Too many reports for the comments of this post so I'm locking this
Nation states are designed to divide the human race into more easily managed chunks.
I'm anti-imperialist and pro-metricist.
"The pure (libertarian) socialists ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted.
Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed." - Michael Parenti, "Blackshirts and Reds"
It's kinda unavoidable that if one major power loses influence, another will benefit from the vacuum. You can't really oppose your own country's imperialism without making the case that other countries taking advantage is an acceptable risk.
This is more or less the story of WWI. With the increasing tensions and military buildup, socialists of countries across Europe formed the Second International and agreed in the Basel Declaration, which said that they would use the crisis to rise up simultaneously against every imperialist power and put an end to both the war and to capitalism:
If a war threatens to break out, it is the duty of the working classes and their parliamentary representatives in the countries involved supported by the coordinating activity of the International Socialist Bureau to exert every effort in order to prevent the outbreak of war by the means they consider most effective, which naturally vary according to the sharpening of the class struggle and the sharpening of the general political situation.
In case war should break out anyway it is their duty to intervene in favor of its speedy termination and with all their powers to utilize the economic and political crisis created by the war to arouse the people and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.
But once the war actually broke out, most of them found reasons to rally around their country's flag. German socialists pointed to the conditions of serfdom under the Tsar and pointed to the massive colonial empires of Britain and France, while British and French socialists argued that Germany undemocratic under the Kaiser and had more responsibility for starting the war. They mostly agreed that both sides were bad, but they said they were only fighting to safeguard their countries "against defeat" rather than for victory, but regardless, for all intents and purposes it was the same thing. Of course, in all of these countries, there was considerable political pressure and propaganda pushing them to fall in line and to regard the enemy as worse, and many people did what was personally advantageous regardless of what they had said previously.
There was only one exception, where the socialists took advantage of the war to overthrow their government, without regard for the possibility that it could help the other side, and they did end up ceding a fair bit of land too, but they were able to put a stop that that theater of the meat grinder everyone was being fed into.
The way I understand the meme, it's not saying anti-imperialism is wrong. It's saying that being a tankie, i.e. simping for china and russia doesn't qualify as anti-imperialism.
Listen, I'm as anti-imperialist as the next guy. But realistically if the core of capital that has nearly unopposed dominion over the entire world recedes, another entity that deserves the moniker of 'empire' completely equally will step in to fill the void! And if that's the case, we should just support the most morally righteous empire. Ours >:-D
if one major power loses influence, another will benefit from the vacuum.
Multipolarism is not a vacuum. Hypocritical "Rules based world order" delusion backed by sycophantic colonies to tyranical CIA is a propaganda tool that deludes an empire into over reaching and collapse and "the vacuum".
I think you may have misunderstood me. I'm not saying that imperialism is justified because of the possibility of a vacuum, I'm saying that the possibility of a vacuum is an acceptable risk for the sake of opposing imperialism.
It's something that really bothers me about communism and socialism being derisive in the US, even in 2024, about 35 years after USSR fell.
The alternative to community-centric society is autocracy, typically devolving into monarchism.
Death to monarchists!
I mean "atheism" is still a dirty word in politics, thousands of years after the prejudice against that started. Apples to oranges, sure, but just goes to show how long it takes for public opinion to shift sometimes.
[LONG RAMBLE]
TLDR: Atheism wasn't really regarded as a threat (other than the thing that USSR enforced) until the aughts and the New Atheism movement, at which point right-wing religious ministries turned from hating on other ministries to hating on atheists and secularists.
Atheism has some fascinating recent history. In the 1970s and 1980s atheists were disregarded almost entirely since it was an asserted position mostly by hard-line scientists and philosophers. Most of the none population instead went to (or at least associated with) left-wing churches. My parents (my Dad who is a rocket scientist and was atheist except in name) joined my mom and I at the Church of Religious Science (later the Science of Mind Church) which is pretty darned lax and easy to accept as religions go.
And the religious right (then, the Southern Baptist Church and the rising Evangelical movement) hated us and declared us false. They also did this to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (still regarded as a dangerous cult) and the Roman Catholic Church. John F. Kennedy got a lot of flack for being Catholic, and Republicans insisted he'd be beholden to the Holy See -- and they tried to pressure him! -- but he demonstrated he could serve the US as president and keep the Vatican at arm's reach. Romney was still getting crap for his Mormonism in his 2012 presidential run, but it blended seamlessly into all sorts of other biographical anomalies that suggested character problems.
