- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
You must log in or register to comment.
The only reason whitey even gives a shit about these dead chinese people is that they hate china so much. After all, half of them are still secretly jerking themselves off at the thought of millions of chinese farmers dying due to the Three Gorges Dam going broke.
I like that we have/need new books to re-report information that was widely known decades ago because of how easy it is to sell propaganda to the west. We have actual documentaries, made by the west at the time of Tiananmen, that completely contradicts the massacre narrative that was invented years later. lol. Libs really will believe anything as long as it comes from the mouth of some oligarch backed talking head.
The key reason this kind of lazy propaganda works is because people want to believe it. It leverages the latent racism and capitalist realism people have internalized living in decaying western societies. The idea that a country that doesn’t follow liberal ideology could be more successful is a complete anathema to these people.
Indeed. “The west is the best” is the prevailing thought in the zeitgeist of the west. So as bad as things can be in the west, at least they are still “the best.” But if other nations actually practice “freedom and liberty” better than they do, despite not screaming about how “free” they are all the time, it calls the whole western narrative into question. And causes a lot of cognitive dissonance. And people in the west are not given the tools they need to deal with that, so they just lash out and get angry, or find an easy excuse to ignore it.
The massacre false narrative was invented basically at the same time as the actual events of the 4th/5th took place, you can see foreign diplomatic actors who were there talk about how “others” are saying there was machine gun fire on crowds while they themselves saw no such thing.
Edit: Someone else posted one of the leaks I was thinking of: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/89BEIJING18828_a.html
Have you seen that chart that tracks how Americans went from credditing the USSR for making the greatest sacrifice in WWII and contributing the most to victory in 1946, to completely removing the Soviet contribution from the picture by the 80s? It’s really sad. The Red Army deserves better.
I’m interested in the documentaries, if you could cite them. Not trying to be snarky and say “Sauce?”, just genuinely curious and I’d like to watch a documentary on the topic, anyway.
Libs will probably lose their minds if they can’t make jokes about Tiananmen Square.
Aww my kitty was named Tinyman (pronounced like a Jewish surname). I’ve never seen that word outside of reference to my kitty.
I’m probably replying to some anti-lib community, but it’s really weird coming from “/c/all” that nearly every comment has some sort of jab at “libs” for a topic that I would never associate with a political spectrum.
Fyi I’m not affiliated with any political “side” and I’m not American, so it just seems weird to be.
We are an a communist instance. American liberals (which includes both of their major political parties) are very imperialist and love to push propaganda about their enemies. It’s why public opinion for China took a nose dive in the last 10 years. Why Iran is so evil, but nobody thinks about Kuwait. Why Tiananmen square gets so much attention but the white terror receives none. China’s the enemy, and “Taiwan” is an innocent friend that needs protecting.
Being communist, we are anti-imperialist, and hate the war mongering propaganda that the liberals seem to lap up. They see this as being conspiracy theorists or contrarian. Hence the conflict about things like this.
Okay, I understand the narative, and agree that western culture has cemented certain opinions on history. But where does the liberal part come in? Maybe I’m misunderstanding that bit. On US social media there is this whole lib vs republican thing going on. In this case does lib just mean “not communism”?
In this case does lib just mean “not communism”?
Liberalism is the ideology of capitalism. Thus “liberal” is everyone who support capitalism, that is basically starting at socialdemocracy and everything right of them - which in western countries mean literally entire political mainstream.
Yeah, this is definitely better than my reply. I’m tired after arguing with the liberals all damn day. I need some cigars and brandy.
They only have two political parties, and it can be hard to tell the difference between them a lot of the time. They’re both still going to push for more military spending, treat social programs with extreme suspicion, and probably go out and attack another country. The Wikipedia definition of neoliberal is this:
Neoliberalism is contemporarily used to refer to market-oriented reform policies such as “eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers” and reducing, especially through privatization and austerity, state influence in the economy.
Which describes both parties pretty well. Americans have a bit of a twisted view of liberal Vs conservative. Both their parties are pretty right wing in comparison to most of the rest of the world, so they often come down to performative acts. For instance, I’m trans. Neither party really cares about me, but the republican base hates me. So they each put on a big show of doing something about me. But they are both primarily interested in the same overall goals in governance, which is in line with neoliberal ideology.
So we just call them all liberals (although I think the republican party is becoming fascist, which is arguably not the same thing). Regardless, an average liberal’s ideology is more compatible with fascism than with us.
To Republicans, “liberal” means communist/vegan/trans/Black/Millenial/baby killers/etc.
To Self-described Liberals, “liberal” means Non-authoritarian socialist/centrist/real patriots/pro-science/pragmatic/etc.
Basically, don’t go on US social media to see political terms being used with any significant amount of accuracy. Most Americans are so politically ignorant that, even to many of those that describe themselves as politically-minded, these labels have essentially lost all concrete meaning.
