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On July 18 2020 20:04 sharkie wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2020 19:54 Nyxisto wrote:On July 18 2020 19:45 sharkie wrote:On July 18 2020 18:45 Nyxisto wrote:On July 18 2020 08:19 Sermokala wrote:
China is definitely everything nazi Germany was if Hitler wasn't making explicit speeches about hating jews and just wanted to kill them in private. Its a wildly corrupt combination of state-owned industries, partially state-owned industries working as proxies, and no real accountability at any level of government that is controlled through one party that decides every other position in government.
Theres really nothing communist or socialist about the country anymore. They just keep the fiction running to stay in power. Having state-owned business doesn't turn you into Nazi Germany, what the hell lol. I was in Shenzhen for work about a year ago and I can safely tell you that it was nothing like Nazi Germany. China is an autocratic state, not a totalitarian one. The country is depoliticized, not caught in a giant struggle for life and death and total war. China's private sector is also large, probably 60-70% of the economy, a lot of it informal. In many ways the country is so capitalist it makes the US look socialist, competition between private firms is cutthroat in ways you don't find in many other places. So you know what it was like in Nazi Germany? Being German, having family who lived through World War 2 both on the German and Polish sides, having talked to actual holocaust survivors I'm pretty sure I have a better grasp on what it was like in Nazi Germany than someone comparing every non-democratic government on the planet to it, yes. It seems very popular in US discourse today to call everything Nazi-like, doesn't make it any more accurate. So in your year in Shenzhen you talked to Black minimum wage workers, Muslim Western Chinese people? Or are you comparing your luxurious lifestyle in one of the biggest Chinese cities, built for Western people to holocaust victims? You are comparing apples and oranges
He said that you cannot compare the German historical experience to what happened in China? It seems like you are arguing with something that you agree with.
There are no black people in China...but choose your topic at least. If you want to talk about black people....then choose either the African-American experience, or any place in Africa.
Every country and minority has its own context.
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On July 18 2020 20:13 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2020 19:54 Nyxisto wrote:On July 18 2020 19:45 sharkie wrote:On July 18 2020 18:45 Nyxisto wrote:On July 18 2020 08:19 Sermokala wrote:
China is definitely everything nazi Germany was if Hitler wasn't making explicit speeches about hating jews and just wanted to kill them in private. Its a wildly corrupt combination of state-owned industries, partially state-owned industries working as proxies, and no real accountability at any level of government that is controlled through one party that decides every other position in government.
Theres really nothing communist or socialist about the country anymore. They just keep the fiction running to stay in power. Having state-owned business doesn't turn you into Nazi Germany, what the hell lol. I was in Shenzhen for work about a year ago and I can safely tell you that it was nothing like Nazi Germany. China is an autocratic state, not a totalitarian one. The country is depoliticized, not caught in a giant struggle for life and death and total war. China's private sector is also large, probably 60-70% of the economy, a lot of it informal. In many ways the country is so capitalist it makes the US look socialist, competition between private firms is cutthroat in ways you don't find in many other places. So you know what it was like in Nazi Germany? Being German, having family who lived through World War 2, having talked to actual holocaust survivors I'm pretty sure I have a better grasp on what it was like in Nazi Germany than someone comparing every non-democratic government on the planet to it, yes. For most people, Nazi Germany was just another government. In fact, initially maybe even better than the previous one, because they stopped paying the ridiculous reparations and invested in huge government projects that gave many people jobs. We have this weird idea that because a regime is terrible, it must be awful for everyone living there. It is simply wrong. What happens is that life continues as normal except that the shoemaker on the corner suddenly disappears and if you try to ask what happens you get shushed. And if you don't shush then maybe you disappear as well, but most people shush. And then when the butcher opposite disappears they join in doing the shushing. And life continues for these people mostly the same as it was before except they can't talk about certain topics. Of course, if you happen to be a Jew, or gay, or gypsy then no matter how much you shush, you got disappeared. And China isn't dissimilar right now with how they're rounding up Uyghurs and "reeducating" them. Oh, and the "social credit" ranking program is something the Nazis could only dream of.
That depiction leaves out how the Nazi party bancrupted the country in 5 years through high debt, by printing money, fake debt papers and selling off centuries of gold reserves. Also driving away and later on killing Jews played a big role to finance their plans.
China, on the other hand, has been a highly economically successful and stable country for decades now.
That conservative/liberterian story telling of how Nazi Germany was the better alternative to social-democratic and communist parties, hadn't it been for the holocaust and the war, is pure crap.
It leaves out all the economic crap that Hitler did. It leaves out that without robbing the rich Jewish people, deeply anchored in the German financial institutions was a financial necessity.
It leaves out how taking Austria in 1938 was partly due to the vast gold reserves of the Austrian Central Bank, after Germany had sold of most of theirs.
It leaves out, that by starting the war Hitler conveniently could stop paying foreign creditors.
A peaceful Nazi Germany did not and could not exist, because it created the necessities for war through its other politics.
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On July 18 2020 20:27 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2020 20:23 Acrofales wrote:On July 18 2020 20:16 Nyxisto wrote:On July 18 2020 20:04 sharkie wrote:On July 18 2020 19:54 Nyxisto wrote:On July 18 2020 19:45 sharkie wrote:On July 18 2020 18:45 Nyxisto wrote:On July 18 2020 08:19 Sermokala wrote:
China is definitely everything nazi Germany was if Hitler wasn't making explicit speeches about hating jews and just wanted to kill them in private. Its a wildly corrupt combination of state-owned industries, partially state-owned industries working as proxies, and no real accountability at any level of government that is controlled through one party that decides every other position in government.
