You clearly didn’t. I’m not American so I’m not part of your “we”. Your turn: is Gaza just a gotcha for you?

Have you been doing any Palestine solidarity work or is gaza just a gotcha for you?

The link works for me. What can I tell you, I’m literally debating shitty Chinese policies with user “stumu415” on a different sub thread here. Search for the string “IAGS” in the comments under this post. I’m tired trying to convince you I’m not an elephant when you continuously make bad faith assumptions and miscaracterise what I’m saying.

Edit: if you’re denying the existence of mass incarceration system in the US (aka the carcéral state) you’re denying reality and absolutely giving the US a pass.

Things being bad or somewhat bad on the West is irrelevant in a discussion about whatever China is doing. One of the most infuriating things we Canadians say is the phrase “at least we’re not as bad as the US”. Fuck that.

If mass surveillance is unacceptable in the West, it’s also unacceptable in China. No ifs and buts. That western surveillance is primarily commercial and secondarily political, whereas is China it’s the other way around doesn’t mean any of the two is ok.

And no, censorship is not the same everywhere, that’s just false. We don’t all hide our history and of course free speech is part of the fight for that.

That’s I guess my biggest suspicion with China as well, especially when it comes to labour. In China labour issues as seen as something for the state to manage through official unions. And I don’t buy the whole-process democracy thing. It’s too cooptive, too “harmonious”. Not buying.

Funny, ten minutes ago I wrote this: https://lemmy.ca/comment/22610922 literally further down the this very thread.

How can you at the same time say that “carceral state” is a tankie dogwhistle, and also say that nobody is giving the US a pass?

To be clear, I am not denying those accusations against China. The Uighur genocide is recognized by the International Association of Genocide Scholars; one cannot cite the IAGS on Gaza and ignore it on Xinjiang. The mass surveillance is also real, the censorship around the Tienanmen massacre is silly Orwellian, and the strangulation of Hong Kong democracy is lamentable. The atrocious working conditions and the iron disciplining of labour is also all too real (I’ve had multiple discussions with Chinese people who bragged about how there are no strikes in China.)

I was only trying to be fair and balanced, because as Westerners we are too often giving ourselves a pass: 1) China is a net positive for the green transition due to solar, at a time when the US is going full fossil fascist. And 2) it is a pole of stability internationally, in ways that the trumpist US and Israel-enabling EU have not been.

Edit: typos and such

Oh no! Anyway…

Even more, Europe and the US had a goddamn deal with Iran that now sounds like an unrealistically optimistic scenario.

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You yanks REALLY need to lose this one. Your noses need to be rubbed in it. You need to feel the SHIT you put the rest of us though. And you need to get seriously angry at the Israelis and rub THEIR noses in it. You need a big enough shock to CHANGE.

(Like I know most of the people on Lemmy are not Republican idiots. I’m obviously not talking about you personally, but about the «general public opinion» in the US, especially the Republican idiots.)

Fuck the US, help Cuba.

Aren’t we saying the same thing?

We’re at the firing of generals stage already?! Hahahaha.

Le président du Faso s’est prononcé sur l’idéologie politique en cours au Burkina. « Nous ne sommes pas dans une démocratie. Nous sommes bien en révolution progressiste populaire. Il faut que tout le monde comprenne cela », a affirmé Ibrahim Traoré.

Pour lui, aucun pays ne peut se développer dans la démocratie qui est « l’aboutissement ».

« On passe forcément par une révolution et nous sommes bel et bien en révolution », a-t-il déclaré, tout en invitant les Burkinabè s’en approprier.

Selon lui, la question de démocratie ou de libertinage d’action ou d’expression, n’a pas sa place. Elle débouche sur une « société de désordre ».

« On ne fait pas de révolution dans le désordre, c’est impossible. Et nous allons faire régner l’ordre et la discipline pour que nous puissions progresser. Parce que les réformes sociales, économiques, politiques, idéologiques ont besoin d’ordre et de discipline. Et chacun a son rôle à jouer », a insisté le Chef de l’Etat.

https://fr.apanews.net/news/nous-ne-sommes-pas-dans-une-democratie-capitaine-traore/

So, basically what’s he’s saying is that the situation is too volatile for democracy, that they want to do certain reforms that require order. The concept of a provisional transitional dictatorship to stabilize things is not an aberration per se, in the context of a chaotic situation. In theory it could be reasonable.

So far so good. One can debate his sincerity, can have different assessments of whether he’s right or not. That’s legitimate political debate.

But the other things he said, equating democracy as such with crimes, that’s extremely alarming. The problem is that he’s making an ideology out of a necessity. He’s not saying “the country is not ready, we need to first stabilize and then democratize”. He’s saying that democracy isn’t even an horizon. And even worse he’s not even qualifying what kind of democracy he’s rejecting, he’s rejecting democracy as such. Really Existing Socialist countries at least maintain that they are higher forms of democracy. He’s done away with the concept altogether.

So they bring the “Jihad” in the “Butlerian”?

I was talking about the US carceral state, i.e., the inhumane American exception from the global norm that is considered “normal” in the US. The US system is slightly more intelligent than blanketly imprisoning a population. No. First the US marginalizes and impoverishes them, then over-polices them, then finds little justifications to label them criminals, then does the imprisonment. That this is entirely normalized and nuanced and cast as complex in a country that considers itself “a city on the hill” or whatever bullshit, is irrelevant. If China had Hollywood and good copaganda TV shows, they would have also convinced the world that their carceral system is normal.

How would Americans feel if Golden Gate bridge was bombed by a hostile entity?

The US is literally doing all the things you’re accusing China of. The only reason it gets a pass on the massive carceral state, the largest in the world by far, is because its cultural industry has so normalized it.

The big difference is that China is a net positive when it comes to global stability and addressing climate change, whereas the US is not.

Those of us who care about things like democracy and human rights have a lot of digging to do.

Boycott, divest, sanction.

Same applies to Israel. BDS should be taken seriously.