They see this as being conspiracy theorists
I personally see tankies as conspiracy oriented because they are, just like all the MAGA people, tribal apologists blind to the bad acts of their team/leaders. Do you really think Xi has the best interests of the people of China in mind? Come on. I’m not dumb enough to think Biden has my best interests in mind.
We understand the material conditions and how that drives not only ideas, but change as a whole. For example by carefully looking at the material world around me, I can safely confirm that Xi and Biden are two different people.
Must be nice on the holodeck.
Bit of a late reply, but why is it so hard for you to imagine any leader caring about their people? (This sounded more accusatory than I meant, that’s not my goal, it’s more of a “why is it so hard to imagine a caring leader?” not a personal attack.)
Most of us in the west have never actually had a leader who wants to help anyone other than the stockholders of big companies. So the concept of leadership that actually cares about people is entirely alien to us.
To look at it another way: Do you consider yourself a good person? And if you were in a leadership position somewhere, would you try to do the best to help out the people under you? Good people do exist in the world. Not necessarily saying Xi is one of them, just that it is possible for a leader to care about people. Power doesn’t corrupt, corrupt people are attracted to power. But they aren’t always the ones who get it.
Thread I wrote about Tiananmen: https://twitter.com/prolewiki/status/1666492127730098208 (Thread reader link due to Musk fuckery on twitter)
CIA-funded leader Chai Ling crying crocodile tears hoping students will be shot while she herself deadpan says she’ll be out of the country: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5__ESiklA1A. She was later extradited by the CIA during Operation Yellowbird and now lives in the USA.
Yeah, that was one of the more fucked up sections of the video I posted, is her crying into a camera. The way she starts crying because the students kept trying to have a peaceful resolution with the government instead of getting themselves massacred… Their entire goal was go try and get as many of their fellow students killed as possible to have as propaganda footage. Like who watches that and then sympathizes with her? Who sees someone crying, because the people under her were trying to be reasonable and not provoke a needless massacre, and thinks “Oh that poor girl. Having to deal with these people that don’t want to get killed for the CIA.” ?"
I mean,
Anti communists are weird, perverse freaks and many of them would happily murder the entire human population if they thought it would keep people from helping each other and making the world better.
I always enjoy re-watching the full “Tank Man” video, with the “brutal Chinese tanks” awkwardly trying to bypass the protestor and patiently waiting him out. I think libs just see that single frame and fill the gaps with their own experiences in their countries in thinking that the guy got ran over or something. If you try that with a secret service car they might do just that.
deleted by creator
I think it’s something Statesians get taught in schools. In Europe we’d always heard he stopped the tanks and then went on his way but “was never seen again”, not that the tanks rolled him over or anything.
God she is such a toolbag. “You need to all go get yourselves killed even though none of you wanted a violent confrontation and many wanted market liberalization to stop and for communist economics to be re-instated! Others just wanted a loosening of socially conservative norms so they could hold hands with their partners without getting dirty looks in public. But what you need to do is start a violent conflict with your PLA comrades for no clear reason. I won’t do it of course, because I am too important to die for the cause that literally only me and like seven other people here care about!”
It was not fabricated, it was exaggerated. Clashes occurred around Beijing and bloodshed was real. Most of them were Maoists clashing with pro market reform government.
Nobody is denying bloodshed. There absolutely were violent protests outside the square. The claim in question is that the military gunned down thousands of peaceful protesters in the square, which so far as I know is a claim that’s exclusively made by people who were not there.
Even that is giving too much credit to the US government narrative.
There literally are all the US mainstream news outlets like CBS News who actually had reporters there at the time: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/there-was-no-tiananmen-square-massacre/
Also from classified US communications with assets on the ground: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/89BEIJING18828_a.html
Funniest thing is that “tank man” photo idiots spam on Reddit all the time. Most people in the west don’t realize there is video of it, that the guy didn’t get run over. Furthermore they assume he was blocking tanks heading towards the square, infact those tanks were at the time headed away from the square to avoid engaging with armed agitators (people with guns and grenades that had killed police) in a crowded environment. Dude was trying to make them go back.
The deaths that day were people who got gunned down by the “protestors” or the police who were killed when the “protestors” threw grenades (military ordnance) into police vehicles. People that were armed by the CIA as part of a color revolution operation, one that failed because it didn’t actually have any support and more importantly because the PLA commander on the scene ordered his units to leave the area rather than responding in kind. The only actual protestors that day were communists having labor protests happening nearby and not the dancing libertine youth acting as the face of the US color revolution operation involving armed groups trying unsuccessfully to provoke the PLA soliders into responding to deadly attacks with deadly force in a crowded urban environment.
My personal opinion on the matter isn’t that much different from yours (the biggest reason being that the media blitz about the massacre seemed preplanned… It just didn’t go according to plan). The problem is that I can’t prove anything, so it’s all conjecture. So I typically leave that out. It’s already a sensitive enough subject.
