#china totalitarian state

[herukapadmajungiansworld]

#chinese communism #china totalitarian state #chinese state #chinese communist party #mao tse tung #mao zedong #zhou enlai #chou en lai #ukraine resistance #stop russian invasion #putin war criminal #stop putin #defend ukraine #putin war ukraine russia #help ukraine #ukraine war #stop putin's agents usa #stop putin allies #henry kissinger

[apenitentialprayer]

Looking in the Mirror

Everyone knows (or thinks they know) about the draconian Internet measures of the Chinese government, and some people know (or think they know) the gravamen of the disclosures I gave to journalists in 2013 about my own government's capabilities. But listen: it's one thing to casually say, in a science-fiction dystopic type of way, that a government can theoretically see and hear everything that all of its citizens are doing. It's a very different thing for a government to actually try to implement such a system. What is a science-fiction writer can describe in a sentence might take the concerted work of thousands of technologists and millions of dollars of equipment. To read the technical details of China's surveillance of private communications –to read a complete and accurate accounting of the mechanisms and machinery required for the constant collection, storage, and analysis of the billions of daily telephone and internet communications of over a billion people– was utterly mind-boggling. At first I was so impressed by the system's sheer achievement and audacity that I almost forgot to be appalled by its totalitarian controls. After all, China's government was an explicitly antidemocratic single-party state. NSA agents, even more than most Americans, just took it for granted that the place was an authoritarian hell-hole. Chinese civil liberties weren't my department. There wasn't anything I could do about them. I worked, I was sure of it, for the good guys, and that made me a good guy, too. But there were certain aspects of what I was reading that disturbed me. I was reminded of what is perhaps the fundamental rule of technological progress: if something can be done, it probably will be done, and possibly already has been. There was simply no way for America to have so much information about what the Chinese were doing without having done some of the very same things itself, and I had the sneaking sense while I was looking through all this China material that I was looking at a mirror and seeing a reflection of America. What China was doing publicly to its own citizens, America might be –could be– doing secretly to the world.

Edward Snowden (Permanent Record, pages 170-171). Bolded emphases added.

#China #United States #technology #surveillance #Industrial Revolution #Edward Snowden #totalitarianism

[claudiosuenaga]

Rumo ao Totalitarismo Global: O sistema de "Crédito Social" da China é mais um pesadelo de Black Mirror que vai se tornando real

Por Cláudio Tsuyoshi Suenaga

O Crédito Social da China é um sistema abrangente de âmbito nacional no qual cada ação é monitorada e uma pontuação única é atribuída a cada indivíduo, como no episódio "Nosedive" (“Queda Livre” no Brasil) de Black Mirror, série de ficção científica distópica britânica criada por Charlie Brooker. Sem qualquer exagero, podemos dizer que essa é uma tendência mundial, pois que quase todos hoje lutam por uma vida utópica por meio da superficialidade e da performatividade, em uma sociedade onde o sucesso e a popularidade nas mídias sociais contribui para o alto status socioeconômico.

A ditadura comunista da China, aliás fomentada e sustentada pelas "democracias" capitalistas do Ocidente, está se movendo rapidamente para introduzir scorecards sociais pelos quais todos os cidadãos serão monitorados 24 horas por dia, 7 dias por semana, e classificados de acordo com seu comportamento.

O plano do Partido Comunista é que cada um de seus 1,4 bilhão de cidadãos esteja submetido a um sistema de crédito social distópico, que começou a ser implementado há quase dez anos e que hoje já está totalmente operacional.

Um programa piloto ativo já viu milhões de pessoas receberem uma pontuação de até 800 e colherem seus benefícios ou sofrerem suas consequências – dependendo do extremo da escala em que se encontram.

Sob o esquema de xinyong, termo chinês que é traduzido como “crédito” em Crédito Social, pontos são perdidos e ganhos com base em leituras de uma sofisticada rede de centenas de milhões de câmeras de vigilância.

O programa foi viabilizado por rápidos avanços em reconhecimento facial, escaneamento corporal e rastreamento geográfico.

Os dados são combinados com informações coletadas de registros governamentais de indivíduos – incluindo médicos e educacionais – juntamente com seus históricos financeiros e de navegação na Internet. As pontuações gerais podem subir e descer em “tempo real” dependendo do comportamento da pessoa, mas tamb��m podem ser afetadas por pessoas com quem se associam. Se seu melhor amigo ou seu pai disser algo negativo sobre o governo, por exemplo, você também perderá pontos.

O sistema obrigatório de “crédito social” foi anunciado pela primeira vez em 2014 em uma tentativa de reforçar a noção de que “manter a confiança é glorioso e quebrar a confiança é vergonhoso”, segundo um documento do governo.

Se as pessoas "andarem na linha" – do Partido Comunista, obviamente – e cumprirem seus preceitos e diretrizes, podem ir a qualquer lugar do mundo, mas se forem relutantes e rebeldes, não poderão se mover um centímetro.

Sob o sistema, aqueles considerados “top cidadãos” são recompensados ​​com pontos de bônus.

Os benefícios de ser classificado na extremidade superior da escala incluem depósitos isentos em hotéis e carros de aluguel, tratamento VIP em aeroportos, empréstimos com desconto, solicitações de emprego prioritárias e acesso rápido às universidades de maior prestígio.

Mas não é preciso muito para acabar no lado errado da escala. Cerca de 10 milhões de pessoas já estão pagando o preço de uma classificação baixa. Andar na rua, pagamentos atrasados ​​de contas ou impostos, comprar muito álcool ou falar contra o governo custam pontos aos cidadãos. Outras ofensas passíveis de punição incluem passar muito tempo jogando videogame, desperdiçar dinheiro em compras frívolas e postar nas mídias sociais. As penalidades variam de perder o direito de viajar de avião ou trem, suspensões de contas de mídia social e ser impedido de trabalhar no governo.