I should add there was a pro-religion sentiment in the US that was really anti-USSR. Marx recognized religion as the opiate of the people a symptom that the masses were suffering from precarity or scarcity, but Marx was saying the response of the community should be to feed them and keep them free of want, and as the dispair fades the need for religious practice will fade as well. (We're not sure if he's completely right.) So Lenin and Stalin's response was to ban religion, which didn't actually address the issue, but it gave the US justification to push church-going in the mid 20th century as a thing that pinko commies didn't do.
Anyway, atheism became significant movement thing due to two factors. One was the new atheist movement which orbited Richard Dawkins and the top atheist guns. Dawkins motivation (as he tells it) was the 9/11 attacks, which showcased the power of religion as a force multiplier in violent conflict. But there was also a certain privilege that religious movements and religious institutions were given that secular ones were not, which was a favored topic of Douglas Adams. And so bringing atheist and secular organizations to equal status as churches was a big early goal of the new atheist movement.
The other factor bringing the rise of popular atheism was the rise of the internet which allowed us all to actually talk about things and confront that a lot of us already had awkward relationships with our respective religious institutions. Myself, this was a period for me to naturalism, ruling out supernatural elements until one comes and bites me on the butt. (This is the dream for IRL ghost hunters, to have a poltergeist beat them with their own duffel. Pain is temporary but evidence lives forever on the internet!)
That said the aughts marked the spread of atheism (and the consequential collapse of left-wing church attendance. Right wing church attendance has been falling less quickly but noticeably, and ministries continue to be in panic about it. And this was when anti-atheist pro-Christian and pro-Muslim movements (who absolutely don't ally) started organizing to scare everyone how terrible we godless folk are, as if our interest in intellectual exercise and not the hypocrisy endemic to right-wing Christian ministries is what is driving parishioners from their pews.
[/LONG RAMBLE]
I also noted this was a problem with the Rebel Alliance (who just supports a republic of oligarchs), and was called a centrist for my efforts.
See, they shouldn't have gone with the First Order. They should've had the New Republic stamp out the Empire, only to create a new empire itself.
Star Wars is supposed to be palatable to children, and my guess is that those types of politics muddy the waters too much for kids to grasp. Simplistic and clear "good vs evil" lines appeal to wider audiences.
God how true this is for all the America bad people
Lemmy has wayyyy to many people who can't understand that America bad ≠ China good.
I was banned from /r/Latestagecapitalism for not agreeing with "China good", tried to explain the opposite: "China bad ≠ America good". They didn't care.
Yeah but it’s a very easy/not even contest that “China better than America”. You don’t need China to be good for that to be true.
Gets it in one.
There's a reason everyone is currently demonizing liberal ideology instead of standing up for the rights that the conservatives are working to strip away.
Noooooo I want the empire that hides all the bad things they do so I don't have to think about it while I drive my SUV and buy Starbucks!!!! /s
Idk man, I feel like a lot of us "America bad" people are from Europe and don't support China or Russia either.
I'm Black; what reason I have to think the country that murders my people not only in the streets, but sometimes in their own beds, is a good force on the world? It is a very easy calculus for me:
"ain't no Chinese, Cuban, or Russian that ever hard-r'd me. Plenty of Americans have. Ain't no Chinese, Cuban, or Russian that ever side-eyed me for just walking down the street. Plenty of white Americans have. Ain't no Chinese, Cuban, or Russian that ever held me at gunpoint unjustly, either. More than one sallow American pig has."
If that meterstick was good enough for Muhammad Ali in reference to Vietnam, it's good enough for me in reference to the people the white moderate claims should be my 'enemies'.
That's why I don't support governments or countries, I support people and anarchist liberation movements :3
Exactly! I'm so tired of being accused of being a liberal and/or a fascist every single time I note that China or Russia isn't some perfect leftist utopia, but in fact just another empire that is a pain in the ass not only to other countries but also their own citizens.
