It is nice to see the western propaganda machine start to fail. I never thought I’d see the general public recognize Israel is a genocidal settler apartheid state until the last couple years, even though the propaganda machine has been working overtime for it. Hopefully other areas in propaganda start to crumble as well.
Born to early to explore the cosmos, too late to explore the world, but just in time to see the fall of the US empire propaganda machine 😁
Nah, we’ll be able to explore the cosmos my friend.
I am a Rational Free Thinker and that’s why I only consume privately funded US media that cites US intelligence
For all the orientalists below:
If that’ supposed to be funny, I don’t get it.
The meme assumes the Western context. We don’t trust the US government because of the centuries of violence and exploitation. We had to go looking for that information because it is minimized and buried at every turn by the compliant national media.
On the other hand, the supposed abuses of the Chinese government are loudly broadcast at every turn. You’ll find if you go looking outside of Western sanctioned sources that all of those criticisms are absurd fabrications.
Therefore, someone in the western context who says they don’t trust the US or China is trusting the US media for information about China but not about the US itself. Does that help?
Yeah, I think it does. But I still don’t get it why the man in the third image is with nearly closed eyes. Is he answering the question by mimicing a Chinese face, meaning China told him not to trust what China says?
Description: Eye squinting happens when the eyelids are compressed together serving to constrict the eyes. It can sometimes occur in just a fraction of a second before disappearing.
In One Sentence: Narrowing the eyes is due to physical or emotional pain.
How To Use it: When you do not like what is being said or seen, simply narrow your eyes. This tells others that you do not like what you are seeing or hearing. You may perform this eye language in brief within just fractions of a seconds. While people may not consciously perceive the signal, it will likely still register subconsciously. If the person for whom the cue is intended, notices, they may revisit their proposal and add additional incentives to ease your negative judgment.
Context: General.
Verbal Translation: “What I’m seeing is causing me emotional or physical pain and to prevent all that negativity from coming into my body I’m going to squint and block to resist.”
Variant: See Anger Facial Expression, Hand To Eye Gesture.
Cue In Action: a) A person will wince when reading objectionable portions of a contract. b) She winced when the student missed the correct note on the piano. It caused her visceral pain.
Meaning and/or Motivation: An eye blocking form of body language designed to prohibit distasteful images or even thoughts from being received at full view. Narrowing eyes indicates contempt, distaste and anger. A person will not only squint from seeing objectionable sights, but also negative thoughts or sounds.
Wincing falls into the category of microexpressions since it can happen in only fractions of a second before disappearing, yet it remains full of meaning.
I’m a little confused because the comic only has two panels? Additionally, in the second panel the character’s eyes are still round not any other shape - I don’t see squinting at all? (If you were trying to draw a head that small with eyes that were squinting, you would use angled lines, not circles)
In any case, I believe the interpretation of the comic intended by the creator is: “Panel one represents what Western liberals say about China. Panel 2 represents the media environment they swim in”
If you see only 2 parts of the image, that means your ISP sucks and it doesn’t load the entire image.
He’s saying anyone that claims to not trust the West nor China only distrusts China because they were propagandized by western news sources.
I don’t find that particularly compelling because I think assuming someone’s information diet and discarding it in order to invalidate their view is lazy. I’ll leave it at that so I don’t get put in timeout.
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Does feddit have screening questions on sign up to make sure people signing up are actual fascist?
feddit
lol yeah it’s in the name
“No U” says terf island
Oh damn you’re still doing the bot thing?
Entrance exam to get into the fediverse:
/s
copium level: estonia
When you have to resort to attack your opponent by using their post history you know that either you lost or you dont have any real argument.
Whataboutism
I don’t disbelieve it but it doesn’t mean OP is wrong.
