How do we combat US propaganda when it's so prevalent?

Serious post warning, sleep-deprived wall of text ahead.

Someone who I dare say I respect publicly discouraged joining or supporting Lemmy on the basis of being The Tankie Place, linking this raddle post, a collection of horrifyingly flimsy evidence that Dessalines (lemmy.ml admin, maintainer of the wonderful dessalines.github.io/essays/) is a freedom hating redfash tankie who likes it when the evil CCP genocides uyghurs and bans femboys.

Naturally it all sucks but now i'm investing too many brain cells into thinking: how do you even refute this garbage?

I'm not proud of it, but I was an "anti-authoritarian leftist" too. I unironically said "tankie" once. And if i were told there is no Uyghur genocide, i would react exactly as if they had told me there was no holocaust. To the westerner, China really is as bad as nazi germany and straightforwardly saying otherwise, in their mind, is no different than if you replace Uyghurs with jews and China with germany. When this narrative is so deeply ingrained, how do you fight it? How the hell did I get here?

i really have no idea how to address it when, to them as it once was to me, it is so obviously true that anyone suggesting otherwise is not even worth listening to. these are fundamental beliefs and challenging them is grounds for instant block and report. its not open for discussion. all i can do is hope they find the truth on their own.

i'll stop rambling now and sleep instead. so i wont respond for a while. sorry if theres a better community to post this in i just needed to get this out before i spontaneously combust. good night comrades.

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55 comments

Hey, I’m an unsure socialist on the sidelines confused about this propaganda war. I’m not sure who’s actually saying what here.
if i were told there is no Uyghur genocide
Even granting that calling it “genocide” could be a stretch, and that US actions toward its minorities might be similar, does that make whatever China is actually doing worth defending though?
Also, I asked for a definition of tankie behavior on Blahaj and got this:
Defending the use of force against civilians expressing disagreement over their government’s decisions peacefully?
Is that really a view anyone takes here?
P.S. If a class war broke out, would you have any concern that the result would be authoritarian?
P.P.S. I hope you don’t mind me asking here. It’s been on my mind and wasn’t sure how to ask.
- Personally, I'm glad you're asking questions and being upfront about your uncertainty.
  I'll let others give the details on Xinjiang but I'll say, briefly, that China's work in eradicating terrorism and improving the standard of living for Uighur Muslims and others in the region are commendable. Not only should this be defended, it should be praised and used as a model elsewhere.
  The answer as to whether I/we agree on that definition depends on a class analysis and also relates to your question about authoritarianism, which I'll answer first.
  The class war broke out a couple of thousand years ago. It has been authoritarian since the beginning. Under the current system, dissent will be met by armed police and military force, made lawful by legislation and supported by the judiciary; the bourgeoisie will deploy this force at the first sign of any threat to its power. Peaceful protestors against fossil fuels, wars, and the regression of women's health rights will be locked in prison, for example.
  Given these observations, the only options are: (i) ending authoritarianism (which is one of the ultimate goals of communism); and (ii) continuing authoritarianism in (a) the same form (which means continuing with capitalism) or (b) a different form (which Marxists think of as necessary in the transition away from capitalism).
  If we then change the question to, 'Do you accept that socialists must be authoritarian?' Yes: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm. If the workers gain control of the means of production, the only way they will maintain control is by exercising a similar kind of legislative, executive, and judicial authority as is currently wielded by bourgeois states. I also can't see how it's possible to gain control of those means in the first place, except by being authoritarian.
  Back to the definition of 'tankie'. First thing to note is that I've never called myself a tankie except in jest. I have no idea what critics mean by it unless it's a pejorative term for a Marxist. In which case, the definition, 'Defending the use of force against civilians expressing disagreement over their government’s decisions peacefully' is just absurd.
  If tankie is simply shorthand for 'Marxist', then it refers to 'historical materialists'. Historical materialism is a way of looking at the world that treats everything as a process, a relation, as historically contingent. We can go into this if you wish.
  That's not to say I don't have anything in response to:
  Defending the use of force against civilians expressing disagreement over their government’s decisions peacefully?
  But my response is to ask a few questions:
  Are there examples of liberal democracies using 'force against civilians expressing disagreement over their government’s decisions peacefully'?
  If so, does this make liberals (who by definition support liberal democracies) 'tankies'?
  What is meant by 'peacefully'?
  What is meant by 'government'?
  What is meant by 'use of force'?
  What is meant by 'civilians'?
  What is meant by 'disagreement'?
  What is meant by 'defending'?
  What is meant by 'expressing'?
  I doubt very much that (m)any Marxists would support bourgeois states' use of force against peaceful anti-war and climate change activists. But the same people might support a socialist state suppressing pro-war, pro-fossil fuel, or pro-capitalist activists who are known to be supported by a foreign imperialist state's secret service.
  Much of it comes down to class position. Marxists understand history as class struggle. It doesn't make much sense for a Marxist to treat individuals separate from a class analysis. So the individual 'peaceful' 'civilian' 'expressing' 'disagreement' is actually entwined in a much larger class struggle and is part of one class or another, which changes the dynamic of the question.
  Feel free to come back with further questions.
  