Theres really nothing communist or socialist about the country anymore. They just keep the fiction running to stay in power. Having state-owned business doesn't turn you into Nazi Germany, what the hell lol. I was in Shenzhen for work about a year ago and I can safely tell you that it was nothing like Nazi Germany. China is an autocratic state, not a totalitarian one. The country is depoliticized, not caught in a giant struggle for life and death and total war. China's private sector is also large, probably 60-70% of the economy, a lot of it informal. In many ways the country is so capitalist it makes the US look socialist, competition between private firms is cutthroat in ways you don't find in many other places. So you know what it was like in Nazi Germany? Being German, having family who lived through World War 2 both on the German and Polish sides, having talked to actual holocaust survivors I'm pretty sure I have a better grasp on what it was like in Nazi Germany than someone comparing every non-democratic government on the planet to it, yes. It seems very popular in US discourse today to call everything Nazi-like, doesn't make it any more accurate. So in your year in Shenzhen you talked to Black minimum wage workers, Muslim Western Chinese people? Or are you comparing your luxurious lifestyle in one of the biggest Chinese cities, built for Western people to holocaust victims? You are comparing apples and oranges I've also been to Western China. It's heavily policed and what's happening there is awful, however it's not comparable to the totalitarianism of Nazism, and everyone who makes these comparisons has likely no experience with either. There's many disastrous human rights violations in China, not just concerning the Muslim population but the hukou system in general which has basically created a caste-like system (and yes I've also personally talked to illegal workers who bascially make a living on the fringes), but none of this compares to the destruction brought onto the world in the second world war. Any thinking person has to be able to make judgements without immediately falling back to Hitler. For most people, Nazi Germany was just another government. In fact, initially maybe even better than the previous one, because they stopped paying the ridiculous reparations and invested in huge government projects that gave many people jobs. We have this weird idea that because a regime is terrible, it must be awful for everyone living there. Have you seen how Europe looked after the war was over? The Nazis weren't "some other government"; Jesus Christ, Nazism led to the physical destruction of much of the continent. Next to the house where I grew up in they are digging bombs out of the ground to this day I'm talking about early 1930s Germany, not mid-1940s... and you know it, so don't compare apples to oranges. There is no talking about the Nazi regime without talking about the war because it was a central part of its ideology. What kind of third grade logic is it to selectively ignore parts of history just so you can make contemporary comparisons?
And you think the One China policy and the border skirmishes with India do not have the potential to blow up into a pan-Asiatic war?
I mean, I totally agree with you that Nazi Germany was bad in ways that China has not yet reached. And obviously history does not repeat itself *exactly*. I thus do not agree with Sermokala that China is everything Nazi Germany was if they didn't have Hitler verbally attacking Jews. I do thing China is very much a fascist regime. And you seemed to be arguing against that rather than Sermokala's exact words. So if all you wanted to say is "this is not an exact carbon copy of Nazi Germany", then we are in complete agreement. If your point is "China is not a fascist regime" I think your point about whether they are literally nazis or not is very much missing the point.
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I'm not just trying to argue semantics. China is not fascist because it isn't totalitarian. As I alluded to in the earlier post-China is completely depoliticized, outside of the sphere of political, life is perfectly normal, you can pick your job these days, go sit in a Starbucks, start a foreign venture capital-backed company with certain limitations, and so on, the party doesn't care. They're very interested in managing life, not sending you to your death.
Under fascism, there is no life outside of the political and nothing apart from the dictator, and as Umberto Eco put it everyone is elevated to the status of a hero. In Nazi Germany they didn't have special economic zones and charter cities where people from abroad went and started their own maker-spaces while bureaucrats discuss international trade policy.
The CCP is fundamentally still interested in making China more prosperous, insofar as they're military assertive it is towards that end. For fascists war is an end in itself, which is why the lifespan of fascist regimes tends to be measures in years or decades, not in centuries or millenia.
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On July 18 2020 21:06 Nyxisto wrote:
I'm not just trying to argue semantics. China is not fascist because it isn't totalitarian. As I alluded to in the earlier post-China is completely depoliticized, outside of the sphere of political, life is perfectly normal, you can pick your job these days, go sit in a Starbucks, start a foreign venture capital-backed company with certain limitations, and so on, the party doesn't care. They're very interested in managing life, not sending you to your death.
Under fascism, there is no life outside of the political and nothing apart from the dictator, and as Umberto Eco put it everyone is elevated to the status of a hero. In Nazi Germany they didn't have special economic zones and charter cities where people from abroad went and started their own maker-spaces while bureaucrats discuss international trade policy.
The CCP is fundamentally still interested in making China more prosperous, insofar as they're military assertive it is towards that end. For fascists war is an end in itself, which is why the lifespan of fascist regimes tends to be measures in years or decades, not in centuries or millenia.
I guess we kinda do need to argue semantics though, as fascism is characterized mainly by oppression of dissent and severe state control of the economy. They don't see violence and war as bad, and do see it as necessary to protect the nation. Fascists are in favour of a totalitarian regime under a strong leader. I think it is very easy to see all these aspects in modern China.
I mean... if we were to take this paragraph from Wikipedia:
Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete and regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties. Such a state is led by a strong leader—such as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist party—to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society. Fascism rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature and views political violence, war, and imperialism as means that can achieve national rejuvenation. Fascists advocate a mixed economy, with the principal goal of achieving autarky (national economic self-sufficiency) through protectionist and interventionist economic policies.
