• TheDude@sh.itjust.worksMEnglish
    170·
    1 year ago

    Any government or governing body should be open to criticism. They are suppose to be working for the people they serve. How is anyone going to know better if no one tells them what they are doing wrong? @wriggly3171@sh.itjust.works you have my support

    • this@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      13·
      1 year ago

      Right on! So I have a question, if I posted something that got me banned from lemmy.ml (such as an article criticizing the CCP for example) I would just not have access to the communities on that instance right? Like it won’t affect my experience in other instances right?

    • speck@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      11·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, it’s not about levying criticism. It’s about having an outsized agenda, arguing in bad faith, spamming the critiques where they don’t below, trying to co-op a shared space to create an echo chamber, etc…

    • Alkalyon@lemmy.mlEnglish
      72·
      1 year ago

      Yeah. This is kinda gaslighting:

      We’ve also seen a rise in anti-China posts that have hit Reddit lately, and along with that comes anti-chinese racism,

      No. Anti-china posts are not racist. We all hate Hitler Germany. Does that mean we are racist against Germans?

      This sentence is fundamentaly flawed and shouldn’t exist in the documentation.

      • Album@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        22·
        1 year ago

        It’s an absolute gaslight. He doesn’t mention that the subs closed down supported authoritarian regimes and were a safe space for violence and extremism where members regularly advocated for it.

        But yeah it’s typical authoritarian/fascist gaslighting.

      • jasondotjson@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        21·
        1 year ago

        To push back on this a little: there’s definitely historical precedent for anti-regime sentiment bleeding over into anti-populace sentiment. To use your example of WWII, a lot of the anti-Japan sentiment bled over to anti-Japanese sentiment in the US in the form of internment camps.

        Of course this was in the 1940s and I like to think that we’ve become a little bit less racist now. But I’ve noticed a lot more racist “jokes” on Reddit as anti-China sentiment has risen. Don’t get me wrong, we should still criticize China for its many human rights abuses and imperialistic practices as well as their violations of personal freedoms in their citizens etc. etc. but we should also be aware that these criticisms will be used by racists to justify their views and their actions, and call it out when it starts becoming more about the people than the government.

        • Ergonomic_Keyboard@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          5·
          1 year ago

          I think it’s because people nowadays are brought up to to ***follow ***what they read.

          There is so much importance of memorising facts one is informed like a computer, then alongside this, are informed by media and abrihamic based religions repeatedly, that life is binary good and bad.

          And as such, when an average reader attempts to criticise China, or Israel, UK or US present governmental practices for instance, they struggle to not generalise and lump government, people, race, and more all into one.

          To educate massess of people into being able to criticise policy is a surefire way to get the masses to be critical of the practices of a present government, and get you out of power.

          Binary identity politics however, will keep you there, in power, forever.

      • planish@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        11·
        1 year ago

        Anti-China posts can be racist. If someone is yelling about the Chinese government oppressing people, great.

        But it sure does seem like people are out there fomenting FUD about China as China, not really in reference to particular policies or practices that need to change.

        For example, in The New York Times’s coverage of that time the US decided to try and ban people anywhere selling good GPUs and semiconductor stuff to people in China, it’s all about “how effective will this be at preventing China from having things” and “how much will this cost Americans”. Not “is this the right thing to do to best stop people in China from being oppressed” or “why should the US be in charge of who can make microchips”.

        You could say “we think China’s government is going to use GPUs to abuse human rights” or “we think if China ever develops a halfway decent semiconductor industry they will immediately invade Taiwan”, but often that kind of context seems to have been deemed irrelevant. People are just taking it as read that it is right and proper for the US to decide what industries Chinese people may or may not do, and how good at them they are allowed to be.

        And I don’t think they’d do that in the absence of racism.

    • Confused Llama@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      It’s from the people developing Lemmy the software, not the creators of independent instances like this one or lemmy.world and many others. I think there’s not much to worry about since the software is open source and if they start to “leak” their ideologies/politics into the software (no idea how 😆), people will fork it quickly.

      However I worry that this is so off-putting to some people that they stop doing anything to help Lemmy grow when they learn about the developers’ politics. A good example is Lemmur, an Android app for Lemmy, whose author stopped further development on it, due to “lack of interest and political differences”, which is sad.