  Thanks for your response.
- and that US actions toward its minorities might be similar, does that make whatever China is actually doing worth defending though?
  From my point of view, what the USA is doing is not similar, because the USA focuses on punishment and, if that doesn't work, destruction of the offending group. The Chinese approach was to expand (access to) education, provide vocational training, and ease other difficulties the group was experiencing that contributing to the root cause of the terrorism. If the Chinese approach had been similar to the USA's approach, they wouldn't have put money and time and effort in to rehabilitating. Rehabilitation is a much preferred solution than punishment and destruction.
  Also, the Chinese approach worked: treating people like humans and working to rehabilitate resolved the terrorism issue.
  The UN Human Rights Council in 2019 published a report praising China's handling of the situation, noting how it was human-centered:
  We commend China’s remarkable achievements in the field of human rights by adhering to the people-centered development philosophy and protecting and promoting human rights through development. We also appreciate China’s contributions to the international human rights cause. We take note that terrorism, separatism and religious extremism has caused enormous damage to people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang, which has seriously infringed upon human rights, including right to life, health and development. Faced with the grave challenge of terrorism and extremism, China has undertaken a series of counter-terrorism and deradicalization measures in Xinjiang, including setting up vocational education and training centers. Now safety and security has returned to Xinjiang and the fundamental human rights of people of all ethnic groups there are safeguarded. The past three consecutive years has seen not a single terrorist attack in Xinjiang and people there enjoy a stronger sense of happiness, fulfillment and security. We note with appreciation that human rights are respected and protected in China in the process of counter-terrorism and deradicalization.
  (emphasis mine) This is from UN Document "A/HRC/41/G/17".
  
  Speaking of UN documents, it doesn’t appear the conditions in such “training centers” (see p. 21, et seq.) are that good:
  https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/22-08-31-final-assesment.pdf
  Please don’t take this to be argumentative, but I’m just trying to understand what is actually going on there. I’m aware of both UN letters (though I haven’t had the chance to read the other one attacking China).
  I saw a video describing reasoning as a social activity. Thank you in advance for helping me to dismantle the propaganda.
  