O jornalista chinês Liu Hu é um dos milhões que já acumulou uma baixa classificação de crédito social. Liu Hu foi preso, preso e multado depois de expor a corrupção oficial. “O governo me considera um inimigo”, disse Liu Hu. Ele agora está proibido de viajar de avião ou trem rápido. Suas contas de mídia social com milhões de seguidores foram suspensas. Ele luta para encontrar trabalho. “Esse tipo de controle social vai contra a maré do mundo. Os olhos do povo chinês estão cegos e seus ouvidos tapados. Eles sabem pouco sobre o mundo e vivem em uma ilusão”, protestou Liu Hu.

Dezessete pessoas que se recusaram a cumprir o serviço militar foram impedidas de se matricular no ensino superior, se inscrever no ensino médio ou continuar seus estudos, informou o Beijing News.

O sistema de vigilância avançada da China vem aumentando exponencialmente conforme a própria tecnologia subjacente se sofistica e o sistema se expande.

Sistemas semelhantes vem sendo implementados no Ocidente, embora mais discretamente e diluídos sob o disfarce de tecnologias de segurança e regulações comunitárias, de modo a se afigurarem aceitáveis a todos.

A diferença crucial é que o sistema de Crédito Social do Ocidente é um conjunto bem mais heterogêneo de sistemas fragmentados e descentralizados. O governo central, agências governamentais específicas, redes de transporte público, governos municipais e outros, estão experimentando diversas iniciativas com diferentes objetivos.

De fato, engloba noções de credibilidade financeira, conformidade regulatória e confiabilidade moral, abrangendo, portanto, programas com diferentes visões e narrativas. Uma linha comum entre esses sistemas é a confiança no compartilhamento de informações e listas para incentivar ou desencorajar certos comportamentos, incluindo listas negras para denegrir os "malfeitores", privilegiando aqueles com um bom histórico.

A maior preocupação em torno do Crédito Social diz respeito a que dimensões ela poderá alcançar no futuro. Será tão abrangente e totalitário como no episódio "Nosedive" (que foi ao ar em 21 de outubro de 2016 na Netflix) de Black Mirror?

Embora este seja atualmente um cenário fragmentado de esquemas díspares, a preocupação é que eles possam ser consolidados. O sistema centralizado e nacional de “pontuação do cidadão” já funciona na prática nas redes sociais, pois aquele que não alcança popularidade nelas, é preterido por muitas empresas.

Se os governos ainda não oficializaram o programa de Crédito Social e o vincularam aos bancos centrais, não está fora de questão que esquemas privados possam eventualmente ser vinculados ao sistema de Crédito Social. Embora o sistema (ainda) não seja tão abrangente e coordenado quanto foi retratado em Black Mirror, suas lógicas e metodologias de compartilhamento e controle de cada vez mais informações para moldar comportamentos podem muito bem levar nessa direção, não só na China como em todos os lugares.

Ora, o totalitarismo global, sob todas as formas, não é desde sempre o sonho dourado da Elite Global que agora, finalmente, graças a tecnologia, pode ser inteiramente viabilizado? Se eles podem fazer, pode ter certeza que farão.

#social credit system #china communist party #black mirror #nosedive #totalitarismo #comunismo #distopia #distopea #science fiction #sci fi #totalitarianism #totalitarian state #totalitarian regime

[mariacallous]

With Ukraine’s counteroffensive stalled and the U.S. Congress deadlocked over crucial military aid, some analysts have begun raising the specter of a turning point in the war that could lead to a Ukrainian defeat. While the situation on the ground is still far from dire, it could rapidly deteriorate in the absence of a significant infusion of U.S. military support for Ukraine.

The consequences of a Ukrainian defeat need to be fully understood. The likely geopolitical consequences are easy to anticipate. The defeat of a Western-backed country would embolden Russia and other revisionist states to change other borders by force. A Russian victory would frighten Russia’s European neighbors, possibly leading to a collapse of European collective security as some countries choose appeasement and others massively rearm. China, too, would conclude that Taiwan cannot rely on sustained U.S. support. Indeed, the ripple effects of U.S. indecision have already begun: In a move that recalls Russia’s illegal annexation of several regions of Ukraine, Venezuela this month claimed more than half of neighboring Guyana as its own. While there are no signs of an impending invasion, it would be naïve to think that other countries aren’t watching closely to see whether Russia’s land grab succeeds.

Many analysts have already described these far-reaching security risks. But they pale in comparison to the dire consequences for Ukraine and its inhabitants if Russia wins. It is important for both supporters and opponents of Ukraine aid to know what these consequences would be.

To understand Ukraine’s likely fate if Russia turns the tide, the best place to start is what the Russians actually say. On Dec. 8, Russian President Vladimir Putin made clear that in his view there is no future for the Ukrainian state. On Dec. 5, he spelled out his intention to “reeducate” the Ukrainian people, curing them of “Russophobia” and “historical falsifications.” On Nov. 12, former Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev made Russia’s appetites clear: “Odessa, Nikolaev, Kyiv, and practically everything else is not Ukraine at all.” It is “obvious,” he posted on Telegram, that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a “usurper,” that the Ukrainian language is only a “mongrel dialect” of Russian, and that Ukraine is “NOT a country, but artificially collected territories.” Other regime propagandists assert that the Ukrainian state is a disease that must be treated and Ukrainians a society that must be “de-wormed.”

More explicitly, Russia’s highly censored state television has, over the past two years, consistently promoted the rape of Ukrainians, the drowning of children, the leveling of cities, the eradication of the Ukrainian elite, and the physical extermination of millions of Ukrainians. For an excellent snapshot of these and other statements, Russian Media Monitor has compiled a must-watch collection of short clips from Russian television, complete with English subtitles. This coordinated campaign is not bluster but a harbinger of what awaits the Ukrainian people. In these remarks, we can see the contours of the atrocities awaiting Ukrainians under a total or nearly total Russian occupation.