My understanding is that after the initial ambush of unarmed PLA soldiers armed PLA units were eventually able to get to the area and engage the insurgents in combat, and that the deaths were a mix of PLA soldiers and insurgents, with probably some innocent bystanders because war is hell no matter how you try to prevent civilian casualties.
On balance, it would be fair to say that while thousands of protestors were most likely not gunned down in the square itself, hundreds were being gunned down around it. So there was a massacre by the PLA, it just didn’t happen in the square itself.
If they were just protestors, why were they gunned down while the ones in the square could all be cleared out with no fatalities? Did the people who incinerated soldiers and strung up their burnt corpses leave peacefully beforehand?
Because the PLA forced themselves through several blockades before they were able to reach the square. It was at these blockades that the strongest resistance was met, and where the majority of the killing occurred.
We don’t know for sure, but the order seems to be that [the PLA] have to get [to the square] by midnight. So by 10:00 p.m. they’re getting desperate. They cannot fight their way through thousands of people with riot shields and billy clubs, so each of these columns coming into the city starts radioing into headquarters, asking for permission to go ahead at any cost. Finally that permission starts coming down sometime between 10:30 p.m. and 11:00 p.m.
The first rounds of fire catch everybody by surprise. The people in the streets don’t expect this to happen. There are a couple of hospitals right near Muxidi, and the casualties start showing up within 10 or 15 minutes of the first round of gunfire. The casualties run very high because people didn’t expect to be shot at with live ammunition. When they start firing, people say, “Oh, it’s rubber bullets.” Even after it becomes clear, even after they realize that the army is going to go ahead at any cost, people still pour into the streets. This is the amazing thing: People were just so angry, so furious at what was happening in their city that they were not going to step back and let the army do what it was doing. This is why the casualties from Muxidi on east towards Tiananmen Square were so high. This is the major military confrontation of the evening.
That account as-presented leaves out the immolating of unarmed soldiers via petrol bombs, which seems necessarily to distort their evaluations of why people behaved how they did. iirc some “protestors” also took the liberty of seizing weapons from an APC that had a catastrophic failure and killed the soldiers inside, and this was still before the crackdown. Remember, a number of soldiers also died, they had to have been killed somehow (though one was killed by friendly fire and like 6 or 7 by the accident I mentioned).
if new yorkers burned some nypd officers to death and then a bunch of people were killed I’d be on the people’s side
not taking a grand stand on the events I don’t know shit about fuck and don’t rightly care honestly
The NYPD are a bunch of jackbooted thugs of a white supremacist administration under the thinnest veneer of “justice”. Equivocating between them and the PLA is absurd.
“As far as I was concerned,” he said, “anybody who’d stand against the cops was all right with me, and that’s why I stayed in…Every time you turn around the cops were pulling some outrage or another.”
https://www.villagepreservation.org/2022/06/13/dave-van-ronk-ally-at-the-stonewall-uprising/
Remember that picture of 50,000 uniformed fascists taking over part of the city in a show of force allegedly for a funeral because some pig got got?
That said, my understanding is that relations between the PLA soldiers and the students were positive throughout. Almost all the PLA soldiers in the square had no weapons, including no batons or riot helmets. I believe there were some riot units present but they were a small number relative to the overall PLA presence. There are stories of the PLA soldiers and students singing songs and sharing food. It’s important to remember that most of the students in the square were advocating for a return to Communist economics from the Dengist market liberalization. From what I understand the CPC didn’t really know what to do with them because they didn’t want to start a confrontation with people demanding more communism, and that’s largely why the event was almost entirely peaceful.
Thousands of completely unarmed PLA troops had already been in the square for days. This is nonsense. There’s pictures of them chilling with the students.
So there was a massacre by the PLA, it just didn’t happen in the square itself.
Current research by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation suggests that the massacre occured in the same place Sadaam Hussein would later store his nonexistant WMDs.
deleted by creator
I don’t think violent protests is an appropriate description. From what I understand armed insurgents ambushed and killed unarmed PLA soldiers and there was a running street battle as armed PLA units tried to get to the area to combat them.
most of them by the time the actual violent clashes happened certainly werent maoists. Yeah there was a significant % of the protestors that were coming from the left of the CPC but you have to remember that the unrest span month(s) and many cities. In Tainanmen by that point in the movement and leading to that the make up of those that stayed and engaged in lynchings and clashes with the PLA and police was solidly “pro-democracy/free-s[peech/liberalism” youth. Also western intelligence focus and assets had already zeroed in in Beijing and those elements after smelling blood from the more organic initial country wide unrest.