China is a fascist ethnostate, Russia is another neoliberal capitalist state, North Korea IMO cannot be described as socialist, Vietnam is pretty cool but mixed and only partially socialist, Cuba is not great tbh just in general, Venezuela is horrible, the Nordic states are just Social Democrat states, Israel has multiple worker co-ops but that doesn't change the fact that they're still a genocidal ethnostate, that just about covers all the tankie countries.
Tankies support the more problematic empires such as Russia and China.
Less problematic in some ways, more problematic in other ways. We shouldn't be supporting the "less problematic" empire. We should be fighting any and all empires.
Did you not read the meme? Imperialism is bad no matter who is doing it, and arguing over which empire is more 'problematic' is counterproductive, as we should oppose all empires instead of wasting all of our time and effort on getting on each other's throats.
true, being rude to other people is bad. We should stop being rude and criminalize it.
wait...
And in doing so they may have pushed large parts of the Chinese-American community to the right. Tankies caping for the CCP were not a good look for the moderate immigrants who had been fucked over by the Chinese government in various ways.
they may have pushed large parts of the Chinese-American community to the right.
That's just the Gusano effect, frankly. Why would someone who supports the ML regime move to China's self-nominated existential enemy, after all?
No, those who oppose just come over here and Yeonmi Park themselves all over the place. You see it in ever single "Castro took my grandfather's plantation" wannabe-settler who conveniently leaves out that el viejo's plantation was staffed by slaves; I expect exactly the same out of Chinese expatriate capitalists afraid they're next (when there's actually still hella billionaires that haven't been milled yet).
More problematic to whom? The US literally changed the political direction of my country and fucked us over real hard.
Where are the chinese wars and regime change operations? At least Russia only attacks its neighbors at most so countries far away have nothing to fear, unlike the US invading and destroying countries all around the globe.
Call them empire or whatever, but being unable to admit that the US is the bigger threat to real freedom in the world only contributes to the causes of the biggest and arguably most brutal empire in history, that is in constant state of war since it was founded.
More problematic to whom?
people living under the threat of them
Where are the chinese wars and regime change operations?
cold war (they did the same as the us, but just lost), tibet, uigurs, taiwan, mongolia, and don't forget their brutal mining operations in africa
At least Russia only attacks its neighbors at most so countries far away have nothing to fear, unlike the US invading and destroying countries all around the globe.
but in return the us only conqueres nations far away from them (at least in the last 100 years), also that's not really better, russia got a lot of neighbors
the US is the bigger threat to real freedom in the world
imo, it purely depends on the region you're looking on
most brutal empire in history
historically britain outcompetes them imo, but in the 20th century, yes they were, now I'd say china tho, just look at their actions in africa, they're kinda repeating briyish history there
but it's nice, that you have manners and don't want to ban everyone disagreeing with you like some on grad
You just went through a regime change operation of Russia. Or did you think Trump and all those extremist right-wing governments in Europe won all on their own?
Putins propaganda machine made those happen. They infiltrated so many social media groups spreading lies to make everyone more xenophobic so they can invade Ukraine and all previous USSR regions without them getting help.
On Lemmy, they are mostly hiding in your instance.
You're just repeating the meme.
They are all bad, they are all part of the problems we face globally, and whatabouting "them" to avoid facing criticism of "us" only serves those in power by deflecting criticism of them.
I wonder why a westerner who gets their news from english speaking western sources which profit off of the same wealth extraction as the empire they are part of would think like this? Surely the western free press would not be influenced by the whims of capital and empire. Obviously China and Russia must be the "worse empire", my empire told me so!
Well, just personally speaking, I know Russian, and reading Russian news sources (state-owned as well as those that have been banned by the Russian state) from time to time, and talking with Russians directly, hasn't even remotely convinced me that the "Russian empire" is equally bad as the "western empire".
The vile Russian Empire, with its Romanov dynasty, super problematic. If Peter is so great, why does he look so wimpy compared to Joe Rogan? Hah, those stupid tankies don't even realize the Chinese empire has been abolished for over 110 years!
You got me. Vivat Roma!
We conquering Cartage with this one 🔥🔥🔥
IMPERIVM SINE FINE
spooks
Max Stirner? In my 196? I'm for it.
Stirner being a pseudonym Engels used to avoid Marx's wrath directly and to act as an ideological foil for Marx to respond to is still one of the funniest conspiracy theories I've heard.