I would say they’re a bot,
not a bad guess probably. just a week or two ago was when I noticed them posting frequently very suddenly, and before that I haven’t seen their name anywhere.
well they have 61 posts within a month, all of them being controversial topics/political opinions. no matter ypur political affiliation. this IS straight up bot behavior
yet his comments sound pretty human, LLM? bot-human combination? maybe just a dude being paid? idk
Nothing says “fragile worldview” quite like claiming everybody who disagrees with you is paid to do it
now, how do you know my world view? i never mentioned wether i agree or disagree, only that the shown behavior is what i would calssify as bot behavior
I don’t need to know your worldview because I recognize your defense mechanism. Nobody who accuses dissenting opinions of being bots ever has a well thought out worldview. You know as well as the rest of us, deep down, that you’re not identifying bots or paid users. You’re just incapable of creating a coherent argument against people with other politics, and this is your “out” to avoid coming to grips with it.
ohhhh are you sure you wanna say that? because based on tge “comrade” in your tag, and your description we seem to have exactly the same political opinions😬
You could agree with me completely and still be incapable of defending your worldview. I didn’t stutter, I said I don’t need to know your worldview and I meant it.
you are right, cause my worldview doesn’t matter. i see thibgs i attribute to bots, so i assume bot.
and what i wad referring to in my previous comment was you saying i couldn’t have a well thought out world view, which -assuming we have the same- would mean you don’t either. yet unlike you, i dont start defending everything that resembles my world view. i explained in previous comments why i thought it was a bot, yet you still assume that i just cant handle a diffrent opinion (which you have as flimsy of evidence as i have that they are a bot btw.)
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while a person is capable of that, tell me how many people post even once a day. most people never post, mor active users post like once a week. posting twice a day is either chronically online, or a bot. and judging by the fact that everything they post is controversial and political, a bot seems more likely
Well you’ve posted more than that; so I guess we should ban you for being a bot.
mor active users post like once a week.
You just posted multiple times in this thread, what are you, grok??
i in fact didnt post at all today, i commented.
So people who comment a lot about politics aren’t bots, but people who post threads are? Break that down for me, Columbo.
Nobody posts, this whole website is a psyop, you’re all actually six hundred mes in a trench coat and I’m actually a hallucinating LLM
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nah, i wouldn’t be surprised if it is a troll tho.
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believing that might require some kind of examination of their own beliefs, and they know for sure those are held up by rickety vibes and baling wire
Two (non-white-supremacist) posts a day?!!? Total bot behavior.
/s
No, lol. Being more online is more likely. Lemmy is filled with politics.
but not every post twice a day
Most of the posts you see are from people that post a ton of times per day, 2 a day is fine.
completely ignoring thaf we are talking about political posts specifically
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Noooo my heckin wholesome Lemmy propaganda don’t you dare have any other opinion than USA#1 here or else me and my liberal friends will call your love of gross, dirty and smelly foreigners and make homophobic jokes about you having sex with Putin
Dont forget the racist sinophobic “jokes”
the wasp nest has really come out in the comments here 🤣
Usians don’t like being told that their stolen land nation started by slave owners who then held a “freedom revolution” so these oligarchs to have to pay taxes while tge rest of their population does, isn’t such a great place after all.
hah! you aint’ kiddin, focused on real-life stuff for a bit and came back to a 40+ inbox 😁 😆
Well done comrade
Ah its nice to see lemmy grow. Now we can have fedderated senseless screaming matches just like the big social networks.
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Politics must be so easy when you just lazily strawman everyone who disagrees with you, before writing them off with an equally lazy adhominem.
I haven’t strawman’d them, they literally say China, Russia, Iran and DPRK are great and the West is bad continually. There’s no nuance to their position. At no point have I seen any post or comment from the OP that says “you know what, there’s some good and bad on both sides and maybe we should strive to find the balance in our perspectives” (though I will admit, I haven’t specifically gone through their post and comment history to seek it out).
It’s also not an ad hominem if I believe the person either doesn’t understand what they’re saying/doing or they’re intentionally saying/doing things because they’re themselves propagandised or being paid to say/do it.
I haven’t strawman’d them
Oh? Please point to where they said “Putin, Xi and Kim are the perfect humans and there’s nothing wrong in any of their countries and they’re perfect utopias.” Because that sounds like a huge fucking strawman.
It’s also not an ad hominem
Refusing to engage with the substance of their point and dismissing them as “either a moron, brainwashed or a paid actor.” is basically the definition of an adhominem.
