I was talking to a colleague of mine, granted, he's an economics guy, but he seems really progressive and thoughtful. However, something about communism, and he went full on dummy brain.

Like, talking about the communist party of China, was uncritically saying the violence and body count speak for themselves, and how awful and repressive the authoritarian government is. I didn't push him on it, but I am sure he would uncritically recite us propaganda - after fully agreeing with me that the US media is the most successful propaganda machine in history.

Anyway, I shouldn't be surprised, but it is still insane to me.

  • duderium [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I just watched that old Carl Zha / Noah Smith debate (I was doing housework for hours…) and had to suffer through yet another lib morphing into an ultraleftist when discussing China—criticizing everything that’s done there while readily admitting that America also does bad things. On the face of it, this seems like principled opposition—until we apply it to other contexts. If I were a centrist living in Nazi Germany, and if someone said that life for Jews in America is better, I could easily say, factually, that life for Jews may be hard in Germany, but it’s no picnic in America, either. Whom does this kind of argument serve? All it does is deflate criticism of the status quo. It’s actually just an insidious and underhanded method of maintaining the status quo. “Things in the imperial core may suck, but it’s impossible for anyone to do better, so you might as well make the best of it.”