The far-right populist Alternative for Germany party rejects a values-based foreign policy, just as much as it rejects NATO and the US. That approach has attracted the attention of Beijing.
It’s already a hexbear fest in here. There is zero point posting anything about China or Russia - every comment is trounced on by hexbears.
Yes yes, if I didn’t want your opinion I should have stayed on Reddit.
Yes, yes, you got here first.
Yes, yes, I’m a brainwashed liberal.
Yes, yes, you’re actually one of the oldest Lemmy communities but you’ve only recently started federating.
Yes, yes, you’re seeing the light and can see through the western media’s bias and the rest of us are just mindless sheep.
Yes, yes, China is great, Russia is fantastic, Ukraine should pursue for peace and roll over.
Yes, yes, you never allowed downvoting so you’re used to just comment and that’s why there’s so many hexbears in here. And you’re definitely not Russian or CCP farmed trolls.
Yes, yes, all those things are true.
I’m sure I’m missing a few, but I’m pretty close to a hexbear “Bingo!” I think.
We used to allow downvoting, we just got rid of it to stop trolls from making multiple accounts to downvote every comment from people they disliked (specifically trans users were getting their comments brigaded like this) and it turned out to be a great choice because it encouraged discussion if you disagreed with someone.
Also we’re definitely not “Russian or CCP farmed trolls” why would they have paid people to talk amongst themselves for three years? I mean I could really use the supplemental income so I wish, been putting off car repairs for months due to finances.
I don’t think all of you are farmed trolls. My apologies if that’s how it was heard.
I think many of you are farmed trolls, some of you are “useful idiots” to the troll farms, some of you have degenerated into a brigade of memes and a few of you are real people who genuinely hold idealistic opinions that couldn’t work in the real world. I doubt many of you belong in the last category.
I think many of you are farmed trolls, some of you are “useful idiots” to the troll farms, some of you have removedd into a brigade of memes and a few of you are real people who genuinely hold idealistic opinions that couldn’t work in the real world. I doubt many of you belong in the last category.
Is this copy-pasta or are you always this condescending? What if I told you that’s how we feel about libs like you?
I’m hardly ever this condescending. I’ve made a special exception to hexbear users who’ve been brigading almost all posts about China and Russia since you federated again.
You’ve been telling everyone how you feel about libs since you federated, so I’m sure you will continue with or without me.
I know it’s tough to face the light and meet the wider world, but outside the basement you’ve been keeping yourself for three years, you should expect that people giggle at your idiocy, at best.
I know it’s tough to face the light and meet the wider world, but outside the basement you’ve been keeping yourself for three years, you should expect that people giggle at your idiocy, at best.
Im so glad you got through that. I hope your doing well for yourself. 👍
I’ve made a special exception to hexbear users who’ve been brigading almost all post last about China and Russia since you federated again.
Would you not agree that China and Russia are highly political topics?
We seem to have different understandings of federation and brigading. Can you pls define what you mean exactly and how these concepts differentiate from each other? I can tell you from our perspective this thread is on our front-page. Like you (@lemmy.one) as us (@hexbear.net) are federated to @lemmy.ml and we each see the same post. We are both “guests” to that instance. Also since China and Russia are highly political topics why wouldn’t be commenting on here?
You’ve been telling everyone how you feel about libs since you federated, so I’m sure you will continue with or without me.
That was not the point I was making. I was telling you that you can litterally take that paragraph you wrote and paste it into any polarizing subreddit and get a bunch of upvotes in each ingroup… Reread what you wrote from our perspective… Don’t you see how we’d say it fits on you too? (If you’re having trouble: imagine you’re us and roleplay it, see if it fits then). You created copy pasta…
I know it’s tough to face the light and meet the wider world, but outside the basement you’ve been keeping yourself. You should expect that people giggle at your idiocy, at best.
It’s closer to a nationalist oligarcy with the trappings a formal, liberal democracy. Ofc, at the end of the day the U$A is no more democratic in any deepy, normative or radical sense. But the state itself is ideologically more nationalist and has been pushing back against liberal social and economic views. You can see this in the conflicts recently between the executive and the central bank, as the latter has been one of the last convinced bastions of neoliberal economic orthodoxy.
This also has to do with the fact that Russia’s ruling bourgeois class’s interests are more national in nature, as a result of their economic development since 1991, aggressive geopolitics from NATO, and the fact that they were forced by the state into emphasizing national interests once the Putin era began.
That is what modern liberal democratic governments become. You analysis is good, I think you are just giving all parties involved too much of the benefit of thr doubt here
Sure. As a matter of historicaly development, we know, as Marxists, that liberal capitalist societies, whether they have the formal institutions of representative democracy or not, tend to develop due to the tendencies of economic development the social consequences of the later and the political conjunctures, into fascistic or fascist political regimes and societies. But these are tendencies, they aren’t metaphysical or mathematical necessities. Even if we always saw every liberal democracy transform into outright into fascism, this doesn’t make them the same thing. If you were actually under a fascist government you would quickly realise the difference.
Fascism is partly characterized by it’s ideological and other superstructural features, but this is only a partial understanding. A fuller understanding notes that such states have only emerged in contexts of capitalist decay and crisis and act as a safety valve through which the capitalist class reestablishes political supremacy over the workings classes. However, I would point out that while capitalists are generally key parts of an any fascist state, the relationship between a powerful fascist state and individual enterprises (such as in Nazi Germany) does tip more and more towards the arbitrary power of the central executive government, to the point where they are more eager than capitalists to jeopardize profits for political objectives.