  I did read most of that, and it is interesting. First thing I want to address is this statement:
  In conclusion, descriptions of detentions in the VETCs in the period between 2017 and 2019 gathered by OHCHR were marked by patterns of torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, other violations of the right of persons deprived of their liberty to be treated humanely and with dignity, as well as violations of the right to health.
  Yet the statement I linked to was made in 2019. So if they had been gathering data for 2 years, why would they have made the statement I linked? This confuses me. It's not like they discovered the reality, or material conditions changed, since they made the statement; they had had years of data, supposedly. I'm going to set that aside for a moment and try to address the content of the document.
  Also, yes I agree entirely that the treatment described in that section is completely unnaceptable. It mentions literal torture methods, unnecessary physical punishment, violation of right to determine or deny medical treatment, etc. None of that is acceptable. That being said, I am curious as to how frequently this happens. Not that any amount is acceptable, but if the rate in this region of these acts is the same as elsewhere in the country, then the framing of the issue needs to change from "targeted genocide" to a critique of the system as a whole. I don't have any data as to the occurrence rate of these acts in this region or outside of it.
  Much of the rest of the report leading up to the part you mentioned is really much less bothersome. It mentions use of the surveillance state to catch offending parties. You may think this is invasive or unacceptable but, again, this is not particular to this region and would be a critique of the whole system. There's an attempt to criticize the use of imprisonment for punishment, which seems like a weird stance to take considering...the rest of the world.
  In all honesty, I think the more damning part of what you linked would be everything after the part you mention specifically. The remainder of the document portrays traditional "genocidal" actions. I don't know what to do with the document since it does seem bad, but it's such a wild about-face from the reports just a couple years earlier, by the same group no less. More from 2019:
  World Bank Statement on Review of Project in Xinjiang, China by The World Bank was in favor or China's actions
  Resolutions by the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (noting that Islam is predominant amongst Uyghurs) was also in favor
  So unless the conditions were so perfectly hidden from many investigative groups until they suddenly weren't, or unless the material conditions changed so much that none of the positive praise would apply anymore, I don't know what to make of the report you've linked.
  
  In all honesty, I think the more damning part of what you linked would be everything after the part you mention specifically.
  I think so too. That’s what I was trying to draw attention to.
  I don’t know what to do with the document since it does seem bad
  I suspect it’s a complicated issue. Consider that there were at least two UN letters from 2019, one criticizing and one supporting. Note both of them (including yours above) were signed by members and not ratified by the entire UN or anything. Reference supporting existence
  In general, I think it’s likely that some of the critics are being disproportionately critical because it’s China, and some of the defenders are so quick to dismiss it for the same reason.
  While perhaps some of the louder US critics should think harder about mass incarceration in the US, I would suggest both countries work to treat their citizens better.
  
  I was interested in which countries signed which statements, so I made a list of:
  
  This looks pretty divided along lines that we see on a lot of other ideological issues as well, but just out of curiousity I also compared this to:
  
  It looks like not a single state switched from Praise to Condemnation, that is, there is no state on the 2022 condemnation that was also on the 2019 praise document. Moreover, not a single NATO member state was on the 2019 praise document, but several are on the 2022 condemnation.
  I think this helps reinforce your statement:
  In general, I think it’s likely that some of the critics are being disproportionately critical because it’s China, and some of the defenders are so quick to dismiss it for the same reason.
  So yeah, unfortunately I'm left to assume that both reports are probably rather partisan. That being said, the 2019 praising was backed by other, third-party investigative souces, such as the ones I linked previously.
  
  I wondered who was behind the report I linked. Apparently it was released by Michelle Bachelet on her final day as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Notably, the word “genocide” was not once used in the report.
  
  Yeah I'm not sure what to make of that. Here is her statement after she visited China, which doesn't say much of anything. Her wikipedia page claims she didn't even sign the report, but their linked citation doesn't actually say that. It is interesting that Chile is not present on either the 2019 or the 2022 report, as I'd expect her opinion to be somewhat reflected/reflective there still.
- The main reason why I'm so vehemently against the Uyghur genocide narrative is that it's plainly meant to turn the people of the US against China in preparation for a war. You're telling me that the country responsible for a million+ dead Muslim civilians in Iraq gives half a shit about Muslims in China? C'mon. That's obviously bullshit and there must be some other reason why we're going on about it.
  Looking into it more the reasons are to destabilize the region to impede the Belt and Road Initiative and to prepare for war with China. I just don't think the US should be involved in the region, full stop, and therefore I am opposed to the US narrative on happenings in Xinjiang. There's no need for overanalysis or splitting hairs on the definition of genocide here.
  In every case when a state is saying something you must ask, why are they saying that?
  As for use of force against civilian protestors: If these protestors are foreign agents of the US, they should of course be cracked down on so long as doing so doesn't grow popular support for the movement. The US and the "international community" commits acts of color revolution and sabotage at every opportunity and socialist states must defend themselves against these acts or face collapse. Genuine protests with the will of the common people behind them should be listened to and taken into account in policymaking.
  
