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CommieGIR posted:And McCarthyism ended up falling apart after being called out for the sham that it was. And the U.S. is arguably not as "strong" or "confident" as it was. But I think "robust" is the key here. . . the U.S. has cultivated a media ecosystem where open debate is tolerated, but the government has sufficient domestic soft power to limit how dangerous the debate is. For example, when the Bush administration unilaterally decided to make it a debate over whether waterboarding is torture---anyone was allowed to question the party line, but no reputable source could claim that there weren't two sides. I used to assume that this was the direction China would be heading in down the line, but they've made it clear that they are able to forge their own path distinct from liberalism and other socialist governments economically, and it certainly seems that will be the case with media. In some ways it already is: as threatening as it is to be invited to tea with the police because you post on twitter, it's certainly a different experience from being caught with samizdat in the Soviet Union.
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Nov 13, 2021 03:29
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CommieGIR posted:And McCarthyism ended up falling apart after being called out for the sham that it was. McCarthyism was only one facet of the movement to purge the unions and socialists and it succeeded wildly. Taft-Hartley alone banned Multiple types of strikes and picketing, and it effectively banned communists in their leadership. It even allowed the government to break up any strike. It is especially telling that major members of the HUAC like Nixon continued on to positions of power. Today, even the word "socialist" is treated as an insult although due to worsening material conditions it has lost it's edge.
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Nov 13, 2021 04:07
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Cpt_Obvious posted:McCarthyism was only one facet of the movement to purge the unions and socialists and it succeeded wildly. Joe McCarthy was politically ruined and died of alcohol and morphine addiction, and his seat in the Senate went to someone that called him a disgrace to America. If this is what you consider a strong, robust, and confident movement? I eagerly await China's assent to power after Xi is found covered in poo poo in his office, having accidentally killed himself while strangle-wanking. Compared to the things we used to do to unions, the late 50s were a loving party, and we've continued to move away from our starting position of "Literally murder all unionists". At least nowadays we tend to at least publicly look down on the idea of opening up on unionists with machine guns. And socialist is a dirty world to the type of people that take horse dewormer to do things other than cure worms in horses, that's not exactly a selling point either.
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Nov 13, 2021 06:23
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People also put up with McCarthyism at a time when the US economy was exploding, so if China's economy is cooling, that's not gonna take as well. Although, it's not like a lack of strong public support will make Xi collapse, people will just get a lot more sad on the inside. Like Russia. I dunno if change for China is possible or where it could come from, but I hope it comes along some time.
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Nov 13, 2021 06:56
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And seriously, if you are trying to equivocate what china is doing to events in america about 70 years ago that makes china look even worse. We know what happened in the end to mccarthy, and the red scare is not looked on fondly by most people.
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Nov 13, 2021 07:02
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hasn't china been cracking down on communist academics lately as part of the push to consolidate behind Xi and to promote xi thought? maybe the mccarthy comparison is more apt than they realized
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Nov 13, 2021 10:19
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Herstory Begins Now posted:hasn't china been cracking down on communist academics lately as part of the push to consolidate behind Xi and to promote xi thought? maybe the mccarthy comparison is more apt than they realized I mean, this is a country which updates the list of banned phrases that will get you censored off the internet on a daily basis. McCarthyism was really bad, but it still isn't really in the same category of where China has been for a long time.
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Nov 13, 2021 10:48
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Cherry picking a single senator and his death as representative of an entire movement is incredibly myopic. Unions were completely shattered and socialists across the country lost their jobs and went to jail. Just because McCarthy himself crashed and burned ignores the success of others like Nixon who prosecuted anti-communist sentiments all the way to Vietnam. It didn’t “fall apart” as a sham, McCarthy fell apart but the movement continued throughout the entir Cold War. And good lord, saying that socialist hasn’t been a slur is so unbelievably silly. Bernie’s movement only reclaimed that term in the past few years. McCarthyism killed the American communist and socialist parties dead in their tracks. poo poo, we don’t even teach their impact on America anymore. You learn about the New Deal and social security and minimum wage like it was a wizard spell cast by FDR and not the result of a mass movement harnessed by the communist and socialist parties. Socialist movements were incredibly popular in the USA right up until the second Red Scare and then they became the all encompassing boogey men for decades. I honestly can’t believe people are arguing with that. Like, it boggles my loving mind. Pharohman777 posted:And seriously, if you are trying to equivocate what china is doing to events in america about 70 years ago that makes china look even worse. Lol no. That’s not what I was doing. I was pointing out that cultural purges are not signs of weakness or fragility. Edit: oh yeah, Regan was another figure who rose to prominence due to his participation in HUAC. That’s two presidents forged by that movement. Cpt_Obvious fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Nov 13, 2021 |
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Nov 13, 2021 12:55
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Quote is not edit.