I’m obviously not saying that liberals have not engaged in extreme racism, colonialism, and genocide. Actually, from a historical point of view, they have been the best at it. It also isn’t wrong to say that in many respects fascism is also charaterized by the turning inward, the domestic usage, of the coercive, violent means of political repression which are innovated and developed in colonies. As Aimé Cesaire pointed out, fascism is like imperialism turned inwards. Modern America often treats many people internally in a fascistic way, embodied by the prison-industrial complex, especially if you are a very active, radical activist, or were or are in the past or present a member of a revolutionary group like the Black Panthers, or more generally a poor immigrant, a racial minority interacting with cops, or many other scenarios. The American state, like the British and French states, their political and economic elites, have already partly fascicized, are undergoing the process. But I really don’t think we’re passed the point of the nature of the political regime changing sufficiently to call them all fully fascist states. After Ukraine, the USA is the closest.
This is also why it is so weird and unnecessary to me when people just say that liberal democracy is the same thing as fascism. The fact that two things are linked or that one has tendencies that lead it to transform into, produce, be replaced by the other does not mean that they’re the same. Actually it implies the opposite, otherwise there would be no transformation to begin with. Take the Italian government. It is filled with realy, ideologically convinced fascists. But it does not find itself in a situation where, even as a unified coalition of Mussolini fans, they cannot actually find any means to exert fully fascist politics in defiance of the EU’s neoliberal economic agenda, nor NATO’s political agenda. Meloni does actually use the classic fascist technique of appealing to leftist sounding points. She recently went on Italian television and shit all over Macron and the French for enganging in neocolonialism against Françafrique, explaining the monetary system on tv and how most gold a child will mine in the period will end up in the French central bank.
The difference with the Ukrainian government is that the material conditions of Ukraine allow, actually force, the government to fascicize beyond the confines of it’s own ideology and extend this to society more broadly and more radically. There is not even the pretence of liberal democracy in Ukraine amongst actual Ukrainians, let alone the Russophone Ukrainians or Russians of the east.
We have different words for a reason: to refer to different things. In this case, different types of political regimes. A liberal political regime is different to fascist political regime. The transition might be gradual or appear relatively continuous, but so was the emergence of feudalism and capitalism.
This is also why it is so weird and unnecessary to me when people just say that liberal democracy is the same thing as fascism. The fact that two things are linked or that one has tendencies that lead it to transform into, produce, be replaced by the other does not mean that they’re the same. Actually it implies the opposite, otherwise there would be no transformation to begin with.
Would you prefer “liberal democracy nearly inevitably leads to fascism”? Stage 1 cancer and stage 4 cancer are both cancer.
Except that that is a completely logically confused example.
By this reasoning feudalism is the same thing as capitalism. Nonsense.
What is common between historically existing fascism and liberalism as political regimes, is the capitalist economic structure that they have existed upon. But this does not uniquely determine the form of the society or the political regime, even if it restricts the range of political regimes which are possible or likely. Otherwise we are engaging in economism and economic determinism and fatalism, which are not Marxist. The difference consists in the real differences in how those political regimes govern, how they organize the economic surplus, how they conduct social policy, how they legislate, and what kind of power relations the executive, legislature and judiciary have to each other. Republican Rome and modern America are both dictatorships of certain classes, but they still had a type of internal hierarchy within the socio-economic and political elite that aimed ensured certain balances of power within their class. Put it this way for example: Israel is highly fascicized society. It is deeply socially and culturally conservative and reactionary. It has been taking steps away from the internal domestic remnants of liberal political structures in order to allow the executive to take control over the legislature. This is a further step towards even more full on fascism.
What is common between 1st and 4th stage cancer is the cancer.
What is common between liberal capitalism and historically existing fascism is capitalism (private property, wage labor, commodity production, attendant social relations, etc.), the existence of a state, nationalism, colonialism, imperialism. In the sense fascism continues and intensifies this, but this does not make them the same. It’s honestly insane to me that this point has to be made: different things are not the same, same things are not different. We use the term fascist to distinguish changes
The Third Reich’s governance was different in a variety of ways to the Weimar’s Republic’s.
I’d agree that in, say, neoliberalism, there is a particularly strong pull towards fascism, and that you already see these tendencies emerging strongly in neoliberal societies’ politics and social relations, ideology and foreign policy. But saying that because the tendencies that lead to a future society are present in an earlier type of society, makes them the same, would again reduce capitalism to feudalism.
Otherwise this is just obfuscation and mystification that gets in the way of properly analyzing things politically and makes Marxists look ridiculous.
I don’t think any state qualifies as “great,” or “fantastic”, however aside from that zero lies detected and Ukraine should have accepted peace terms a year ago instead of listening to :loser:
LOL. I definitely did not believe Iraq had WMDs. It was insane what the US and its partners did in Iraq. It solved nothing. It probably made things worse in the Middle East, at least for 20 years, and it cost a lot of lives.
But let’s not use that fact to say everything the West is doing is wrong. Just like a few of the good things China doesn’t make everything China does correct.
If you payed closer attention you’d notice that we have a range of opinions on China, and we don’t all think everything they do is correct. That’s what the term critical support means. It’s a recognition that even socialist states are imperfect, as the nation state as an institution is fundamentally imperfect and will always and everywhere undermine freedom to some degree. But a state which is undergoing the transition to socialism, particularly one that’s putting themselves in a position to undermine US imperial hegemony like China is, is well worth supporting, even as we acknowledge its flaws and contradictions.
What none of us will ever tolerate are accusations of genocide with one discredited religious fanatic as the source, or racist insults being hurled at their head of state, both things I’ve seen numerous times from users from other instances.
I believed it. I was a child at the time, but I believed it. Because the entire US was screaming it was true.
After Libya, my illusions were fully shattered. Now I search out the backstory devoid of Western sources.
You claim you didn’t believe, but you still buy the US line today.
How can you reconcile such a monstrous lie they told in Iraq with the idea that they could ever be trusted again? That cognitive dissonance broke my belief in the West entirely.
