I get frustrated talking to my other leftist buddies about this because I feel like they should know better, but they’ve chosen to go with what feels like willful ignorance on this issue.
this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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Same problem when discussing China. They will knee-jerk defend any country that claims to be or once was socialist. Could not realise that the modern CCP spits on Marx's legacy and ideas, or that Western-style liberal social democracy is closer to actual socialism than whatever is going on in China
china is capitalist, look at jack ma. that's not even close to even socialism.
I got banned for calling them simps on this post
https://hexbear.net/post/1285475
They are revelling in the future time when the great Chinese people are set free on the internet by their benevolent masters the CCP to come bully the west's twitterati... The irony of them banning me for picking on them, mental.
Personally I found myself knee-jerking in the face of rampant sinophobia and honestly quite bigoted takes that've been rising up lately but I agree that they are indefensible as a socialist bastion of any kind.
Authoritarian people are not my buddies, no matter where they are aligned on the left/right spectrum. History shows again and again they'll kill us when they get the chance to, as if being full of shit on a general level wasn't bad enough.
any authoritarianists should play frostpunk. the game makes you build a propaganda building (the people working there regularly kill themselves) and watchtowers. but discontent will rise (for good reason). so you will build distractions like a pub or a fighting arena.
i know it's just a video game, but it's really close to real life when you simplify it.
Eh, Frostpunk is amazing, but videogames are TERRIBLE for learning socialist practices. At least the vast majority. There is always the authoritarian player calling the shots.
Frostpunk is an authoritarian regime even if you're nice to everyone. Same with civ games and RTS games, etc, etc. Traditional games cannot teach socialist values. ...and I love them anyways, it's just critical to point out that they are largely TERRIBLE for socialist/communist teachings, because they require the presence of a "strong man", the player.
Authoritarians conscously (or unconscously) believe that a "strong man" MUST exist, and games largely reinforce that whether they mean to or not.
They'll say, "No, this kulak is one of the GOOD ones", and it won't matter one bit. Of course, they'll gleefully endorse the deaths of so many others, but for their friends, they probably will be shocked for the whole ten seconds it takes for some thought-terminating cliche to come into their head. "I will work harder!" Boxer said.
A lot of leftists make the mistake of conflating anti-imperialism to anti-Americanism and, while there is plenty of overlap between the two they are not exactly the same. We need to call out imperialism in all of its forms wherever it occurs.
You see, we are invading a country that has aspiration of joining a union of smaller nations, that aims to increase the ties between those nations and stopping any imperialistic notion within them, who are allies with a country that has acted imperialistic in other theaters, so we are basically anti-imperialists! I see no flaw with that logic.
These groups very much have the same vibe as the trumpy incel fascist groups that were everywhere a few years ago. Which could be down to both being in a large part pushed by Russia's propaganda machine. The shitty memes, the pseudo intellectual bullshit justifing why authoritarian fascism is the moral approach in life. Fucking shills, bootlickers and underdeveloped teenage minds ...
Critical support for Putin's Anti-Imperialist Imperialism!