  I just don’t think the US should be involved in the region, full stop, and therefore I am opposed to the US narrative on happenings in Xinjiang. There’s no need for overanalysis or splitting hairs on the definition of genocide here.
  I agree that the US has been meddling too much in foreign affairs. While I think China should be handling it better, China should be the one to fix that.
  As for use of force against civilian protestors: If these protestors are foreign agents of the US, they should of course be cracked down on so long as doing so doesn’t grow popular support for the movement.
  Meanwhile r/conservative is unironically saying that "if capitalism is so powerful that we can absolutely devastate a country simply by refusing to trade with them, maybe that's a sign that the U.S. system works and ought to be emulated."
  
  Personally I don't believe the amount of devastation you can cause should be the measure of how well your system works. If that was the play then they should have put me in charge of cloud deployment and database administration at my last job lol
  
  If that was the play then they should have put me in charge of cloud deployment and database administration at my last job lol
  Did you name your kid Bobby Tables by chance? :P
  I agree, but I need the exercise of thinking about how I would feel if the revolution happened.
  Is there any AES countries you can point to that you think worked well?
  
  They weren't as successful in the long term because they didn't successfully defend the revolution, but I'd point to Burkina Faso as an example of what becomes possible after a revolution. China also saw a meteoric rise in life expectancy during Mao's time in power and I'd consider it a success story overall.
- Defending against accusations of genocide? Yes. Although the phrasing can sound odd because it is largely a fabricated narrative. I think most here would support China's actions as a deradicalization program against religious extremism, especially compared to the US solution in neighboring Afghanistan and Iraq.
  Tankie is really just used as an insult against "communists I don't like." It's not like it has any theoretical depth. It has an etymology related to the definition they gave you but that only has so much influence on its use.
  Class war is the ongoing state of things. Like infation and rent hikes. If a revoluton broke out, of course it would be authoritarian. And the resulting state would probably take an extremely cautious siege socialism approach if it wanted to survive, so yes it would probably be authoritarian. But choosing to not be authoritarian is really just willfully ceding power to the previous ruling class who are not going to give up their position peacefully, even after a revolution. Think about the media narrative and war hawk stances against Cuba, the DPRK, the PRC. Now imagine that but applied to a newly founded socialist republic.
  
  Fair enough, thanks for the correction. What do you think then about that if a revolution were to occur? An authoritarian model, being unchecked, seems to have the potential to go wrong easily. Could an authoritarian result actually be for the better?
  