Millions died on a lie. Justice would be execution for every official involved. They are doing it again, but once again most won’t realize it until years after.
I can understand that because you feel duped, you find it hard to trust anything the US says today.
I didn’t feel duped, though. It was clearly an insane lie meant to justify a neocon, hawkish invasion of Iraq and Bush Jr was desperate to “finish the job” and get a pat on his back by Bush.
The world is super complex. Not everything the West does is good - there’s plenty of examples in history, less from present day but definitely cases (Iraq is an awful example). Similarly, not everything China does is bad, far from it. I’ve travelled there extensively and work with Chinese citizens every single day. I have no hate for Chinese people - count many as my friend and they’re both hard working and fun to be around after work (once you get to know them). There’s plenty of things to like in China. And once you get to know Chinese people well, they will tell you story after story about the insanity inside their own country - that they are well aware of. They laugh at their own government.
So I’m not confused about the balance of things. On balance, the West is a far better influence on the world and care-taker of its citizens than China is. And let’s not get started on the Russian state, which is an oligarchic kleptocracy driven to violence by its isolated dictator.
I understand that the US is the among the most evil and genocidal forces in human history.
I came to that realization through being duped.
That is a very important distinction. None of this comes from some petty sense of slight.
To consider the US a better influence on the world than China is not only laughable, it is obscene.
The US exterminated an entire continent of innocent people as the opening act to their crimes, and have only added to that list with every passing year. Never have they meaningfully repented or cleaned house from those acts.
It would be as if Nazi Germany survived for three centuries.
The US carried out nuclear murder to make a political point. The US butchered and destroyed the lives of billions in the global south and they aim to do the same to China next.
On balance, the West is a far better influence on the world
NATO has bombed and destroyed not just Iraq, but the majority of the middle east. It runs an occupation force today in Syria. NATO didn’t just destroy Iraq, it colonized Iraq’s agriculture, which is now dependent on imports from NATO while it feeds pasta to Texan schools. NATO has transformed Libya into an open air slave market, flooded Syria with weapons, backed Israeli Apartheid, blockaded Iran, couped the government of Pakistan, and caused a famine in Afghanistan on their way out by sanctioning yet another people. The little girls whose rights NATO countries cared about so very much then starved to death. Not for any reason, not to achieve any objective. But only out of spite.
NATO has couped and propagandized it’s way across Latin America. This is not ancient history. It is current and ongoing. It claims outright that they won’t stop blockading Venezuela until it’s oil is owned by american shareholders. So not only bombs, deaths by starvation and lack of medicine are perfectly fine for the organization. Just as Syrians and Chinese people have no right to territorial integrity, Cubans have had no right to ally with whoever they want for generations.
NATO runs an actual and currently existing Colonial Empire across Africa. One of it’s leading voices, France, owns the infrastructure, finances and natural resources of dozens of countries, assassinating its way into total dominance. Then it gives some scraps back to those colonies, and calls it ‘Foreign Aid’. Berating the poors for being so dependent. Once challenged, NATO has yet again chosen to starve people to death with trade wars on basic infrastructure, food, and medicine.
I’m Brazilian. When the Bolsonaro family was literally calling Chinese monkeys on twitter the Chinese were remarkably patient. The USA berates us for being ‘anti-american’ because we aren’t grateful of how Biden chose not to coup us last year. As if it’s not humiliating enough that a fascist in this country can draw on the history of America and outright ask the CIA for help staying in power. There are now US troops supporting the coup government of Peru. Right after coup attempts in Bolivia and Venezuela. We now watch as high ranking US government officials float the idea of invading Mexico, under the cover of a war on drugs. After years of waging it in Colombia and Central America. But we all know it’s because Mexico nationalized stuff that Americans don’t want to see owned by Mexicans.
There are no fucking standards for comparison. There are no regions of this world which do not witness current and ongoing hybrid wars waged by NATO countries at the behest of the USA.
The West is a defensive alliance between warmongerers. The Americans at least have the decency of wearing their thirst for blood on their sleeve. Democrat or Republican, they’ve all had their share of wars they enjoy supporting. It’s the Europeans who will cry on TV while sending volunteers to Iraq and Afghanistan.
I only pray for any people who is targetted by NATO’s eye of sauron. Or has to make do with sharing a border such an evil collection of governments.
Hey, since you already understand that the war on terror was a lie, I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts after listening to Blowback Season 2 and Season 3. They’re about Cuba and Korea. I grew up believing they were no good and completely evil, but there is a verifiable truth that is propagandized against in the west. You don’t even have to use non-western sources to get to that truth, it’s just that if you don’t know you’ve been lied to, there’s no reason to dig in.
It’s certainly not a single lie over the War on Terror that has led to our complete distrust of the American state.
the West is a far better influence on the world and care-taker of its citizens than China is
Simple statistics like literacy and life expectancy disagree with this assessment.
And let’s not get started on the Russian state
You won’t find much support for Russia on Hexbear. You’re mistaking our disdain for NATO as support for Russia. Russia is not the Soviet Union.
I shall have a listen. Thanks for the recommendation 🙏
For FWIW I don’t think the WoT was “a lie” - nor was it a complete truth. I remain broadly in support of what the west did in Afghanistan (and I’m saying this despite one of my previous buddies dying over there), although I definitely to this day will argue that the second war on Iraq was borderline evil and most definitely a war crime.
I’m not American, by the way, so my point of comparison isn’t China vs US, but China “the west”. The US has plenty of problems too.
You are correct that it’s my impression that Hexbear users broadly support Russia.
I’m not sure I understand your question. Do you mean “what made me realise that Iraq had no WMDs”? Well, for starters that the UN had been all over the bloody country inspecting it for years. Secondly that Colin Powell’s session at the UN presented drawings as evidence. Drawings.