My understanding is that that is not the case at all, and that the CIA backed “liberal democracy” gang was a very small number of people who bullied their way in to control of the PA system and never had much support from the students. My understanding is that when the PLA finally made an ultimatum to leave almost all the students joined hands and walked out of the square peacefully. I believe there was some confrontation between PLA soldiers in riot gear and students, but it was relatively minor and confined to small areas of the square. It’s hared to overstate that what happened bears no relationship at all to the western narrative.
liberals reading
That’s funny.
~let me put this here real quick~
Shouldn’t even take a book to come to that conclusion, honestly. Frankly, I doubt anyone who is entrenteched in the propaganda around the event would change their mind no matter how much evidence you show them. For them, China is bad, so everything else must follow from that.
Even western media, at the time of the event, said that basically nothing happened in the square. It wasn’t until they realised that didn’t line up with the US position that they changed their line, but you can find old articles (including first hand accounts from diplomats in the area) that say there wasn’t much.
I don’t think anyone denies that some violence occured in the city as a whole, though it was very often levied the opposite way of popular portrayal. Especially because a lot of the PLA that were initially deployed were not even armed.
Sorry for the shitpost reply, but, lol no shit.
Edit: just wait till you find out about what Gaddafi actually did and how the USG used him as a virtual supervillain to fund our adventures in the Levant. The USG and their mouthpieces always lie.
I mean Gaddafi was by many political and social measures somewhat reactionary, due to some aspects of his nationalism, religious orientation (traditional Islam is reactionary; he was resolutely anti-communist and anti-Marxist because of its perceived atheism), as well as traditionalist views of women, despite being more progressive in this respect that that conservative Islamic figures or Islamists. There was an immense concentration of wealth around Gaddafi, although there was also undoubtedly a massive restribution of wealth and improvement in quality of life, I don’t think it amounted to a genuinely socialist society. In any case, the meaning of his use of the term ‘socialism’ was not what Marxist mean, although there were some properties in common.
Ofc you are correct that this becomes irrelevantly weaponized by Western imperialism. The reason Gaddafi was removed was because he was promoting an alterative international monetary system to the dollar, presumably underwritten by Libyan (and allied countries’) oil. More generally the anti-imperialist geopolitical policy of the Libyan state clearly played a key role, having targeted foreign capital the moment he came to power. There was probably also a central role being played by the French regime’s special forces and intelligence under Sarkozy, as the latter had confirmed links with Gaddafi. A lot of investigative reporting has indicated that Gaddafi was threatening Sarkozy to go public with the fact Gaddafi has brided him. If seems that French intelligence located Gaddafi and likely organized the manpower who actually merked him.
Yeah, thanks for getting my main point, I didn’t mean to imply he was an actual communist, just that he was a useful boogeyman for the West, until he wasn’t useful anymore.
yeh the clarification was more just for other potential viewers or lurkers so that was clear. No suggestion you thought he was an actual filthy commie
religious orientation (traditional Islam is reactionary
iirc correctly he had a pretty weird conception of Islam that was a deviation from most of the traditional schools of jurisprudence, but admittedly i don’t know many details.
iirc a bunch of European and American special forces spookys who absolutely were not supposed to be there got caught in Libya during the insurrection.
Good post.
yeh he beefed continuously with the more traditionalist religious establishment who were admitedly far less down than him for recognizing women as actual autonomous human beings because every school of traditional Islamic jurisprudence or theology is, by any material or abstractly ideological/theoretical estimation, deeply reactionary. His view as not very coherent imo but it was still based on elements of traditional Islam. It was not Islamist as he did not actual allow the full islamisation of the institutions of the state in a way that Islamists would want. Tbh I think it was a mix of genuine belief on his part that it was holding back the development of society, of a populist political maneuver, and the fact that he was ideologically a weird guy.
Islam is weird because it’s gone in so many different ways over the centuries. I check in on the various Islamic feminisms from time to time because the way they approach feminist issues is often very different from Western feminisms, and it’s interesting and challenging to see how other ideologies confront similar problems.
Sure. From a materialist perspective my first question is first and foremost whether actually existing movements are relatively progressive in their context, although this in no way should blind us to their problematic aspects that remain regardless. Otherwise the perspective is moralist in the pejorative sense.
Like for instance from an outside - and apparently normally from an inside - perspective it certainly looks like traditional schools of Islam leave very little leeway, theoretically speaking, for politically progressive views on questions of gender, sex and sexuality. Indeed the Qur’an itself is pretty clearly not a progressive text on these matters. By-the-bye I’m never going to be fond of any body of thought which does not seem to find slavery in and of itself repulsive (in fact allows it), especially if it claims to have on hand the ad-verbatim word of God, in which the main prophet (and ultimate moral standard) married (according to what is traditionally considered the most reliable of the Hadiths) an underage girl, and in which if anyone does not believe the revelation when presented to them then they will spend an eternity being tortured in hell (which might also happen for other at-first-glance minor offenses). Especially when the actual arguments given in the text for theistic belief are extremely weak, if there at all. Telling that to children (especially girls) in particular is child abuse imo, having been told similar things myself. For me it is clear that the regressive policies in many Islamic countries with respect to these questions are not simply reducible to the effects of, say, Western colonialism and imperialism, as I’ve sometimes heard people suggest. Of course at the end of the day I think these are mainly issues for the peoples of these societies, though I guess some people on this site might disagree, having seen their support for example for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Saying this ofc has nothing to do with the immense richness of the many cultures where the people who make them up are predominantly (though not entirely) Islamic. Islamic philosophy for example is still very interesting in many ways, although much of it has relevance beyond the confines of Islam.