We can also project the effect of a Russian victory from the atrocities that are already widespread in the Russian-occupied territories. According to official Ukrainian sources, nearly 2 million Ukrainians have already been removed from their homes and communities in the occupied areas and resettled in Russia, either temporarily or permanently. Other estimates range from 1.6 million to 4.7 million. Russian children’s commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova said that more than 700,000 Ukrainian children have been taken from Ukraine to Russia since February 2022; nearly 20,000 of these are known to Ukrainian authorities by name. Transferring children from their home country and denying them access to their language and culture is not only an internationally recognized war crime. Such forced assimilation is also defined by the U.N. Convention on Genocide as a genocidal act. It is why the International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for Lvova-Belova’s arrest.

Russia is not only ridding its occupied regions of Ukrainians but also replacing them with Russian settlers—a tragic continuity with Soviet and Russian imperial practices of systemic deportation, colonization, and Russification. In the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, where the Russian advance killed tens of thousands of civilians and destroyed 50 percent of the city’s housing stock, a handful of new apartment buildings were recently constructed. Some of that housing is being offered for sale, with Russians carpetbaggers snatching up real estate at bargain prices.

Ukraine’s partly occupied south offers a clear picture of the techniques used by the occupying forces to establish authority. A Human Rights Watch report from July 2022 documents a pattern of torture, disappearances, and arbitrary detention in the region. Citizens endured torture during interrogation, including beatings, electroshocks, and sensory deprivation. Several prisoners died from the torture, and large numbers have simply disappeared. Among the victims were local officials, teachers, representatives of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, NGO activists, and members of Ukraine’s territorial defense. There also is a massive amount of information collected by human rights monitors and journalists about the operation of filtration and detention camps.

Political indoctrination and the militarization of youth are already key characteristics of life under Russian occupation. Political banners and posters promoting Russian patriotism are omnipresent in the occupied regions. New children’s textbooks expunge Ukrainian history and preach hatred for Ukraine’s leadership. The Ukrainian language is being removed from much of the education system and relegated to its colonial status as a quaint dialect representing nothing but a gradually disappearing regional culture soon to be subsumed in the Russified mainstream.

Already, millions of Ukrainians have had their lives destroyed in one way or another by Russia’s monstrous occupation. Were Russia to complete its conquest, it would be a multiple of that number. After almost a decade of war against Russia, Ukrainians are united and highly mobilized in the defense of their country’s borders, democracy, culture, and language, to which many Ukrainian Russian-speakers have switched out of disgust with Moscow’s invasion. Millions of Ukrainians have been enraged and radicalized by Russia’s war crimes and destruction of their towns and homes. Millions of Ukrainians have volunteered to assist the war effort, millions have contributed funds to support the military, and even more have turned to social media to vent and publicly register their rage at Putin and the Russian state.

That would not only make any conquest brutal and bloody. Should Ukraine lose, almost all of Ukrainian society would need to be punished, repressed, silenced, or reeducated if the occupation is to quell resistance and absorb the country into Russia. For this reason, a Russian takeover would be accompanied by mass arrests, long-term detentions, mass deportations into the Russian heartland, filtration camps on a vast scale, and political terror. If a serious insurgency emerges, the level of repression will only widen and deepen.

A major effort will also be required to rid the country of seditious materials, which is to say all films, novels, poetry, essays, art, scholarly works, and music that may contain positive references to Ukraine’s period of independence. Libraries and schools will be purged of all such subversive content—in essence, the majority of all writing and cultural output that Ukraine has produced during the last three decades. Writers and scholars will face the choice of repudiating their identity and past work or becoming nonpersons in the new order. Many will face arrest or worse, simply because they transport Ukrainian culture and stand in the way of Russification. Again, this is not speculation but widespread practice in other territories that Russia has occupied.

Russian territorial advances would be accompanied by a second wave of Ukrainian refugees far more massive than that of early 2022, when some 7 million Ukrainians crossed the border into the European Union. For the remaining Ukrainians, the future would be one of totalitarian controls on culture, education, and speech, accompanied by a mass terror on a scale not seen in Europe since the 20th-century era of totalitarian rule.

There you have in distilled form what a Russian victory would mean. Members of the U.S. Congress are free to vote against assistance to Ukraine if they think—wrongly—that the war’s outcome does not affect the U.S. national interest. But they should not be allowed to oppose assistance to Ukraine without being fully aware of the tyranny they will be helping to empower—and their responsibility for the massive and entirely predictable crimes that will ensue.

[centrally-unplanned]

I do think a bitterly funny thing about Mao & China's brand of communism is that he was correct on a very core fundamental, that absent perpetual revolution the party would drift right and become the same as the nationalist government it replaced. That very much did happen! Deng turned out to be a capitalist roader, like 100%! China is not left or socialist or anything like that, all the ways that it is not liberal & capitalist are about totalitarian state control or nationalist causes, things you absolutely could see Chiang Kai Shek doing. I don't think that is even a stopped clock moment or anything, I do in fact think Mao was a true believer and saw the way the wind was blowing (he was also a power-tripping maniac and a bunch of other stuff, you can be more than one thing)

Obviously it was way better for China that they did that, Mao was a true believer in nonsense. But a point is a point.

[deltamusings]

Israel was attacked by maybe 1000 terrorists. Out of the millions we’ve recently welcomed in, how many are terrorists or terror cells? How many are planning terror attacks? How many have brought dirty bombs into the USA? Nuclear attacks that could leave a major American city uninhabitable for decades. How many intend on poisoning a water supply for an entire city? How many are planning on bombing the new World Trade Center? Or the Hoover Dam?

No one knows, do they? How could they? Israeli and U.S. intelligence couldn’t see the Hamas attack coming from a few yards across the Israeli border. Our government had to ask citizens for help finding a missing military jet. You think they know where these millions of illegals are and what they’re up to?

And our DOJ, FBI, CIA, DC Swamp and Deep State are too busy targeting conservatives, PTA parents and Catholics at church.

They’re too busy torturing J6 peaceful protestors kept in solitary confinement, in third world prison conditions, without civil or human rights.

