davel [he/him] @ davel @lemmy.ml

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2 yr. ago

Sure. Every country of nontrivial size likely has propaganda apparatuses. It’s more a matter of (1) scale, (2) purpose, (3) efficacy, and (4) to what extent they face externally vs internally. I think US psyop is proportional with the rest of its military-industrial complex, which is as large as the next nine or ten largest militaries combined. It’s laughable that Russian psyop has moved the needle much with the US electorate, never mind swung an election for Trump. The US is just a weak, vulnerable smol bean country whose military-industrial complex invented the internet.

i saw it on the interweb so it must be true

I was responding to:

Forced sterilisation says otherwise.

Your mountain of Western Imperialism Times evidence isn’t even about forced sterilization or birthrates. It looks like they spent a lot of money on that extraordinarily slick webpage, though. They must really care a lot about the plight of Xinjiang Muslims. Usually they’re not especially sympathetic to Muslims, but for the poor Uyghurs—for no particular reason—their hearts bleed 🤔

Then enjoy the continued lurch toward the right that’s been going on for generations, ever since the last time politicians feared socialism enough to make significant concessions. Previously:

When you have to go back 93 years to the Great Depression to find an example, you’ve made my point.

FDR did what he did to save capitalism from the threat of socialist revolution, and politicians have spent the last three generations clawing back the concessions he had made to socialist & labor agitators. They also purged socialists from labor unions, and they purged and even assassinated communists, to avoid any such thing happening again.

Chris Hedges, America: The Farewell Tour:

The New Deal, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, saved capitalism. It was put in place because socialists were a strong and serious threat. The oligarchs understood that with the breakdown of capitalism—something I expect we will again witness in our lifetimes—there was a possibility of a socialist revolution. They did not want to lose their wealth and power. Roosevelt, writing to a friend in 1930, said there was “no question in my mind that it is time for the country to become fairly radical for at least one generation. History shows that where this occurs occasionally, nations are saved from revolution.” In other words, Roosevelt went to his fellow oligarchs and said, “Hand over some of your money or you will lose all your money in a revolution.” And they complied. That is how the government created fifteen million jobs, Social Security, unemployment benefits, and public works projects. The capitalists did not do this because the suffering of the masses moved them to pity. They did this because they were scared.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._R._Licklider

Funny this meme isn’t about other things than the things that it’s about. Checkmate!

*Langley and Eglin

Also, previously.

Emphasis mine:

A team of researchers who say they are from the University of Zurich ran an “unauthorized,” large-scale experiment […]

This whole thing is sus from the get-go. Why should I believe anything these anonymous supposed “researchers” say?

It’s a bourgeois rights violation, while the proles get prison slave labor when they get out of line.

Your evidence of a general Muslim crackdown is exterior cosmetic changes to some mosques which were cherry-picked by western media?

State Atheism is a CCP classic.

why do all the Mosques suddenly look like Han temples?

So atheist China is making religious temples look like other religious temples? Pick a lane.

I think that this theory comes from the West’s Han supremacy narrative (projection, much?). But again, even NATOpedia has counterexamples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_China.

🤷 Not every YouTube video. Maybe every YouTube video that the algorithm shows you.

• Is Islam banned in China? | Visiting mosques in Xinjiang
• This is What I Found in Xinjiang China: I was warned Not to Come Here In this exclusive inside look at China's most controversial region, we tour one China's oldest mosques and interview the Imam on the truth about Xinjiang.
• How is Life of Muslims in China 🇨🇳 | First Impression of Urumqi, Xinjiang | Uyghur People
• Islam Banned in China!? I Visit Mosques and was shocked!
• Xinjiang residents debunk rumors of "forced demolition of mosques"
• Visiting a mosque in Xinjiang, understanding the truth about religious freedom in China
• Did China really destroy its Mosques?
• Visiting Kuqa Mosque - Xinjiang - China - 库车大寺
• Debunking rumors: Is centuries-old Uyghur mosque defaced in China's Xinjiang?

Never heard of him. He writes for The Real News Network, which I take as a good sign. His interviewee, John Helmer, talks about Trump administration mandarins Wess Mitchell and Elbridge Colby.

Whether we ultimately initiate or not, we will work to create conditions for China to initiate, as we did with Ukraine, and as we did with Afghanistan in the previous cold war. Despite the public rhetoric, the US doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Taiwanese or Ukrainian lives. They’re just means to its imperialist ends.

No, neither “cultural” nor otherwise.

• https://lemmy.ml/comment/14839342
• https://lemmy.ml/comment/15126223

For which there is no evidence. In fact the opposite happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_China#Affirmative_action_policies

In accordance with China’s affirmative action policies towards ethnic minorities, all non-Han ethnic groups were subject to different laws and were usually allowed to have two children in urban areas, and three or four in rural areas.

No, they are not trying to do anything of the sort.

• https://lemmy.ml/comment/14839342
• https://lemmy.ml/comment/15126223

Marxist-Leninsts consider socialism to be the transitional stage from capitalism to communism (under a dictatorship of the proletariat/democratic centralism), so from that point of view, the China is socialist now. https://files.catbox.moe/6n2qll.avif

Even when the Democratic party does win, the working class still loses.

📺 Why the Democratic Party CANNOT and WILL NOT be Reformed

Democrats would rather lose to a Republican, to a conservative, to a fascist, to Trump, than address the material conditions of the American people.

Okay, but Sanders isn’t on the left, either, despite calling himself a socialist. Sanders will say that It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, and he’ll complain about “crony” capitalism and “über” capitalism, but as a liberal he’ll never question capitalism as such. He’ll never question private ownership of the means of production.