And of course women - feminists and otherwise, whether Muslim or not - in Islamic countries have their own distinct ways of politically organizing and attempting to deal with their problematic gender relations (whether or not it is expressed that way). I agree that it’s very important to take this into account, not least to avoid the classic liberal and conservative patronizing attitude of many Westerners in which they see Muslims as barbarians, despite (in the case of conservatives) perhaps having many similar views as traditionalist Salafists or Islamists, or despite their views being equally reactionary in general (liberal culture is, I’ll admit, far more emotionally and spiritually barren than Muslim spiritual culture).
The CIA also helped transfer weapons from Libya to Syria and, well that’s where ISIS got their guns from.
I’m bowing out y’all, it was fun. Definitely will be looking into this event and checking some references people pointed me to.
That’s dope. The one thing I always find frustrating when bickering over politics is people not even caring to read or learn more. I have a lot more respect for my friends when they do, even if all it does is give more nuance to their takes.
Hell if I never decided to read more shit I’d still be a right winger with the rest of the nutcase family.
Right, learning is always good. The thing is, every fringe group, whether it’s MAGA, anarchists, or ML or whatever, everyone wants you to read their docs.
And while I’m willing to check some stuff out, I’ve come to conclusions based on arm-chair reasoning such as “no government can ever be trusted”, “humans are fallible, and putting some of them above others is inherently problematic regardless of the system”. I’ll read but am doubtful something will be able to convince me to trust in government or someone with power.
There’s a difference from racist screeds and someone telling you to read the leaked diplomatic cables about tianenmen.
I’ll read but am doubtful something will be able to convince me to trust in government or someone with power.
I know you said you’re bowing out in another comment but I just want to say that states are bad, all states. States do bad things in pursuit of maintaining themselves. This is true of the capitalist state. This is true of the socialist state. What matters here is who they do their bad shit in service of, what class are they serving, the proletariat or the bourgeoisie.
We are communists. We want a stateless society. We want this because we know states are bad.
I think the only real difference in our views is the classic one. I simply don’t see the dictatorship of the proletariat as not having the same tendencies toward corruption as every other. I can’t imagine an organization powerful enough to defeat capitalism willfully giving up it’s own power after it’s job is done.
It will attract psychopaths like flies to shit like every other power structure.
I would strongly suggest reading State and Revolution to understand the reasoning on the function of the DotP. It is fundamentally oriented towards the tendencies of power and people following self-interested motivations in aggregate over time. No one is talking about “giving up” anything. The proletariat is to oppress the bourgeoisie by means of more genuinely democratic governance (that obstructs the power of capital that is exerted in liberal democracies) and erode the bourgeois class over time until it no longer exists. No power is surrendered at any point in that process, but the people who need to be oppressed are decided on class lines that cease to exist by the very same process as the class is oppressed.
You can find both text and audiobook versions online pretty easily, and hopefully the most famous work of the founder of the first Marxist state is not on the same level as QAnon manifestos to you.
Idk, sounds like a Q drop
Why?
It’s not about it giving up its power. It doesn’t do that.
It redistributes resources to things that it needs. This is where understanding WHAT the state is and WHY it exists in the first place. The state exists as a tool of the ruling class to maintain their position of power and exploit the other classes. In a bourgeoise-state this is the bourgeoisie exploiting the other classes. In a proletarian state this is the proletariat exploiting the other classes. But once we abolish all classes and only have a single class the obvious outcome is that the resources dedicated to oppressing the other classes will be redistributed to new things. Much like the capitalist state winds down resource spending on cops and other shit when it doesn’t require it, and ramps it up in a time of high class war. The proletarian-state will wind down the resources spent on oppressive organisations, prisons, cops, military, etc, because these all exist for a purpose - if that purpose is gone, people will use those resources for different things.
It’s very longterm though. We’re talking about something that will absolutely only happen when all capitalist states are gone and all socialist states enter a stage of unity. Once that’s achieved military is going to be the first thing to disappear. Cops won’t go until crime does and that’s going to take achieving abundance first, as well as targeting more and more specific causes.
The marxist understanding of “the state” does not include systems of administration. Things like the decision bodies, councils etc are not “the state”. It is expected that systems of administration will still exist under communism, councils of people deciding upon things and the like, this isn’t exactly at odds with anarchist theory either though as anarchists don’t exactly shun councils or deciding things between people.
