This is a propaganda piece which intends to use America’s blatant authoritarianism, atrocities, etc as an opportunity to white wash China’s government as “comparatively good”.
It’s fine to talk about the good aspects of China. There’s no need to directly compare it to America unless you’re making propaganda.
Propaganda likes to ignore inconvenient truths and propagandists tend to downvote them.
Edit: tell me more about the Union Jack stuff. AFAIK Hong Kong had a locally elected government and it cooperated with the Chinese government as part of the Chinese government. No idea what you’re talking about, or why there was even a notion of them staying a “UK colony”. That just sounds like propaganda to me because, again, they literally had a locally elected government? Were there people that wanted to REJOIN the UK government?
I mean, I do understand that context; it is a propaganda piece portraying China as comparatively better than the US.
China is comparatively better than the U.S.
Making propaganda to that effect is good.
Everything is propaganda. You’re doing anti-China propaganda; I’m doing pro-China propaganda. with a veneer of nuance or whatever but my words have political meaning and so do yours…
I’ve never understood how any expression of political thought could not be propaganda… or that there’s an especially good/principled way to separate what you and me are doing from whatever you mean by propaganda…if it’s a government paying for it I really don’t think OP qualifies…or else the PRC should get its fuckin money back lol
The difference is the target, the intention, and the means of transmission.
I’m making a comment on a thread. Maybe 3 people will read this. I am coming in without a pro- bias of any kind, only with anti-atrocity bias.
Atrocities are something both governments are guilty of.
Yet the prevailing opinion (among tankies, anyway) is “China is the best and everything is okay and this is considered critical support because when pushed I cannot defend those things and will be forced to admit that they did bad things… but forget those bad things, look at how bad America is!”
I’m actually not doing anti-China propaganda. I’m interested in Chinese policy in a lot of ways and am not always opposed to them. What I am doing is pointing out the hypocrisy and inability for some people to hold authoritarians accountable because it’s THEIR brand of authoritarianism.
Edit: also, making propaganda which intentionally white washes authoritarian regimes with a penchant for violence against those who protest is… nope, still not good. Listen. Just grow a fucking backbone. Just gain some moral consistency. Maybe not you? But you can’t tell me the prevailing opinion around here isn’t “fuck Blue MAGA they support genocide, I’d rather just not vote”. And guess what? Those people aren’t keeping that same energy when their favorite “communist” state is under the microscope.
I don’t think tankies think what you think tankies think. Maybe I’m wrong, but my impression is that when Marxist Leninists get together, criticism of “AES” countries is a perfectly fine topic of conversation “inside” the group, but when it’s done “outside” it serves the interest of the US/capital/imperialism. And I think there’s something to that; it does! A little full of yourself to think it could matter more than looking reasonable to outsiders or educating your insiders…but it’s not totally crazy. I don’t know, there is plenty though, like look at bad empanada (I think he’d be considered a tankie, right?). Guys done quite a bit on the Uyghurs.
I say all this as a Marxist Leninist (I assume I’m a “tankie” to people who use the word “tankie” lol).
Of course, I’d also say it’s a bit silly to think one could “hold [China] accountable” by the opposite means.
We disagree about what propaganda means, I guess. I don’t think “doing anti-China propaganda” means you hate China or something, I think it just means you’re conveying a political message that runs counter to their political message. I don’t understand the distinction between political messaging that is or isn’t propaganda?
Tankie is a pejorative for authoritarian communists.
This isn’t inside the group? It might be publicly viewable, but it’s still .ml. This is .ml territory. It specifically shouldn’t be an echo chamber.
I understand what you’re saying, but this is the in group.
I don’t think it’s full of yourself at all to consider time and place when being critical, but I think also that this whole idea of “strategic criticism”, simply put, looks- no, is- incredibly dishonest.
Is bad empanada a tankie? I’m not completely familiar. I don’t follow any big political content (I’ve seen hasan clips on youtube and like liberal stuff like dean on tiktok). I try to avoid being parasocial. It sucks bcos I didn’t know Andrew Callaghan was a sex pest or whatever bcos I was really into his on the ground independent reporting. I also have never read any theory. I’m not a particularly educated person- certainly lightyears ahead of the average American citizen just by merit that I did “gifted kid good” in k-12 and took some college courses.
I don’t know that all marxist leninists are tankies. Idrc much. Are you all authoritarian? If so, I do think I understand why mls would think a state authority (ran by the people) is good or at least can be good, but I also think a lot of them are inclined to be intellectually dishonest when it suits them. Me, too, sometimes.
I use tankie, personally, more often to refer explicitly to authoritarian communists who are willing to overlook atrocities committed by “their side”.
