Created after seeing this absolutely fucking deranged post in r/starwarsleftymemes:
https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsleftymemes/comments/qxri8x/if_you_support_modern_day_china_you_arent_a/
I don’t understand how that site can be so bad even on “leftist” subs.
This is probably my favourite emote on the site. It consistently cracks me up.
Because Centrism in America is polite right wing ideology. Thanks Overton Window.
oof that's awful.
i guess they exist in large numbers, but i'm not sure why those that claim to be most concerned with immediate material conditions (free healthcare), should be so doggedly self-righteous about china being "bad". like, hey dipshit, that's not the reason you don't have free healthcare.
i suppose it's born out of a rhetorical need to differentiate the good, sensible socialists from the "baddies", when they need to try to convince nonleftists of the merits of a more equitable society ("no we're not crazy like they are; we seek sensible solutions which you also like but otherwise didn't have the language to articulate"). but boy, they really seem to have lost the plot.
Those “I’m one of the good ones” bootlickers are always the first to go when fash take over because of their proximity to said boot.
Two possible takes on why they do this:
Take 1:
They’re social imperialists with no interest in liberation, just getting more of the spoils. If someone’s goals for socialism are only focused on getting themselves more free shit instead of on solidarity, then they might be a chauvinist.
Take 2:
They have an understanding on at least some level that countries liberating themselves from the imperial core “takes away” resources.
Instead of asking why those resources were there to begin with or properly looking at the distribution of wealth in their own country, it’s much easier to rally and attack a target that those at the top approve of.
mmm i don't think so.
i would bet it's much less insidious. i think these are well meaning, bleeding heart types, who honestly believe the worst caricatures of chinese policy and don't have a more developed sense of history, power, politics etc; i think they think they are supporting the little guy (at least in the immediate case which prompted your post, these are people who enjoy reducing everything to the manichean world of the star wars universe after all, lol). it seems evident that they don't just care about themselves (unless you attribute to them quite a bit of bad faith scheming), as evidenced by their alarm for supposed marginalized groups (taiwanese, hong kongers, uyghers, and so on), and their general political disposition (they want fellow poor/blacks to be better off). likewise, i'm confident that they aren't doing a geopolitical calculus about resource distribution, for the same reasons.
i would agree that they are tending towards being chauvinistic, insofar as they carry over sort of these mind relics from a prior worldview which finds that: anyone outside of the west is naturally worse off, and needs their help and support; and that any exercise of centralized power, outside of the west, is worrisome for reasons of "totalitarianism" and "despotism".
what strikes me, is, their need to do this kind of "virtue signaling" and punching left in a presumably leftist space. it must just be feelings of ressentiment and powerlessness, of being young and idealistic and stuck on the internet.
(also it shouldn't be lost that, at least in this case, the sort of selection of the leftish/lib pop which we are talking about -- people who love star wars memes. i really can't get over it; like, obviously, dudes on level of cultural sophistication of just reguritating corporate media are bound to be incredibly lame.)
In the case of social chauvinism / imperialism, a lot of the time it’s just people with no concept of anti-imperialism who are acting in their own material interest. Rarely a lot of conscious thought put into that.
(and/or, they could just be anarchists, which is also, incredibly lame.)
Boo. Hiss.
i think a previous comment of yours was deleted, but RE a point you made concerning social chauvinism and material conditions: i think that's pretty interesting. that could also be at work here. but it strikes me that, for at least some of the people taking these positions, downwardly mobile white people, this can't be the whole story. policies conveying material advantages to blacks don't materially help these kind of white liberals, but they adopt positions supporting such policies because it's evidently the correct and just thing to do.
these people just happen to that think that uyghers (in addition to blacks) are the ewoks and xi (in addition to trump) is the emperor lol.
I posted on genzedong, go upvote from the new feed:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GenZedong/
Who an I to tell Picasso which brush to use, just post a link here when you're done, I'll comment in support when my shift finishes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsleftymemes/comments/r0monl/just_saying/
Upvote from the new feed of their sub, though.
rule 2: no tanky stuff
No accusing leftist of being libs, atrocity denial/apologia
I'm getting the sense that sub is run by actual children.
Counterpoint: Wars create revolutionary conditions, therefore the long-game is ginning up anti-China sentiment to create revolutionary conditions. This has no ethical shortcomings and is completely above critique.
Wait until I start pushing the "the neocons were Trots all along playing the long game to create revolutionary conditions" conspiracy theory.
My counterpoint to your counterpoint of their counterpoint is that anyone who interferes in the process of returning to monke is a tankie
