareness of the possibility that their guests are going to be people with some reactionary views.

Everything you wrote about Joti Brar and CPGB-ML is true and it is important that people are aware of this, but i don't see how that is grounds for reporting this post.

I don't think the intention of the poster was promoting either the CPGB-ML nor Joti Brar. I haven't watched the video yet but from the title it doesn't seem like it's promoting those reactionary views which you mentioned but rather providing a geopolitical perspective on the Ukraine proxy war and the West's larger obsession with Russia.

In that sense I think it is acceptable so long as the poster adds a content warning that the speaker being platformed has reactionary views on LGBT issues. People share articles and videos from much more reactionary sources than the CPGB-ML. Or do you think that every military or geopolitical analysis that has ever been shared here has always been strictly by pro-LGBT communists?

Yemen really might just be the most based country on earth...after the DPRK.

No Mao either. Makes me sad...

You can ease them into it by first going on holiday in China. Once they see how full of shit western propaganda is about communist states it's not as big of a leap to suggest visiting the DPRK one day.

Irredeemable sick society...

i love you warmongers

ah yes, we "warmongers" who warn against bombing the energy infrastructure of another country because we don't want a war

a nuclear war caused by China

talks about Russian-Chinese pipelines getting bombed and then claims that the resulting war would have been "caused by China"... 🤡

It's one thing to bomb the pipeline of a completely cucked and subservient vassal state like Germany that will just meekly take it and say "thank you sir, may i have some more".

It's another to do it to a sovereign nuclear superpower like China. At that point you're declaring war on one and a half billion people who produce one third of the entire world's manufacturing output.

Good luck and have fun with the consequences.

After Tiananmen they can't believe in #1

But they did. For a long time they still believed that they could do achieve their goals in China via a slower more subversive approach than the overt 1989 color revolution attempt, via gradual elite corruption and infection with liberal ideology.

This is why up until the "pivot to Asia" happened you still had fairly positive coverage of China in the Western media and cultural sphere. In the 90s and 00s China was portrayed relatively positively in the media. The war propaganda faucet to demonize and dehumanize Chinese people in the eyes of Westerners was only turned on relatively recently.

If they really thought there was no hope of regime change after 1989 they would have started this much earlier when China was much weaker. They didn't because they didn't understand China (they still don't) and they deluded themselves into thinking things were still going their way.

#2 is possible but requires that the elite mistakes money for power

Well, that is how they think. But that's not the point that was being made. The point is that the logic of capitalism made it impossible for them to resist outsourcing to China, because the profits were too juicy to pass up. China understood this and took full advantage of it.

By the time the western elites noticed their catastrophic strategic mistake it was too late. Now they are panicking and for the last decade or so have been scrambling to try and find a way to reverse what has happened before the window of opportunity permanently closes.

Hence their increasingly reckless and self-harming escalations, with Ukraine, Taiwan, now Iran... They feel they are out of time and nothing is working anymore so they have to constantly take crazier and crazier gambles in hopes of digging themselves out of the hole.

Yeah. To anyone who has studied the Nazi rhetoric and policies with regards to their war against the Soviet Union it's clear and undeniable that that war had a settler colonial character. Hence why the war was waged as a war of extermination in the East and not so in the West. It's very strange to try to deny this...

I'm not sure exactly what the author of this piece is trying to achieve. There is no contradiction between the statement that the war was colonial in nature and the idea that it was also waged to save capitalism. Colonialism has historically been a way for capitalism to externalize its contradictions.

Yeah that's a very strange take. Sure you can criticize a lot of the foreign policy decisions that China made during the Sino-Soviet split. That is absolutely legitimate, they did make many mistakes. But to outright say that it was the "wrong side" is very odd.

At most you could say that taking any side at all in that split was counter-productive, since the split never should have happened in the first place and greatly negatively affected both countries and the entire world communist movement as a whole.

But actually siding with the USSR is particularly confusing to me, as much as i admire the USSR and its historical achievements, because retrospectively we can now see which country's ideological, economic and political strategy succeeded and which failed.

Communism in China survived. Whereas we can clearly see that the USSR's revisionism and historical nihilism, especially in regards to their treatment of Stalin and the Stalin era, did them no favors and actually ended up undermining the ideological base of socialism itself.

The fact that China did not do the same to Mao is one of the reasons why it did not fall as the USSR did. I'm not saying it's the only reason, there were many geopolitical factors as well, but the internal political line of the ruling party certainly also played a big role.

My main criticism of it is that it seems rather superficial. It tries to show the how but does not attempt to go into the why. It offers no deeper (systemic rather than individualistic) explanations or solutions and leaves too much open for the audience to interpret according to their own ideological framework. I find that fairly cowardly as it absolves the writers of the show of having to actually take an ideological position. In that regard is a quintessentially liberal piece of media.