Amerikkka land of the jailed (But China is defo AuThOrITarIAn!!)
Amerikkka land of the jailed (But China is defo AuThOrITarIAn!!)
277 comments
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both are. have fun fighting eachother in the mud.
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All states are authoritarian, in that they are instruments by which one class oppresses the others. What this doesn't say anything about alone, though, is which class is in power. In the US Empire, the capitalists are in power, and use the authority of the state to crush workers when workers rise up. In the PRC, the working class is in power, and the state keeps capitalists in check and appropriates their capital gradually.
The only way out of authoritarian control by any class is to get rid of classes entirely, which requires full collectivization of production. China is actively building towards that, the US Empire is opposing it. Until we get to a classless society, it's better for the working class to be in charge.
In other words, class struggle will continue to exist even after the proletariat takes control. All of the tensions from class struggle continue to exist, only they are resolved in favor of the working class. This is what "authoritarianism" looks like, class conflict expressed in state response.
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Lemmy.ml has a ton of communists, communists tend to support socialist countries 🤷
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At some point, you gotta dance with who brung ya. If, after over a century of experimentation, you conclude that every single AES state is as evil as the CIA tells us, there's not much socialism to support.
You also really need to jam your eyes shut and ignore the enormous improvements in quality of life, even in the face of adverse economic headwinds, in the surviving socialist block. "Ah, but I'm not free to shitpost on the Internet the same way!" is such sad metric for a country's success
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Both are garbage. The US is just a bigger pile of garbage (for now).
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Totally both are garbage. But from anti-colonial and anti-authoritarian perspective, US has always been garbage. Trump only removed the pretensions. I mean, Joe Biden affirmed that US will invade Holland if any Americans are arrested by the International Court there. So much for a country that purports rules based international order, if the most supreme power the world has ever seen confirmed that such rules and order don't apply to them.
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US is in a situation where even the Chinese government can make fun of how undemocratic it is. I think this explains a lot.
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Nafo clown propagandists eating shit as usual.
Edit because you did an edit:
Authoritarian state
Wet water
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
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I just gotta pop in and say: thank you, comrades, for absolutely making my morning by dunking on some capitalists' useful idiots.
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I don’t know what it is about this post in particular, but the threadiverse isn’t sending its best 🤷
Edit to add: Some of them were so angry that they broke out their alt accounts to downvote some more.
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I think some of the Reddit refuges honestly think Reddit sucks because Spez Man Bad. There's no analysis of what creates Reddits and Spezes, and therefore they don't recognize who made this platform and why.
I have to believe ultimately some of these people will come around, so that's good at least.
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Jokes on them, my instance ignores down votes. Lol
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How frequent are alt-downvotes?
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I'm kind of new to lemmy in general and judging by the other comments I want to ask: is lemmy.ml full of ultras? Or is that what you're talking about in saying they didn't send their best?
If it is full of ultras, do you know of an instance(?) that either critically supports AES countries or at least has more of a mixed set of users? I don't mind debate, but on every single comment it would get tiring.
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Anytime comrade 🫡
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There are a lot of communists on Lemmy, and communists tend to support socialist countries. Simple as that. Plus, in the current era where the US Empire is dying, China is presenting itself as a better trade partner for the global south, one focused more on multilateralism and not on imperialism.
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liberals brain breaking
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Freedom with the most people in prison
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They're not always in prison, sometimes we let them do their forced labor outside.
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Agreed, the US prison system is legalized form of slavery
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That is a camper van. Probably cozy tbh
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maybe we should hold a vote to defederate from them
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100% Agree. They all seem to be excusing chinese authoritarianism
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Yes, both countries have serious problems. At least Americans can discuss theirs openly.
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Tell that to Malcolm X, MLK, or Fred Hampton
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And it’s not like those were one-offs, COINTELPRO was crazy in scope and did massive damage beyond just the murders.
It’s not like that’s all in the past either, just look at how the Palestine protests were handled as well as the Floyd protests.
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At least Americans can discuss theirs openly.