Cpt_Obvious fucked around with this message at 13:00 on Nov 13, 2021 |
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Nov 13, 2021 12:57
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Cherry picking a single senator and his death as representative of an entire movement is incredibly myopic. Unions were completely shattered and socialists across the country lost their jobs and went to jail. Just because McCarthy himself crashed and burned ignores the success of others like Nixon who prosecuted anti-communist sentiments all the way to Vietnam. It didn’t “fall apart” as a sham, McCarthy fell apart but the movement continued throughout the entir Cold War. Nobody in the US at that time was banned from discussing what was happening, which I think you'll find is a key difference.
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Nov 13, 2021 18:44
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Plastic_Gargoyle posted:Nobody in the US at that time was banned from discussing what was happening, which I think you'll find is a key difference. Dissent was absolutely quashed. For example, members of the Committee for the First Amendment were dragged in front of HUAC for protesting it.
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Nov 13, 2021 19:26
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Dissent was absolutely quashed. For example, members of the Committee for the First Amendment were dragged in front of HUAC for protesting it. I find it so weird that you can't just take the win on something we all agree was bad and instead try to torture language to equivocate being subpoenaed to appear in front of a democratic committee with *checks notes on contemporary CCP policy towards dissidents* putting millions of people into concentration camps.
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Nov 13, 2021 19:44
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Alchenar posted:I find it so weird that you can't just take the win on something we all agree was bad and instead try to torture language to equivocate being subpoenaed to appear in front of a democratic committee with *checks notes on contemporary CCP policy towards dissidents* putting millions of people into concentration camps.  We were talking about internet card games and whether banning them was a sign of weakness in a regime.
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Nov 13, 2021 19:51
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Cpt_Obvious posted:
Off line games actually.
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Nov 13, 2021 19:54
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For me the point is not that "Oh, the U.S. does it too" in a tu quoque sense, but rather that "free speech" as an absolute has not existed anywhere, and "reasonable" carve-outs are often rationalizations, such as how "You can't shout 'Fire!' in a crowded theater" means "People can be imprisoned for advocating for pacifism". Creating a binary that China fails to adhere to isn't at all useful for understanding anything. The U.S. with the 1st Amendment really did allow speech that was not allowed elsewhere at the time, but it also criminalized harsh dissent very early on. The modern form of robust freedom of speech in America only goes back to 1973. There are people on this forum who were born before then! It is true that sedition laws weren't used as a tool for mass imprisonment, but only employed rarely to make examples of prominent figures . . . but that also roughly tracks with what China is doing today. We can look at the trajectory of freedom of speech in America as a comparison for looking at and predicting it in China. Yes, China doesn't have "free speech" if you have to make a broad generalization but their Constitution says: 民有言论...自由. How true that is is changing over time. The real bright line difference is that the U.S. has never had a tradition of prior restraint, and of course you can't compare the age of pamphleteering to the age of the internet as easily. Also it's a bit hard to compare the era of media consolidation to early America as well. I think in the current future there really is going to be a bit of a bellweather in how much publications such as the South China Morning Post change their tone (though of course the SCMP was already changing its tone a bit before the extradition bill, which one can take as evidence of Party influence absent duress). Also, while Chinese voices on the subject are limited ipso facto when it comes to suppression speech, China isn't some black hole. You can go there and talk to people. Chinese people travel abroad. A significant minority of Chinese netizens use VPNs. There is nothing like the Stasi to go after people for talking frankly about politics over dinner. As it has been in most times and places (though to a higher degree) there are a small number of people who are righteously aggrieved that they cannot promote their ideas without fear of retribution, and a lot of people who are mildly inconvenienced--and probably even more nationalists whose kneejerk reaction is that troublemakers deserve to be punished. At least saying that last bit out loud in America makes you a pariah in a lot of social circles these days. If you go with the perspective that the Chinese government is trying to memoryhole things, they're doing a pretty awful job, because the Orwellian ideal is that the information simply isn't available. I think it makes a lot more sense that Party knows that its tools like ephemeral bans on search terms are just a crude bludgeon, but that a crude and incomplete repression of negative news is more than enough to reduce widespread disaffection. They have a stated goal of promoting harmonious society and they effect policies to achieve that goal. You might (and should!) disagree with the scope of their goal (or even their goal itself) and the policies they use to achieve it, but that's different from just cutting off all analysis because they're bad, and we can therefore attribute whatever bad things we think are bad to them.