It could literally be discussing modern China. The only sentence we could argue about is whether or not China is mobilizing their society completely. I'd personally say that the Chinese aren't moblilizing in militaristic terms, but rather in economic. They are literally building factories in towns and cities in order to put people to work and "modernize" areas of the country. And they are definitely no military slouch either, and there is definitely plenty of glorification of the military (ergo violence) with their parades.
And I am far from alone in thinking this way:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/is-china-fascist-state/
The whole article is worth reading as a larger argument on why we should consider China as a fascist regime, but lets skip straight to the conclusion: it is worth noting that this was written in 2014, well before I thought China was becoming fascist, and I thought they were slowly transitioning to a democracy. I think that the developments over the last few years have made it clear that the *second* alternative is the way more likely way this is developing... and that is very scary.
The overlap of fascist characteristics with the concrete aspects of the Chinese regime suggest at least two possible interpretations. First, the key fascist traits of corporatism in place of civil society, including a mass party, may be a vestige of the central planning period that the Chinese leadership plans to discard when it is no longer useful in building a capitalist superpower.
In other words, the regime is a familiar capitalist dictatorship in the process of shedding the trappings of socialism. If this is the case, the possibility exists that at some point in the future the regime will undergo democratic reform. This could be generated from below by working class protests as well as the putative democratic aspirations of the rising middle class (see report of the former in Aljazeera).
Alternatively, the regime may be in the process of transforming the structures of the central planning period into institutions to consolidate and render permanent a dictatorship of capital. If that is the case, hopes for democratic reform have no basis. Change would require insurrection and overthrow of the regime.
In this context it is sobering to recall that the fascist regimes established before WWII fell as a result of world war not internal insurrection. More sobering still is another comparison to the first half of the twentieth century. In the early twenty first century there is no militarily powerful government like that of the United States under Franklin D Roosevelt to lead an alliance of bourgeois democracies against the rise of a neo-fascist coalition.
EDIT:
I am not sure I agree with this:
https://newrepublic.com/article/154042/failure-define-fascism-today
But they basically say that nothing can be fascist because the sociopolitical situation is too different: fascism was a response to communism, and communism is not a threat to national governments anymore. So instead of calling regimes like Putin's Russia and Xi's China "fascist", they call them "fascistic": incorporating classical fascist ideology but without having the hypermilitaristic aspect to combat communists. Maybe you prefer that temrinology.
To me it is very much tomayto tomahto: limiting the definition of fascism in such a way that it cannot be used in a modern context, and using "fascistic" for modern regimes that adopt most of the trappings of classical fascists is semantic nitpicking.
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On July 18 2020 21:06 Nyxisto wrote:
I'm not just trying to argue semantics. China is not fascist because it isn't totalitarian. As I alluded to in the earlier post-China is completely depoliticized, outside of the sphere of political, life is perfectly normal, you can pick your job these days, go sit in a Starbucks, start a foreign venture capital-backed company with certain limitations, and so on, the party doesn't care. They're very interested in managing life, not sending you to your death.
Under fascism, there is no life outside of the political and nothing apart from the dictator, and as Umberto Eco put it everyone is elevated to the status of a hero. In Nazi Germany they didn't have special economic zones and charter cities where people from abroad went and started their own maker-spaces while bureaucrats discuss international trade policy.
The CCP is fundamentally still interested in making China more prosperous, insofar as they're military assertive it is towards that end. For fascists war is an end in itself, which is why the lifespan of fascist regimes tends to be measures in years or decades, not in centuries or millenia.
That's an odd definition of authoritarianism/totalitarianism. Would you say the same about Chile under Pinochet? Maybe ask the HK folks what they think. They seem oddly willing to die to prevent becoming apart of China and under CCP rule.
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I really very, very hardly see how modern China compares in any meaningful way to nazi Germany. Not that it's great, but the comparison makes very little to no sense at all imo.
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This begs the question. China may be an extremely "leftist" country on the political compass, but you have to dive a bit into Chinese history itself. All Asian countries are very different from Western norms. North Korea now is a bit like what China used to be. There were many horror stories in the old China...
Like they changed how everyone read and wrote Chinese, changed the Chinese characters, because at that time, Mao Zedong thought that illiteracy was too high. I was taught "simplified Chinese" when I went to school. But then upon emigration, there were many immigrants who were from Taiwan or Hong Kong or some such thing...so many books were written in "traditional" Chinese. That meant I had to semi-learn a new way of reading.
Upon attempted emigration, I had to go back home for countless weeks. I could not board the airplane. That is because I did not have anything written, which certified that I was not in a "conspiracy" against any member of the Chinese Communist Party. I was only 6 years old at the time.
In the end, it did not matter. Anyone could just forge any written thing saying that I was not in a "conspiracy," so that was what we eventually got.
But like I said, China back in time was somewhat similar to what North Korea is now. But then along came "Deng Xiaoping." He said: "To get rich is glorious." That was the end of "Communist China" as we knew it. Today China is a communist country...but I guess only politically. There are many more freedoms in China that even the West has rarely heard about...like how an aforementioned poster mentioned that today, "Communist" Chinese public spending is far below Western standards.
So partially, it is the time factor, but partially, it is something cultural. North Korea is effectively a monarchy...calling itself "Communist." But even China is Communist only in name today, and you may argue, so were the USSR and even Cuba. Castro did not even know that he was a Communist until he entered Havana. Anti-Americanism was a thing in Latin America back then.