  Friendly text block and two audio theory links incoming:
  The thing about the terms aurhoritarianism and authoritarian is, they aren’t terms that describe a meaninfgul distinction. Like "terrorist" before it, "authoritarian" is just the latest rhetorical cudgel used to draw an arbitrary distinction between Our violence, (justified, righteous, at worst regrettable but necessary) and Their violence (unjustifiable, irredeemable, the result of some shared societal moral defect). This applies both to traditional violence, as you can see with how the western press has been framing the war in Ukraine, and to social violence, such as with western coverage on points of friction such as protests in rival countries. In every case, the same actions will be framed differently. Not only are exceptions carved out for certain kinds of explicit violence, but implicit violence is made invisible. It's very easy to find a million threads online about China Bad posted under a photo of several tanks not running over a guy (or a clip shortened to imply they did), but not as easy to find discussions about all the recordings of US police just straight up running over protestors in 2020(explicit), and nobidy would venture any optimistic guesses as to the healthcare they may or may not have recieved afterwards (implicit).
  When the US incinerates a million people half the world away, displaces thirty million more, poisons their land, water and DNA for generations with DU shells, that's spreading democracy, or at worst a tragic mishap that could have been handled better. When Russia, (and to be clear, I have zero love for the Russian Federation, they are a ghoul state, but if they're a ghoul state then the US is the vampire that bit them) when they respond to 8 years of shelling and Azov death squads operating with impunity in a majority-Russian province where people's own language has been made illegal...it is now immediately genocidal to interrupt these actual processes of genocide. The only explanation I've heard for this is that "Putin is trying to kill every single Ukranaian, for reasons unclear." Because to them, only people on our side have depth. Anyone on the other side is a Terrorist, Authoritarian, Commie, Tankie, Traitor, Looter Thug RussianChinese AgentBot. Whatever term can be used to justify reducing human beings to caricatures on which to project your own worst impulses instead of trying to understand. A Marvel capeshit villain. There's a reason the saying exists about scratched liberals, they're already primed to accept fascist answers to the questions raised by the holes in their understanding of the world. The process of shutting out any alternative answers begins with simple, thought-terminating epithets than can be brandished with empty confidence.
  Ultimately all violence is authoritarian, even defensive violence, because state authority is violence. Unlike liberals though, we're materialists, which means we don't content ourselves with shallow grandstanding moral denunciations. We can admit that most violence (barring consensual violence like sparring or bdsm) is ugly, corrosive and undesirable, while also sometimes being necessary to stop greater suffering. Liberals, who are capitalists and champion an ultraviolent capitalist world order, are backed into the corner of supposedly being the enlightened, noviolent intellectual successors of MLK and Ghandi (or at least the sanitized image they've created of them) while literally supporting Nazis who do Nazi shit, and they have normalized reconciling this contradiction by way of assuring themselves and each other that anyone pointing out their hypocrisy is either naive, a kid trying to be trendy, or secretly an agent of Them.
  
  Thanks for your response. You're right, for authoritarian to have any meaning, the US should undoubtedly be included in it.
  I suppose I really meant to ask if there would be a significant risk of conditions becoming worse for the average worker in a post-revolution aftermath.
  
  Whether authoritarianism is bad or good depends primarily on the result. An authority that focuses on serving the people, building infrastructure, and putting food in people's stomachs is very different from an authority that focuses on scapegoating the people.
  
  That's a fair point. I should have instead asked if there is a significant risk of conditions becoming worse for the average worker in a post-revolution aftermath.
  
  Of course there is, although the extent of it will depend on how good workers have it before the revolution. If a revolution accomplished degrowth in the US, for example, workers would have to suddenly live with a lot less than before, especially if they were in the labor aristocracy. Revolutions are also by their nature disruptive and you can expect to see disruptions in all kinds of supply chains and the food supply, and possibly some extent of purges of the old bureaucracy and reeducation of the people in order to defend the revolution from the counterrevolution. After some time this evens out and typically the one famine that occurred after the revolution is the last famine in that country, climate change notwithstanding. And not too long after a successful revolution depending on conditions workers will have better access to things they actually need like housing, food, healthcare, steady employment, public health, education, ability to live if disabled, and public transit at the possible cost of luxury goods, amenities, and little treats.
  
  Not to disagree – because I agree – but I want to unpick the degrowth point a little.
  Would workers necessarily feel the impact of degrowth negatively? Most things produced under capitalism is pointless, easily-broken, tat (how many versions of sink drainers and spectacles cases do we really need?). It's all marketed hard to create demand.
  Stopping the production of that tat would surely lead to job losses but without the advertising would people really miss the goods? If Apple and Microsoft weren't allowed to make their machines redundant via software updates and they stopped manufacturing desire for the latest model, would normal people realise and if they did would they be upset? I'd imagine that most would sigh relief.
  There would have to be a shift in employment and the division of labour but that's not necessarily painful if people can e.g. stay indefinitely in the home they currently occupy (or be given a home if homeless/houseless). Expectations would have to be adjusted – I fully agree, but if the bourgeois ideological apparatuses can be stopped, I reckon that most people would adjust quite well and quite quickly.
  Just imagine if the number of total working hours halved because we decided to shut down lots of harmful industries, then guaranteed everyone a fair share of those hours, with the guaranteed services that you listed. I suppose the labour aristocracy, as you say, may be pissed off with the change because they already have access to all those services and they've been propagandised to think that they have it all because they're special. Everyone else might be right on board and willing to tell the ex-labour aristocrats to boil their arses.
  