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Nov 13, 2021 20:17
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Cpt_Obvious posted:
Xi isn't China. I'm not sure most of these comparisons hold up, but the supposedly weak thing is Xi's political position, not China overall. In any case, it is interesting that both of them are crackdowns on (supposed) homosexuals in the arts.
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Nov 13, 2021 20:22
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Dissent was absolutely quashed. For example, members of the Committee for the First Amendment were dragged in front of HUAC for protesting it. Expecting there to be flourishing communist groups in the US in the 1950s as a sign of "a truly free society" is idiotic anyway for any number of reasons. Were any of those people jailed, and the existence of their protests utterly suppressed?
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Nov 13, 2021 22:13
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Plastic_Gargoyle posted:
Yes and kinda. The Hollywood 10 specifically were all blacklisted and several jailed. There was a movie about it recently called Trumbo starring Bryan Cranston although I don't remember if that specific person went to jail but others did. It's not entirely accurate but does a pretty good job. The reality is that authoritarian regimes don't generally try to destroy all evidence of their suppression, that would defeat the purpose of it. The whole point of the HUAC hearings was to scare people out of socialist sentiments, so they'd have to hear about it in the first place. Anyway, this has gone off topic far enough. Here's some content about competition between china and the us by economist Richard Wolff who i refuse to stop posting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q5VsEew0ZM Cpt_Obvious fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Nov 13, 2021 |
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Nov 13, 2021 22:22
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Cpt_Obvious posted:The reality is that authoritarian regimes don't generally try to destroy all evidence of their suppression, that would defeat the purpose of it. The whole point of the HUAC hearings was to scare people out of socialist sentiments, so they'd have to hear about it in the first place. It failed miserably. It is one of the direct actions that led to the counter-culture movement of the 60s. It is perhaps the clarion call of what wasted so many lives and so much effort in the Cold War, the idea that 'communists' were a single thing that existed in some meaningful group sense, rather than being like 9 million disparate groups which often hated each other. It wasn't just cruel, it was stupid. It accomplished nothing it wanted to, destroyed many of the people that championed it, and is right up there with the War on Drugs on crippling policies that forever lessened America. If at any point you find yourself thinking of one of the worst gently caress ups in the history of the America government while thinking of China? China is a profoundly stupid and incompetent place.
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Nov 13, 2021 22:40
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Mulva posted:the idea that 'communists' were a single thing that existed in some meaningful group sense, rather than being like 9 million disparate groups which often hated each other. There were different groups of socialists, yes, but before the red scare they were in positions of power including two significant political parties and especially union leadership which the Taft-Hartley act explicitly made illegal.
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Nov 13, 2021 23:33
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Mulva posted:It failed miserably. It is one of the direct actions that led to the counter-culture movement of the 60s. It is perhaps the clarion call of what wasted so many lives and so much effort in the Cold War, the idea that 'communists' were a single thing that existed in some meaningful group sense, rather than being like 9 million disparate groups which often hated each other. It wasn't just cruel, it was stupid. It accomplished nothing it wanted to, destroyed many of the people that championed it, and is right up there with the War on Drugs on crippling policies that forever lessened America. Yep. The irony being that there actually were a bunch of Soviet spies in the US government, defense industry, etc. but the witch hunt mostly ruined a bunch of effectively random people who had nothing to do with it. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Nov 14, 2021 |
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Nov 14, 2021 02:53
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Alchenar posted:I find it so weird that you can't just take the win on something we all agree was bad and instead try to torture language to equivocate being subpoenaed to appear in front of a democratic committee with *checks notes on contemporary CCP policy towards dissidents* putting millions of people into concentration camps. China isn't doing that though. There are no concentration camps, and the prisons and rehabilitation centers that do exist are not handling millions of dissidents. Also I can't believe people fall for this poo poo again. Everyone arrested in a country we don't like says they're a political prisoner when the vast majority are just criminals. Actual, literal Russian Mafia dons beat that drum back in the Soviet days and even got people to solicit donations for them. Then the second they got out after the fall, they went right back to the mafia. Stop believing what the CIA and their pet cultists (who even have to admit that their information is 3rd or 4th hand on the rare occasions it's not just made up) tell you.
