Removed by mod
Tankiejerk is now on lemmy
Removed by mod"Totalitarian" and "authoritarian" do so much lifting in these arguments. People seem to think that these adjectives are only applicable to developing world countries and anywhere that isn't the West. Try going anywhere or staying alive in this society without money, and take a look at the policies you support - are they law? Try being queer or against the social grain of society, watch what meager rights you have evaporate.
The freedoms enjoyed by chelsea manning, daniel hale, ed snowden and julian assange
There are still Black Panther survivors and AIM movement people in prison. And, like, let's get real - Everyone in jail for drugs is a political prisoner.
"Totalitarian" and "authoritarian" do so much lifting in these arguments.
afaik they don't mean anything. They're purely vibes based and usually thought terminating cliches. I don't think most of these people could name any non-authoritarian countries anywhere, or if they did they'd identify something absurd like the US or France or something. I have no idea what totalitarian is supposed to mean, I think it's just the Great Man view of history taken to an extreme. ie Stalin and his big spoon. Like the common use of the term is either purely vibes, or just absurdly naive.
right? is there a government that isn't "authoritarian"? it wouldn't even make logical sense
Authoritarian means bad country and freedom means good country, that’s about it
People seem to think that these adjectives are only applicable to developing world countries and anywhere that isn't the West.
Alternately, anywhere their team isn't winning.
Texas? Authoritarian.
Florida? Totalitarian.
NYC? Aktuly everything is fine here.
California? Downright utopian.
Georgia? Divide By Zero! Does not compute!
California? Downright utopian.
Sterilizing black women prisoners, thanks Kamala!
California? Downright utopian.
If you're rich and connected, it kind of is.
"Totalitarian" and "authoritarian" do so much lifting in these arguments.
shoutout to the anti-Jewish journo Hannah Arendt who provided the ideological basis for woke radlibs to claim "(Stalinist) authoritarianism did the holocaust, we need more freedom for individual capitalists like our PMC comrade Eichmann, not less capitalism!!!"
You can make an argument that woke neoliberal "individual freedom" ideology exists to deny the holocaust
Liberals dipping their toes in holocaust denial with their embrace of both-sidsing WWII
Have you seen !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works? Shit's managed by one salty dude impersonating a mastodon admin lmao
I regrettably have posted on there... in my defense I was still getting the feel of lemmy.
I posted some guy who wrote a 10,000 word essay to conclude that Pol Pot was onto something when he murdered educated people. That was in response to me saying I was an engineer.
I really gave up on that community when they started posting "racist" things from lemmygrad. Like "cracker" or "crakkka" lmao.
Mainly a small minority of Maoist Third Worldists and a lot of Gonzaloites stuck in the 1970s
Unironic Pol Potters should take a stroll to the depths of the Marianna trench where they fucking belong.
wrote a 10,000 word essay to conclude that Pol Pot was onto something when he murdered educated people
Dude needs to take a chill pill wtf lol
Lol they tried to explain that higher education is only there to fragment the working class. What is learned college doesn't translate to work expertise. Then told an anecdotal story about a recent college grad being elitist towards 40+ y/o clerical workers. All of this shows that Pol Pot was onto something when he was "shooting managers, experts, highly educated people in the head" because "they were perceived as an enemy to the farm workers".
I like Hexbear much more Lemmygrad... there is just something off about that place.
lemmygrad is scarred from many battles, but I find beauty in it
I have. The mod of the com even pinged Dessalines in a mention on that community.
Yeah they accuse @muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml of being Dessalines' alt lmao.
He's reaaaaal fucking salty, even I made into a screenshot lmao
It's not loading for me. Our Hexbears but be ddosing "sh.itjust[doesn't]work" now too. STAHHHHHP!!!!!
China didn't seem very "totalitarian" when I was there, unless the definition of "totalitarian" includes friendly people and cute pandas. The police there are rarely seen (mostly in areas with large crowds), don't even carry guns, and have a helpful and polite attitude, unlike US cops who use their position as an excuse to bully people. Also Winnie the Pooh merchandise is 100% legal there (I have photos if you don't believe me), people can freely talk about politics and complain about the government without being taken away by secret police, and ethnic and religious minorities appear to be able to display their religion and culture freely. There IS ethnic discrimination to be clear (at least from what I've read and was told), which deserves to be criticized, but western countries really have no ground to stand on in this regard. They do have things like more cameras in public, but this is also not something unique to China (the UK is an example). It's also likely that the government has access to certain commonly used apps, like WeChat, but again this isn't really any different from western countries including the US, where the government simply buys your personal data from third parties without your knowledge. Overall, I'd say I felt the government in was China LESS threatening than the US (especially US police), but this is based on a limited window of being there for 3 weeks as a foreigner, so take it with a grain of salt.