No not all hexbear users are farmed trolls. I think most are doing China and Russia’s bidding out of misunderstandings about the world and what really happens inside those two countries.
I think some hexbear users are farmed trolls and/bots.
You went on a long screed about how we keep making fun of you and telling you to go back to reddit. Clearly you’re the one being ridiculed for your insane opinions.
I mean i am yet to read any convincing arguments that we aren’t, even though there are plenty of opportunities to debate us in the free market of ideas.
You came into a thread and started slamming out an entire paragraph unrelated to the actual post about those damn hexbeara and NOW its about choosing your battles?
True, engaging with actual sourced comments is equivalent to arguing with drunkards, as opposed to going on tirades about how all the hexbears are bad bots.
See you could have done it right here, with this post. There was practically an invitation, but you chose to post something that dismissed and sidestepped the issue.
Now you have some idea of how we feel on Reddit. The difference here is that karma doesn’t matter. And hexbearers can’t even downvote your comments anyway. You’re just complaining that you have to listen to another point of view.
That’s not a reply to what you’ve been asked, that’s you posting a link to a lemmy thread linking to a German state affiliated media article that has already been posted in the OP and that you probably haven’t even read beyond the title because it doesn’t have anything to do with your rant against the spectre of hexbear, or with the replies to it. It’s a pattern i’ve come to see a lot with you shitlibs, you make gestures towards what you believe to be an authoritative and trustworthy source and then it becomes obvious you haven’t engaged with the linked material in any way, you just make a feeble attempt to use it as a way to shut dissenters up. That kind of parlor trick probably even works on your brain that has been smoothed out to a marble-like texture by the reddit front page, Vaush streams, and a constantly growing coat of bioaccumulating microplastics, but come the fuck on, people have asked you a question. Is it that hard to answer it in good faith? I’ve read the article in question, i’ve actually read the replies from other hexbear users here and the article doesn’t work as a refutation of what they’ve said, in fact some of it actually supports the claims by hexbear users that the pro-imperialist stance of liberal left parties in the west has opened up an opportunity for right wingers to appropriate anti-western and pacifist stances in public to fish for votes of disgruntled apolitical and post-left people while they privately support the same murderous, genocidal expansionism as their more liberal counterparts, as evidenced by the breaking of disarmament treaties from the cold war and the increased funding of Azovite insurgents under Trump, the sudden swiveling towards an uncompromising pro-NATO stance of the fascists now governing Italy and countless other examples for the imperialism of parties politically comparable to Germany’s AfD. I wonder if it’s seriously beyond you to think that far or if you’re just too lazy to do any critical thinking. Is this redditor debatebro shit the only way you can engage in a conversation? I’m genuinely curious how the fuck that idea of us as a simultaneously Chinese and Russian botnet started to live rent-free in your head, or how you got the idea that a bunch of trans communists support modern-day Russia’s neoliberal regime that is as bad on queer rights as Florida will be 5 years from now, and what kind of absurd thought process is behind your far-fetched assumptions about us.
Hey man, I’m genuinely sorry that I linked to the wrong thing. That’s a simple mistake, it seems my client (Voyager) acts a bit strange when pressing “Share”. Let me fix it.
Edit: Nope can’t seem to get a durable link.
What I wrote in another comment, which I was trying to link to, was:
_I don’t think all of you are farmed trolls. My apologies if that’s how it was heard.
I think many of you are farmed trolls, some of you are “useful idiots” to the troll farms, some of you have degenerated into a brigade of memes and a few of you are real people who genuinely hold idealistic opinions that couldn’t work in the real world. I doubt many of you belong in the last category._
maybe we are Subreddit that was banned from reddit Because its oppinions are deemed “Dangerous” the Status Quo and the Class of People that profit from the Status Quo. ( The Oligarchy , the Passiv income classes) Maybe the History of Hexbear is actually if you look at it , the answer to all your questions
Maybe Propaganda actually happens and Happend to You ! if you are iritated by hearing Pro China opinions ? How is this not a Testment of your Isolation …
You have actually a great fucking opportunity on your hands , you can Learn …
Your conspiracy allows you to dismiss any leftist thought as non genuine.
You will spend the rest of your life honestly believing an ideology that almost overthrew capitalism multiple times isn’t sincerely held by many people.
As awful as capitalism is I don’t for a second question your genuine belief in it. That only seems to go one way
Hey, I don’t have anything new to say, just want to join the pile-on. Sorry you can’t have your liberal echo chamber, and sorry that most of the world actually prefers China to the great satan and its western demons. If you didn’t want to be ridiculed for your insane opinions though you really shouldn’t be federated with the real world though
You are on a good way ,
accept us as the new Cultural Hegemony …
Its not like you didnt have a Cultural Hegemony Before, so you know the play
It was China bad , its China good now!
pretty fucking easy …
Waaaaahhhhh only 99% of everything I interact with is geared toward my Liberal Anti-Communist sensibilities waaaaahhhhh waaaaahhhhh why can’t it be 100%
Libs crying that they can’t just pile on people who disagree with them will never stop being funny. These trolls can’t actually make any coherent arguments to support their positions and simply regurgitate a handful of tropes they memorized. All of a sudden this tactic doesn’t work anymore and y’all having a meltdown.
It’s already a hexbear fest in here. There is zero point posting anything about China or Russia - every comment is trounced on by hexbears.
Yes yes, if I didn’t want your opinion I should have stayed on Reddit.
Yes, yes, you got here first.
Yes, yes, I’m a brainwashed liberal.
Yes, yes, you’re actually one of the oldest Lemmy communities but you’ve only recently started federating.
Yes, yes, you’re seeing the light and can see through the western media’s bias and the rest of us are just mindless sheep.
Yes, yes, China is great, Russia is fantastic, Ukraine should pursue for peace and roll over.