But here’s the real problem. There are tens of thousands of Chinese military-age males in the country. Why are they here? How did they travel 10,000 miles and cross an ocean to get here? Who paid for that long, expensive journey? And how did they get out of China, a communist totalitarian police state?

[thenyanguardparty]

zoe! I see you've been blogging about signalis, and I was wondering if you would mind giving your thoughts on it? I haven't played it but I started watching a summary of it where the content creator painted it in an anti-communist light, at which point I just clicked off. but I trust you so I wonder if I should give it a chance :)

well the thing is that it definitely is anti-communist (or at least "anti-totalitarian" but in practice that's the same thing). the Eusan Nation (which is very unsubtly based on east germany and a bit of china) is shown as being everything that "totalitarian" brings to mind (repressive police state, militarism, forced labor, censorship and propaganda, mind control, etc). i obviously take issue with this as a certified tankie

that aside, the horror is good, it is very atmospheric, it has The King in Yellow, it has doomed lesbian robotgirls in space, i greatly enjoy it. critical support for the Eusan Nation in its war against the Empire though

#asks #Anonymous #signalis

[hussyknee]

Not so friendly reminder that Tankies are people who deny not only the genocides of Russia but also Vietnam and China (including the Uyghurs), and are apologists for the North Korean regime. They push Russian propaganda of "colour revolutions" every time a Global South country rises up against a totalitarian government because they believe totalitarianism is merely anti-communist agenda; deriding, dismissing and dehumanizing the liberation movements of our countries that come at great human cost. They're not anti-imperialists or anti-colonial; their chief issue with the imperial core is that it's not their ideology seated at the heart of it. They only care about Global South lives when it serves their ideology, and have no genuine concern or curiosity about the ground realities or agency of the communities impacted by imperialism and colonialism.

I also want you to understand that every major power player involved in this conflict is a genocidal fascist. Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis that are fighting Israel are funded by the theocratic Iranian regime headed by Ebrahim Raisi (begging you to remember the hundreds of Iranian girls and women killed for protesting it). Iran is also an ally of the notorious Bashar Al-Assad's regime in Syria, responsible for the genocide and displacement of millions of his own people while actively funding the Islamic State he wages war against. Both Assad and Raisi are allies of Putin, who is currently trying to colonize and genocide Ukraine and is terrorising Poland, Hungary, Georgia, Estonia, Latvia etc. However, Iran and Putin (half-heartedly) are also allies of the Armenians who are being genocided by Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is supported by the US, but also Erdogan in Turkey, infamous dictator that hates the European Union and is a close pal of Putin. Meanwhile the US's best friends in the Middle East is Israel, which hates Arabs, and Saudi Arabia, who doesn't recognise Israel as a country but is hated by most of the MENA and is currently in a Cold War with Iran.

*yanks y'all by the shirt and shouts in your face* THERE ARE NO GOOD GUYS HERE, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?? ONLY INNOCENT CIVILIANS CAUGHT IN A SPIDER WEB OF GREEDY, DESPOTIC, GENOCIDAL, FASCIST CUNTS. THERE IS NO POINT TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHICH ONE IS THE BIGGEST THREAT TO GLOBAL DEMOCRACY BECAUSE ALL THE FALL OF ONE DOES IS CREATE A POWER VACCUUM THAT WILL IMMEDIATELY BE FILLED BY THE NEXT BULLY.

These governments can only be toppled from within by their own people once external threats like war with their neighbours are eased, because militaries with nothing to fight are economic black holes that try to eat itself, and it's this economic stress that act as catalysts for coalition building and civilian revolt. Military losses weaken imperialists' coercive power and legitimacy over their own people, so the best thing you can do to help them agitate for change is preventing imperialist expansions from claiming any more victims.

#TL;DR: if the US divests from Israel #withdraws entirely from Iraq and Syria and actually commits to helping Ukraine beat back Putin #it would break Israel's continuing destabilising of the Middle East #and consequent lessening of external threat might lessen some of these states' chokeholds over their own people. #Sadly‚ it's also why the US refuses to do so. Ukraine means little to the US #while the MENA keeps the US's arms and oil industries in business. #If Putin invades Ukraine and the US is tied up fighting seven different countries in the Middle East alongside Israel #he's going to try and encroach into Poland #and then we're on the brink of nuclear war. #Althoug actually we might not have to wait that long #considering the US is already aiming nuclear missiles at Iran for being mean to Israel #and also attacking the US's bases in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for Gaza. #tankies #war in ukraine #ukrainian genocide #palestinian genocide #armenian genocide #western leftists #geo-politics #decolonisation #colonization #imperialism #middle east #global south #totalitarianism #western propaganda #western imperialism #genocide denial #liberation #knee of huss

[starseedpatriot]

For those who think Trump shouldn’t be POTUS in 2024 because he didn’t fully “drain the swamp” in his first term, allow me to offer some perspective.

Do you remember what it was like in 2017? Do you remember how many people were still completely brainwashed by the TV?

If Trump arrested Deep State actors as soon as he showed up, it would have been chaos, civil war, mass civilian casualties, legitimate threat to NATSEC, breakdown of society, etc.

At the time, a small percentage of the population even knew about the Deep State, let alone believed it was a real thing. Trump and his supporters were mocked relentlessly back then for talking about the Deep State, and now it’s widely recognized as a reality.

A large percentage of Americans believed the MSM at the time that Trump conspired with Russia. On top of that, Trump was hamstrung by the Mueller investigation. If Trump went scorched-earth on the Deep State during this time, it would not have worked. The Leftists were already emboldened to riot due to the BLM insanity. It would have been ugly.

We were on pace to handle it in Trump’s 2nd term, and then they released C19 on the world, the bio-medical police state was implemented, mail-in ballots were sent out en masse, the steal happened, and everything changed.

However, Biden’s disastrous term pretty much confirmed Trump was right about everything, and the American People got a quick 4 year dose of full-blown Orwellian totalitarian dystopia.

