• 4 Posts
  • 109 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 29th, 2023

help-circle



  • OurToothbrush@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlHard to swallow pills
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    5 days ago

    Sure, if you know literally nothing about the military industrial complex and government capture and its role in creating war, and you want to buy into the propaganda that the US only attacks when it feels threatened.

    When countries are threatened and dropping bombs relieves that threat instead of increases it, then they do.

    Settler-brained-as-fuck idea about how conflict works


  • OurToothbrush@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlHard to swallow pills
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    14
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    5 days ago

    Who decides what speech threatens the government? The government.

    Uhuh. In other words, governments restrict speech that they think threatens them.

    I can say fuck Joe Biden, fuck Donald Trump, and fuck every member of Congress and the Supreme Court. Can you point me towards someone living in China who’s comfortable openly saying “fuck Xi Jinping?”

    First off, how many Chinese people have you actually talked to? You know there are Chinese people on the internet that you can talk to, right? And foreign exchange students? You can even visit the country if you want.

    And yes, you’re free to say things that don’t actually threaten the US, like saying fuck Trump or Fuck Biden. You’re allowed to be as ineffectual as you’d like. Compare your statements to all the black lives matter organizers who’ve been found to commit suicide by bullets to the back of the head or public hanging from trees.


  • OurToothbrush@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlHard to swallow pills
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    11
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    5 days ago

    The mere suggestion that the state is illegitimate in China would have gotten me disappeared.

    China has a smaller surveillance state than the US, so I doubt it. Also yeah, the US hasn’t faced serious coup attempts in the last 50 years.

    So it makes you wonder if ruling with an iron fist and crushing dissidents has some merit after all.

    Their execution or imprisonment stats must be much higher than the US! Wait. I’m just hearing… oh dear.


  • I mean- yeah, the birdcage model has been supplanted by majority public ownership at this point, the same incentives that create the military industrial complex don’t exist- if you’d like, i would recommend reading “Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism” which can be a handy reference point for the US military complex.



  • OurToothbrush@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlHard to swallow pills
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    15
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    5 days ago

    A million Uyghurs, whose only apparent crime is being Muslim, have been sent to labor camps and undergone forced sterilization.

    Do you know the sources of these claims? Because you’re repeating stuff that was first spread around by a German Christian nationalist (a euphemism) employed by a cia front group, which had already been debunked, and could be debunked by anyone looking at his methodology who is able to read mandarin.

    Why is this myth pushed so hard by western countries which slaughter Muslims by the millions, and are engaged in genocide against a majority Muslim population as we speak?

    Why do Muslim delegations visiting uniformly support the way China has treated its minority Muslim populations? Before you say sectarianism, investigate and realize that the delegations were intentionally multi-sectarian.

    Tiananmen Square started out as people peacefully protesting government corruption, and ended in the state murdering them.

    How violently do you think the US would have responded to US protestors trying to overthrow the government when they start burning and lynching to death unarmed soldiers? You can still find photos online of mutilated PLA soldiers corpses from june 2nd. 300 or so dead, including the soldiers that were killed, seems pretty light. Oh wait, the US military would never show up to a protest not armed to the teeth, silly me.


  • OurToothbrush@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlHard to swallow pills
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    26
    arrow-down
    8
    ·
    5 days ago

    You do understand that free speech that doesn’t threaten the government is tolerated everywhere, right? Us having more free speech here is just a function of the US government feeling more secure in its power, you can still find examples of free speech being punished in the US when it has threatened its power.



  • OurToothbrush@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlForest of trees
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    edit-2
    8 days ago

    So your argument is the geographical boundaries mean when a country is split it is imperialism to unite it again?

    Imagine if the confederacy retreated to the keys islands, that’s sort of the level of ridiculous here. The right wing losers of a civil war retreated to an island that was and is considered part of the country.


  • OurToothbrush@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlForest of trees
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    edit-2
    8 days ago

    Capitalism has a foothold there but the British no longer rule there. Justifying imperialism with imperialism also doesn’t magically make it okay

    No they just installed a friendly neocolonial government. Jesus Christ do some basic investigation. If the British invaded part of your hometown and installed a puppet government, would you call it imperialism for it to be taken back by your town?


  • You do understand the whole fascism thing relied on getting new colonies, right? They even did the whole manifest destiny thing.

    And the point was it doesn’t matter in relation to other attrocities.

    The point is that they’re in the same bucket as other colonial atrocities

    Russia was also a colonial power, and one of the last which is still one, ask a Yakut guy or someone from the northern Caucasus. So it should be also added there?

    Weren’t you the one complaining about whataboutism? Also yes, we can view the Russian empire and the Russian federation as imperialist projects.



  • OurToothbrush@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlForest of trees
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    22
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    8 days ago

    Whataboutism is only sometimes tu quoque.

    And you are using it again. Because the term was coined by English oppressors, than it shouldn’t true…

    Christ- this is deeply unserious. Do you understand how the British used it to deflect from the idea that IRA violence and British colonialism were connected? The British were saying “it is a logical fallacy to talk about our violence that creates the resistance, we are talkng about how the resistance is using violence and how that means they’re bad”

    Always the same answer to everything, my beloved dictator/political system/whatever is not really terrible, because I can point to something even worse

    Do you see all violence as divorced from other violence?

    Let’s see, “colonials are not as terrible, because what the Nazis did, and Jews were white people” Same as your reasoning.

    The Nazis were a colonial power, Jesus Christ, Mary, and Joseph, did you learn nothing about fascism in school?


  • OurToothbrush@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlForest of trees
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    33
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    8 days ago

    Oh, i liked this section

    According to lexicographer Ben Zimmer,[13] the term originated in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. Zimmer cites a 1974 letter by history teacher Sean O’Conaill which was published in The Irish Times where he complained about “the Whatabouts”, people who defended the IRA by pointing out supposed wrongdoings of their enemy:

    I would not suggest such a thing were it not for the Whatabouts. These are the people who answer every condemnation of the Provisional I.R.A. with an argument to prove the greater immorality of the “enemy”, and therefore the justice of the Provisionals’ cause: “What about Bloody Sunday, internment, torture, force-feeding, army intimidation?”. Every call to stop is answered in the same way: “What about the Treaty of Limerick; the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921; Lenadoon?”. Neither is the Church immune: “The Catholic Church has never supported the national cause. What about Papal sanction for the Norman invasion; condemnation of the Fenians by Moriarty; Parnell?”

    — Sean O’Conaill, “Letter to Editor”, The Irish Times, 30 Jan 1974

    Good example of how claims of whataboutism are used to try to remove actual important context from a discussion.




  • OurToothbrush@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlForest of trees
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    28
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    8 days ago

    I actually support the side which is magnitudes less violent. And there is a difference between killing fascists like the Soviets did and killing anti-colonial freedom fighters but mostly civilians like the colonial powers did.

    You can only oppose everyone if your opposition doesn’t actually do anything. If you’re actually affecting things your opposition of one will strengthen the other. You have to be against the US empire and for multipolarity or against multipolarity and for the US empire. There isn’t a third option.