Yes, yes, you never allowed downvoting so you’re used to just comment and that’s why there’s so many hexbears in here. And you’re definitely not Russian or CCP farmed trolls.
Yes, yes, all those things are true.
I’m sure I’m missing a few, but I’m pretty close to a hexbear “Bingo!” I think.
We used to allow downvoting, we just got rid of it to stop trolls from making multiple accounts to downvote every comment from people they disliked (specifically trans users were getting their comments brigaded like this) and it turned out to be a great choice because it encouraged discussion if you disagreed with someone.
Also we’re definitely not “Russian or CCP farmed trolls” why would they have paid people to talk amongst themselves for three years? I mean I could really use the supplemental income so I wish, been putting off car repairs for months due to finances.
I mean the prevention of downvotes is pretty much the only thing I agree with :)
It’s a good policy for sure.
I don’t think all of you are farmed trolls. My apologies if that’s how it was heard.
I think many of you are farmed trolls, some of you are “useful idiots” to the troll farms, some of you have degenerated into a brigade of memes and a few of you are real people who genuinely hold idealistic opinions that couldn’t work in the real world. I doubt many of you belong in the last category.
“Only a few of you are even real people that’s why I am wasting my time whining here”
Is this copy-pasta or are you always this condescending? What if I told you that’s how we feel about libs like you?
I’m hardly ever this condescending. I’ve made a special exception to hexbear users who’ve been brigading almost all posts about China and Russia since you federated again.
You’ve been telling everyone how you feel about libs since you federated, so I’m sure you will continue with or without me.
I know it’s tough to face the light and meet the wider world, but outside the basement you’ve been keeping yourself for three years, you should expect that people giggle at your idiocy, at best.
Im so glad you got through that. I hope your doing well for yourself. 👍
That was not the point I was making. I was telling you that you can litterally take that paragraph you wrote and paste it into any polarizing subreddit and get a bunch of upvotes in each ingroup… Reread what you wrote from our perspective… Don’t you see how we’d say it fits on you too? (If you’re having trouble: imagine you’re us and roleplay it, see if it fits then). You created copy pasta…
I am once again asking liberals to either learn how federation works, or go back to reddit.
It’s not brigading when I see a dumb post on my front page and decide to comment on it.
Reddit is a Liberal echo chamber that actively censors things that aren’t the US state department line, go back to it if federation is such a problem.
not very nice to call me stupid
Are you trying to imply that all those things aren’t 100% true?
Well, Russia isn’t fantastic
It is a modern liberal democracy. Of course it is awful
It’s closer to a nationalist oligarcy with the trappings a formal, liberal democracy. Ofc, at the end of the day the U$A is no more democratic in any deepy, normative or radical sense. But the state itself is ideologically more nationalist and has been pushing back against liberal social and economic views. You can see this in the conflicts recently between the executive and the central bank, as the latter has been one of the last convinced bastions of neoliberal economic orthodoxy.
This also has to do with the fact that Russia’s ruling bourgeois class’s interests are more national in nature, as a result of their economic development since 1991, aggressive geopolitics from NATO, and the fact that they were forced by the state into emphasizing national interests once the Putin era began.
Ofc it remains a capitalist shithole.
That is what modern liberal democratic governments become. You analysis is good, I think you are just giving all parties involved too much of the benefit of thr doubt here
Sure. As a matter of historicaly development, we know, as Marxists, that liberal capitalist societies, whether they have the formal institutions of representative democracy or not, tend to develop due to the tendencies of economic development the social consequences of the later and the political conjunctures, into fascistic or fascist political regimes and societies. But these are tendencies, they aren’t metaphysical or mathematical necessities. Even if we always saw every liberal democracy transform into outright into fascism, this doesn’t make them the same thing. If you were actually under a fascist government you would quickly realise the difference.
Fascism is partly characterized by it’s ideological and other superstructural features, but this is only a partial understanding. A fuller understanding notes that such states have only emerged in contexts of capitalist decay and crisis and act as a safety valve through which the capitalist class reestablishes political supremacy over the workings classes. However, I would point out that while capitalists are generally key parts of an any fascist state, the relationship between a powerful fascist state and individual enterprises (such as in Nazi Germany) does tip more and more towards the arbitrary power of the central executive government, to the point where they are more eager than capitalists to jeopardize profits for political objectives.
I’m obviously not saying that liberals have not engaged in extreme racism, colonialism, and genocide. Actually, from a historical point of view, they have been the best at it. It also isn’t wrong to say that in many respects fascism is also charaterized by the turning inward, the domestic usage, of the coercive, violent means of political repression which are innovated and developed in colonies. As Aimé Cesaire pointed out, fascism is like imperialism turned inwards. Modern America often treats many people internally in a fascistic way, embodied by the prison-industrial complex, especially if you are a very active, radical activist, or were or are in the past or present a member of a revolutionary group like the Black Panthers, or more generally a poor immigrant, a racial minority interacting with cops, or many other scenarios. The American state, like the British and French states, their political and economic elites, have already partly fascicized, are undergoing the process. But I really don’t think we’re passed the point of the nature of the political regime changing sufficiently to call them all fully fascist states. After Ukraine, the USA is the closest.
This is also why it is so weird and unnecessary to me when people just say that liberal democracy is the same thing as fascism. The fact that two things are linked or that one has tendencies that lead it to transform into, produce, be replaced by the other does not mean that they’re the same. Actually it implies the opposite, otherwise there would be no transformation to begin with. Take the Italian government. It is filled with realy, ideologically convinced fascists. But it does not find itself in a situation where, even as a unified coalition of Mussolini fans, they cannot actually find any means to exert fully fascist politics in defiance of the EU’s neoliberal economic agenda, nor NATO’s political agenda. Meloni does actually use the classic fascist technique of appealing to leftist sounding points. She recently went on Italian television and shit all over Macron and the French for enganging in neocolonialism against Françafrique, explaining the monetary system on tv and how most gold a child will mine in the period will end up in the French central bank. The difference with the Ukrainian government is that the material conditions of Ukraine allow, actually force, the government to fascicize beyond the confines of it’s own ideology and extend this to society more broadly and more radically. There is not even the pretence of liberal democracy in Ukraine amongst actual Ukrainians, let alone the Russophone Ukrainians or Russians of the east.