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On July 18 2020 21:48 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2020 21:06 Nyxisto wrote:
I'm not just trying to argue semantics. China is not fascist because it isn't totalitarian. As I alluded to in the earlier post-China is completely depoliticized, outside of the sphere of political, life is perfectly normal, you can pick your job these days, go sit in a Starbucks, start a foreign venture capital-backed company with certain limitations, and so on, the party doesn't care. They're very interested in managing life, not sending you to your death.
Under fascism, there is no life outside of the political and nothing apart from the dictator, and as Umberto Eco put it everyone is elevated to the status of a hero. In Nazi Germany they didn't have special economic zones and charter cities where people from abroad went and started their own maker-spaces while bureaucrats discuss international trade policy.
The CCP is fundamentally still interested in making China more prosperous, insofar as they're military assertive it is towards that end. For fascists war is an end in itself, which is why the lifespan of fascist regimes tends to be measures in years or decades, not in centuries or millenia. That's an odd definition of authoritarianism/totalitarianism. Would you say the same about Chile under Pinochet? Maybe ask the HK folks what they think. They seem oddly willing to die to prevent becoming apart of China and under CCP rule.
I don't know a ton about Pinochet but I'm not sure he was a fascist either, I think his regime also generally lacked mass mobilization or any rhetoric of national rebirth or ultra-traditionalism and he was simply quite despotic. I think this is true for a lot of the dictators in Latin America and I don't think they fall into either fascism or China-style autocracy.
I don't think it's odd either to distinguish between autocratic or repressive and totalitarian regimes. Singapore for example where I live right now is definitely not liberal. There's relatively little freedom of the press here, it's largely been governed by the PAP, and more precisely mostly one man and his son, Lee Kuan Yew. However it's not like living in a totalitarian country at all, because it completely lacks any sort of political mobilisation, it's very bureaucratic and technocratic, William Gibson characterized it disfavourably as 'Disneyland with the death penalty' in the 90s.
Under totalitarianism, there is a sort of substitution at work. The individual serves the party, the party serves the committee, the committee serves the leaders and everyone serves the dictator. This was Trotzky's view of Stalinism. People sometimes treat China as if it works like this but it's a total meme view. Politically China is extremely decentralised, in particular fiscally. Localities and regions have a relatively large degree of autonomy in how they operate. Just consider the range of politics. You have a free-market city like Shenzhen in the middle of a communist country. It'd be like having a socialist city of 40 million people in Nebraska. Not very totalitarian.
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On July 18 2020 20:13 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2020 19:54 Nyxisto wrote:On July 18 2020 19:45 sharkie wrote:On July 18 2020 18:45 Nyxisto wrote:On July 18 2020 08:19 Sermokala wrote:
China is definitely everything nazi Germany was if Hitler wasn't making explicit speeches about hating jews and just wanted to kill them in private. Its a wildly corrupt combination of state-owned industries, partially state-owned industries working as proxies, and no real accountability at any level of government that is controlled through one party that decides every other position in government.
Theres really nothing communist or socialist about the country anymore. They just keep the fiction running to stay in power. Having state-owned business doesn't turn you into Nazi Germany, what the hell lol. I was in Shenzhen for work about a year ago and I can safely tell you that it was nothing like Nazi Germany. China is an autocratic state, not a totalitarian one. The country is depoliticized, not caught in a giant struggle for life and death and total war. China's private sector is also large, probably 60-70% of the economy, a lot of it informal. In many ways the country is so capitalist it makes the US look socialist, competition between private firms is cutthroat in ways you don't find in many other places. So you know what it was like in Nazi Germany? Being German, having family who lived through World War 2, having talked to actual holocaust survivors I'm pretty sure I have a better grasp on what it was like in Nazi Germany than someone comparing every non-democratic government on the planet to it, yes. For most people, Nazi Germany was just another government. In fact, initially maybe even better than the previous one, because they stopped paying the ridiculous reparations and invested in huge government projects that gave many people jobs. We have this weird idea that because a regime is terrible, it must be awful for everyone living there. It is simply wrong. What happens is that life continues as normal except that the shoemaker on the corner suddenly disappears and if you try to ask what happens you get shushed. And if you don't shush then maybe you disappear as well, but most people shush. And then when the butcher opposite disappears they join in doing the shushing. And life continues for these people mostly the same as it was before except they can't talk about certain topics. Of course, if you happen to be a Jew, or gay, or gypsy then no matter how much you shush, you got disappeared. And China isn't dissimilar right now with how they're rounding up Uyghurs and "reeducating" them. Oh, and the "social credit" ranking program is something the Nazis could only dream of.
Reeducating them doesn't mean exterminating them, they have to process the love of the state for the sake of this sort of confucian social order, it isn't racially motivated. Well, not that I agree but I believe it should calm down unless the cia finances some terrorists which is bound to happen.
Anyway, this comparaison is quite stupid.
Nazi Germany was a protestant and capitalist country with a tradition of decentralism just like the USA and GB (ah, the benevolant british empire...) which actively try to genocide/destroy culture by assimilating and overwhelming them with this mindless entertaining industry. This is exactly the same elite, the same people, the same political horizon, the same racial capitalism that american "progressists" and let's call the international bourgeoisie you're probably part of now use masterfully with identity policies. Now, if you combine it with this remnant of manifest destiny, we got imperialist power which base their political culture on identitary conflicts.