We can be critical of past and existing socialist projects, but we can’t ultimately forget that they must be supported and given grace in the face of the primary contradiction that is Global North imperialism. As long as our societies are influenced by class relations, states are going to exist for the foreseeable future. To think a socialist state shuld be abolished immediately in the context of being surrounded by imperialist predators is an irrational expectation…
Because of this, we are skeptical of the messaging coming from imperialist states. We support the countries that are attempting to progress humanity past capitalism, which is destroying us. For those of us in the imperial core, we understand that any criticisms we have of other socialist revolutions can’t ultimately be trusted. Those criticisms – whatever they may be – have zero relevance to the nations that are battling for survival in spite of the empire we live in.
We should cautiously inspect the propaganda we consume from all states, socialist or not. But we omly continue to amass reasons to be downright cynical of anything coming out of Western governments.
Agreed! Criticism of the 20th century, both it’s failures and it’s successes, is vital to moving forward! We can’t treat our past comrades as saints, nor ignore them, and they wouldn’t want us to! Imagine knowing that those who came after you refused to learn from the mistakes you made! I can’t imagine anything more horrible for someone who devoted their life to a scientific understanding of economy than people refusing to learn from observation.
Thx for your reply
. As long as our societies are influenced by class relations, states are going to exist for the foreseeable future.
IMO there’s a false dichotomy here that nearly everyone I’ve talked to falls into, that there are only two ways to move into the future, the “tankie” way (is there a non-offensive word that means what “tankie” means and isn’t specific to a tendency like “ML”?) and the anarchist way.
The tankie way is basically to unite the people, start a revolution to beat down capitalism, and form into a new authoritarian govt. but this time of the people. Somehow this new government is not going to become corrupted? And eventually no longer be needed and vanish?
The anarchist way is to unite the people, start a revolution to beat down capitalsm, and then… ???
I see fatal flaws in both of these paths that look obvious to me. To the tankies, a government not becoming corrupt? Talk about high fantasy. For the anarchists, what happens after? How to prevent warlords, or surviving capitalists from taking over again? It’s an incomplete plan at best.
My personal position is that cultural progress must come first. To tankies, you can’t force peace and harmony on hundreds of millions of people at once at the barrel of a gun. And to other anarchist, if you give millions of people who only know capitalism and exploitation sudden complete freedom as anarchist want would lead to chaos and destruction. Any attempts at revolution before the culture is ready for it will lead to protracted war, famine, etc.
So, why wait for a revolution to start building out of the ashes (which to be clear, a revolution of this scale would kill millions of people and cause massive permanent ecological damage, assuming a revolution like that could even happen in 2023 in the U.S., just the question of how to handle nuclear materials alone is daunting), we can work now to build the future from where we are now.
We can use any and all not-quite full on revolutionary tactics to weaken and destroy capitalism. (I’m not a pacifist btw, and not against all violence, I just think full-on revolution won’t work)
- The fediverse will help us make much progress, being able to talk away from corporate censorship will have an effect I’m pretty sure.
- Being a good example and helping people - so people start to see who is on their side
- Teaching people, I’m working on starting local groups to teach people how to move away from Microsoft and how to join the fediverse.
- Starting co-ops, free shops
- Garage bars with free drinks/byob, weekly block parties with free food for anyone around
- Organized community backyard farming
- Sabotage MSM
- Tons of other things
–> We need to get people to start not looking to the government for solutions and start looking to their communities by providing superior solutions. If our communist way is better, let’s demonstrate it.
Thanks for engaging but I still really don’t think you’ve fully grasp what Marxism-Leninism is. You’ve continued to mischaracterize and create strawmen out of what M-L movements aspire to do (forcing peace at the barrel of a gun??).
Yes, historically, Marxism-Leninist revolutions have relied on centralized vanguard parties, but ultimately each country where a revolution takes place, socialism will be built according to that country’s material conditions. There’s no reason why our strategies and tactics can’t adapt based on our particular situations, but we still take lessons from past attempts at building socialism. Marxism is not a dogma (although there are still those that treat it that way).
When we say a state is inevitible, it’s the recognition that a state will naturally arise as long as there are still class relations. To not acknowledge that is to ignore material reality. After a revolution, there will still be a bourgeoisie and they will still be needed to contribute to building the socialist project. People will still have cultural tendencies from the prior bourgeois dictatorship. Money will still be a thing. Imperialism will still exist. How do you secure the ground the working class has won through revolution (which is still what you’re talking about, whether you want to call it a “revolution” or not)? As long as the bourgeoisie exist, their interests will ultimately be opposed to the interests of the proletariat. How do you prevent a bourgeois dictatorship from seizing power again? You’re going to need to repress them by some means. You’re going to have to exclude them from decision-making bodies. What do you call that other than a state?
