A true war hero!

until something changes tangibly

And you think the democrats will do that? lol

The obvious answer to people not being willing to vote for shitty and evil democrats is not to whine at those people (because, dont you know, the republicans are 20% more shitty and 5% more evil!), it’s for the democrats to stop being shitty and evil. They have the power in this relationship. They would rather lose than stop being shitty and evil, and you’re saying “help them win anyway” and that’s just ridiculous.

e: I realized maybe you’re not doing that. I’m not trying to criticize your choice to vote for democrats. That’s your business, and none of mine! I’m trying to say “stop criticizing people for not voting for democrats when democrats will do absolutely nothing to help the situation in any meaningful way”

This is a good post! 🎉

When you know you know sometimes! Me and my wife were a bit like this.

Cooking is always welcome.

I hope this is a nice conversation and you’re not frustrated; it’s nice for me!

inside

I don’t disagree it shouldn’t be an echo chamber; I’m glad you’re here (not that I have or should have any say in the use of the space!). Definitely not “inside” though. When I say “inside” I mean within a democratic centralist organization with some kind of political discipline. Organizations I’ve been part of would, from time to time, task members with researching and creating a report on AES countries, and then presenting their report internally to help develop well-considered positions on them. That’s the level of “internal” that I mean! Like…among people who trust each other, and only those people.

strategic criticism

If you mean that “strategic criticism” winds up just being “no criticism” I think that may be a fair critique of a lot of ML orgs.

Theory

Obviously the importance of theory is something people disagree about heatedly but to me, resistance to imperialism in the imperialist countries is so minimal that I’m happy to see a wide variety of tactics and let what happens happen. I got my theories but I ain’t gonna go out of my way to criticize someone else’s (hell, I was general Secretary of an IWW branch for several years…Marxist friends joke thay of course the anarchists made the Marxist be the organized one)

authoritarianism

When it comes to the word authoritarianism, I think a lot of Marxists have the same knee-jerk traction, which is to turn to Engels’ On Authority. Not for no reason, I think he makes a good point:

But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists.

So am I authoritarian? I mean I guess so, in that I believe in revolution. I believe “authoritarian means” may be appropriate. I don’t think any MLs see authoritarian means as a desirable feature in and of themselves. I think every ML wants to see them discarded as soon as they are no longer necessary. I think reasonable people can disagree about what that looks like, obviously…but that’s a difference of degree, not of kind, right? At least I would see it that way.

Big agree that intellectual dishonesty is bad. We should all think and speak and work as clearly as we can. Insofar as MLs (or anyone else for that matter) think unscientifically (worshiping books, class reductionism, etc), that’s bad!

I think some people can hold China accountable; Chinese people! When I say “we can’t hold them accountable” I mean “the internet.” (Of course I think people in the CPC have the most power and greatest obligation to hold the government accountable, but I understand skepticism about that, obviously. I don’t think that skepticism is merely a result of western propaganda or something. I worry about that too; they clearly don’t do a stellar job lol).

propaganda

You said your categories but not what you meant by them, just that they are important factors for you. So having a target audience makes something more likely to be propaganda, as does intention to spread a political message, as does the actual effectiveness of reaching people? That’s all fine; I don’t think these really help us come to agreement on what is or isn’t propaganda. Like…it looks to me like your messages in this thread have a target audience (tankies and/or potential tankies), they intend to carry a political message (comparing china and the us like this let’s China off the hook for its own evils)…maybe they don’t reach many people (maybe even just one?). But in the scheme of things I don’t think that factor particularly weighs in favor of anything on Lemmy being propaganda lol; way too puny for reaching any substantial number of people (And fwiw I would say the same thing about my own messages).

I don’t think tankies think what you think tankies think. Maybe I’m wrong, but my impression is that when Marxist Leninists get together, criticism of “AES” countries is a perfectly fine topic of conversation “inside” the group, but when it’s done “outside” it serves the interest of the US/capital/imperialism. And I think there’s something to that; it does! A little full of yourself to think it could matter more than looking reasonable to outsiders or educating your insiders…but it’s not totally crazy. I don’t know, there is plenty though, like look at bad empanada (I think he’d be considered a tankie, right?). Guys done quite a bit on the Uyghurs.

I say all this as a Marxist Leninist (I assume I’m a “tankie” to people who use the word “tankie” lol).

Of course, I’d also say it’s a bit silly to think one could “hold [China] accountable” by the opposite means.

We disagree about what propaganda means, I guess. I don’t think “doing anti-China propaganda” means you hate China or something, I think it just means you’re conveying a political message that runs counter to their political message. I don’t understand the distinction between political messaging that is or isn’t propaganda?

I mean, I do understand that context; it is a propaganda piece portraying China as comparatively better than the US.

China is comparatively better than the U.S.

Making propaganda to that effect is good.

Everything is propaganda. You’re doing anti-China propaganda; I’m doing pro-China propaganda. with a veneer of nuance or whatever but my words have political meaning and so do yours…

I’ve never understood how any expression of political thought could not be propaganda… or that there’s an especially good/principled way to separate what you and me are doing from whatever you mean by propaganda…if it’s a government paying for it I really don’t think OP qualifies…or else the PRC should get its fuckin money back lol

Naw it’s not one sided, you just didn’t hear about the guy who got banned for accusing 4 people of being CIA agents.

Who said atrocities are justifiable? Didn’t I just agree with you it was bad?

You’re the one that brought up Hong Kong as a “this was bad therefore it’s totally ridiculous to say anything positive about China.” I agree with the first part, but not the second nor the connection.

Maybe it’s not a majority, I don’t know, but at least some of the protesters were wishing to stay a UK colony; the Union Jack was much in evidence (which is pretty wild really). Or were those CPC provocateurs or something? If you tell me that was a vocal and ridiculous minority, that’s fine, I wasn’t there, I’ll believe you.

Look man, I’m happy people were brave and cool and protested for what they believed in, even if it’s not what I believe in, and it’s bad Chinese cops/authorities/whatever hurt them for it. I don’t know why that would mean I should think that saying good things about China is wrong. I also think the surveillance and mistreatment of the Uyghurs is bad…like way worse than what happened in Hong Kong. There are also lots of good things to say about China.

Nope that’s bad. Cops hurting protesters is bad even when the protesters are wrong.

Less bad than the wrong protesters getting their way and Hong Kong staying a colony of the UK…but still bad, for sure.

Should not be surprised you’re a rad one, violet08!

I think another bit of context is that it was used as sort of Palestinian flag stand-in emoji when there wasn’t a Palestinian flag emoji

Nebula, means tv, and dropout =/ none will be the next YouTube but it’s nice to have options I guess

Also, a tremendous game. A work of art!

Jeffrey Sachs is a cool smart and good guy. He gets how things work and wants things to go well for people.

for sure for sure, would never hold my own jank against the software lol just how life circumstances go sometimes!

We’ll see if I can get it running, my only personal machine right now is an old laptop running linux so I’ll have to try WINE…if it works at least you’ll know the basics are real solid to work even emulating windows on old hardware :P

This is an extremely cool concept; I hope to be able to give it a shot soon!!!

If I’ve never played a megaman game, is megaman zero a good place to start?

I tried battle network and thought it was real neat. Would be happy to get abck into it but I understand it’s not really a “megaman” game

Lol, I just recognized the name from spending ages discussing the monarchy with this guy. Seeing this post I checked his other comments; jeeeeeeeesus.