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Nov 14, 2021 05:19
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You really think all the news reports and all the people who talk about their relatives in Xinjiang are all members of a gigantic cia conspiracy? I mean, thats pretty high praise for the CIA, but a bunch of this stuff is literally coming from the Chinese government itself. As in there are various policy papers and other bureaucratic detritus that people found on the Chinese internet that back up the allegations made because the Chinese government thinks its a good thing. Stop fantasizing about this hypercompetent CIA that puppetmasters everything.
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Nov 14, 2021 05:42
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Pharohman777 posted:You really think all the news reports and all the people who talk about their relatives in Xinjiang are all members of a gigantic cia conspiracy? Can you post these papers? I would like to read them. 😀
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Nov 14, 2021 05:56
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CaptainACAB posted:China isn't doing that though. There are no concentration camps, and the prisons and rehabilitation centers that do exist are not handling millions of dissidents. This sure is one hell of a post.
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Nov 14, 2021 06:27
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clearly china is a cia conspiracy, poo poo
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Nov 14, 2021 06:29
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CaptainACAB the noted China scholar and expert on Xinjiang and Uyghur culture has spoken
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Nov 14, 2021 06:31
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The CIA is not S.H.E.I.L.D., fellows.
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Nov 14, 2021 08:04
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How are u posted:The CIA is not S.H.E.I.L.D., fellows. Actually misspelling an acronym that tries to sound cool and badass would be right on brand for CIA. Legacy of Ashes is a great book that is often comedic but for the fact real people are dying. I also read this Kermit Roosevelt memoir about the overthrow of Mossadegh once. It’s so strange because he writes about it with such pride yet it comes across as a series of obvious fuckups that through sheer luck leads to an outcome they could claim as a success.
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Nov 14, 2021 08:57
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Mr Hootington posted:Can you post these papers? I would like to read them. 😀 This is likely what they're referring to https://www.icij.org/investigations/china-cables/read-the-china-cables-documents/ https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html The Chinese government denies their authenticity, but of course they would, and judging by the contents if they were faked whoever faked it knows a hell of a lot to be insanely convincing. There was an order in the local Xinjiang government to tighten information control and prevent leaks almost immediately after too, which doesn't seem like the kind of thing you do because of fake documents. It's easy to disregard because Adrian Zenz attached his name to it, but gently caress he's going to attach his name to everything. He wasn't actually involved in the documents themselves or in their leaking other than commenting on them after the fact. They line up, in general, with a lot of things the Chinese government themselves have said (and disagree with a lot of things people downplaying things that happen in Xinjiang say. I've bitched about it before, but the thing that gets me is when people talk about jails, and prisoners. The documents and the party themselves repeatedly emphasize that they are not prisons and that the people there are not convicted of any crime. And, I think that is a massively important point.) BrainDance fucked around with this message at 10:07 on Nov 14, 2021 |
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Nov 14, 2021 09:59
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I wasn't even referring to Xinjiang, I meant the very open concentration camp system running from the 50's across the country.
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Nov 14, 2021 10:20
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BrainDance posted:This is likely what they're referring to Ahh yes, the papers Zenz thought were a smoking gun wherein the Chinese government clearly outlines that they want the detainees to be well treated and offered vocational skills to reintegrate them into society. They even spend half the document meticulously outlining building and cleanliness standards, and have entire sections about the standards for program completion prior to release. Truly, proof of China's maleficence. Imagine, taking people at risk of radicalization, then providing them with job skills, an education and language classes to help them integrate with broader society before releasing them? SHOCKING human rights abuses.
