Chinese propaganda is rampant on the fediverse
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I don’t see much indicating him as a former communist
He talked about it - some variety of Trotskyism IIRC. A bit of a surprise but shouldn't have been. Tons of former Maoists have been in high positions. Even a neoliberal head of the European Commission (Barroso).
On the supposed virtues of communism, you won't convince me but I suppose you know that already. IMO the world would have done very well to listen to George Orwell, someone who saw through it all on the basis of up-front experience 90 years ago. That might have saved an awful lot of needless suffering. Or Orlando Figes, who wrote a book whose title says it all: "The USSR: A People's Tragedy".
To be fair, I don't think many communists globally are fans of Trotskyism, considering it's predominantly western and liberal-compatible. The vast majority of communists globally are Marxist-Leninists, Trotskyism is seen as more fringe. Trotskyists tend to already begin with anti-AES stances (for a variety of reasons, usually a combination of Red Scare propaganda mixed with alienation from capitalism), so going from "socialism is a good idea but never existed" to "socialism is a bad idea because what's existed hasn't worked" is a common jump. A former Trotskyist making loads of money off of denouncing communism is both entirely predictable and hardly compelling for those who've studied communism in theory and practice.
As for the rapist Eric Blair, also known as George Orwell, the western world listened to him too well. He didn't see through anything, rather, his position as a British fed (known for keeping a journal of people he knew and suspected of being Jewish and/or communists) and propagandist was extremely useful to western intelligence agencies. On Orwell is a good essay going over his dreadfall past and role in propagandizing. Orwell has been taught in countless schools not because of any truth, but because of his utility.
As for Figes, another that earns an enourmous sum of money from preaching the bible of anti-communism to serve capitalist interests, better historians exist. Syzmanski's Is the Red Flag Flying? The Political Economy of the Soviet Union today, Pat Sloan's Soviet Democracy, Human Rights in the Soviet Union, Anna Louise Strong's This Soviet World, Mary Stevenson Callcott's Russian Justice, the recently deceased Dr. Michael Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds, all the way up to Professor Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance, there's tons of academic resources to get a much better view of socialism in practice.
I don't expect you to read these, of course, my point is that just like you don't expect to change your mind by me sharing evidence counter to your views, I'm unlikely to be swayed by professionals repeating standard anti-communist dogma. It takes a much greater amount of study and reflection to go against the dominant, hegemonic culture, nearly every common anti-communist talking point has been wielded against me at some point simply by me stating that I support socialism.
Is there anything specific you'd like to discuss, regarding the effectiveness of socialism/communism? We can have a constructive conversation surrounding specifics.
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This seems right. Personally I'm not sure I could roll my eyes harder at the fact that so many people in 2026 are so ignorant as to be prepared to call themselves "communists" - after all the famines, the purges, the 40 years in which much of Europe was struggling to escape (literally) from communism... And then I saw that you, too, call yourself a communist! So I guess I'll stop there.
Except to recommend you the Ones and Tooze podcast, in which the brilliant host (an ex-communist) recently did a whole series, in great and illuminating detail, on the various communist thinkers. Which I listened to... dutifully.
Their idol Mao killed approx 160 million humans.
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Uh huh. You know you've got nothing when you're reduced to trying to do the rhetorical version of the "Who's on first" bit.
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It's not even 1 account. It's a collection of sockpuppets. I started noticing them when they started posting in !Canada@lemmy.ca but apparently the streak goes quite further back. The latest ones are Sepia and tardigrade.
I've also suggested changing tactic a bit from being a complete bad-faith asshole to good-faith commenters to at least being nice. Nada.
Ultimately the problem is that the mods for the communities they frequently post to have allowed this to go on for years. They have to know by now what’s going on, and by doing nothing they tacitly endorse it.
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Where did I say civilians? That's just the pretext they used to silence any words against Russia.
Where did I say civilians?
In the linked chain, repeatedly.
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I don’t see much indicating him as a former communist
He talked about it - some variety of Trotskyism IIRC. A bit of a surprise but shouldn't have been. Tons of former Maoists have been in high positions. Even a neoliberal head of the European Commission (Barroso).