      • passport@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        just came over here after poking around some of the other instances and the quality increase from not having tankies brigading shit is truly amazing

        • Chef Rat@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Never actually met an immigrant who actually stays here in Eastern Europe but yeah communist shouldn’t come back. But I don’t want capitalism either, this shits wack for our people and workers. Guess there isn’t a place to create new economic structures that could surpass both of them.

        • Chef Rat@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          9·
          1 year ago

          We’ll it’s all true but there are some smaller differences, I live in ex Yugoslav country which was in eastern block but more liberal than Soviet puppet states.

          Most people aren’t racist or xenophobic (except Balkan rule: hate thy neighbor). We are just an extremely introverted and paranoid society, that’s why many empires fell around our people. We never had any colonies because our people were used as labour for other empires, so we never developed a superiority complex to other races.

          We’re just anarchy that’s preserved through community.

          • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            4·
            1 year ago

            That’s interesting. Thank you for sharing your perspective. As a paranoid and anxious person I can empathize with a whole society with this issues.

  • upperleft@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    47·
    1 year ago

    The Chinese Communist Party is absolutely not above criticism, but I always found the China obsession on reddit to be odd. While I don’t think it should be banned outright, I think y’all ought to consider what is motivating such a weird fetish (because frankly that is) for a specific government.

    • argv_minus_one@beehaw.orgEnglish
      32·
      1 year ago

      There are plenty of awful regimes around the world, but China is unique in how powerful and dangerous it is.

      In particular, if China were to invade Taiwan, which it has a stated intention of doing, then the TSMC chip fabs—the only place on Earth capable of mass-producing modern electronic circuits—will almost certainly be destroyed in the fighting, and that will cause a global economic depression that’ll make 2008 look like a minor inconvenience. That’s a huge global threat.

    • OrdinaryCrackEnjoyer@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      20·
      1 year ago

      Yeah idk what could possibly be the motivator for that, I mean it’s not like they’re currently in the middle of any genocides right? Or posturing about invading a certain island neighbour? Nah no way, they’d never do that!

      • upperleft@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        27·
        1 year ago

        As i stated: “The Chinese Communist Party is absolutely not above criticism”

        There is a point at which the criticism becomes a weird fetish though, and that is something that was a common occurrence on reddit. Likely moreso tied to nationalist politics and rabble rousing foreign policy that I personally have a disdain for.

        • 🇺🇦 seirim @lemmy.proEnglish
          27·
          1 year ago

          As someone who lives in China, I’ll tell you your perspective on that isn’t wrong. People abroad too easily conflate what the Chinese govt. dues with Chinese people and “China”. Their concerns are all valid, but people grossly overestimate how much impact regular Chinese folks can have on their own govt.

          How happy are people in the US with their govt and how much control they have over it? Not enough right, well the Chinese have even less. They’re even less engaged, though, oddly, but because the stakes for caring and speaking up are so high. People abroad probably rightly wish the average citizen constrained their own govt more, but the reality is they don’t have a way to do it, so they just focus on daily life. Also, they are in a misinformation bubble like crazy.

          • zpoex@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            8·
            1 year ago

            I think this is the best take in the thread.

            Also, as someone who’s from there, it’s just pretty weird seeing folks on there saying “f the ccp” to each other, sometimes adding a “but not the chinese people tho”. Like what is the point of yall repeating this shit to each other. It makes me feel like I’m sort of excluded, and I think I cannot really have a more in-depth conversation with those people because I do not think they will really understand my situation and the world around me.

            • upperleft@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              4·
              1 year ago

              You’ve really hit the nail on the head.

              Do the anti CCPers really care about people? Or is it just a hate boner/we love freedom meme?

              The way it comes off it’s like there really just isn’t any depth too it and it seems really performative with little real substance.

            • 🇺🇦 seirim @lemmy.proEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              Yeah, the reality is most online commenters haven’t been to China at all or for very much and their understanding of it is binary and Perry surface level. It’s a shame, really, but this goes across exposure to all cultures I think.

          • rothaine@beehaw.orgEnglish
            4·
            1 year ago

            Having been subscribed to r/hongkong for the past few years, it was like seeing the government quash the voice of the people in real time. 😢

          • skogens_ro@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            5·
            1 year ago

            Preoccupation perhaps? I’d say a lot of people on the have a preoccupation with US-focused criticism. Though I agree it makes sense that countries like the US and China garner a lot more attention than say, Czechia or Kyrgisistan.

            It’s the extent of it that can get weird. It’s everywhere. A thread about a knife attack in France is not an appropriate place to dunk on American shooting statistics.