Which leads naturally to the idea that genocide is in the ethos of those countries... And this theory is quite true, when Germany tried to destroy Russia, some historians presented it as the courageous german soldiers who fought to prevent the commies threatened western civilization and they were rights in the sense that Nazi Germany is indeed the true face of the world dominated by USA with an elite absolutely certain of its superiority and ready to wash the world of everything which isn't them. A world my country is now part of as our elite is pretty happy with these consumerism combined with this mindless entertainement for the masses and has thus decided to adopt the american way of life. As a result, there is no difference between a french bourgeois and an american one, they speak the same language, read the same stuff (1984, on the road => the little catechism of the liberal, after this, they are now ready to die for freedom, how cute) and think totally alike.
But when people resist, well, it turns into a civilization conflict in which for example every arab nation who doesn't compel is mercilessly destroyed, humiliated, bombed or even stolen while you are being extremely good at building narrative to justify it : your superiority of values, "Democracy" (well, considering how uneducated and instrumentalized people are in the West, I would rather called this a perfectly locked oligarchy and idiocracy) and ofc, the "good side of history" which is quite easy to do when it's people of your class which wrote it but I am pretty sure that one day, the West today will probably be considered as way worse than any of his ennemies.
But I am being pretty optimistic because the derugalation of economy, the careful destruction of social and polticial bodies with identity policies really make me wonder how things can be done for climate change when everything is done to incapacitate strong moves in this matter. As would say Maggie, there are no society or politics, just communities.
Edit : I am obviously support the idea of China taking over the world over Western barbarism, maybe they could even accidentally save Europe from it.
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On July 19 2020 08:36 stilt wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2020 20:13 Acrofales wrote:On July 18 2020 19:54 Nyxisto wrote:On July 18 2020 19:45 sharkie wrote:On July 18 2020 18:45 Nyxisto wrote:On July 18 2020 08:19 Sermokala wrote:
China is definitely everything nazi Germany was if Hitler wasn't making explicit speeches about hating jews and just wanted to kill them in private. Its a wildly corrupt combination of state-owned industries, partially state-owned industries working as proxies, and no real accountability at any level of government that is controlled through one party that decides every other position in government.
Theres really nothing communist or socialist about the country anymore. They just keep the fiction running to stay in power. Having state-owned business doesn't turn you into Nazi Germany, what the hell lol. I was in Shenzhen for work about a year ago and I can safely tell you that it was nothing like Nazi Germany. China is an autocratic state, not a totalitarian one. The country is depoliticized, not caught in a giant struggle for life and death and total war. China's private sector is also large, probably 60-70% of the economy, a lot of it informal. In many ways the country is so capitalist it makes the US look socialist, competition between private firms is cutthroat in ways you don't find in many other places. So you know what it was like in Nazi Germany? Being German, having family who lived through World War 2, having talked to actual holocaust survivors I'm pretty sure I have a better grasp on what it was like in Nazi Germany than someone comparing every non-democratic government on the planet to it, yes. For most people, Nazi Germany was just another government. In fact, initially maybe even better than the previous one, because they stopped paying the ridiculous reparations and invested in huge government projects that gave many people jobs. We have this weird idea that because a regime is terrible, it must be awful for everyone living there. It is simply wrong. What happens is that life continues as normal except that the shoemaker on the corner suddenly disappears and if you try to ask what happens you get shushed. And if you don't shush then maybe you disappear as well, but most people shush. And then when the butcher opposite disappears they join in doing the shushing. And life continues for these people mostly the same as it was before except they can't talk about certain topics. Of course, if you happen to be a Jew, or gay, or gypsy then no matter how much you shush, you got disappeared. And China isn't dissimilar right now with how they're rounding up Uyghurs and "reeducating" them. Oh, and the "social credit" ranking program is something the Nazis could only dream of. Reeducating them doesn't mean exterminating them, they have to process the love of the state for the sake of this sort of confucian social order, it isn't racially motivated. Well, not that I agree but I believe it should calm down unless the cia finances some terrorists which is bound to happen. Anyway, this comparaison is quite stupid. Nazi Germany was a protestant and capitalist country with a tradition of decentralism just like the USA and GB (ah, the benevolant british empire...) which actively try to genocide/destroy culture by assimilating and overwhelming them with this mindless entertaining industry. This is exactly the same elite, the same people, the same political horizon, the same racial capitalism that american "progressists" and let's call the international bourgeoisie you're probably part of now use masterfully with identity policies. Now, if you combine it with this remnant of manifest destiny, we got imperialist power which base their political culture on identitary conflicts. Which leads naturally to the idea that genocide is in the ethos of those countries... And this theory is quite true, when Germany tried to destroy Russia, some historians presented it as the courageous german soldiers who fought to prevent the commies threatened western civilization and they were rights in the sense that Nazi Germany is indeed the true face of the world dominated by USA with an elite absolutely certain of its superiority and ready to wash the world of everything which isn't them. A world my country is now part of as our elite is pretty happy with these consumerism combined with this mindless entertainement for the masses and has thus decided to adopt the american way of life. As a result, there is no difference between a french bourgeois and an american one, they speak the same language, read the same stuff (1984, on the road => the little catechism of the liberal, after this, they are now ready to die for freedom, how cute) and think totally alike. But when people resist, well, it turns into a civilization conflict in which for example every arab nation who doesn't compel is mercilessly destroyed, humiliated, bombed or even stolen while you are being extremely good at building narrative to justify it : your superiority of values, "Democracy" (well, considering how uneducated and instrumentalized people are in the West, I would rather called this a perfectly locked oligarchy and idiocracy) and ofc, the "good side of history" which is quite easy to do when it's people of your class which wrote it but I am pretty sure that one day, the West today will probably be considered as way worse than any of his ennemies. But I am being pretty optimistic because the derugalation of economy, the careful destruction of social and polticial bodies with identity policies really make me wonder how things can be done for climate change when everything is done to incapacitate strong moves in this matter. As would say Maggie, there are no society or politics, just communities. Edit : I am obviously support the idea of China taking over the world over Western barbarism, maybe they could even accidentally save Europe from it.
