The US scarcely respects its own laws and constitution, it truly feels no need to follow its own word. This cold war can only end with the extinction of the empire, all its ally-vassals turning their back and only then will the republic disintigrate, likely kicking and screaming to take the world with it.

Jesus fucking christ. It’s the “Am I allowed to participate in society?” all over again. No, it’s not some huge hypocricy to have an extra flat that you rent out, or to work a high salary job. It’s also not a crime to want some comforts and even luxuries.

The landlords in pre-revolution China were essentially feudal lords, not people with a bit of extra wealth that still laboured for their living. There’s no point in looking down on people over what is little more than pittance for an actual capitalist today, those arseholes take trips to the bottom of the ocean for the money your parents accrued over their lifetime.

I feel I would’ve been a lot softer if I hadn’t read the comments. I also struggled with this when I was younger. If you truly can’t fathom being petit bourgeois, just sell it when you inherit it, though be wary that the buyer may be another leech looking for investments. Otherwise I’d say it’s sufficient that you keep in mind that as a human being your interests lie with the preletariat. It might be even better if you used your money to support revolutionary activity.

I didn’t know iconoclasm meant being against teachers.

Because that’s what these two men have been. They’re known for their lectures and their books. They’ve done fuckall to foster a cult around them.

He doesn’t acknowledge PRC’s achievements, doesn’t support AES except Cuba (I think) and doesn’t align himself with other anti-imperialists. He attacks journalists critical of the west, I faintly recall a bona fide NED spook quote tweeting BE to attack the Greyzone.

Insofar as he limits himself to attacking rightists, especially the ones claiming to be socialists, he’s fine.

As the news of the counteroffensive’s failure started pouring in, there was some idiot, I want to say Pistorius but probably not him, saying the tanks weren’t german, since they weren’t operated in Germany by germans, and that they were instead Ukrainian.

Communists just can’t get into the fashy mindset enough to come up with believable slurs, it’s only natural.

Wow, I really didn’t expect to see “protestors made my commute longer so now I’m pro global warming” type of critique here.

It would help a lot if these people weren’t so intellectually uncurious and read what these terrible horrible tyrants said. Mao doesn’t say that some landlord stole his candy so we all must commit to PPW everywhere. We can’t discuss anything with someone who thinks it’s the end of history, we can merely point them in a direction that might break the illusion, and if they by themselves succeed, then we can discuss and inform.

Seriously, I commend your efforts. At no point was I under the illusion that everyone can be educated with discussion or anything, but it takes shit experiences to recognise when the argument is boiling down to “this person holds all the wrong axioms and won’t respond if I try to refute them.”

That map looks extremely arbitrary to me. Knowing what little I know of a few cuisines, it doesn’t sound possible that regions where there’s a very rich tradition of meals/desserts with milk and a prevalence of yoghurt and cheese would have 30-60% lactose intolerance.

A journal for british billionaires makes cheap torture claims, among ither things. I feel the article doesn’t give us an answer one way or the other.

Clickbait with “our audience is too racist to give us shit” characteristics

Hey, I hadn’t read that. Thanks!

I mean, specifically in context, I’m sure my grandfather would envy this person. The context is that he hasn’t walked in almost a decade, had very low mobility for the decade prior, and had done physical labour since his teens before then. If he could choose between being stuck in a room left to his thoughts and slaving away for some disgusting corpo, he’d probably choose the latter in the blink of an eye. This (as in mine, the article is loathsome regardless) isn’t a comment on capitalism, just being old and decrepit.

Should I quote Lenin in Socialism and the War and Imperialism: the Latest Stage of Capitalism, on that? Do I need to remind comrades that Lenin saw Tsarist Russia as a nascent imperialist state with a mix of feudal colonial elements and modern imperialist elements all that tied to it being dominated by British and especially French capital? The excuses then that today’s Russia, an advanced capitalist state with sizeable capital export and control in its immediate region (larger than under Tsarist Russia to be noted), is therefore not imperialist is lazy. We must remain consistent. We must remain scientific, but very importantly we must remain clear eyed: The fact that the current war is an inter-imperialist one does not mean that we must ignore that the primary aggressor is undeniably western imperialism and its war dog the NATO “alliance”.

We indeed must remain scientific. That requires us to consider things that happened post-1924. This idea of labelling Russia imperialist, a shaky argument to being with, and then asserting that this makes the sides similar enough to not proclaim support is little more than idealism.

If we’re throwing out quotes, let’s also being in Stalin, Litvinov, Molotov. Why are we even pretending war between capitalists is happening for the first time since 1918, why are we ignoring the monumental though largely fruitless efforts of the USSR to rally the imperialists against Nazi Germany? Why pretend we’ve never allied ourselves with the US and UK when so many people’s movements received assistance from them, even if for the purpose of fighting their enemies?

Since multipolarity today depends on PRC not making moves to become yet another hegemon, it also depends on one’s position on China.