And class struggle doesn’t just end when socialists seize power. It continues. And it’s up to the masses to keep the new regime honest about it’s ideals. Of course there is always the chance a socialist government can become overrun with corruption. That is the entire lesson we’ve learned from the violent dissolution of the USSR. But that doesn’t mean we abandon the communist struggle. We learn, we recognize the internal and external forces at play, and we try to build on pre-existing theory so that we can better put it into practice.
Hey good on you for doing the reading and I hope the other people on our instance weren’t too mean to you <3
But yeah, most of us started in the same place of being fucked over by capitalism or reactionaries in some way and searched for an alternative and ended up as communists.
personal story of how I became a communist, mention of bigoted alcoholic father
I myself had a pretty materially comfortable upbringing but my dad was and still is an incredibly right wing homophobic, transphobic and antisemitic alcoholic who literally volunteered for ukip, the Tories and the Brexit party at various different points. Like to give you an idea of the type of guy he is he got me a copy of 1984 when I was 8 and sat me down and lectured me on the evils of socialism (and also kind of said that it was simultaneously antisemitic while implying that it was also a Jewish conspiracy). Which kinda made growing up and realising I was queer but having to hide it quite polarising against his beliefs for me, so like i started discussing it online and searching like left wing queer friendly communities and like starting to gel with the idea of socialism (actually just kinda tentatively supporting Corbyn at that point - because like he seemed a bit too radical to me at the time for me to uncritically support)
Anyway fast forward a year or two and I was calling myself a socialist or even a communist sometimes because I found the most acceptance in what were in retrospect, pretty milquetoast “”“socialist”“” spaces and then I found hexbear and ngl it was so nice, like I didn’t really agree with them about everything but from the very beginning the mods showed that they were extremely willing to go hard to protect the queer users of the site from queerphobic abuse and so I stuck around and they gradually got me to read theory and read up about history in my own time. Anyway, now 3 years since I joined hexbear I consider myself an ML because I see it as the most effective path forward for decolonisation and I very much admire the progressive history of (most) marxist-lenininist nations and also I pretty frequently end up discussing theory with the various trans communists from this site who are in my dms. Right now I’m sandwiched between reading 10 Days in Harlem by Simon Hall and Settlers: the Myth of the White Proletariat by J. Sakai
I hope the other people on our instance weren’t too mean to you <3
People are passionate about these topics, I get it. I wouldn’t posted if I wasn’t ready to take from a bunch of “tankies” lol. I had a good time, I’ll be back arguing with y’all about something else soon :)
That being said, I started calling myself (anarcho-)communist when I realized the term for what I had essentially always felt.
Thx for the personal story!
Yeah, hope to see you soon. But yeah in general I’m a lot less, idk, gung ho with supporting China than most of the users of this site, but when its like come to major struggle sessions with outside users we kind of close ranks and keep to the hexbear line (excluding the hundred comment struggle session about kruschev that hexbear users had with each other in an unrelated worldnews thread on lemmy.ml when we first federated)
I think things will calm down after a week or so after all the hexbears get bored of arguing with libs and return to normal posting. after all the last time we had this many outsiders coming into our home turf and trying to start shit was like 3 years ago when some /pol/ users tried to raid hexbear and doxx some of the users and got bullied so hard they never came back
Anyway, hope you stay well <3
deleted by creator
One more, because I don’t think anyone else posted it, is Qiao Collective’s reading list on the e event. It’s a lot of reading but the sources are pretty good: https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/tiananmenreadinglist
Glad to hear the change of heart. I thought you were a lost cause.
Lurker here: this was a really cool conversation to read. Much respect to you, hope you stick around the instance. Telling people to post hog is fun and all but seeing a genuine good faith conversation about some super polarizing political opinions is what makes me most glad we federated.
Excellent!
Damn this post is a warzone 😂
There wasn’t a massacre on June 4th 1989, but there is in this comment section.
I love it, it feels like cth again. Some great dunks, no hogs unfortunately.
This is more of your traditional “wall of text” leftist community.
Coming even from from an anarchist (i.e. someone who is also distrustful of government, media, etc), this type of stuff makes you guys sound crazy. In 2023 saying Tiananmen Square massacre never happened is an extraordinary claim and therefore is going to require extraordinary evidence for effective persuasion. You behave like Chinese state apologists to most people.
Now maybe you’re right, TBH I can’t claim to know for certain, but if you actually want to convince people you need to do more than point to documents I have no more reason to believe than the pictures and documents I’ve already seen. Why should I believe your sources vs what as far as I can tell is the rest of the academic world that doesn’t agree with you? Especially when it seems apparent that current Chinese leadership has an obvious authoritarian quality and ends justify the means type of attitude. You may deny this but all it takes for me to believe it is to see the fear in the faces of Chinese people when asked certain questions.
deleted by creator
No ML denies that China is ‘authoritarian’. They argue that all states are.