You think the Han Chinese don't think themselves superior to those around them? Ha. Your knowledge of China is severely limited. The Chinese State is awful and Han Nationalism is a big problem which has contributed to the eradication of Uighur communities (and who knows what else as it is very secretive in that part of China). If you think ICE detention centers on the Mexican border are bad, that's nothing compared to Chinese treatment of their Uighur population (or how they've treated the Nepalese they've displaced, etc.). My point being that you don't need to compare all awful Governments to Nazi's to make a point how awful they are. It just obfuscates the real issues and leads to pointless semantic debates.
I'm not even going to address how you believe enlightenment values are barbaric, but let's just say in practice I'm not sure you're going to enjoy Chinese authoritarianism very much if you ever get to experience it. You'd probably have a low social credit score and wouldn't be able to fly, ride a train or bus, buy luxuries / decent food or have a good job. (Which is conveniently not addressed by Nyxisto) Political oppression and curtailment of civil liberties is very high in China, some of the worlds worst in fact, made worse by widespread technological application. Just because some cities have relatively free economies is not really fully addressing the issues (which is why I brought up Pinochet in the first place).
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Northern Ireland23956 Posts
I’m not sure stilt is arguing that enlightenment values are barbaric, more that attempts to impose them have been/they’ve been a smokescreen for imperialist expansion and colonialist and capitalist exploitation around the world.
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On July 18 2020 08:32 Belisarius wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2020 04:33 Nouar wrote:
Still, these kind of sanctions when there is no PROOF that Huawei hardware is rigged is over-the-top. The USA just threatened sanctions on TSMC (Taiwanese company) if they were to provide processors to Huawei.
Now, if there was proof, I'd argue differently. For now it just seems like a commercial war to push the US of A's own equipment to me. Okay, this isn't the position I expected from you here. We know that the CCP has an unprecedented level of control over its citizens and its companies. Xi has instituted a clear and strong shift in his foreign and domestic policy toward suppression and projection of power. The chinese state is aggressively expanding its footprint: physical, digital and cultural, often in blatant defiance of international law. It is pushing disinformation and suppressing speech critical of it in every domain it has access to. There is a well-documented record of chinese cyber-attacks all around the globe, and these have accelerated dramatically in recent years. Do you disagree with any of this? Acro said it fairly clearly; the only option left to most nations in the world is to choose who they would prefer to be spied on by. For all of Trump's.... Trumpness, any society built on liberal democracy will reluctantly select the US. By a third Trump term in a US that's gone full neofascist, that choice may be harder and both options worse, but there is still some hope that that timeline will be averted. I've had the feeling for a while that a large part of Europe is still in denial about either the CCP's ambitions or their ability to execute them. Here in their backyard, I feel we are more aware of the dragon we are sleeping next to. You are military, afaik. You are generally pretty pragmatic. If you are blase about this, what is the average euro thinking?
Oh I am not in denial about the amount of influence China is asserting in Asia, Africa and even Europe (Greece took a big hit for example). I am also aware of the shit it's doing at home and their imperialistic views in their region.
However, this is about something else. For countries that declare themselves respectful of laws, capitalistic, open to concurrence etc, I just find the hypocrisy in just barring another country's company from markets with no proof so... shameless ?
It's just to cave to foreign pressure, and not based on facts.
Just an excuse to favor your own companies (or allies'), no real root in counter-intelligence, just assumptions and possibilities. It's mainly lying to the public.
In fact, this is furthered by this article, that states that British officials told Huawei that the ban was mostly due to geopolitical pressure from Trump and might be reversed if he loses the election :
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/18/pressure-from-trump-led-to-5g-ban-britain-tells-huawei
There is a well documented record of everyone doing cyber-attacks on everyone, be it France, five-eyes, Israel, China... Every country is fighting for influence, China is doing it to get its place in the world, the US has done it for decades via soft or hard pressure, Europe is still trying to do it here and there but it's not very efficient anymore, Russia is...
This is a invisible war, and we (europe) are mainly being dominated by huge powers. I am blasé about it because I know and see what everyone is doing, including our "allies", not just what's shown in the news.
The NSA having access to nearly every US company's data through backdoors, while these are the most used platforms worldwide and foreign data is physically sent and hosted in the US, is for me a much larger issue than "maybe Huawei devices can have a hardware backdoor but we are not sure".
One that is slowly getting fixed by european laws.
You need to take these items one by one, or if you're not happy, start a war against China ? If we start by not respecting international and trade laws, why should they ? You cannot put official pressure on them if you don't respect the rules yourself. If you don't, it ends up on a slope to all-out war (not necessarily immediately with arms, but a cold war at first, and then you end up with covert ops like Iran is doing, except China won't have the need to do it covertly).
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Northern Ireland23956 Posts
On July 19 2020 18:36 Nouar wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2020 08:32 Belisarius wrote:On July 18 2020 04:33 Nouar wrote:
Still, these kind of sanctions when there is no PROOF that Huawei hardware is rigged is over-the-top. The USA just threatened sanctions on TSMC (Taiwanese company) if they were to provide processors to Huawei.