I understand it could be applied to any authoritarian communist, however, but I really don’t know that it would be fair to call you ALL tankies.
However, some people (Cowbee, for example) do like to intentionally conflate being a “tankie” with being a communist- which is CERTAINLY not true. It is debatable whether anarchocommunism is feasible, not debateable whether its adherents exist. So you can definitely be a communist and not a tankie.
Oh, we can’t “hold China accountable”? We can’t start a people’s movement to hold the bad actors accountable? Huh. Almost seems like that’s a giant fucking issue. The people have no means of holding the government accountable?
I’m not saying doing anti-China propaganda has a prerequisite of me hating China. I prettttty clearly laid out to you what propaganda is. You keep saying “I don’t know, what’s propaganda, what distinguishes it from political messaging that isn’t propaganda”. And then I told you. And then you said “yeah, guess we disagree, I don’t understand the difference.”
I’ll repeat it for you.
Target - propaganda has a target audience. It is aimed at specific people or demographics of people, or in specific locations where it will reach specific people or demographics of people.
Intention - This is done with specific intention to spread a particular political message.
Means of transmission: Who is being reached, how, how many.
A comment in a thread? Not propaganda. A singular conversation? Not propaganda. A post which creates the thread, generates attention, and is the first/main thing most people will see? Propaganda. A pattern of conversations with intention to spread a particular message? PropandaZ
I hope this is a nice conversation and you’re not frustrated; it’s nice for me!
inside
I don’t disagree it shouldn’t be an echo chamber; I’m glad you’re here (not that I have or should have any say in the use of the space!). Definitely not “inside” though. When I say “inside” I mean within a democratic centralist organization with some kind of political discipline. Organizations I’ve been part of would, from time to time, task members with researching and creating a report on AES countries, and then presenting their report internally to help develop well-considered positions on them. That’s the level of “internal” that I mean! Like…among people who trust each other, and only those people.
strategic criticism
If you mean that “strategic criticism” winds up just being “no criticism” I think that may be a fair critique of a lot of ML orgs.
Theory
Obviously the importance of theory is something people disagree about heatedly but to me, resistance to imperialism in the imperialist countries is so minimal that I’m happy to see a wide variety of tactics and let what happens happen. I got my theories but I ain’t gonna go out of my way to criticize someone else’s (hell, I was general Secretary of an IWW branch for several years…Marxist friends joke thay of course the anarchists made the Marxist be the organized one)
authoritarianism
When it comes to the word authoritarianism, I think a lot of Marxists have the same knee-jerk traction, which is to turn to Engels’ On Authority. Not for no reason, I think he makes a good point:
But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists.
So am I authoritarian? I mean I guess so, in that I believe in revolution. I believe “authoritarian means” may be appropriate. I don’t think any MLs see authoritarian means as a desirable feature in and of themselves. I think every ML wants to see them discarded as soon as they are no longer necessary. I think reasonable people can disagree about what that looks like, obviously…but that’s a difference of degree, not of kind, right? At least I would see it that way.
Big agree that intellectual dishonesty is bad. We should all think and speak and work as clearly as we can. Insofar as MLs (or anyone else for that matter) think unscientifically (worshiping books, class reductionism, etc), that’s bad!
I think some people can hold China accountable; Chinese people! When I say “we can’t hold them accountable” I mean “the internet.” (Of course I think people in the CPC have the most power and greatest obligation to hold the government accountable, but I understand skepticism about that, obviously. I don’t think that skepticism is merely a result of western propaganda or something. I worry about that too; they clearly don’t do a stellar job lol).
propaganda
You said your categories but not what you meant by them, just that they are important factors for you. So having a target audience makes something more likely to be propaganda, as does intention to spread a political message, as does the actual effectiveness of reaching people? That’s all fine; I don’t think these really help us come to agreement on what is or isn’t propaganda. Like…it looks to me like your messages in this thread have a target audience (tankies and/or potential tankies), they intend to carry a political message (comparing china and the us like this let’s China off the hook for its own evils)…maybe they don’t reach many people (maybe even just one?). But in the scheme of things I don’t think that factor particularly weighs in favor of anything on Lemmy being propaganda lol; way too puny for reaching any substantial number of people (And fwiw I would say the same thing about my own messages).
“Tankie” is just a pejorative for communists, used against those with views common to communists. No socialist state is perfect, of course, but many preconceived notions about socialist states are flat out wrong, so communists get called “tankies” for giving a more accurate picture.
No, again, you are intentionally trying to mislead readers into believing something false to be true. Not all communists are tankies, and whenever we call you tankies, it’s not because you’re communist.
You don’t seem to understand the greater context.