Almost everything Marxists say is poorly understood by their detractors and framed in a negative light in one way or another.
what as far as I can tell is the rest of the academic world that doesn’t agree with you?
This makes it seem as though you haven’t read the literature and arguments of either side. If that’s the case you shouldn’t be coming to any conclusions at all, especially to dismiss one side outright for being unorthodox. By definition, the counter narrative is going to sound unorthodox in light of the orthodox claims. The correct approach is to read the source and judge it on its own merit and in light of other known facts.
all it takes for me to believe it is to see the fear in the faces of Chinese people when asked certain questions.
The “I talked to one person so now I’m an expert on the situation” school of historical anyalysis.
“anarchists” please stop believing state department propaganda
The country that says Iraq had WMD said China did a thing that wouldn’t make any sense for them to do. That is the extraordinary claim. Why do you feel that a claim made by the US, who has only ever lied to you, is a reasonable starting point?
extraordinary claim and therefore is going to require extraordinary evidence
All it takes to prove that the massacre did happen is evidence. Where is this extraordinary evidence?
Proving that something doesn’t exist is much harder. There was a liberal in here earlier though that was also saying that we’re a bunch of conspiracy theorists. I gave him links, you can see them below. First hand reports from people who were actually there say that there was no massacre. This includes a CBS reporter and a Latin American diplomat.
First hand reports from people who were actually there say that there was no massacre.
In the square itself, maybe, but all eyewitnesses agree that the PLA shot and killed many hundreds of protesters in Beijing during the protests, which had been (until that point) largely peaceful.
So while you at the author of this article might be correct to say that there was no actual massacre in Tiananmen Square itself, there certainly was a massacre going on around it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8057762.stm
correct me if I’m wrong, but skimming through this drivel, I’m left with the impression that the author never actually saw anyone get shot
Gold star for you! This is significantly better than the usual nonsense that’s pushed. But after having claimed a massacre for so long, this still seems like damage control to me.
Do these photos look like the aftermath of a massacre to you? Or do you think that the CPC account of the situation might be closer to reality? They claim that after the protest was broken up, some violent instigators began attacking the military in the area around the square. And yes, hundreds died, and many of them were soldiers.
Do these photos look like the aftermath of a massacre to you?
Yes, they do. The term “massacre” doesn’t necessarily imply that the protestors didn’t fight back after the PLA started killing them.
I might suggest you read this then. It’s by a reporter for the Washington Post, who was in the city reporting on it at the time.
Why would I believe your sources over others? Especially when there are what appear to most people to be pictures of the Chinese state using lethal military force against protesters and dead bodes on the ground. Are these fake pictures?
Again, fantastical claims. Where are these pictures?
Edit: I love that this is the second person to come in here who gives us shit for being conspiracy theorists, disregards first hand eyewitness accounts, and runs away when pressed for evidence. Murder trials in the US must work very differently than I’ve been led to believe.
You mean thr picture of a few people lying on the ground clearly alive near a bunch of what are quite clearly bicycles?
Do you believe we went to the moon? If so why? If not why?
Do you believe human caused climate change is a thing? Why?
You’re believing somebody, why do you believe those people?
Do you believe in Last Thursdayism? I choose not to because reality has no meaning that way and the consequences are still the same.
Do you believe in your own birth? After all, you couldn’t possibly remember it. How do you know aliens didn’t just materialize you out of nothing? Again, I choose not to subscribe to the alien-materialization theory because there’s a much better hypothesis that seems to make a lot more sense.
Do you believe your eyes and ears, or has
the party 
already commanded you to disregard their evidence?
Honestly, you want a simple, widely accepted, heavily west-biased source? Literally just read the wikipedia article.
“[CBS and WP journalists] could not find enough evidence to suggest that a massacre took place on the square”
“cables from the United States embassy in Beijing agreed there was no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square”
Nobody here is denying there were protests, or that a limited number people died in clashes with police across the country. But literally no reputed source, western lib or otherwise, claims that the government was out in Tianenmen killing civilians in major numbers.
You have seen documents that are reliable and not published by American and European imperialist intelligence agencies? Produce them then, that is the extraordinary claim
Anarchists and illiteracy, name a more iconic duo.
It’s a clickbaity title, and it’s disappointing to see people engaging with it on the grounds of contrarianism, I guess.
The truth is (which I would assume/hope many here agree with) is that the violence associated with the protests was very real. It was , however, greatly exaggerated by western media in many cases. This has been known for decades, I’m not sure what this book offers that would change that at this point (no, I’m not going to read the article)
Coming even from from an anarchist (i.e. someone who is also distrustful of government, media, etc), this type of stuff makes you guys sound crazy.
It only sounds crazy if you assume you cannot possibly be a victim of a propaganda campaign, which I get it it’s uncomfortable to think about but consider it and do your own research.