            • upperleft@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              6·
              1 year ago

              I will say that I am personally more critical of the US, as I am an American, and therefore I feel personally responsible for the actions of my own government (even though I realistically have no personal control over it).

              • Ergonomic_Keyboard@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                1·
                1 year ago

                Something about reading a person with no power feeling responsible for the practices of the upper echelons of power and control makes me feel sad. Like the propaganda worked or something. I feel like there’s a parallel to the environmental accountability. I can’t remember the name of the approach, but it’s very much a thing that:

                Where one has power and control in minority, instead of dealing with it, make it seem as though the wide majority without power, control or benefit of X is in fact responsible for X, and they should feel bad and take accountability for X. Even though the unfortunate majority had no say in how the runnings of it were decided.

                -edit-

                • accountability evasion
                • Responsibility diffusion
                • passing the buck.
    • your_mind_aches@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      19·
      1 year ago

      There’s a crazy amount of sinophobia on Reddit, but let’s be clear, the people who fervently defend the Chinese government are being just as disingenuous.

      • God@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        It’s not sinophobia to criticize the CCP. I haven’t seen anyone saying anything about the Chinese people. What’s more common is criticizing the CCP and its actions as the ruling party of China. I don’t think there’s generalized “sinophobia” as you claim.

        • Jefe@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          6·
          1 year ago

          The commenter above made it pretty clear that criticism of the government, i.e. the CCP isn’t the issue. The issue at hand is that there most definitely is casual racism on some very popular subreddits that are tolerated more than I’d like. Redditors have blindspots, just like anyone do, but their particular blindspots include casually racist attitudes towards Chinese people. I hope that you’re just lucky in the types of threads and subs you frequent, but I 1000% have seen more than just casual sinophobia that had nothing to do with criticizing their government.

          • God@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            idk maybe i am indeed very lucky cuz i have not seen that, and instead have seen a lot of criticism against ccp being re-purposed as “sinophobia” by the genzedong community.

            notice, for example, how we ended up talking about racism in a thread about criticizing the CCP. coincidence? i think not.

            • Jefe@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              I don’t really know who they are, but it’s still important to consider even if some bad actors also bring it up disingenuously. The alt-right likes to call everyone groomers now, that doesn’t mean grooming is a convenient smoke-screen that isn’t real.

              • God@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                2·
                1 year ago

                i don’t know what you’re talking about here. what’s important to consider? that criticizing the ccp may be racist? and what does the alt-right calling ppl groomers have to do with the topic? sorry i don’t see the connections here.

                • Jefe@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                  2·
                  1 year ago

                  I’m saying that it’s important to consider that just because disingenuous people call attention to something as a way to dismiss your argument, it does not mean it’s not real. It just means they know how to dismiss your argument really well.

                  What does that have to do with the alt-right? Because lately any time someone says that it’s not evil to be gay and that pride month isn’t some national holiday to turn everyone gay, instead of trying to defend their insane stance they just call you a pedophile or groomer and leave it at that. They don’t actually care about pedophiles or groomers, otherwise they’d actually do something about the church or conservative congress members either being investigated for or charged with sex crimes against minors. All that matters is whatever works to shut you up.

    • carl_marks_@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      13·
      1 year ago

      Exactly. Chinese capitalism is currently threatening American capitalism, so American media and american society more generally demonizes it. China is willing to offer cheaper loans to 3rd world countries than any western countries and banks like the IMF. Of course, this is still exploitative imperialism, but it is slightly less bad than the west. China. Of course, China treats its workers terribly, but it at least tries to reinvest the surplus it takes from those workers into domestic production and infrastructure. Tankies love to depict China as ontologically good because it opposes american hegemony and has a rapidly growing economy. They ignore its imperialism and domestic exploitation. Redditors, American exceptionalists, and their ilk depict China as ontologically evil, a threat to world peace, the most totalitarian country imaginable. They of course ignore the comparably bad conditions of America’s puppet states and its domestic prison system. The reality is much more boring. Two capitalist nation states are fighting over their shares of the world market.

      • pancakes@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        11·
        1 year ago

        I’m not an American but it’s hard to equate these two countries. While I don’t love the US, you can’t deny that the CCP literally runs concentration camps…

        • carl_marks_@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          9·
          1 year ago

          What would you call the places where the US detains immigrants? What would you call the enhanced interrogation techniques the US uses in guantanamo bay and CIA blacksites? What would you call the prisons where the US forces people to work without pay?