Now, if there was proof, I'd argue differently. For now it just seems like a commercial war to push the US of A's own equipment to me. Okay, this isn't the position I expected from you here. We know that the CCP has an unprecedented level of control over its citizens and its companies. Xi has instituted a clear and strong shift in his foreign and domestic policy toward suppression and projection of power. The chinese state is aggressively expanding its footprint: physical, digital and cultural, often in blatant defiance of international law. It is pushing disinformation and suppressing speech critical of it in every domain it has access to. There is a well-documented record of chinese cyber-attacks all around the globe, and these have accelerated dramatically in recent years. Do you disagree with any of this? Acro said it fairly clearly; the only option left to most nations in the world is to choose who they would prefer to be spied on by. For all of Trump's.... Trumpness, any society built on liberal democracy will reluctantly select the US. By a third Trump term in a US that's gone full neofascist, that choice may be harder and both options worse, but there is still some hope that that timeline will be averted. I've had the feeling for a while that a large part of Europe is still in denial about either the CCP's ambitions or their ability to execute them. Here in their backyard, I feel we are more aware of the dragon we are sleeping next to. You are military, afaik. You are generally pretty pragmatic. If you are blase about this, what is the average euro thinking? Oh I am not in denial about the amount of influence China is asserting in Asia, Africa and even Europe (Greece took a big hit for example). I am also aware of the shit it's doing at home and their imperialistic views in their region. However, this is about something else. For countries that declare themselves respectful of laws, capitalistic, open to concurrence etc, I just find the hypocrisy in just barring another country's company from markets with no proof so... shameless ? It's just to cave to foreign pressure, and not based on facts. Just an excuse to favor your own companies (or allies'), no real root in counter-intelligence, just assumptions and possibilities. It's mainly lying to the public. In fact, this is furthered by this article, that states that British officials told Huawei that the ban was mostly due to geopolitical pressure from Trump and might be reversed if he loses the election : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/18/pressure-from-trump-led-to-5g-ban-britain-tells-huaweiThere is a well documented record of everyone doing cyber-attacks on everyone, be it France, five-eyes, Israel, China... Every country is fighting for influence, China is doing it to get its place in the world, the US has done it for decades via soft or hard pressure, Europe is still trying to do it here and there but it's not very efficient anymore, Russia is... This is a invisible war, and we (europe) are mainly being dominated by huge powers. I am blasé about it because I know and see what everyone is doing, including our "allies", not just what's shown in the news. The NSA having access to nearly every US company's data through backdoors, while these are the most used platforms worldwide and foreign data is physically sent and hosted in the US, is for me a much larger issue than "maybe Huawei devices can have a hardware backdoor but we are not sure". One that is slowly getting fixed by european laws. You need to take these items one by one, or if you're not happy, start a war against China ? If we start by not respecting international and trade laws, why should they ? You cannot put official pressure on them if you don't respect the rules yourself. If you don't, it ends up on a slope to all-out war (not necessarily immediately with arms, but a cold war at first, and then you end up with covert ops like Iran is doing, except China won't have the need to do it covertly).
Well indeed. Partly why I was so critical of our government earlier in the thread. Although didn’t do a very good job in articulating my thoughts.
Either the threat to security was there with Huawei to begin with, or it wasn’t and was overblown. As far as I’m aware very little has changed there on that technical level, so either the wrong decision was made initially and reversed, or the inverse.
What has changed is the US taking a harder stance on China far as I can tell and boom it’s reversed.
One of my main reasons for wanting us to remain in the EU was to keep Europe as a more powerful bloc in resisting the US and China, as well as fearing a more isolated UK being vulnerable to such leverage.
The effects of which we’re seeing earlier than I expected due to the US and China’s relations dipping in the way they have lately.
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On July 19 2020 19:08 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 18:36 Nouar wrote:On July 18 2020 08:32 Belisarius wrote:On July 18 2020 04:33 Nouar wrote:
Still, these kind of sanctions when there is no PROOF that Huawei hardware is rigged is over-the-top. The USA just threatened sanctions on TSMC (Taiwanese company) if they were to provide processors to Huawei.