Yeah, but also, who can you really trust? Your own personal experiences? Or the US media/some white supremacist on youtube telling you how totalitarian it all is?
Clearly, they just blasted you with the commie mind control brainwash ray while you were there so you're now forced to say crazy things like "China is a normal country really."
It was mostly a pretty normal country. If you want to know about a truly scary thing I saw over there, though...
spoiler
KFC in China has a chicken taco. Like, not a taco with chicken in it, but a taco made from a huge slab fried chicken folded over. I'm vegetarian so I didn't try it, but it looked like some of the most out of control fast food I'd ever seen.
We have to stop China. Their fast food technology is going to surpass ours soon if we don't stop it.
Sounds like the "double down"
ShowBorger, but with fried chicken instead of bread. Either proof that God doesn't exist, or proof of his infinite mercy, as nothing less than infinite mercy could allow such a thing to exist.
Either proof that God doesn't exist, or proof of his infinite mercy, as nothing less than infinite mercy could allow such a thing to exist.
lmfao. gonna call this "Damarcus's Paradox"
This double down burger used to be popular in South Africa along with the KFC winter bowl, which was a mix of KFC crumbed chicken strips, mash, gravy, corn and cheese. Sadly KFC no longer carries those meals anymore.
It had a limited run in my country once, like a decade ago. It was pretty excessive, I don't think they were ever all that popular (people over here generally eat KFC nuggets and chips, not full meals.)
the US gov't definitely doesn't buy your data, they slurp up every electronic signal they can get and store it all in their yottabyte complex in Utah they've been siphoning off internet traffic from fiber cables at ISPs since fiber became a thing
they do both
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/us-government-buys-data-americans-little-oversight-report-finds-rcna89035
https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/6/16/23762403/data-odni-report-wyden
https://www.wired.com/story/ndaa-2023-davidson-jacobs-fourth-amendment/
i stand corrected, likely they buy it so they can avoid parallel construction but yeah looks like they do buy it too
buys
Buys? What about the five eyes alliance? Or I dunno... DCS3000?
Yeah, all of that too. The US also has 25% of the world's prisoners despite being only 5% of the world population. That sure looks like a police state to me.
I Iived there for four years. You only saw the bright packaging for tourists
I wasn't there for tourism and spent a decent amount of time with Chinese nationals. My views on this are also from speaking with people who lived there, but you are right that my own experience of it was fairly limited.
Huge claims, new account, and not a single link. Yeah, I smell anecdotal bullshit time.
Sounds like bitter sexpat to me.
Edit: lmao this coomer freak literally went around asking for "porn instances" https://lemmy.eus/post/172123?scrollToComments=true
Shills for NFTs, Check. Also confidently incorrect about how they work lmao. https://lemmy.ml/comment/2707218
Inability to learn to Chinese renders him incapable of doing basic tasks while in China, blames it on phones while even other expats prove him wrong. https://lemmy.ml/comment/2690720
Admits many Taiwanese consider themselves Chinese but decides some random sexpat knows better. https://lemmy.ml/comment/2483288
Thinks Chinese people can't write "native level English" https://lemmy.ml/comment/1174241
After having been kicked out of one Asian country, has decided to be a parasite in another one where they bitch about every minor detail. https://lemmy.ml/post/1648171?scrollToComments=true
Weird insecurity about being unable to learn Chinese leads to him accusing random Chinese people of not being able to read. Common sexpat trait. https://lemmy.ml/comment/1186287
Is his username literally African Expansionist? How much you wanna bet it's some bitter white South African?
All of this is stuff I learned, witnessed or experienced as a reporter working for state media.
They weren't surveilling the people and controlling them, they were keeping an eye on a foreign propaganda agent.
I'm not going to lie, aside from the hyperbolic tone of it, most of this sounds pretty ordinary to me, with just a few points that don't seem to match the evidence.
All housing is designed to be a prison, locking in entire neighborhoods at the snap of a finger. See what happened in Shanghai last year. All apartment complexes and blocks of houses are behind gates and walls, with guards at each entrance. Older buildings are retrofitted to comply. These compounds are cheerfully called "communities".