A fellow egoist? In my 196? I'm in for it (because it pleases me).
anti imperialist/colonial supporters when they find out that the entire timeline of human history is conquest, colonialism, and imperialism.
Feudalism dominated throughout human history, yet kings and queens have been dethroned in a good portion of the world.
the ones who prospered were the most aggressive ones, even conquering the whole world by force, it's a survivorship bias situation.
not every group of humans is aggressive, but those eventually get conquered by the agressive ones, military power always ends up winning.
It's unscientific to say that any country, given the chance, would do the same as the europeans or the US empire did to the world.
At least the Chinese century will prove or disprove this theory, given it's the first significant power shift in the last 500 years, let's see if they will be so brutal as the US and its allies (you know who) are to the world.
I firmly doubt it, there are no signs of brutality to other nations coming from the chinese, at most you could argue of some internal issues. There are no invasions, war or regime change operations done by China yet.
As someone from the global south, I don't fear China or even Russia in the least, I only fear what the US or Europe will try to inflict in my country, like the recent regime change operations that I lived through, that was pretty harsh.
there are no signs of brutality to other nations coming from the chinese
China is literally committing genocide on the Uyghurs. What makes you think they wouldn't do the same to other groups they dislike if they get into power?
Now they are buying all resources they can in Africa doing the same type of Colonialism Europe did a hundred years ago.
the ones who prospered were the most aggressive ones, even conquering the whole world by force, it’s a survivorship bias situation.
this is my fundamental gripe with the problem, yes it's technically a survivorship bias, but how do you remove it, that's the hard question.
If 10 people in a group agree to leave 10,000 USD on a table, such that after 20 minutes, they can all split it amongst themselves, and then turn off the lights in the room and plug their ears in the meantime, someone if not multiple people are going to try and take it all for themselves.
Evolution has fundamentally programmed in a form of survivorship bias within basically every species. I don't think you can separate it unfortunately.
not every group of humans is aggressive, but those eventually get conquered by the agressive ones, military power always ends up winning.
exactly.
It’s unscientific to say that any country, given the chance, would do the same as the europeans or the US empire did to the world.
i wouldn't say that they would explicitly, but i would argue that being in a position of that much power, over that much of the world, in that much of a volatile position, there is a very high likelihood that they would influence some amount of the world, in a similar manner.
At least the Chinese century will prove or disprove this theory, given it’s the first significant power shift in the last 500 years, let’s see if they will be so brutal as the US and its allies (you know who) are to the world.
if we're talking about modern day china, they already do a lot of power projection in the sea, illegally, same in the air. I don't know if they're doing any predatory lending to other countries, but that could very well change in the future, so we can't say anything about it now. It's highly likely that china at least wants other countries to be dependent on themselves at the minimum, which i would argue is a form of this power projection.
They are 100% in a position to do things that are more predatory, time will tell, i predict they will, it's inevitable, but i could be wrong. Either that or china itself implodes before we get to that point, so who knows.
personally i know nothing about their military presence outside of the previously mentioned stuff. So i can't really say anything about it, but there's probably at least one bad thing they've done. Again, time will tell.
It absolutely is, but my take on that is we're just bad at doing community-based government and need more practice.
possibly, but i think it's a sort of fundamental problem. I would be curious if history/anthropology has any sort of knowledge on societies that didn't have a hierarchical power structure within itself. But i'm guessing it's very uncommon, if not unheard of.
If humans could do a communal governance structure effectively, one would think it would have already been tried, and successfully implemented.
Democracy is probably the closest thing we've ever had, but it's still not perfect.
I'm sure theres also a lot of psych and socio research on this as well.
there's also the question of whether it's even possible to have a communal government structure in the first place, the world is incredibly complex, and politics is even more complex, doing things correctly is very hard.
TL;DR i don't think it's possible, and i'm not sure it ever will, judging by how humans behave.
So true! All the peaceniks yapping about the a bomb, flowers and trees are just pinkos. I heard a guy call for ceasefire in Palestine the other day, and I screamed to him: "Fuck off to Iran, if you like it so much".
Yes, that is exactly what I was saying, and you definitely are a very literate person who is not putting words into anyone's mouth.