Lol have you seen what's been happening to pro Palestine protestors? BLM protestors? Anti Trump protestors? Julian Assange? Edward Snowden?
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Those against the Iraq war, or Vietnam war...
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So do Chinese citizens, though. The state exerts control over private media and the speech of wealthy capitalists, but there's broad diversity in political thought and discussion.
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Just don't demand or try to enact real lasting change
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You are free to protest as long as we can tuck you in the corner and ignore you
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Chinese average citizens can freely discuss what they want, the "disappearing" is just western propa
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Chinese too, and openly in the US currently not so much. People in China are heavy controlled by the Gov, but they have more civil rights and services as citizen in the US
Complete list of banned books in the US. (Autoscroll enabled, due to the hugh amount of those, stop/start with mouseclick)
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/a45012950/banned-book-list/
US Freedom and Human rights only exist in Fox News.
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People in China are heavy controlled by the Gov, but they have more civil rights
You guys are completely brainwashed if you believe this. They can't even form a union or strike.
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Complete list of banned books in the US
Lmao what? Do you know what "banning" a book means? It's just not on offer in schools or a library for that specific state. It's completely normal to just buy it for yourself and there are even organizations dedicated to distributing banned books.
It's hilarious to try and dunk on America with this of all things. Media restricted/censored in China is entirely unavailable. It's actually very interesting how the censorship manifests in daily life, but I imagine any .ml reader will discard those anecdotes (or any verifiable reports) and try to redirect back to the West somehow.
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Sometimes. For now.
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What does a totalitarian state even mean? Based on liberals, left communists, and anarchists, it's every socialist experiment that had lasted a great amount of time and accomplished better living standards for their citizens. 😂
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System of a Down - The Prison Song
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China? The US is currently more compeeting with North Corea respect freedom and human rights.
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and who supports north korea?
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What on earth do you mean by "totalitarian?" China's a democratic country, if the US was acting more like China we'd actually have good infrastructure, manufacturing, democracy, and a coherent plan for the future. Sadly, the US isn't a socialist country.
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Shit redditors say 😂
If the US acted more like China y'all could actually be the best country in the world like your delusional population believes.
Rising standards of living, life expectancy, housing for everyone, affordable healthcare and fresh produce. What horrors, they don't even poison themselves with hormone burgers bro.
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I'm not from the USA.
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277 comments
Fun fact: It's actually possible for two countries to both be authoritarian!
The US killed a million innocent people in Iraq just a few years ago, and is *currently * drone bombing several countries in ME and north africa, and is currently supporting the apartheid state of israel with billions of dollars in military aid.
The PRC has not been in a war since its skirmish with Vietnam in 1979.
The US has a network of > 800 military bases across the globe, and has been involved in regime change in nearly every country.
Which one is authoritarian?
I feel like this is shifting the focus to imperialism, where the US is overwhelmingly and undeniably worse.
However, domestically, if you wanna pretend that someone as a random citizen, has any chance of receiving political representation in China, well you enjoy your fantasy.
The US and China are both deeply undemocratic places. I'm saying this as someone from neither country.
Anyone who's actually been to China would know this. It is authoritarian. It's not even something viewed as bad by most people in China. It's just the way things are there.
There is pretty strong support for the government there, albeit that could be argued as product of censorship, repression and also genuine support. Many see the CCP as having done a lot of good things which they are grateful for, which in addition to the bad things, in fairness, they have done.
I'm getting kinda tired of some leftists knee jerking "China Good", just as much as I'm getting kinda tired of the "China Bad" crowd, when the truth is neither wholly good nor wholly bad.
We can be leftists and not have a hard-on for any country claiming to be socialist, you know
"They can both be authoritarian"
"WELL USA INVADED IRAQ"
Lmao
Which one is currently genociding Uhygurs? Which one illegally annexed Tibet and Hong Kong? Both countries are authoritarian shit-holes.
Uighurs
Tibet
Supporting Russia in Ukraine
Look up the definition of authoritarianism. Bombing other countries is not the defining feature of an authoritarian government.