  It's hard to say for sure without a deeper analysis and a real revolution to analyze. It depends on how much is destroyed in the course of revolution, whether the economy collapses or not, and all of that and more is basically a crapshoot. I guess it might not be strictly inevitable because of the inefficient characteristics of our current economy, so thank you for the food for thought.
  
  Very likely, depending on the state and on whether other states have or move towards a revolution at a similar time. When the Soviets seized power in Russia, they were later invaded by over 15 states, including the US, Britain, France, Germany, and Japan. 'Post-revolutionary' conditions will not necessarily deteriorate because the workers are in control (although as bobs-guns points out, there will be logistical issues, etc, to contend with). Conditions will deteriorate because capitalists will fight until the last capitalist or socialist is gone.
  I put 'post-revolution' in quotation marks to emphasise a need for care with the notion of revolution. The bourgeois way of thinking treats events as isolated and chronological. First one event happens, then another, then another, and each one finishes neatly just as the next is about to begin. From the perspective of historical materialism (HiMat), this is an error.
  HiMat is the application of dialectical materialism (DiMat) to human society. For DiMat, the world is not made of things but of internally contradictory relations and processes. The struggle within these relations drives change. But change is not linear. Change happens linearly until it leaps. Even then, the 'new' has traces of the 'old', just as the 'old' contained the seeds of the 'new'.
  From the perspective of HiMat, a revolution takes a long time, as one mode of production slowly transforms into the next mode of production until suddenly the revolution is achieved. I say all this to suggest that the 'post-revolution aftermath' is the process of revolution itself.
  There's another way of explaining this. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels wrote:
  We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.
  If revolution is a process of changing the mode of production, and if communism is the process of abolishing the old mode of production, then communism is the revolution and the post-revolutionary state of things.
  To go back to my opening paragraph, we know that capitalists are counter-revolutionary anti-communists who will make things as difficult as possible for the revolutionary communists before and during the revolution. NATO spent however many decades in a Cold War with the USSR before brutally dismantling Soviet society more-or-less overnight.
  Today NATO embargoes 'post-revolutionary' Cuba and pre-revolutionary Venezuela while provoking China and banning successful Chinese businesses from the States – this is the cause of the difficult 'aftermath' of a revolution, not the socialist government.
  Once the revolution is fully achieved and there are no capitalists (a long time in the future), we can properly use the phrase 'post-revolution', and the disruptive 'aftermath' will be a thing of the past. In the meantime, the task of the socialist/communist government will be to provide for the people. Remember, that while this government must be authoritative, that government is composed of the people.
  A rhetorical question: what would your first decisions involve if you were one of the workers who seizes power? Because the point of the revolution is not to put an elite in charge but to put you in charge (collectively, of course).
  
  I say all this to suggest that the ‘post-revolution aftermath’ is the process of revolution itself.
  That’s a fair point. I suppose one must continually fight to defend the revolution as long as the socialist state exists.
- Defending the use of force against civilians expressing disagreement over their government’s decisions peacefully?
  Very ironic, since the phrase "Tankie" was coined to describe socialists who were in favor of "sending in the tanks" when Hungarian fascists attempted a coup in 1956. The "peaceful civilians" in question broke convicted Nazis out of prison, formed lynch mobs, and went around marking the front doors of Jews and communists for extermination before they were finally stopped.
  
  Just read up on it — interesting read. I wonder why Mao supported a second intervention. Honestly not sure on that event.
  It’s funny to me that the US couldn’t criticize the Soviet intervention because France and Britain were intervening in Egypt.

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