Every apartment building I've ever lived in has had multiple locking entrances and exits. Gated communities with guard booths are everyhwere in the US and many other countries. Many of the places I grew up had walls or high fences around them to deter crime and reduce road noise. The street ai live in now does at either end. You also say that every building and neighbourhood is like this, but there's tens of millions of people who live in different architectural styles and layouts. Plenty of larger towns and smaller city districts have medium density mixed use apartment buildings and low density houses, all accessible from the street. I have a professional curiosity in architecture and even aside from following various projects, reading about China's changing architecture etc, I watch a lot of walking videos of places I haven't been yet and while I've seen occasional instances of gated communities or walled courtyards between apartment blocks, most haven't shown what you describe. Do you have any more definitive examples of what you mean?
All housing communities have a party member who is given an office on-site. These individuals do nice things to foster community (my local lady organized an annual musical talent show) but they also know the residents and can report on them if needed.
Like Homeowners Associations do, or the people condo boards appoint, or 'block captains', or building ambassadors in apartment blocks I've lived in, or Community Watch captains when I was growing up in England.
All public schoolteachers are required to maintain what we call "permanent records" of children, up thru university. All behavior is recorded. Romance and dating are officially discouraged by the CPC until after college. If a teacher knows a student is dating, it will be recorded and could harm that person later in life, especially if going for government jobs or attempting to join the party.
Students all over the world have permanent records kept by schools and increasingly the details listed are a lot more than just grades and bad behaviour. And while 'dating' itself might not be against the rules in all schools here in the UK (it is in some) for example, a lot public displays of affection still are. I was genuinely curious about you point about the attitude towards dating and it potentially being harmful to their reputation later, so I went looking. Most anecdotal evidence, articles, and more seem to imply that dating in China is pretty similar to anywhere else, most people start dating in high school, and certainly by college. The closest I found to the idea of it doing reputational damage was the very poor way dating multiple people at once is looked upon (although that's true in lots of places too). I couldn't find any reference to the fact you dated in school harming your prospects later. If you've got some evidence for that I'd be interested in seeing it. Likewise, I read this academic paper from 2016 on attitudes to dating in China and it makes no mention of that. It does support that since the 90s Chinese dating culture has been modernising a fair bit to become more and more like it is in a lot of the 'West' although some cultural trends around family remain and young people seem to have sex for the first time slightly older (around college).
All public school classrooms thru college level have a class monitor. This student facilitates communication and represents the students to the teacher. This student also is expected to provide information about classmates. For example, Boy A is dating Girl B. Boy C didn't study hard for his test because he went to a movie. Etc etc.
We had / have a whole hierarchy of these in the UK too; class captains, prefects, head boy and girl etc. Some were nosy little snitches, some were chill and just student representatives. From what I hear from my many teacher friends that dynamic hasn't changed all that much, although the positions themselves are less formalised in some schools, more so in others.
Do you want to ride the subway? You must line up even at rush hour and have your belongings scanned. This is every subway station I ever went through, in at least six cities, including remote and rural stations.
New York and Los Angeles have not just metal detectors, but face scanners and body scanners at some metro stations. Most modern mass transit systems use extensive facial recognition programs with their cameras. Scanning your bags is different, I'll grant you that, but from what I've seen it seems pretty fast and cursory. Not nearly as intensive, lengthy, or invasive as going through an airport for example. Plenty of metro and transit systems all over the world have security or police that can and will do random bag searches and spot checks too.
Do you want to travel to a neighboring city? You must receive official approval from the government before you can purchase train tickets. Driving? You'll need to show your papers.
Can you link some evidence for this? Because honestly from the Chinese people I've known and everything I've ever read this sounds like total bullshit. Chinese citizens travel freely, although there can be certain restrictions or arrangements related to specific jobs where you're some kind of representative like certain civil service jobs and obviously there's still hurdles around travelling in Tibet. Everything I've read about train travel in China states that people with a Chinese credit/debit card linked to WeChat or other apps just book tickets that way, while foreigners or older people without smartphones use ticket kiosks or offices on stations. As a foreigner you may have to show your passport as ID when buying tickets, much like checking into hotels all over the world for example, but that's it. Basically every country on the planet requires you have papers (a licence) to show you can drive and you can be asked for it randomly, if stopped, at tolls etc. Again, not to mention traffic cameras and number plate readers.
Do you want to move to another city and find work? You must apply for a permit and hope you're allowed to leave. Did you lose your job in the big city? If you don't get a new work permit soon, you'll need to return to your hometown. Your hometown is an officially designated place that you must reside in if you have nowhere else to be. Hometowns may recall residents, or so it seems to have happened to my friend.
Do you have any evidence for this? I've never heard this. Much like elsewhere in the world you're required to keep your current residential address and other information up to date for things like legal and tax purposes. Obviously if you're a foreigner you need visas and work permits just like in other countries, but apart from some very specific potential restrictions in certain jobs and sensitive areas, all available information states they work just like anywhere else. Likewise for student visas.