Both...
We don't need anti-American propaganda, we already hate America, my guy
"Authoritarian" is largely a meaningless term. All it really means is one group using force against another group, but it doesn't say anything about which group is which. In the US Empire, the capitalists use the state to crush the workers, and export genocide and chaos to the global south. In the PRC, the working class uses the state to keep the capitalists in check as they progress and develop along socialist lines. This stark difference in which class is in power is shown with immense popular support in the PRC:
I'm a big defender of China when the "China Bad" crowd comes out, but this graph is meaningless beyond what people's perceptions are.
Real trade unions are banned. All must be part of the party, workers rights are routinely not enforced, and given the lattitude the government has to act, there isn't really much of an excuse.
The CCP enjoy massive support, though, this is undeniable. The reasons for this support is debatable and vary from person to person.
I for one, very much enjoy when the Chinese government does things in line with my socialist ideals. But let's not pretend like they're actually keeping the capitalists in check. There are many, many billionaires in China, something that ought not be possible under an actual socialist country.
It doesn't take a genius to look at their system of voting to quickly conclude that you don't really have a say, the People's Congress functions as a rubber stamp for what the inner party has already decided.
Again, my opinions aside, people in China generally are supportive of the government at this present time.
The state used the police to crush the working class when they demanded the money from the banks that invested it in a runaway housing scam.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/11/china-violent-clashes-at-protest-over-frozen-rural-bank-accounts
You are believing in a fantasy. There are countless countries around the world that are arguably more socialist than China without even calling themselves such. Quite frankly, I trust actions and numbers more than words.
Meta argument: charts like this are basically useless.
I was raised in a very religious town. If you asked, the people in that town would say “my religion is a religion of love” “people should be as free as possible because it’s an extension of personal agency” and all the while they beat their kids and would rather die than let gay or trans people be themselves.
They can quote the scriptures and could likely write some pretty strong rhetoric implying they are loving and kind and caring, but it wouldn’t be anywhere near the truth.
Point is that just because you get phrases pounded into your head doesn’t mean you truly believe them or even know what they imply.
If your country’s rhetoric specifically states that the government serves the people and says it over and over, regardless of the truth of that statement, people will have a tendency to select it. (Like if your government called itself the people’s republic…)
If you asked Americans and Chinese if they think personal freedom is important, you’d likely get the reverse pattern in your graph. Is this because America has more freedom? No, more likely it’s because the historical rhetoric we get exposed to emphasizes “freedom” whereas China’s revolutionary rhetoric was centered around “democracy”
If you asked Americans if they support socialism, you’d get lower bars than if you asked it indirectly. Just using the word socialism skews your metric.
People will say they support or don’t support concepts they don’t understand, or that they view in a different light than others. Does democracy mean more than two political parties? Does democracy mean no capitalism? Does democracy require freedom to spread information freely? Etc.
So once again these metrics are useless because I’d imagine most of these countries’ voters would disagree on what the statements even mean.
Okay, but we are talking about a country where you aren't allowed to form a political party that opposes the CCP, right? How can we tell the difference between "hell yeah, my country is making my life great" and "there is exactly one answer to this survey question that will not get me in trouble"? I always try to keep in mind that I am not immune to propaganda, but I've personally known Chinese people who have very explicitly declined to offer any criticism of the Chinese government or go against the party line, even in private conversation, because they didn't want trouble.
So you consider a state censoring all it's citizens from discussing certain words and topics to not be authoritarian?
Can you please provide a source for the graphic?
Better answer the survey correctly when you live in a country that has laws like "disagreeing with the government is a crime"
We Need To Talk About "Authoritarianism"
People really need to stop getting their views from the internet.
It's possible, but it's objectively not the case. Don't take my word for it though, it's what people actually living in China say.
That's why deepseek refuses to criticize the CCP
Except one country is authoritarian and lying about the authoritarianism of China
China?
Right now the US is led by fan of xi and putin, so no surprise he wants to implement the same things there.
@KoboldCoterie
Exactly this.