          The US has used heavily militarized police and even tanks to crush civil unrest. The US doesn’t just threaten to invade a neighboring island (like china threatens to invade taiwan), the US actually has invaded neighboring islands such as Cuba, Haiti (multiple times), the Dominican Republic, etc. None of this justifies any of China’s actions, but it is important to know that nominally democratic nations can also act authoritarian.

          • Barbarian@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            8·
            1 year ago

            I tentatively agree. The key to avoiding whataboutism is to make clear that you’re willing to call out abuses and human rights violations for both sides.

        • kukkurovaca@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          8·
          1 year ago

          The US also runs concentration campus, has slave labor, forced sterilization, torture, genocide, violently repressive police, persecution of religious minorities, etc. etc. etc. Hence why it’s a red flag (no pun intended) when people in the west have A Lot To Say about China and just China.

          ::slaps top of any country:: you can fit so many human rights violations in this bad boy

          (I have a lot more complaints about the US than China, but that’s because I live in the US, not because I think other imperial powers are exempt from criticism.)

        • Jefe@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          4·
          1 year ago

          We do too. I’m sorry, but just because ours are callous and depressingly bureaucratic instead of passionate and angry, not having the intention of reeducating anyone, it doesn’t excuse the fact that even though Trump is no longer president we have refugee children dying in cramped cages, women and children being violated by ICE agents, and other human rights violations constantly and ongoing.

    • scrollbars@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      12·
      1 year ago

      Yup, the flip side of the coin is that reddit really has a hate boner for China. The anti-CCP side has its own collection of nutty people, with a lot of the talking points tracing back to the cult nice people that send out all those Shen Yun flyers.

      Shit’s complicated. That said, banning all criticism of the Chinese government isn’t the answer. We need to be smarter about the information that we digest.

      • Socsa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        7·
        1 year ago

        It really isn’t that complicated. If Chinese politics is to be taken seriously, then there is a ton of low hanging liberal fruit for the picking. There is no reason for the Chinese legal system to not have public trial, for starters. There is no reason for China to censor the internet or speech or free association the way it does. And most importantly, there is no reason for China to not confront the very real sins of Mao and Deng in public.

        I agree there is complexity which exists beyond this kind of stuff. But these are first principles for free society, and political agency, and should be taken seriously.

        • scrollbars@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          4·
          1 year ago

          I’m sympathetic to what you listed, and it would be nice to see those things come to pass. I’m just cynical about anything that starts to sound like “regime change” after watching the US campaigns in the middle east these past couple decades.

          Even though Tiananmen was a long time ago, there have been more recent cracks in the facade like the unrest over lingering COVID zero policies. It’s encouraging to know that people do have limits, but I don’t know how popular those sentiments are across the broader population.

          • socialjusticewizard@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            It’s always nice to hear from someone else that recognizes how similar all this saber rattling is to the buildup to the first iraq war. All of a sudden after years of radio silence, everyone seems to care really deeply about the situation in another country.

        • iie@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          it’s also possible China censored the internet as a form of protectionism. social networks tend to form monopolies because people go wherever everyone else is. whichever state that network is based in then gets a boost to its tech industry

      • God@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        6·
        1 year ago

        You’re somehow implying that being an anti-ccp “fanatic” is basically crazy, and that people should reconsider their position… because… ? hate boner for china? what does disliking the CCP have to do with “hating china”?

        • scrollbars@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          5·
          1 year ago

          You can dislike the CCP without hating China, or being fanatical about it. There are people that have trouble with it, though. As an example you could say that the CCP sponsors campaigns of corporate espionage on a large scale to steal technology from other countries. That one is pretty uncontroversial. But some people have trouble preventing themselves from taking it further and making generalizations about how creative the country’s citizens are, as an example.

          • God@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            4·
            1 year ago

            I haven’t seen that. First time I see a suggestion such as that you’re mentioning, that the Chinese could be uncreative. I read lots of Chinese books all the time and if anything I’d say they’re more creative than western authors in many respects.

            • scrollbars@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              Glad to hear, I’ve been meaning to pick up some Chinese sci-fi myself now that more of that stuff is getting translated.

              • God@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                3·
                1 year ago

                novelupdates.com has a lot of translations of asian novels in general, most terrible quality bc they’re done by amateurs but some are great, and sometimes it doesn’t matter cuz the stories themselves make up for the shitty translation.