This caused a significant portion of the People to wake up to the realities about corruption and degeneration of society that Trump was talking about. The Left, the media, the corporations, all of the elements of the Deep State went completely batshit crazy, exposing themselves to the People.

Now add the optics of Biden weaponizing the DOJ to go after Trump over nothing, and all the sudden, if Trump went after the Deep State in his 2nd the public would not only understand it, they agree with him.

Then add additional layers, like that Biden admin and their Deep State affiliates are 100% responsible for the war in Ukraine, as they are trying to defend their illegal offshore proxy they created via CIA color revolution in 2014. Funding and arming nazi military forces and dragging the US/NATO into WW3 with nuclear superpower Russia and China waiting patiently in the shadows.

Why will Trump drain the swamp on his next term? Because the People get it now. They see what he was talking about. They had a front row seat to witness it for the last 7+ years.

Trump now has the political ammunition and the global support to do what is necessary and rid the world of the Deep State. And equally as important, the Deep State have lost control of the narrative because of the parabolic takeover of citizen journalism thanks to Elon’s introduction of free speech on Twitter.

Trump didn’t have all this going for him his first time around. Now much more of the world is awake, and more of them will continue to wake as WW3 and nuclear destruction looms over us all.

Trump said it himself. “We are in a position to that now because Pandora’s Box has been opened. People will say ‘now we get it’”.

The Left are right; if Trump wins 2024, it WILL be a “Retribution Presidency”.

[alpaca-clouds]

So anarchism is kinda sorta like communism/socialism, just less totalitarian? Doesn't sound bad to me!

Also Hobie totally makes Mayday a little battle jacket with "ACAB" on the back spelled out in toy blocks, you can't convince me otherwise on this. And when he babysits, he reads to her. "The cow says moo! The butterfly don't say nothing. The pig says you have the right to remain silent."

Basically it is like this: Communism/socialism are economic systems. They basically just say how the economy is run. They are not a political system.

Overly simplified, what happened so far went kinda like this. The Leninists basically said: "The only way to do communism, is to do an authoriterianism first, because people do not know what is best for them." With the general idea to go over to a proper democracy once a communist system had been established. But then some people got too used to having absolute power and also Stalin happened.

The basic issue is that a lot of socialist regimes to not trust their own people - and hence steer towards authoritarianism, which is why it always goes wrong.

Meanwhile anarchism is a political ideology. So, while communism says "this is how the economy should be done", anarchism is one of the "this is how politics should be run" models. And the big thing about anarchism is that anarchists believe people to be actually good and intelligent and can be trusted to properly govern themselves.

Because of the entire "no hierarchies" rule, most anarchists then also support socialism/communism as an economical system. So both goes hand in hand.

The tl;dr of the entire communism thing is:

Capitalism = Private ownership of the means of productions. Meaning, that the means of production are held by some private entities, with only few people usually having a say on how those means should be used. Because they own all of that, they also get to decide what happens to the profits that might occur, most often just keeping them.

Socialism = The means of productions are in the hand of some centralized power structure (most often the state and ideally, though not necessarily, this power structure is under some sort of democratic control). Meaning, that this centralized power will decide what will be done with the means of production and what happens to the profits. Ideally those get shared between the people the power structure governs. (But this is also why originally socialist structures so easily fall into state capitalism, like it is happening in China.)

Communism = The means of production are in the hands of the workers/people. This can either mean: You work at a company? Well, you get an equal say what happens with the means of production that are part of a company. Aka what are they going to produce this year. You also get an equal share in the profits. But can also mean: Everyone within a country gets an equal say what is produced within the country and an equal share of all the produced goods and profits.

And quick note: Means of production is basically the sort of equipment used to produce value. So, lands that might be used to cultivate crops are means of production. The equipment the farmer would use to harvest the crops are means of production. A weaving machine also would be means of production. And in the modern society those big servers an IT company would use are also means of production.

And also: Oh, yes, Hobie totally would. And I need a picture of Mayday in that ACAB jacket. That would be so adorable.

#answered #asks #communism #socialism #capitalism #anti capitalism #fuck capitalism #anarchism #people are good

[herukapadmajungiansworld]

😒🙄🤨😬🤐🤢😭😱😖😵😩😫😡

#india #china #russia #positive perception #pro imperialism #pro russian imperialism #china totalitarian state #stop putin #putin war criminal #vladimir putin friends #russophile #stop russian invasion #ukraine resistance #stop putin's agents usa #putin war ukraine russia #defend ukraine #stop putin allies #help ukraine #ukraine war #russian invasion of ukraine #support ukraine #glory to ukraine #i stand with ukraine #putin ukraine #invasion of ukraine #slava ukraini #war in ukraine

[the-bjd-community-confess]

Hello, Oldie Chinese Diaspora Anon™️ here. Where is the “loudest anti-recast voice” from? This confession reminded me of something interesting (and makes me feel very old at the same time). There are a lot of aspects to the recast market (and yes, Econ Anon, I hear you! It’s a market thing! 👍 ) and part of it is geopolitical. I guess that’s where I come in.

Let me walk you back to the late 80’s when China first opened its doors to the world. At that time, because of Chairman Deng’s policy of “letting a small group of people get rich sooner”, the Eastern seaboard opened itself up to foreign investment. However, one should never forget that China is a totalitarian, Communist state. It meant that “the law” is prone to changing, the government owns most large industries and through the ways of loans, the government also has a backdoor to most businesses. I still remember the blatant accusations of what we used to call the “Chinese honeypot” scheme. The government (or some government-funded businesses) entice foreign investors to set up factories along the Eastern seaboard.