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Nov 14, 2021 10:23
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CaptainACAB posted:Ahh yes, the papers Zenz thought were a smoking gun wherein the Chinese government clearly outlines that they want the detainees to be well treated and offered vocational skills to reintegrate them into society. They even spend half the document meticulously outlining building and cleanliness standards, and have entire sections about the standards for program completion prior to release. I don't think you've read them, and I think Zenz could say whatever he wants about the documents and it wouldn't matter, they are what they are. Of course he's going to promote anything that helps his narrative (for him, even if it's bullshit. But that's not what these look like.) I get it though, I get your thing. Li Keqiang himself could be posting here and you'd go off about how wrong he is about China.
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Nov 14, 2021 10:30
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BrainDance posted:I don't think you've read them, and I think Zenz could say whatever he wants about the documents and it wouldn't matter, they are what they are. Of course he's going to promote anything that helps his narrative (for him, even if it's bullshit. But that's not what these look like.) Have YOU actually read them? Because if you had you'd know the first document was entirely comprised of (rather stringent) standards for health, safety, vocational training, education and hygene, which seems a whole awful lot of investment for death camps. There's a line specifically stating that armed guards are not allowed in various areas, even! If this is proof of China's evil, I'd hate to think what you'd think of actual human rights violations. CaptainACAB fucked around with this message at 10:35 on Nov 14, 2021 |
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Nov 14, 2021 10:33
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It also outlines a procedure for arbitrarily and indefinitely detaining people of a specific ethnicity who have not actually committed any crimes. Which is a very bad thing regardless of who does it, and is something I'm not really all that supportive of.
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Nov 14, 2021 10:39
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BrainDance posted:It also outlines a procedure for arbitrarily and indefinitely detaining people of a specific ethnicity who have not actually committed any crimes. Which is a very bad thing regardless of who does it, and is something I'm not really all that supportive of. Yes, detaining them so arbitrarily there's an entire paper about gathering and maintaining proper evidence and verification before action is taken.
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Nov 14, 2021 10:46
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The evidence is explicitly evidence of non-crimes, that's the entire point, and the reason things not otherwise defined anywhere can be used as evidence to detain people (like we've seen happen.) China already has a justice system set up to deal with actual crimes, there are already laws in China that cover extremism. Those laws apply to all ethnicities. Though, even that, gently caress Chinese cops, there are some insane interpretations of their laws (and some insane laws) that I've seen get used to gently caress a lot of people over who really didn't do anything wrong. BrainDance fucked around with this message at 10:55 on Nov 14, 2021 |
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Nov 14, 2021 10:52
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One thing I always wonder about the supposed US tolerance of political dissent (cf the USSR, DDR etc), is how much credit you can give a country for not locking up people who are basically no threat to power in the imperial core, when it is perfectly happy to orchestrate mass killings of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of political dissidents in the imperial periphery. Like just because you have a passable impression of freedom and democracy at home, surely the lack of respect for it abroad sort of negates that almost entirely? Maybe you wouldn't get locked up for advocating communism in Jacksonville in 1965 (although you would probably be spied on by secret police agencies like the FBI), but if you tried it in 1965 Jakarta then you would absolutely get murdered with the full blessing of the CIA, so surely it's not really a system tolerant of anything other than limited forms of political dissent (i.e. in specific geographical locations) when considered in aggregate? It's one of those things I always think about when you read about e.g. UK police spying on environmentalist groups via extremely intensive and gross methods. Clearly, our commitment to allowing political dissent, even at home where nominally we're supposed to be a liberal democracy is already limited, and I always suspect the reason MI5 isn't murdering communists like MI6 is less because of any unshakable moral principle of the British government and more just because they don't need to. Like you only have to look at the British security state's activities in Northern Ireland to see that they're perfectly happy to pretty openly kill people on allegedly British soil for political reasons.
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Nov 14, 2021 11:01
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BrainDance posted:The evidence is explicitly evidence of non-crimes, that's the entire point, and the reason things not otherwise defined anywhere can be used as evidence to detain people (like we've seen happen.) This is a whole lot of Zenzian speculation based on entirely contradictory evidence but ok sure.
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Nov 14, 2021 11:02
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lol at bringing out the 'all the evidence of xinjiang is from zenz' bullshit in 2021
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Nov 14, 2021 11:14
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