You ever read that red sails ‘brainwashing isn’t real’ article? Similar premise, similar conclusion.
Basically guy was spending a lot of time debunking anti China stuff and getting frustrated. Realized really the propaganda isn’t very sophisticated, wasn’t hard to debunk in most cases. So saying people are fooled is kind of a cop out, underselling their intelligence maybe flattering your own. They’re buying in consciously or otherwise because they see the benefit from siding with the propagandist.
Idk was an interesting read for me at least. If you can’t get past the writing style these points are more or less where he ends up:
Stop accusing the masses of being “brainwashed.” Stop treating them as cattle, stop attempting to rouse them into action by scolding them with exposure to “unpleasant truths.”
Accept instead that they have been avoiding those truths for a reason. You were able to break through the propaganda barrier, and so could they if they really wanted to. Many of these people see you as the fool, and in many cases not without reason.
Understanding people as intelligent beings, craft a political strategy that convincingly makes the case for why they and their lot are very likely to benefit from joining your political project. Not in some utopian infinite timescale, but soon.
If you cannot make this case, then forget about convincing the person in question. Focus instead on finding other people to whom such a case can be made. This will lead you directly to class analysis.
Oh yeah that’s a great article, and very much agree with his take there.
same, hard agree, but it’s also so easy to fall back into thinking people are dumb when frustration mounts
indeed
Yeah, it’s weird that people prefer democracy to dictatorship. Freedom of speech is pretty important too.
I have a lot of issues with capitalism, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to give up on democracy as a whole. And China has just about as many of those capitalism problems as we do.
Dog we are communists, we don’t get “freedom of speech”, if we become an actual threat to state power they have and will again in the future imprison and kill us
Yeah, it’s weird that people prefer democracy to dictatorship.
That’s why I support China and want to destroy the burger empire.
Also, the officialdom gives license to hate. It’s a rubber stamp on bigotry, you can be a bigot all you like, but for Good™. Now you can dehumanise Russians, Chinese and any other targets of imperialism for free and remain a progressive liberal, shielded from any negative judgement.
And if on the rare occasion you are called out on it, you can just say that you hate the governments, not the people, ignoring all polling figures and support for these governments. After all, those support stats are fake anyway, you stupid tankie.
Good post!
+10 social rating
+1 rice ration
+1 cat wife
Glory to the strong jade rod comrade Xi!
+500 FICO credit score. You can now afford groceries for a week.
The least deranged westerner has logged on.
I can’t tell if you are a poe.
Who is a poe?
America always needed a bogyman, the Soviet Union did a perfect job for it, military menacing, but an economy which couldn’t challenge the US economical power globally, Perfect! But China? they’re scared shitless. Americans are witnessing the slow collapse of their economy and are puzzled, why is manufacturing gone? why is my government incompetent? Why is corruption more accepted now than ever before? Answer: China China China… Did I mention CHINA? Not to mention Jake Sullivan’s speech on how neo-liberalism has fundamentally destroyed America, no not the average American, that happened in the 1980s, but actually AMERICA. The US cannot compete with china, evidence is the shrinking manufacturing sector, the stagnation of innovative research and designs. Hell even the biggest banks aren’t american anymore, the top 4 are located in china.
I would like to add another thing, the west since 1991 has been experiencing its best prosperity in ages, with people fully buying into the capitalist dream, now its completely different. Even liberals recognize that the good times are over, and people are desperate for those good times to come back. The rise of china completely shatters the average westerner delusions, a country cannot preform better than their own, Afterall haven’t I been told that the west has the greatest, most wealthiest, and prosperous nations in the world? People need this lie to be sold to them, otherwise they’ll have to re-wind a life-time of propaganda.
Yeah, US empire is definitely entering uncharted waters now. It seems the realization of this is starting to set in now, as you point out with Sullivan’s speech, but they have no idea what to do. Honestly, it’s not really clear that there is anything that could be done even if US had a competent government in charge. China is simply bigger and has a more stable political political system that’s capable of long term planning. The fundamentals in China are much better than in US.
And very much agree that collapsing standard of living in the west makes it harder for people to swallow the propaganda that’s being pushed by the ruling class. People can see that what they’re being told doesn’t match their lived experience, and that translates into faith in the system collapsing. I think that’s actually one of the big driving factors behind stuff like qanon. Once people lose faith in central authority then they can just find a comfortable narrative that fits their preconceptions, and if they meet enough people who shares their beliefs that becomes their tribe.
tbh rn the mainsteam coverage on China in the US is WAAAAYY less about what goes in in Mainland China, a lot more about their potential as a global threat and sabre-rattling to drum up anti-China sentiment. Think about the balloon, they didn’t give 2 shits as to whether it was actually a Chinese balloon, one of them was an Illinois Amateur Weather Balloon troupe’s device. They shot it down to drum up China hate, same with whenever they mentioned the war in Ukraine, they don’t talk about the internal debates within the CPC as to how they wanna deal with this diplomatically, they paint China as 100% pro Russia to scare Americans. They’re getting lazier and less creative. They barely even mention Xinjiang anymore because they’re quickly fucking off with the “Human Rights” narrative. Possibly because the US and allies are becoming less democratic and more brutal or possibly because human rights talk doesn’t whip up hatred like an active global threat does. Regardless of why, we can see a slight but significant change in US foreign policy (the way they sell it, the foreign policy itself isn’t changing)
Yeah, I think they’re realizing that countries are starting to increasingly align towards China, and the whole HuMaN RigHTs rhetoric falls flat outside the west. So now it’s all about China debt trap narrative.
It’s often just white people being racist. They already had a negative opinion of them, so propaganda works well.
That’s a big part of it for sure, this is also what drives the whole Chinese people can’t innovate and steal everything from the west narrative.