This is a propaganda piece which intends to use America’s blatant authoritarianism, atrocities, etc as an opportunity to white wash China’s government as “comparatively good”.
It’s fine to talk about the good aspects of China. There’s no need to directly compare it to America unless you’re making propaganda.
Propaganda likes to ignore inconvenient truths and propagandists tend to downvote them.
Edit: tell me more about the Union Jack stuff. AFAIK Hong Kong had a locally elected government and it cooperated with the Chinese government as part of the Chinese government. No idea what you’re talking about, or why there was even a notion of them staying a “UK colony”. That just sounds like propaganda to me because, again, they literally had a locally elected government? Were there people that wanted to REJOIN the UK government?
I mean, I do understand that context; it is a propaganda piece portraying China as comparatively better than the US.
China is comparatively better than the U.S.
Making propaganda to that effect is good.
Everything is propaganda. You’re doing anti-China propaganda; I’m doing pro-China propaganda. with a veneer of nuance or whatever but my words have political meaning and so do yours…
I’ve never understood how any expression of political thought could not be propaganda… or that there’s an especially good/principled way to separate what you and me are doing from whatever you mean by propaganda…if it’s a government paying for it I really don’t think OP qualifies…or else the PRC should get its fuckin money back lol
The difference is the target, the intention, and the means of transmission.
I’m making a comment on a thread. Maybe 3 people will read this. I am coming in without a pro- bias of any kind, only with anti-atrocity bias.
Atrocities are something both governments are guilty of.
Yet the prevailing opinion (among tankies, anyway) is “China is the best and everything is okay and this is considered critical support because when pushed I cannot defend those things and will be forced to admit that they did bad things… but forget those bad things, look at how bad America is!”
I’m actually not doing anti-China propaganda. I’m interested in Chinese policy in a lot of ways and am not always opposed to them. What I am doing is pointing out the hypocrisy and inability for some people to hold authoritarians accountable because it’s THEIR brand of authoritarianism.
Edit: also, making propaganda which intentionally white washes authoritarian regimes with a penchant for violence against those who protest is… nope, still not good. Listen. Just grow a fucking backbone. Just gain some moral consistency. Maybe not you? But you can’t tell me the prevailing opinion around here isn’t “fuck Blue MAGA they support genocide, I’d rather just not vote”. And guess what? Those people aren’t keeping that same energy when their favorite “communist” state is under the microscope.
I don’t think tankies think what you think tankies think. Maybe I’m wrong, but my impression is that when Marxist Leninists get together, criticism of “AES” countries is a perfectly fine topic of conversation “inside” the group, but when it’s done “outside” it serves the interest of the US/capital/imperialism. And I think there’s something to that; it does! A little full of yourself to think it could matter more than looking reasonable to outsiders or educating your insiders…but it’s not totally crazy. I don’t know, there is plenty though, like look at bad empanada (I think he’d be considered a tankie, right?). Guys done quite a bit on the Uyghurs.
I say all this as a Marxist Leninist (I assume I’m a “tankie” to people who use the word “tankie” lol).
Of course, I’d also say it’s a bit silly to think one could “hold [China] accountable” by the opposite means.
We disagree about what propaganda means, I guess. I don’t think “doing anti-China propaganda” means you hate China or something, I think it just means you’re conveying a political message that runs counter to their political message. I don’t understand the distinction between political messaging that is or isn’t propaganda?
Tankie is a pejorative for authoritarian communists.
This isn’t inside the group? It might be publicly viewable, but it’s still .ml. This is .ml territory. It specifically shouldn’t be an echo chamber.
I understand what you’re saying, but this is the in group.
I don’t think it’s full of yourself at all to consider time and place when being critical, but I think also that this whole idea of “strategic criticism”, simply put, looks- no, is- incredibly dishonest.
Is bad empanada a tankie? I’m not completely familiar. I don’t follow any big political content (I’ve seen hasan clips on youtube and like liberal stuff like dean on tiktok). I try to avoid being parasocial. It sucks bcos I didn’t know Andrew Callaghan was a sex pest or whatever bcos I was really into his on the ground independent reporting. I also have never read any theory. I’m not a particularly educated person- certainly lightyears ahead of the average American citizen just by merit that I did “gifted kid good” in k-12 and took some college courses.
I don’t know that all marxist leninists are tankies. Idrc much. Are you all authoritarian? If so, I do think I understand why mls would think a state authority (ran by the people) is good or at least can be good, but I also think a lot of them are inclined to be intellectually dishonest when it suits them. Me, too, sometimes.
I use tankie, personally, more often to refer explicitly to authoritarian communists who are willing to overlook atrocities committed by “their side”.