Of course, someone has to post against the dominance that is western
propaganda“media”The solution to that isn’t to post even more blatantly state controlled media just with a different flavor of boot sole.
Come on now.
Nearly all media is state controlled. Even privately owned media companies because both the media and the state are just tools the owning class uses to maintain power. They share the same interests. There are some coalitions of reporters and journalists that have relative independence but even they must cooperate with the interests of the owning class or risk being shut out of key resources necessary for their reporting and therefore their income. The goal is to read reporting from all sources with the interests of the producers of that source in mind. You can read RT and get reliable information on some subjects just as you can read the kyivindependant and get reliable information on some subjects. Emphasis on some. It is unfortunately up to the reader to filter through bias, a skill that is suspisciously not taught well in our education.
Nearly all media is state controlled. Even privately owned media companies because both the media and the state are just tools the owning class uses to maintain power.
More info on this:
I really gotta read Chomsky and Herman’s book on that subject
I actually preferred Inventing Reality from Parenti
Parenti my beloved. Will be adding that to my list thank you
I haven’t given it a try yet, I’ll have to give it a read.
After reading On Chomsky I really can’t suggest reading him.
Your comment got like 10 downvote from 2 year old no content accounts. The redditors are here on the fediverse to correct the record.
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^ how to let people know you have mental capacity of a 13 year old
Imperialism? What’s that?
“Fuck this violent imperialist country that snuffs out human rights. Imma move to another one 💪💪💪” absolute bootlickers
Least mentally deranged neoliberal btw.
Hi, I’m very concerned about violent imperialism. Can you explain how China fits that description?
Imperialism is when war or trade with other counties
Truly a running dog for imperialism
Everybody Sucks Here
Only the right-wing neolibs of world and their ilk, I find the users of ml and hexbear to be quite nice
I was referencing nation states in general, not a subsection of the working class. Don’t get me wrong, rightoids are unbearable. I wish I could vacate this planet and leave them to play their shitty reindeer games with each other.
These institutions (nation states) garner a level of devotion much like religion, regardless of their ideology. Tribalism.
Nation states path to power is the capability to muster greater standing armies then other more decentralized ways of life. That is why the working class is so heavily divided through these imaginary lines on the globe.
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Downvotes are pro russian trolls
Search engines are free. Russia criminalized gay, trans people and asexuals (the only country that specifically criminalizes asexuality iirc). You’re “defending” a fascist state lmao
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The face reminded me of the style of the face pictures for Psycho Patrol R. I doubt that any one picture is exactly the same, but the style is similar enough to remind me. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/1907590/ss_97de425d644d8a91b36a76e87a82ad9b647c95bc.600x338.jpg https://store.steampowered.com/app/1907590/Psycho_Patrol_R/
Wasn’t the great leap forward by Mao the biggest mass murder in world history, according to historians not governments?
Doesn’t whitewashing that amount to Holocaust denial level cultural blindness?
I know nothing, quick Google search.
Do you understand the difference between causing a famine unintentionally and doing mass murder?
“Oops! I killed 15 million people, but it was an accident. My bad. Who knew forcibly moving all the farmers to the city and making them work in factories would cause a famine?”
-Mao, probably
PS: 15 million is the low end number. 15-55 million is the commonly accepted number, with some estimates as high as 70 million.
At some point you’d think he’d look around and notice.
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Lol what’s your source on this, the black book? Also do you think Mao was like the king of China or?
So you think Mao decided starving his own people benefited him? Why?
I’m sorry, but why would that matter? We tend to judge people by their actions, not their intent, when it comes to mass deaths.
Right?
Right?
In short, no, that was cold war propaganda. These intro articles get into some of the details of the Mao era:
- Monster or Liberator? by Carlos Martinez
- How did Mao manage to kill ~78 million people? by Godfree Roberts
- The Long Game and Its Contradictions. Audiobook
- The Rise of the Chinese People’s Communes by Anna Louise Strong
I could find books that say the Nazis are great guys too. Doesn’t make it right.