Part of the agreement to receive government subsidized benefits was to hire more than 50% local labour, and this included the managerial staff as well. In the beginning, a lot of the early investors reported that they were earning hand over fist because of the cheap labour. But after the first wave, investors were being expelled out of the country one way or another, after being stripped of their assets and their trade secrets. I still remember multiple family members (and business friends of these said family members) recounting stories of foreign bosses catching their Chinese managers stealing trade secrets and deliberately sabotaging equipment when their aims have been fulfilled. In some cases, actual honeypot traps were set up so the bosses would be set up with adultery (which was a severely punishable crime at the time) or saddled up with a Chinese wife. To cut the horror story down, China found itself where it is today through alleged systematic and government-sanctioned intellectual theft. It is no wonder that the Chinese boomers are not known as big sticklers to copyright law. In many ways, they are still the ones in charge. Folks like Luo, for example.

However, just as a coin has two sides, the closed-in totalitarian state also fostered an “ever-inward” culture. Children born to these boomers were taught on a steady diet of nationalism and extreme self-centredness. These are considered to be virtues. Their children, the Gen Z, have even more of the same cultural upbringing, bolstered by being the “only child” of “only child” parents. As a consequence, there is a lot of internal cohesion based off of nationalism, which translated into a specific type of cronyism that is hard to fathom. Most of us have heard of the term “rabid fans” – for an old fogey like me, I think of Deadheads caravanning across the country to catch the next concert. Folks these days are probably more familiar with the fans of famous singers such as BTS and BlackPink and the hijinks they were up to from time to time. In today’s China, on the other hand, pretty much every fandom can boast their own “rabid fans” – from Apple Fanatics to a self-professed fan groups for an actor/singer/artist to… well, BJDs. When I say “rabid fans”, it’s because I cannot come up with any other word for this behaviour. If you can think of a better descriptor, please let me know.

I lurk in Chinese “BJD Circle.” And this fanaticism has its highs and lows. The lows are plenty and serious – people will refuse to sell second-hand dolls to newbies because “they don’t speak the lingo”, for example. The faceup artists are known to smash heads if they are found to be recasts. Scammers and questionable behaviours are “hung” out in the Tucao bar for a public lynching - and because most people in the circle frequent this Tieba, it’s basically a court of public opinion. Thanks to the social credit system, if you are lynched through a virtual struggle session, your ability to be a part of this circle becomes so diminished that you are shunned. And due to the fact that you need your real name and information to set up an account for all transactional platforms, it’s easy to get doxed and cyberbullied. This self-righteous fervor expanded outside of China and was brought under the spotlight for the first time in 2020, during the “Milk Tea Alliance” incident (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_Tea_Alliance Note: in the spirit of full disclosure, I came from one of the Milk Tea Alliance countries. )

What about the highs? The “high” point in this self-contained lynching culture is internal self-policing. The Circle acknowledges that people who are just entering the hobby may accidentally buy a recast. But in order to be accepted into the circle, you have to prove that you have completely given up your recast dolls by “whitewashing” yourself here: http://c.tieba.baidu.com/p/6882408381 (Content Warning: very broken dolls, hammer, fire) If you get caught having a recast doll, you will be shunned. Your businesses (as a faceup artist, seamstress, wig maker, etc) will also be boycotted. In short, the self-policing is slowly squeezing Luo’s business out of China, for better or worse.

Which is why on Luo’s business website (https://chinabjd.en.alibaba.com/company_profile.html) China is no longer its biggest market, which we alluded to here: It took me a long time to try to hunt down why would North America be the second largest market while China itself makes up a small portion. It wasn’t until I came across this post http://c.tieba.baidu.com/p/7792470874?pn=1 that it made sense. It was first posted in the April of 2022, from a Chinese national studying abroad in Japan. This person was surprised that the international market was flooded with Shuga Fairy dolls while another person chimed in stating that a lot of “Westerners” asked if Shuga Fairy dolls were any good. Other folks chimed in that Shuga Fairy dolls were found in a lot of international platforms while another one mentioned that the same doll sold for a higher price overseas.

Then it made sense. For what it’s worth, the Chinese’s closed, cronyism “Circles” have managed to keep most of the recasts out of the hobby. Sure, recast-friendly/neutral circles still exist, but they are in the fringes and having some difficulty interacting with the rest of the hobby as a whole (to the point having difficulty buying doll items from Xianyu stores. Store owners will refuse to sell their wares to recast owners). But that’s not the same with North America. It’s a land where information is scarce(r ), the market is not nearly as saturated and there are a lot more folks who have simply never heard of a BJD before. It’s much easier to con a largely unsuspecting crowd (which explains why recast dealers really work hard on that SEO) into buying something that they thought was “just an expensive toy”.

So, for the folks who think “the US has the loudest anti-recast voice”… I am really, really sorry. You can’t argue with the numbers (or Econ Anon, for that matter). The US is the second largest mark for the recast market. And there are some really compelling reasons why this is so.

P.S. I am not familiar with the Russian market at all. So please, don’t ask me why Russia is the largest market for Luo and his company. Thanks in advance.

~Anonymous

#BJD #ABJD #BJD Confessions #Community Counterfeits #Recasters

[evilelitest2]

I wanted to echo a few points dimensionalrevolutionary said, as well as respond to a few things you said.

Firstly, implementing socialism without revolution has been tried before. Salvador Allende was a Marxist who was democratically elected President of Chile. As President, he began a number of programs to increase literacy, access to healthcare and employment, access to food, etc. You can look him up on your own time if you so choose. However, in 1973 a military coup forced him out of power and installed Augusto Pinochet, a dictator who killed thousands of innocents and caused many more to flee the country. This coup was backed by the United States, with Henry Kissinger saying “I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”

In Indonesia, the Communist Party operated within the framework of electoral politics and became the largest non-ruling Communist Party on the planet. In return, the Indonesian government and army conducted mass killings of communists in 1965, resulting in the deaths of around 1 million people (many of whom weren’t even Communist Party members, just wrongfully implicated). It is no coincidence that the socialist states that remain today are those that seized state power via a revolution rather than relying on electoralism. History has shown that any non-violent attempt to achieve socialism is doomed to brutal repression by the bourgeoisie.