We have different words for a reason: to refer to different things. In this case, different types of political regimes. A liberal political regime is different to fascist political regime. The transition might be gradual or appear relatively continuous, but so was the emergence of feudalism and capitalism.
Would you prefer “liberal democracy nearly inevitably leads to fascism”? Stage 1 cancer and stage 4 cancer are both cancer.
You: Life leads to death, therefore life is death (in short)
Except that that is a completely logically confused example. By this reasoning feudalism is the same thing as capitalism. Nonsense.
What is common between historically existing fascism and liberalism as political regimes, is the capitalist economic structure that they have existed upon. But this does not uniquely determine the form of the society or the political regime, even if it restricts the range of political regimes which are possible or likely. Otherwise we are engaging in economism and economic determinism and fatalism, which are not Marxist. The difference consists in the real differences in how those political regimes govern, how they organize the economic surplus, how they conduct social policy, how they legislate, and what kind of power relations the executive, legislature and judiciary have to each other. Republican Rome and modern America are both dictatorships of certain classes, but they still had a type of internal hierarchy within the socio-economic and political elite that aimed ensured certain balances of power within their class. Put it this way for example: Israel is highly fascicized society. It is deeply socially and culturally conservative and reactionary. It has been taking steps away from the internal domestic remnants of liberal political structures in order to allow the executive to take control over the legislature. This is a further step towards even more full on fascism.
What is common between 1st and 4th stage cancer is the cancer. What is common between liberal capitalism and historically existing fascism is capitalism (private property, wage labor, commodity production, attendant social relations, etc.), the existence of a state, nationalism, colonialism, imperialism. In the sense fascism continues and intensifies this, but this does not make them the same. It’s honestly insane to me that this point has to be made: different things are not the same, same things are not different. We use the term fascist to distinguish changes The Third Reich’s governance was different in a variety of ways to the Weimar’s Republic’s.
I’d agree that in, say, neoliberalism, there is a particularly strong pull towards fascism, and that you already see these tendencies emerging strongly in neoliberal societies’ politics and social relations, ideology and foreign policy. But saying that because the tendencies that lead to a future society are present in an earlier type of society, makes them the same, would again reduce capitalism to feudalism.
Otherwise this is just obfuscation and mystification that gets in the way of properly analyzing things politically and makes Marxists look ridiculous.
Which framework is that analysis based on, Frankfurt school or something later?
Frankfurt School is a kind of Classwar asset Psy Op to remove Material Analysis from the Theory …
No we use the Докторская колбаса school of analysis
Thanks for the well-reasoned and nuanced take
True
I don’t think any state qualifies as “great,” or “fantastic”, however aside from that zero lies detected and Ukraine should have accepted peace terms a year ago instead of listening to :loser:
Get off your cross
If you didn’t want to be ridiculed for your insane opinions, you shouldn’t haven’t federated with the real world.
Our opinions are correct so we feel no challenge from you. It’s simple as that.
You will perpetually be stuck falling for the next WMDs in Iraq, forever.
It’s sad
LOL. I definitely did not believe Iraq had WMDs. It was insane what the US and its partners did in Iraq. It solved nothing. It probably made things worse in the Middle East, at least for 20 years, and it cost a lot of lives.
But let’s not use that fact to say everything the West is doing is wrong. Just like a few of the good things China doesn’t make everything China does correct.
If you payed closer attention you’d notice that we have a range of opinions on China, and we don’t all think everything they do is correct. That’s what the term critical support means. It’s a recognition that even socialist states are imperfect, as the nation state as an institution is fundamentally imperfect and will always and everywhere undermine freedom to some degree. But a state which is undergoing the transition to socialism, particularly one that’s putting themselves in a position to undermine US imperial hegemony like China is, is well worth supporting, even as we acknowledge its flaws and contradictions.
What none of us will ever tolerate are accusations of genocide with one discredited religious fanatic as the source, or racist insults being hurled at their head of state, both things I’ve seen numerous times from users from other instances.
Real challenge right there.
For real though. It’s hardly difficult to find a bunch of leftists arguing about China lmao
I believed it. I was a child at the time, but I believed it. Because the entire US was screaming it was true.
After Libya, my illusions were fully shattered. Now I search out the backstory devoid of Western sources.
You claim you didn’t believe, but you still buy the US line today.
How can you reconcile such a monstrous lie they told in Iraq with the idea that they could ever be trusted again? That cognitive dissonance broke my belief in the West entirely.
Millions died on a lie. Justice would be execution for every official involved. They are doing it again, but once again most won’t realize it until years after.
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I can understand that because you feel duped, you find it hard to trust anything the US says today.
I didn’t feel duped, though. It was clearly an insane lie meant to justify a neocon, hawkish invasion of Iraq and Bush Jr was desperate to “finish the job” and get a pat on his back by Bush.
The world is super complex. Not everything the West does is good - there’s plenty of examples in history, less from present day but definitely cases (Iraq is an awful example). Similarly, not everything China does is bad, far from it. I’ve travelled there extensively and work with Chinese citizens every single day. I have no hate for Chinese people - count many as my friend and they’re both hard working and fun to be around after work (once you get to know them). There’s plenty of things to like in China. And once you get to know Chinese people well, they will tell you story after story about the insanity inside their own country - that they are well aware of. They laugh at their own government.