              • MoistBalls@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                1·
                1 year ago

                Honestly, you’ve got some recommendations? I’m actually more into non-fiction, but I really gotta start practicing my Chinese more. I wish more books adhered to the traditional character set and the top to bottom format though.

                • scrollbars@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                  4·
                  1 year ago

                  Haha I can’t read a drop of Chinese, but the one that everyone tends to recommend as a gateway is The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin. Haven’t read it yet but I did watch Wandering Earth on netflix, which is based on a short story by the same author.

                • nanoUFO@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                  2·
                  1 year ago

                  There are a couple xianxia novels. Reverend Insanity (incomplete banned by the ccp but has some of the best word building and intelligent writting), Lord of Mysteries (more western fantasy lovecraftian mystery) and Forty Millennium of Cultivation (has 40k elements in it). Non fiction isn’t really popular probably because anything non fiction in China that has anything to do with history is at risk due to censors and people in the west aren’t really interested in reading ccp bootlicking.

                • God@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                  2·
                  1 year ago

                  I was trying to learn some Chinese the other day to read some of the raw wordings in Ascending, Do Not Disturb. The novel itself is not amazing, although I did like it a lot, but the translators left some terminology untranslated and I had some fun researching how to read that.

                  I can’t recommend Chinese sci-fi or nonfiction, haven’t read any, I only read fantasy novels. My favorites are Coiling Dragon and Douluo Dalu. If you can read Chinese then why not try those lmao. I wish I could read Chinese. I wouldn’t spend so much time finding translations.

        • nLuLukna @sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          I think he’s talking about the people who don’t do anything but look for hateable things about the CCP

          • God@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            5·
            1 year ago

            why should we look for likeable things about the ccp when they’re committing genocide? lmao. and why should we spend effort looking for likeable things about the ccp when they have millions of genzedongers around the world (example: lemmygrad.ml) to do it for them?

            • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              I think instead we should balance it with posts appreciating Chinese culture. They have a long artistic and cultural history that goes way beyond the current gov.

              • God@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                3·
                1 year ago

                Thing is, I’m not talking about China or the Chinese people. If I say “CCP is committing genocide” am I talking in any way about “The Chinese People”?? I’m not. Talking shit about basically Hitler2.0 has absolutely nothing to do with The Chinese People. Why should I go around randomly yelling good stories about the Chinese culture any time I wanna talk shit about Xi Jinping or his posse of evil? Makes no sense right?

                • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                  2·
                  1 year ago

                  You don’t have to, and I probably won’t either. It’s just a nice idea. Too many crazies take it too far into racism. (not you)

            • nLuLukna @sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              No I’m not saying we should look for positives But aside from the big flashy stuff, you don’t need to spend hours search for CCP raised taxes in Tibet at one point 5 years ago to know that the CCP is an awful government.

              That sort of hatred I suppose leads to the sentiment that Washington is a perfect government etc, its a political view that’s just as worthy of criticism as GZD, and also just as silly.

              Now the CCP has done some horrible things and we SHOULD recognise them I think I’ve got my point across, there’s a difference between hating the CCP and HATING the CCP I guess.

              • God@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                1·
                1 year ago

                I don’t HATE the ccp. I just hate reading support for it and for other communist tyrants. “oh but Marxism equality socialism ooh” sure commit genocide in the name of equality, get a Peace Nobel Price for eradicating an entire civilization, see if I’m gonna start thinking “oh but maybe I should be more lenient and think of the other side, I bet they also have good traits teehee”.

                • nLuLukna @sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                  2·
                  1 year ago

                  I do hate the CCP, I don’t need to spend every waking moment finding more evdience I already know they are awful. Between the on going genocide and the several of things they have done to retain power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely

    • Tree6024@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      8·
      1 year ago

      Technically correct, much like you can’t do anything about what your neighbour does in their own home.

      However, what sh.itjust.works and lemmy.ml can do is block ‘bad server’ communication.

      They can also enforce rules on their own ‘home’ as it were.

        • PirateSaysAye@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          5·
          1 year ago

          If a server becomes blocked by some other server(s), then neither can communicate or access the resources of the other, but they can still access resources from the other parts of the fediverse. If a server is unfederated from every other, then they operate as their own separate little island by themselves.

        • Mstraa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          4·
          1 year ago

          Users from the banned instance would not see the communities or content from the instance that blocked them. (As I understand this all thing ^^)

  • God@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    27·
    1 year ago

    yes, just post your anti-ccp shit here dude it’s free dude dude free it’s free dude