Now to address some of your points. Your point on “Sweden’s backsliding is because it’s not diverse enough” is only looking at part of the picture. Obviously part of Sweden’s slide to the far right is due to racist and anti-immigration sentiments, this backsliding has been occurring long before that, as far back as the collapse of the USSR (which provided an incentive to keep Scandinavian workers happy, lest they be influenced by the socialists on the border). AzureScapegoat, a Swedish Marxist, has an excellent video on this through the lens of the Overton Window (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK1Ikx6el1E).

You say that most revolutions fail, which is true, but as I pointed out above every single attempt to achieve socialism via electoralism has failed. I would rather risk a low-percentage chance at achieving socialism than try the method that has NEVER succeeded.

Setting aside the fact that Hannah Arendt, a pivotal philosopher in defining authoritarianism/totalitarianism, was a massive racist who claimed anti-racism was totalitarianism (which immediately discredits the ideology for me), every government on the planet is “authoritarian.” Liberalism is just as authoritarian, it’s just that the powers-that-be are unelected and unaccountable billionaires who can set the rules of society to their whims by pouring ungodly amounts of money into the legalized bribery that is lobbying.

Regarding your final point on trans rights, while there are some parties that have bad views on LGBT+ rights (such as the KKE in Greece), in general implying that Marxists are uniquely bad when it comes to LGBT+ rights is laughable. The USSR, a country which dissolved over 30 years ago, didn’t have excellent LGBT+ rights? That’s so crazy, I wonder how LGBT+ rights were in the United States at the same time. It’s also laughable to say that the US has better LGBT+ rights than Cuba, a country which recently passed an incredibly progressive family law by popular vote (rather than via 9 unelected judges), and which provides trans Cubans free gender-affirming care (along with their other free healthcare).

Finally, bemoaning a socialist country like China for having worse LGBT+ rights than the USA is incredibly disingenuous. Less than a century ago large parts of China were still feudal. Less than 50 years ago China was a mostly rural society of poor farmers. Expecting Global South countries which have not had the same abilities to develop due to unequal exchange (and often had bigoted law codes forced upon them by imperialist countries) is intellectually dishonest. China’s LGBT+ rights are absolutely behind the United States, but the difference is that China is improving (recently Beijing made transitioning easier and Shanghai opened several clinics for LGBT+ youths), while the USA is backsliding. I feel the trajectory is far more significant.

Again, thanks for the polite response

I'm a historian, you can assume I know who Allende is, both Chille and Indonesia are some very dark stains on US history and the nation needs to apologize for it property. That isn't really a condemnation of social democracy though, its more a condemnation of School of the Americas, like any country is going to have trouble when an imperialist state overthrows there government to force a right wing mass murdering autocrat. Now the communist states who remain today have mostly become super capitalist at this point, so I'm not sure how much of a win that is.

Your youtube friend is simplifying things a tad, after the Soviet Union fell you had backsliding in some areas but also some major progressive reforms in others, its not a clear backslide until the last few years with the anti immigration nonsense because a major schism in Swedish politics has been the fact that it is a very homogenous country. Social Democracy tends to thrive better when it has a broad diverse base to draw upon and a more intersectional foundation

No friend no, you can't just gloss over the revolutionary logistics bit, your a Marxists, you are supposed to be consequentialist about this. WHAT IS YOUR SPECIFIC PLAN. A revolution without a plan is not a revolution, its a Che Guevara tee shirt with extra steps. What is your revolutionary plan in the United States (I assume you are American). What specific revolutionary steps are you taking. Do you know how to use a gun? Do you have an organized cell? What revolutions' are you modeling yourself after? Marx himself talks about this, Revolutionaries who are stuck on the romantic image of revolutions of the past rather than the realities of revolutions in the present. My argument against revolution is that in the United States, there is no model for it working unless circumstances change dramatically, or you secretly have control of the US military

For electoralism, you get tangible results, just compromised and disappointing one. Biden as I said is a centrist hack, but even under him, the United States has move to the left more in the last three years than in the 30 years before. The reason why so many unions are going on strike right now is because of Biden's policies (though possibly unintentionally). It also prevented Trump from turning the US into a dictatorship

I used to work for the Hannah Arendt society, I know her flaws, but she isn't the only scholar on Authoritarianism. (also Marx was racist, like come on dude) Liberals are often authoritarian, which is why i'm not a liberal, I'm a social democrat. Democratic foundations however produce more stable and egalitarian states than dictatorships, dictatorships are inherently right wing, you don't need Hannah Arendt to do that.

The US did have better policies on queer issues than the USSR. Not by much, its was pretty awful, but there is a reason why you managed to get a large gay rights organizing group going in the US and that never really took off in the USSR. This is to not let the US off the hook "better than the USSR" isn't a great moral accomplishment. And to be clear, the USSR was better than any far right government, so credit where its due, but its weird to mythologize a regime that was never good on any queer rights issue.

Cuba is a big reversals, because Castro infamously put gays into camps, but the regime has reversed itself a lot in the last 20 years. So you get one, one communist regime which genuinely got better on queer issues and got better than the capitalist states (though only after the dictators died and the state started to moderate but still). Credit where it is due

To be honest, I think you are taking a pretty patronizing attitude towards China. Even ignoring how China has had a very long homosexual tradition (again its not a Christian country) One of the entire points of communism is about "Dragging" nations in to modernity, even ignoring the problematic Hegalian framework of that, the fact is that the anti queer stuff in CHina isn't just coming from ignorant rural peasants, its from the party itself. In many ways, things got worse for queer people under Mao because the state was centralized enough to actually enforce its will more. China has made some progress in the last ten years, but the Party still to this day has not asserted Homosexuality as a human right

Also parts of the US have backslide, the Blue states have some of the best trans protections in the entire world, like its not good what is happening right now in America, but having lived abroad a lot, it can get so much worse. in the US at least, the majority of the country don't support this backslide, and while the Democrats do suck, they have not backslide as a party, if anything they have moved to be more inclusive (no where near enough though, I don't want to let them off the hook)

Finally, I tend to be much more comfortable with Marxists when they are clearly not tankies, but marxists places get so quickly infested with Tankie nonsense which inevitably leads them to repeat rightists talking points. So how the typical marxist response to the crisis in Ukraine is basically a copy/paste of Tucker's Carlson's talking points. I understand that not all Marxists are tankies, but I do think Marxism as an ideology really needs to get over the nostalgic worship of failed authoritarian states.