You may have a point in who leans in which direction, in that comrades that have been organised for some time have a bias against China, but that’s not a clever value judgement. Since older comrades lean this way, and the leadership are older in many parties, unions etc, it makes sense that this bias would be made official policy.

It might read like I’m devaluing it calling it bias, and that’s exactly what I am because that’s all that it is. I say this having talked to many of them and seen the clear contradiction in the party policy. Old leftists are quite often parroting anticommunist tropes re China, such as no freeze peach, no free thought, or direct quote ”They run people over with tanks over there." These people aren’t stupid, they just come from a time when China didn’t respond to western misinformation.

I’m always caught off guard by how many anticommunist arguments are just projection.

Another anglo salivating at the remote possibility of destroying the Three Gorges dam. The potential 100 million dead, half a billion displaced and the ensuing WW3 really doesn’t seem to take much place in their conscience. It also answers the question of what sort of person would make countryball comics.

Except that lowlife wasn’t so much as scratched! They were forced to behold the existance of people who had a different opinion that they believed for good reason, and that was enough to go all fascist.

I won’t say more on the 4 June incident, I only have two watching suggestions. First is the Gate of heavenly Peace documentary part 1 part 2 which I suggest watching with care. The facts are there, but the narration is dissonant from them and has a lot of sinophobic crap. The second is Tovarisch Endymion’s video, which partially uses the aforementioned doku.

On the subject of chinese history and what license it gives us to say about the PRC, I’ll again caution you to be certain of what you have in mind. If you’re referring to some misdeeds in the CPC era, you should inform yourself on the specific fault you understand them to have. Afterwards we (being this sub, lemmygrad or wherever you choose) could discuss at greater detail.

Finally, the media. It’s completely true that all media has a bias and an agenda. But we ought to approach this scientifically, lest we fall into a liberal trap and accept or reject something we shouldn’t. For example, what is the agenda of Washington Post? This one’s simple, it’s owned by Bezos, so it’ll push whatever he wants. It’ll support rightist deregulation, anti-worker policies without associating much with outright fascists, who might rock the boat and cost mr Bezos a pretty penny. What about BBC? Well, it’s owned and operated by the UK govt, which in recent years has shown the stick vis a vis their funding. As such, they editorially support whatever the Tories do, imperialism and redbaiting anything to the left of Thatcher. Next, the MYT, whose owner I know fuckall about. What I do know is that they’ve been in favour of every single war, intervention and pro-US coup since WW2. This, alogside the fact that they really hate SocDems, not to say a word hpe they feel about actual leftists, should be sufficient. As for CCTV/CGTN, I’m taking the craven route and not saying shit, inviting you to determine for yourself. Read their articles, see what they focus on and what they don’t. Try to look into their editorial independence, and for bonus points, find out how often they contradict the CPC stance. I’m not promising you’ll be enlightened and agree with me on everything, but I expect you to be surprised eith what you find.

I hate formatting my comments like this, but in lieu of a theme I’m sort of forced.

who i think it’s fair to say have a history of being not the nicest

You think wrong. You’d have to establish why you believe that without resorting to tropes first.

I’m not sure if the claims of censorship regarding people talking about the Tiananmen square are true or not but I feel the evidence brought forward is quite compelling and should not be dismissed.

I’m quite curious what that evidence is. It’s true that the mention of the 4 June incident is suppressed on the anniversaries, but not on other days of the year and one glance at reddit or twitter should make why it’s suppressed abundantly clear. People gathering on social media to regurgitate what amounts to little more than hearsay.

Your approach makes me question what you actually know about the incident. Are you aware that the protests were going on for almost 2 months before it devolved, or that the army was sent without firearm long before 4 June? Did you read about what the “peaceful” protestors did before the fighting started? Mutilating people and setting them on fire isn’t associated with communist, whereas reactionaries have been known to do that in response to whatever perceived slight. Perhaps most importantly, are you aware that a bunch of the student leaders fled the country and are now living cushy lives in the US?

I think that’s the whole point of my argument here is that things are just not black and white. communists, as history has shown, can be horrible and manipulated by the draw of power as much as anyone. Don’t immediately take one route because it fits your personal narrative better,

This is also a trope. I hope you won’t be offended by my saying so but it’s your one of your last vestiges of liberalism trying to claw through by creating nuance where there isn’t much. Communist leaders are often accused of power hunger, how they sought to aggrandise themselves, empowered the party to their personal benefit and elevated their creatures disregarding the desires of the people or the party. The best remedy to this is to read their actions and their words.

I’d also like to reply to the norion that whatever we say here is said because it fits our narrative. Fact of the matter is that almost everyone here was once a liberal of whatever inclination. For a lot of us, learning that the USSR/PRC were anything less than hellholes or that Lenin/Kim/Stalin/Mao/Ho/Castro etc were decent people and good leaders. We were handed down all manner of liberal narratives and the facts we were provided with didn’t fit any of them. As such it would serve you best to do your investigation and bring whatever facts you believe folks aren’t informed of before making the implication that anyone follows the path of least ideological resistance.