So I’m not confused about the balance of things. On balance, the West is a far better influence on the world and care-taker of its citizens than China is. And let’s not get started on the Russian state, which is an oligarchic kleptocracy driven to violence by its isolated dictator.
I understand that the US is the among the most evil and genocidal forces in human history.
I came to that realization through being duped.
That is a very important distinction. None of this comes from some petty sense of slight.
To consider the US a better influence on the world than China is not only laughable, it is obscene.
The US exterminated an entire continent of innocent people as the opening act to their crimes, and have only added to that list with every passing year. Never have they meaningfully repented or cleaned house from those acts.
It would be as if Nazi Germany survived for three centuries.
The US carried out nuclear murder to make a political point. The US butchered and destroyed the lives of billions in the global south and they aim to do the same to China next.
NATO has bombed and destroyed not just Iraq, but the majority of the middle east. It runs an occupation force today in Syria. NATO didn’t just destroy Iraq, it colonized Iraq’s agriculture, which is now dependent on imports from NATO while it feeds pasta to Texan schools. NATO has transformed Libya into an open air slave market, flooded Syria with weapons, backed Israeli Apartheid, blockaded Iran, couped the government of Pakistan, and caused a famine in Afghanistan on their way out by sanctioning yet another people. The little girls whose rights NATO countries cared about so very much then starved to death. Not for any reason, not to achieve any objective. But only out of spite.
NATO has couped and propagandized it’s way across Latin America. This is not ancient history. It is current and ongoing. It claims outright that they won’t stop blockading Venezuela until it’s oil is owned by american shareholders. So not only bombs, deaths by starvation and lack of medicine are perfectly fine for the organization. Just as Syrians and Chinese people have no right to territorial integrity, Cubans have had no right to ally with whoever they want for generations.
NATO runs an actual and currently existing Colonial Empire across Africa. One of it’s leading voices, France, owns the infrastructure, finances and natural resources of dozens of countries, assassinating its way into total dominance. Then it gives some scraps back to those colonies, and calls it ‘Foreign Aid’. Berating the poors for being so dependent. Once challenged, NATO has yet again chosen to starve people to death with trade wars on basic infrastructure, food, and medicine.
I’m Brazilian. When the Bolsonaro family was literally calling Chinese monkeys on twitter the Chinese were remarkably patient. The USA berates us for being ‘anti-american’ because we aren’t grateful of how Biden chose not to coup us last year. As if it’s not humiliating enough that a fascist in this country can draw on the history of America and outright ask the CIA for help staying in power. There are now US troops supporting the coup government of Peru. Right after coup attempts in Bolivia and Venezuela. We now watch as high ranking US government officials float the idea of invading Mexico, under the cover of a war on drugs. After years of waging it in Colombia and Central America. But we all know it’s because Mexico nationalized stuff that Americans don’t want to see owned by Mexicans.
There are no fucking standards for comparison. There are no regions of this world which do not witness current and ongoing hybrid wars waged by NATO countries at the behest of the USA.
The West is a defensive alliance between warmongerers. The Americans at least have the decency of wearing their thirst for blood on their sleeve. Democrat or Republican, they’ve all had their share of wars they enjoy supporting. It’s the Europeans who will cry on TV while sending volunteers to Iraq and Afghanistan.
I only pray for any people who is targetted by NATO’s eye of sauron. Or has to make do with sharing a border such an evil collection of governments.
Hey, since you already understand that the war on terror was a lie, I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts after listening to Blowback Season 2 and Season 3. They’re about Cuba and Korea. I grew up believing they were no good and completely evil, but there is a verifiable truth that is propagandized against in the west. You don’t even have to use non-western sources to get to that truth, it’s just that if you don’t know you’ve been lied to, there’s no reason to dig in.
It’s certainly not a single lie over the War on Terror that has led to our complete distrust of the American state.
Simple statistics like literacy and life expectancy disagree with this assessment.
You won’t find much support for Russia on Hexbear. You’re mistaking our disdain for NATO as support for Russia. Russia is not the Soviet Union.
I shall have a listen. Thanks for the recommendation 🙏
For FWIW I don’t think the WoT was “a lie” - nor was it a complete truth. I remain broadly in support of what the west did in Afghanistan (and I’m saying this despite one of my previous buddies dying over there), although I definitely to this day will argue that the second war on Iraq was borderline evil and most definitely a war crime.
I’m not American, by the way, so my point of comparison isn’t China vs US, but China “the west”. The US has plenty of problems too.
You are correct that it’s my impression that Hexbear users broadly support Russia.
That’s interesting. Now i’m genuinely curious what broke your resistance.
I’m not sure I understand your question. Do you mean “what made me realise that Iraq had no WMDs”? Well, for starters that the UN had been all over the bloody country inspecting it for years. Secondly that Colin Powell’s session at the UN presented drawings as evidence. Drawings.
I’m talking about your persecution complex. I don’t feel attacked.
lmao, alwaysthesamemap.jpeg
If you didn’t want to be ridiculed for your insane opinions, you shouldn’t haven’t federated with the real world.
You literally believe that people who disagree with you are “farmed bots”, you’re in no position to say other people have insane opinions
No not all hexbear users are farmed trolls. I think most are doing China and Russia’s bidding out of misunderstandings about the world and what really happens inside those two countries.
I think some hexbear users are farmed trolls and/bots.
What a coincidence, I think you’re doing the USAs bidding out of a misunderstanding about the world and what really happens inside that country.
You are not the real world, you are a walled garden of privilege.
You went on a long screed about how we keep making fun of you and telling you to go back to reddit. Clearly you’re the one being ridiculed for your insane opinions.
I mean people are invited every time to argue we aren’t right about this but they never do for some reason, idk why that is.