Cheers, fun discussion

#ask EvilElitest2 #communism #marxism #Tankies #Leninism

[mariacallous]

During the first months of the Russian invasion, in one of the frontline villages in the southern Kherson region, I met several firefighters – ordinary Ukrainian men in their 40s or 50s. Their prewar tasks involved putting out fires in the local wood or occasionally buildings.

Since the Russian invasion, they save houses burning from missiles and retrieve their dead neighbours. One of the men began to cry during our conversation. He left embarrassed, but shortly returned. I comforted the firefighters, explaining that even governors and mayors sometimes sob during interviews.

In the following months, I travelled from one frontline town to another. I met doctors, policemen, railway and communal workers, journalists, electricians, civil servants, government officials whose relatives are fighting and dying in the army. They escaped or are still living under Russian occupation, their houses and apartments destroyed. They acknowledged that they were emotional, often angry, horrified, but driven by a sense of duty. In the end this would help them move forward, and even be proud of what they did.

Russia invaded Donbas and Crimea in Ukraine in 2014; the country already knew what the war was. But since 5am on 24 February last year, all citizens have learned how to survive when a foreign army uses its might to destroy the peace. They have discovered how to act during an air-raid warning; how to live and work through blackouts; that they should not walk at night because of curfews. They have learned to forget about planes, as airports are closed, and how to be separated from family. People have adapted to many things, and also learned how to deal with emotions: that tears are nothing to be ashamed of. The initial shock and sadness have transformed into a bigger confidence and determination.

As for today – besides hope in victory, national pride, solidarity and compassion, which you see on the surface – one of the prevailing feelings among Ukrainians is guilt that we are not doing enough. In non-frontline towns and in Kyiv, life has returned to a kind of normal. We are preoccupied with thoughts of those who live under constant shelling or occupation. Those who are not in the army think of those who must fight daily; soldiers who survive think of the fallen. Those who left the country feel guilty about those who stayed.

I recently visited a standup comedy performance in a suburb of Kyiv. Self-depreciation is back following months when society was unable to joke about the war. One of the most popular gags is from a comedian comparing his efforts to those of soldiers and veterans. After Ukraine’s victory, he jokes, he would tell his children he spent the war sitting in an Odesa basement, tweeting that Nato should help by “closing the sky”.

Thousands of crimes have been committed by Russian soldiers on Ukrainian soil. The Ukrainian general prosecutor’s office says it has registered at least 71 000 violations of the customs of war. Since then it has become harder to talk to Russian colleagues. By colleagues I mean not propagandists, but just journalists who oppose the Russian invasion and Putin’s regime.

I still communicate with them, but many exchanges end with excuses about why Russian society can do nothing. They think that those who are against the war have nothing to do with the actions of their state. I do believe guilt is not collective, but shared responsibility exists.

Before Russia’s invasion I reported on totalitarian countries: Iran, Syria, China, Belarus. I understand how dangerous it is to protest in a state that is ready to kill its own citizens. The Ukrainians fought against this in revolutions in 2004 and 2014. In the end we built a government that defends its citizens.

It feels paradoxical that Ukrainians, who defend their homeland and are under attack, feel guilty for not doing more. Meanwhile, Russians who are opposed to war are uncomfortable speaking about personal responsibility, stressing that nothing depends on them. This can be explained not by a lack of empathy or bitterness, but by disempowerment and the detachment of Russian citizens. This is something the Kremlin wants from Russian society. Russians who oppose the war must transform their lack of empowerment into action, and find their strength.

Ukrainians have defended their country for 365 days without a break. They have saved many lives from Russian troops. Our task now is to transform a sense of guilt into a sense of duty. We need to preserve our strength.

[azspot]

The problem with the series is not that it endorses totalitarianism, which it does not. The problem lies in the totalising, reductive, and potentially dangerous dualism of humanity/morality/democracy/destruction versus animality/reason/autocracy/survival on which the plot and character development rest. Liu constructs an ultimate, definitive existential threat to human civilisation—a threat rooted in the assumed dark forest nature of the universe—and builds his characters around these polarities: humaneness leads to self-destruction and survival depends on ruthlessness. When external threats are imminent, law and order are of the utmost importance, as we see with Trisolaris, the occupied Earth, and the society of spaceships. While the science of the series is admirably imaginative, its sociopolitical imagination is impoverished, unlike, for example, one of Liu’s earlier works, The Village Teacher (an English translation of this short story is included in Liu 2020). In this short story, Earth, again, is about to be wiped out by a hyper-advanced civilisation engaged in some kind of existential struggle. Aliens test the knowledge of randomly selected candidates on a target planet to determine whether to spare it. A village teacher in rural China, tortured by chronic disease and extreme poverty, insists on his students memorising Newton’s laws of motion before his death. It is this ordinary, heroic, yet unknown act that saves Earth from annihilation. The world of the Three-Body Problem, in contrast, is one in a permanent state of exception, suffocated by moral dilemmas and devoid of politics, insofar as politics is about possibilities for action and the plurality of social relations.

The ‘Three-Body Problem’, the Imperative of Survival, and the Misogyny of Reactionary Rhetoric

#books #china #scifi

[therealtruthalways]

Head of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, expresses his great admiration for China—a dystopian, totalitarian, biometric surveillance state:

"The World Economic Forum has been part of the development of [China] for nearly 30 years... The Chinese model is certainly a very attractive model for quite a number of countries."

As the conspiracy realists have been pointing out for many years, China—with its social credit system, mandatory digital ID, CBDCs and omnipresent biometric surveillance state—is the blueprint for what our self-appointed globalist overlords intend to roll out globally.

Please share far and wide,