This kind of post-truth nihilism is completely fruitless. If you dismiss evidence that contradicts your preconceived notions on the basis that evidence against other unrelated facts might also exist, then the only valid beliefs are the ones you already have. You’ve arrived at an epistemological position that rejects all new knowledge and positions all knowledge you already have as infallible.
Why not evaluate the claims and their evidence, instead of starting from the position that any defense of Mao is comparable to defending the Nazi Holocaust? Not to mention, if you did come across a group of Holocaust deniers, is this really the weak response you’d give them? Not even going to produce any evidence in support of your own claims?
Getting people to read even short articles is impossible.
Just be honest with yourself any say that you’re not looking to challenge your orientalist biases, that you just want things to confirm them.
The communists were the ones who defeated fascism in ww2, Mao being one of the most important leaders in that fight against japanese fascism. To equate Mao with nazis or the axis powers, who they shed so much blood to defeat, is sickening.
And you are impartial, saying someone you do not know has an “orientalist” bias. Throwing out pejorative words, linking to lengthy fringe arguments like a Trump supporter telling me to watch Hannity.
I see you’re defending your heroes by parsing words and cherry-picking books and news and rallying your arguments (and propaganda) to defend them. I expected nothing less from you; it’s exactly the same thing a Trump supporter would do.
Carry on, comrade. Enjoy yourself. You have the evangelistic fervor of a Baptist preacher.
The People’s Republic of China oversaw the largest increase of quality of life in human history, and the previously mentioned famine would be the last in a region where they have frequently occurred throughout history.
The PRC’s legacy is not one of causing famine, it is of ending it.
That’s a bold statement, what’s your source?
- Wikipedia: List of famines in China
- Reuters, 2018, China overtakes U.S. for healthy lifespan: WHO data
- United Nations Secretary-General, 2019: Helping 800 Million People Escape Poverty Was Greatest Such Effort in History, Says Secretary-General, on Seventieth Anniversary of China’s Founding
- The Economist, 2021: At 54, China’s average retirement age is too low
- Bloomberg, 2024: China’s Energy Use Per Person Surpasses Europe’s for First Time
- Monster or Liberator? by Carlos Martinez
- How did Mao manage to kill ~78 million people? by Godfree Roberts
- The Long Game and Its Contradictions. Audiobook
- The Rise of the Chinese People’s Communes by Anna Louise Strong
I see you’re defending your heroes by parsing words and cherry-picking books and news and rallying your arguments (and propaganda) to defend them. I expected nothing less from you; it’s exactly the same thing a Trump supporter would do.
Meanwhile you do something a million times more honorable and simply refuse to confront new information, dismiss it all as propaganda, and say your opponent is equal to a Trump supporter (for what? for having principled stances that he backed up with multiple sources? How often do Trump supporters back up their claims with sources that aren’t PragerU videos or AI generated images?). You’re implying that Dessalines is being intellectually dishonest when he has done nothing incorrect in this conversation: he made a claim to counter your unsourced claim, cited his sources, and when you refused to learn anything at all he’s just calling you out for falling back on Western propaganda. Is any of that wrong?
Yeah lots of people died but the cultural revolution and Great Leap Forward but it has been over for 50 years now, meanwhile how many millions of people have had their lives ruined by US sanctions or wars in the last 70 years? Imperial countries export their misery so that people like you and me can live nice comfortable lives. Meanwhile we point at other countries who were deliberately impoverished for our benefit. When leaders in those countries try to take back their wealth they’re assassinated, when trade unionists try to organise to give the workers better rights they’re tortured and then assassinated. At least the Great Leap Forward only negatively impacted Chinese people, meanwhile you get to sit smugly on your computer or phone and eat your chocolate bar that was built or farmed with the blood of poor labourers in Africa and when those poor people try to rise up to better their conditions our governments and their fascist lackeys will be there in minutes killing them for you so you can keep getting cheap treats.
Also do you really think there is no political repression in the west? I recently read the obituary of a guy who was in my local communist party who was denied work his whole life because he was an „unteachable communist“ being on the wrong side of the ruling classes ideology sucks no matter where you are.
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