How do we combat US propaganda when it's so prevalent? - eviltoast

Serious post warning, sleep-deprived wall of text ahead.

Someone who I dare say I respect publicly discouraged joining or supporting Lemmy on the basis of being The Tankie Place, linking this raddle post, a collection of horrifyingly flimsy evidence that Dessalines (lemmy.ml admin, maintainer of the wonderful dessalines.github.io/essays/) is a freedom hating redfash tankie who likes it when the evil CCP genocides uyghurs and bans femboys.

Naturally it all sucks but now i’m investing too many brain cells into thinking: how do you even refute this garbage?

I’m not proud of it, but I was an “anti-authoritarian leftist” too. I unironically said “tankie” once. And if i were told there is no Uyghur genocide, i would react exactly as if they had told me there was no holocaust. To the westerner, China really is as bad as nazi germany and straightforwardly saying otherwise, in their mind, is no different than if you replace Uyghurs with jews and China with germany. When this narrative is so deeply ingrained, how do you fight it? How the hell did I get here?

i really have no idea how to address it when, to them as it once was to me, it is so obviously true that anyone suggesting otherwise is not even worth listening to. these are fundamental beliefs and challenging them is grounds for instant block and report. its not open for discussion. all i can do is hope they find the truth on their own.

i’ll stop rambling now and sleep instead. so i wont respond for a while. sorry if theres a better community to post this in i just needed to get this out before i spontaneously combust. good night comrades.

  • bobs_guns@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    The main reason why I’m so vehemently against the Uyghur genocide narrative is that it’s plainly meant to turn the people of the US against China in preparation for a war. You’re telling me that the country responsible for a million+ dead Muslim civilians in Iraq gives half a shit about Muslims in China? C’mon. That’s obviously bullshit and there must be some other reason why we’re going on about it.

    Looking into it more the reasons are to destabilize the region to impede the Belt and Road Initiative and to prepare for war with China. I just don’t think the US should be involved in the region, full stop, and therefore I am opposed to the US narrative on happenings in Xinjiang. There’s no need for overanalysis or splitting hairs on the definition of genocide here.

    In every case when a state is saying something you must ask, why are they saying that?

    As for use of force against civilian protestors: If these protestors are foreign agents of the US, they should of course be cracked down on so long as doing so doesn’t grow popular support for the movement. The US and the “international community” commits acts of color revolution and sabotage at every opportunity and socialist states must defend themselves against these acts or face collapse. Genuine protests with the will of the common people behind them should be listened to and taken into account in policymaking.

    • Shinhoshi@infosec.pub
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      1 year ago

      I just don’t think the US should be involved in the region, full stop, and therefore I am opposed to the US narrative on happenings in Xinjiang. There’s no need for overanalysis or splitting hairs on the definition of genocide here.

      I agree that the US has been meddling too much in foreign affairs. While I think China should be handling it better, China should be the one to fix that.

      As for use of force against civilian protestors: If these protestors are foreign agents of the US, they should of course be cracked down on so long as doing so doesn’t grow popular support for the movement.

      Meanwhile r/conservative is unironically saying that “if capitalism is so powerful that we can absolutely devastate a country simply by refusing to trade with them, maybe that’s a sign that the U.S. system works and ought to be emulated.”

      • bobs_guns@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        Personally I don’t believe the amount of devastation you can cause should be the measure of how well your system works. If that was the play then they should have put me in charge of cloud deployment and database administration at my last job lol

        • Shinhoshi@infosec.pub
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          1 year ago

          If that was the play then they should have put me in charge of cloud deployment and database administration at my last job lol

          Did you name your kid Bobby Tables by chance? :P

          I agree, but I need the exercise of thinking about how I would feel if the revolution happened.

          Is there any AES countries you can point to that you think worked well?

          • bobs_guns@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            They weren’t as successful in the long term because they didn’t successfully defend the revolution, but I’d point to Burkina Faso as an example of what becomes possible after a revolution. China also saw a meteoric rise in life expectancy during Mao’s time in power and I’d consider it a success story overall.