I understand it could be applied to any authoritarian communist, however, but I really don’t know that it would be fair to call you ALL tankies.
However, some people (Cowbee, for example) do like to intentionally conflate being a “tankie” with being a communist- which is CERTAINLY not true. It is debatable whether anarchocommunism is feasible, not debateable whether its adherents exist. So you can definitely be a communist and not a tankie.
Oh, we can’t “hold China accountable”? We can’t start a people’s movement to hold the bad actors accountable? Huh. Almost seems like that’s a giant fucking issue. The people have no means of holding the government accountable?
I’m not saying doing anti-China propaganda has a prerequisite of me hating China. I prettttty clearly laid out to you what propaganda is. You keep saying “I don’t know, what’s propaganda, what distinguishes it from political messaging that isn’t propaganda”. And then I told you. And then you said “yeah, guess we disagree, I don’t understand the difference.”
I’ll repeat it for you.
Target - propaganda has a target audience. It is aimed at specific people or demographics of people, or in specific locations where it will reach specific people or demographics of people.
Intention - This is done with specific intention to spread a particular political message.
Means of transmission: Who is being reached, how, how many.
A comment in a thread? Not propaganda. A singular conversation? Not propaganda. A post which creates the thread, generates attention, and is the first/main thing most people will see? Propaganda. A pattern of conversations with intention to spread a particular message? PropandaZ
I hope this is a nice conversation and you’re not frustrated; it’s nice for me!
I don’t disagree it shouldn’t be an echo chamber; I’m glad you’re here (not that I have or should have any say in the use of the space!). Definitely not “inside” though. When I say “inside” I mean within a democratic centralist organization with some kind of political discipline. Organizations I’ve been part of would, from time to time, task members with researching and creating a report on AES countries, and then presenting their report internally to help develop well-considered positions on them. That’s the level of “internal” that I mean! Like…among people who trust each other, and only those people.
If you mean that “strategic criticism” winds up just being “no criticism” I think that may be a fair critique of a lot of ML orgs.
Obviously the importance of theory is something people disagree about heatedly but to me, resistance to imperialism in the imperialist countries is so minimal that I’m happy to see a wide variety of tactics and let what happens happen. I got my theories but I ain’t gonna go out of my way to criticize someone else’s (hell, I was general Secretary of an IWW branch for several years…Marxist friends joke thay of course the anarchists made the Marxist be the organized one)
When it comes to the word authoritarianism, I think a lot of Marxists have the same knee-jerk traction, which is to turn to Engels’ On Authority. Not for no reason, I think he makes a good point:
So am I authoritarian? I mean I guess so, in that I believe in revolution. I believe “authoritarian means” may be appropriate. I don’t think any MLs see authoritarian means as a desirable feature in and of themselves. I think every ML wants to see them discarded as soon as they are no longer necessary. I think reasonable people can disagree about what that looks like, obviously…but that’s a difference of degree, not of kind, right? At least I would see it that way.
Big agree that intellectual dishonesty is bad. We should all think and speak and work as clearly as we can. Insofar as MLs (or anyone else for that matter) think unscientifically (worshiping books, class reductionism, etc), that’s bad!
I think some people can hold China accountable; Chinese people! When I say “we can’t hold them accountable” I mean “the internet.” (Of course I think people in the CPC have the most power and greatest obligation to hold the government accountable, but I understand skepticism about that, obviously. I don’t think that skepticism is merely a result of western propaganda or something. I worry about that too; they clearly don’t do a stellar job lol).
You said your categories but not what you meant by them, just that they are important factors for you. So having a target audience makes something more likely to be propaganda, as does intention to spread a political message, as does the actual effectiveness of reaching people? That’s all fine; I don’t think these really help us come to agreement on what is or isn’t propaganda. Like…it looks to me like your messages in this thread have a target audience (tankies and/or potential tankies), they intend to carry a political message (comparing china and the us like this let’s China off the hook for its own evils)…maybe they don’t reach many people (maybe even just one?). But in the scheme of things I don’t think that factor particularly weighs in favor of anything on Lemmy being propaganda lol; way too puny for reaching any substantial number of people (And fwiw I would say the same thing about my own messages).
“Tankie” is just a pejorative for communists, used against those with views common to communists. No socialist state is perfect, of course, but many preconceived notions about socialist states are flat out wrong, so communists get called “tankies” for giving a more accurate picture.
No, again, you are intentionally trying to mislead readers into believing something false to be true. Not all communists are tankies, and whenever we call you tankies, it’s not because you’re communist.
Can you give some examples of “non-tankie” communists?
😭😭 literally anyone who would call themself an anarchocommunist for starters. Let’s not play dumb, shall we?