Some guys on the lemmy.ml instance try to pretend China isn’t just North Korea with positive cash flow.
The DPRK is an amazing country, so that is a compliment.
All apartment complexes and blocks of houses are behind gates and walls,
As opposed to tent cities where the you people keep your underclass. Fuck off sexpat. Go bitch about being an illiterate parasite in an Asian country somewhere else. The horror, walls!
I'm Chinese, dipshit. I never understood the inability of you expat parasites to have any semblance of self awareness. Just because you struggle/refuse to learn our language does not mean the opposite is true. Go back to reddit.
Okay I lied holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit
ShowFurther proof that Marxist parents must work very hard to avoid raising miniature Mayor Petes and Girlboss Kamalas. Democracy starts at home!
Also they are 100% Tienanmen brained.
"Uhh, do you support killed 10,000 protestors with tanks because if you do you're a tankie" is "when did you stop (CW: mention of DV)
spoiler
hitting your wife
?" but much, much, much sillier.
"Yeah, don't you wish they had done that on January 6th though?"
gets some interesting responses.
Liberals loved Jan 6th, because it gave them permission to be pro-cop.
It was so weird watching the do an about face and start praising the cops! And they made so many excuses for the entire DC police apparatus hanging them out to dry. I guess they got the message?
Liberals are obedient repeaters that take their marching orders from the NYT
denying genocides, and falling for totalitarian propaganda and calling such regimes “true democracies”.
zero self awareness from the modern version of the "British writing soy utopian poems on slave cotton" PMC class
Colonists steal native land and rename it Massachusetts. Centuries of exploitation, slavery, and war go by to establish white supremacist authority in the region. Henry David Thoreau is born. He goes to live in a shack his friend helped him build and his sister and mom helped him finance. The property is owned and controlled privately and administered by an evil slave-owning empire. His mom visits twice per week to give him pies and clean his socks. He regularly goes into town to buy food grown by exploited farm labor and probably slaves too.
Thoreau: "Ah, untapped, unspoiled nature. Living off the land and writing fancy boy essays. I'm truly the master of my own destiny."
Getting mom to cook him a meal and do his laundry in her house 300 feet away
Getting some real BMF vibes from you... And I love it. If there's one thing this week has been missing, it's completely unhinged and inscrutable BMF posts.
Yeah this is the latest alt. I think it's my personal favorite username of BMF's so far.
BMF posts need to hit the front page of federation for the memes
PMC class
Worse, the average PMC at times has some level of self awareness and is miserable as a result. These are class apart that you find in the endless strip mall and tract-home sprawl of the Inland Empire or Greater Houston area, ie the burgerland suburbanite class that exists in a perpetual state of blissful arrogance.
All of the people in those countries who hate the government are free-thinkers and patriots, while those who like or are neutral on the government are brainwashed tankies.
Thank you for your service, the 40 anti-vaxxers at the libre cuba protests in 2021.
"Dunking on tankies from a leftist perspective."
Ah yes, Seig heil fellow leftists!
This will accelerate sh.itjust.works down the fascist gutter. The instance is crypto-fash right now, but once you get too many of them concentrated in one place it becomes too difficult to keep them from exposing themselves and they'll be defederated by everyone just like Exploding Heads.
The com is on dot world, but it was down at the time so I shared the link from shit just works instead. Your point still stands though (hell, it's probably even more applicable in this case).
lmao right then. Either way is good. Its existence will accelerate the rapid transition to far right for any instance it is on.
I did warn them they were going to get nazi bar syndrome.
Wow this is just embarrassing. I feel bad for them there isn't even anything to dunk on there.
the funniest thing about the term "tankie" to me is that it comes from trots and stalinists arguing with each other in the COMMUNIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN in the 1950s over whether khruschev was based or cringe for rolling tanks into Hungary. The Stalinists argued that Khruschev (the man who denounced Stalin) was based because he was putting down a crypto-fascist pseudo-revolution that was funded by the west, while the Trots argued that this was just Red Fash Tankie Soviet Imperialism. Someone on this site once made an effortpost about it.
So liberals have basically appropriated a term that different communists used to fling at each other back in the 1950s, and turned it into a totally bastardized "anyone who is in favor of using violence to end capitalism, including anarchists, are LE RED FASH TANKIES." This is especially ironic considering how much violence is used to preserve capitalism. Were the Americans not "tankies" when they rolled Abrams into Iraq? No. Clearly not. That was defending democracy from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein
breaking with US interests by trying to nationalize the Iraqi oil industrybuilding weapons of mass destruction.