It’s so cute how you think that means you’re right.
I mean i am yet to read any convincing arguments that we aren’t, even though there are plenty of opportunities to debate us in the free market of ideas.
One has to pick one’s battles; it’s not always worth one’s time to debate the raving drunk on the street corner, even if what he is saying is wrong.
And yet here you are, screaming at the drunk
Hey I’m not drunk!
You came into a thread and started slamming out an entire paragraph unrelated to the actual post about those damn hexbeara and NOW its about choosing your battles?
Lmao cmon guy
True, engaging with actual sourced comments is equivalent to arguing with drunkards, as opposed to going on tirades about how all the hexbears are bad bots.
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thank
See you could have done it right here, with this post. There was practically an invitation, but you chose to post something that dismissed and sidestepped the issue.
Now you have some idea of how we feel on Reddit. The difference here is that karma doesn’t matter. And hexbearers can’t even downvote your comments anyway. You’re just complaining that you have to listen to another point of view.
Simultaneously a bot farm and separated from any wider instances until very recently.
Do you honestly believe that?
Does it really make sense to you that China sets up self contained bot farms interacting with no one?
No that’s not what I believe. Here’s what I believe.
That’s not a reply to what you’ve been asked, that’s you posting a link to a lemmy thread linking to a German state affiliated media article that has already been posted in the OP and that you probably haven’t even read beyond the title because it doesn’t have anything to do with your rant against the spectre of hexbear, or with the replies to it. It’s a pattern i’ve come to see a lot with you shitlibs, you make
gestures towards what you believe to be an authoritative and trustworthy source and then it becomes obvious you haven’t engaged with the linked material in any way, you just make a feeble attempt to use it as a way to shut dissenters up. That kind of parlor trick probably even works on your brain that has been smoothed out to a marble-like texture by the reddit front page, Vaush streams, and a constantly growing coat of bioaccumulating microplastics, but come the fuck on, people have asked you a question. Is it that hard to answer it in good faith? I’ve read the article in question, i’ve actually read the replies from other hexbear users here and the article doesn’t work as a refutation of what they’ve said, in fact some of it actually supports the claims by hexbear users that the pro-imperialist stance of liberal left parties in the west has opened up an opportunity for right wingers to appropriate anti-western and pacifist stances in public to fish for votes of disgruntled apolitical and post-left people while they privately support the same murderous, genocidal expansionism as their more liberal counterparts, as evidenced by the breaking of disarmament treaties from the cold war and the increased funding of Azovite insurgents under Trump, the sudden swiveling towards an uncompromising pro-NATO stance of the fascists now governing Italy and countless other examples for the imperialism of parties politically comparable to Germany’s AfD. I wonder if it’s seriously beyond you to think that far or if you’re just too lazy to do any critical thinking. Is this redditor debatebro shit the only way you can engage in a conversation? I’m genuinely curious how the fuck that idea of us as a simultaneously Chinese and Russian botnet started to live rent-free in your head, or how you got the idea that a bunch of trans communists support modern-day Russia’s neoliberal regime that is as bad on queer rights as Florida will be 5 years from now, and what kind of absurd thought process is behind your far-fetched assumptions about us.
Hey man, I’m genuinely sorry that I linked to the wrong thing. That’s a simple mistake, it seems my client (Voyager) acts a bit strange when pressing “Share”. Let me fix it.
Edit: Nope can’t seem to get a durable link.
What I wrote in another comment, which I was trying to link to, was:
_I don’t think all of you are farmed trolls. My apologies if that’s how it was heard.
I think many of you are farmed trolls, some of you are “useful idiots” to the troll farms, some of you have degenerated into a brigade of memes and a few of you are real people who genuinely hold idealistic opinions that couldn’t work in the real world. I doubt many of you belong in the last category._
maybe we are Subreddit that was banned from reddit Because its oppinions are deemed “Dangerous” the Status Quo and the Class of People that profit from the Status Quo. ( The Oligarchy , the Passiv income classes) Maybe the History of Hexbear is actually if you look at it , the answer to all your questions
Maybe Propaganda actually happens and Happend to You ! if you are iritated by hearing Pro China opinions ? How is this not a Testment of your Isolation … You have actually a great fucking opportunity on your hands , you can Learn …
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=uxc5cbMqvxU
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I’m sorry that our existence shatters your worldview.
Either stop complaining that we exist or find some proof for your troll farming hypothesis(good luck)
Your conspiracy allows you to dismiss any leftist thought as non genuine.
You will spend the rest of your life honestly believing an ideology that almost overthrew capitalism multiple times isn’t sincerely held by many people.
As awful as capitalism is I don’t for a second question your genuine belief in it. That only seems to go one way
Hey, I don’t have anything new to say, just want to join the pile-on. Sorry you can’t have your liberal echo chamber, and sorry that most of the world actually prefers China to the great satan and its western demons. If you didn’t want to be ridiculed for your insane opinions though you really shouldn’t be federated with the real world though
Lmaooo go cry about it I guess
i disagree since they’ll court anyone, even americans and nato
You are on a good way , accept us as the new Cultural Hegemony … Its not like you didnt have a Cultural Hegemony Before, so you know the play
It was China bad , its China good now! pretty fucking easy …
Waaaaahhhhh only 99% of everything I interact with is geared toward my Liberal Anti-Communist sensibilities waaaaahhhhh waaaaahhhhh why can’t it be 100%
“Everyone I disagree with is a trolll, I’m so enlightened”. Fuck off.
Libs crying that they can’t just pile on people who disagree with them will never stop being funny. These trolls can’t actually make any coherent arguments to support their positions and simply regurgitate a handful of tropes they memorized. All of a sudden this tactic doesn’t work anymore and y’all having a meltdown.
And here’s a bingo card for you lot