On the supposed virtues of communism, you won't convince me but I suppose you know that already. IMO the world would have done very well to listen to George Orwell, someone who saw through it all on the basis of up-front experience 90 years ago. That might have saved an awful lot of needless suffering. Or Orlando Figes, who wrote a book whose title says it all: "The USSR: A People's Tragedy".
On the supposed virtues of communism, you won’t convince me
Just straight up admitting your anti-communism is an unshakable article of faith that no argument or evidence can change.
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Their idol Mao killed approx 160 million humans.
Damn, out jerking the black book of communism by an order of magnitude. You're really going for it
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Uh huh. You know you've got nothing when you're reduced to trying to do the rhetorical version of the "Who's on first" bit.
I agree. Why did you do that?
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Chinese propaganda is rampant on the fediverse. We need to discuss ways to combat this. One group- memes or something is wholly controlled by Chinese state actors. What do you think?
Go on then, git!!
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Lol. I know you are but what am I?
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Chinese propaganda is rampant on the fediverse. We need to discuss ways to combat this. One group- memes or something is wholly controlled by Chinese state actors. What do you think?
Days in the fediverse comm without explicit anti-communism and red scare fearmongering: 0
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Where did I say civilians?
In the linked chain, repeatedly.
That is untrue. I never said it. And for the record I only believe in hitting military targets and those of politicians and military officials involved in the war.
Also I think you are cherry picking. They have censored me more times than that. Maybe it was on my now defunct lemm.ee account.
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whataboutism is a thought-terminating cliche.
it ends up a very effective way of shutting down comparison between them.
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The difference is that I don't get banned/censored on western instances for criticizing Trump or US military interventions.
criticizing trump or us military interventions is pretty much all i do on ml, grad, hexbear
i eventually leave or get banned from the anarcho lib comms for doing that.
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criticizing trump or us military interventions is pretty much all i do on ml, grad, hexbear
i eventually leave or get banned from the anarcho lib comms for doing that.
Well sure you can criticize Trump there. But try criticizing the CCCP, China, or Russia.
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That is untrue. I never said it. And for the record I only believe in hitting military targets and those of politicians and military officials involved in the war.
Also I think you are cherry picking. They have censored me more times than that. Maybe it was on my now defunct lemm.ee account.
Ok. Anyone can easily click the link to verify that you're lying, so I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish.
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Ok. Anyone can easily click the link to verify that you're lying, so I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish.
Yes they can see I did not
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whataboutism is a thought-terminating cliche.
it ends up a very effective way of shutting down comparison between them.
The whole point is that there is no comparison necessary. It's nothing but a deflection.
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Yes they can see I did not
So, again, I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish by lying about this.
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What’s rampant is imperial core propaganda. You see the “Chinese propaganda” as “rampant” because you’re used to seeing only imperial core propaganda, which is how the internet looks on corporate media, including corporate social media.
The first step is to understand the media, which Media Bias/Fact Check and the Ad Fontes Media* are never going to teach you. The only people who are taught it are those who get degrees in marketing, public relations, political science, history, and journalism; and even then only some of them.
The new post-Trump/“post-truth” media literacy curricula won’t teach it to you either, because it was paid for and crafted by the US military-industrial complex: New Media Literacy Standards Aim to Combat ‘Truth Decay’.
This week, the RAND Corporation released a new set of media literacy standards designed to support schools in this task.The standards are part of RAND’s ongoing project on “truth decay”: a phenomenon that RAND researchers describe as “the diminishing role that facts, data, and analysis play in our political and civic discourse.”
None of it is a secret, though, and it can be learned.
- Noam Chomsky - The 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine
- Propaganda model
- Edward Bernays
- Walter Lippmann
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Powell Memorandum
- The Trilateral Commission’s report, The Crisis of Democracy
* I’ve criticized MBFC & Ad Fontes before:
ah yes, corporate media such as... the BBC
truly yank brained
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