Now, if there was proof, I'd argue differently. For now it just seems like a commercial war to push the US of A's own equipment to me. Okay, this isn't the position I expected from you here. We know that the CCP has an unprecedented level of control over its citizens and its companies. Xi has instituted a clear and strong shift in his foreign and domestic policy toward suppression and projection of power. The chinese state is aggressively expanding its footprint: physical, digital and cultural, often in blatant defiance of international law. It is pushing disinformation and suppressing speech critical of it in every domain it has access to. There is a well-documented record of chinese cyber-attacks all around the globe, and these have accelerated dramatically in recent years. Do you disagree with any of this? Acro said it fairly clearly; the only option left to most nations in the world is to choose who they would prefer to be spied on by. For all of Trump's.... Trumpness, any society built on liberal democracy will reluctantly select the US. By a third Trump term in a US that's gone full neofascist, that choice may be harder and both options worse, but there is still some hope that that timeline will be averted. I've had the feeling for a while that a large part of Europe is still in denial about either the CCP's ambitions or their ability to execute them. Here in their backyard, I feel we are more aware of the dragon we are sleeping next to. You are military, afaik. You are generally pretty pragmatic. If you are blase about this, what is the average euro thinking? Oh I am not in denial about the amount of influence China is asserting in Asia, Africa and even Europe (Greece took a big hit for example). I am also aware of the shit it's doing at home and their imperialistic views in their region. However, this is about something else. For countries that declare themselves respectful of laws, capitalistic, open to concurrence etc, I just find the hypocrisy in just barring another country's company from markets with no proof so... shameless ? It's just to cave to foreign pressure, and not based on facts. Just an excuse to favor your own companies (or allies'), no real root in counter-intelligence, just assumptions and possibilities. It's mainly lying to the public. In fact, this is furthered by this article, that states that British officials told Huawei that the ban was mostly due to geopolitical pressure from Trump and might be reversed if he loses the election : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/18/pressure-from-trump-led-to-5g-ban-britain-tells-huaweiThere is a well documented record of everyone doing cyber-attacks on everyone, be it France, five-eyes, Israel, China... Every country is fighting for influence, China is doing it to get its place in the world, the US has done it for decades via soft or hard pressure, Europe is still trying to do it here and there but it's not very efficient anymore, Russia is... This is a invisible war, and we (europe) are mainly being dominated by huge powers. I am blasé about it because I know and see what everyone is doing, including our "allies", not just what's shown in the news. The NSA having access to nearly every US company's data through backdoors, while these are the most used platforms worldwide and foreign data is physically sent and hosted in the US, is for me a much larger issue than "maybe Huawei devices can have a hardware backdoor but we are not sure". One that is slowly getting fixed by european laws. You need to take these items one by one, or if you're not happy, start a war against China ? If we start by not respecting international and trade laws, why should they ? You cannot put official pressure on them if you don't respect the rules yourself. If you don't, it ends up on a slope to all-out war (not necessarily immediately with arms, but a cold war at first, and then you end up with covert ops like Iran is doing, except China won't have the need to do it covertly). Well indeed. Partly why I was so critical of our government earlier in the thread. Although didn’t do a very good job in articulating my thoughts. Either the threat to security was there with Huawei to begin with, or it wasn’t and was overblown. As far as I’m aware very little has changed there on that technical level, so either the wrong decision was made initially and reversed, or the inverse. What has changed is the US taking a harder stance on China far as I can tell and boom it’s reversed. One of my main reasons for wanting us to remain in the EU was to keep Europe as a more powerful bloc in resisting the US and China, as well as fearing a more isolated UK being vulnerable to such leverage. The effects of which we’re seeing earlier than I expected due to the US and China’s relations dipping in the way they have lately.
The EU as it is presently set up does not work. For one thing, the finances. The UK got a better deal out of it than Germany, at least.
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On July 19 2020 19:08 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 18:36 Nouar wrote:On July 18 2020 08:32 Belisarius wrote:On July 18 2020 04:33 Nouar wrote:
Still, these kind of sanctions when there is no PROOF that Huawei hardware is rigged is over-the-top. The USA just threatened sanctions on TSMC (Taiwanese company) if they were to provide processors to Huawei.
Now, if there was proof, I'd argue differently. For now it just seems like a commercial war to push the US of A's own equipment to me. Okay, this isn't the position I expected from you here. We know that the CCP has an unprecedented level of control over its citizens and its companies. Xi has instituted a clear and strong shift in his foreign and domestic policy toward suppression and projection of power. The chinese state is aggressively expanding its footprint: physical, digital and cultural, often in blatant defiance of international law. It is pushing disinformation and suppressing speech critical of it in every domain it has access to. There is a well-documented record of chinese cyber-attacks all around the globe, and these have accelerated dramatically in recent years. Do you disagree with any of this? Acro said it fairly clearly; the only option left to most nations in the world is to choose who they would prefer to be spied on by. For all of Trump's.... Trumpness, any society built on liberal democracy will reluctantly select the US. By a third Trump term in a US that's gone full neofascist, that choice may be harder and both options worse, but there is still some hope that that timeline will be averted. I've had the feeling for a while that a large part of Europe is still in denial about either the CCP's ambitions or their ability to execute them. Here in their backyard, I feel we are more aware of the dragon we are sleeping next to. You are military, afaik. You are generally pretty pragmatic. If you are blase about this, what is the average euro thinking? Oh I am not in denial about the amount of influence China is asserting in Asia, Africa and even Europe (Greece took a big hit for example). I am also aware of the shit it's doing at home and their imperialistic views in their region. However, this is about something else. For countries that declare themselves respectful of laws, capitalistic, open to concurrence etc, I just find the hypocrisy in just barring another country's company from markets with no proof so... shameless ? It's just to cave to foreign pressure, and not based on facts. Just an excuse to favor your own companies (or allies'), no real root in counter-intelligence, just assumptions and possibilities. It's mainly lying to the public. In fact, this is furthered by this article, that states that British officials told Huawei that the ban was mostly due to geopolitical pressure from Trump and might be reversed if he loses the election : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/18/pressure-from-trump-led-to-5g-ban-britain-tells-huaweiThere is a well documented record of everyone doing cyber-attacks on everyone, be it France, five-eyes, Israel, China... Every country is fighting for influence, China is doing it to get its place in the world, the US has done it for decades via soft or hard pressure, Europe is still trying to do it here and there but it's not very efficient anymore, Russia is... This is a invisible war, and we (europe) are mainly being dominated by huge powers. I am blasé about it because I know and see what everyone is doing, including our "allies", not just what's shown in the news. The NSA having access to nearly every US company's data through backdoors, while these are the most used platforms worldwide and foreign data is physically sent and hosted in the US, is for me a much larger issue than "maybe Huawei devices can have a hardware backdoor but we are not sure". One that is slowly getting fixed by european laws. You need to take these items one by one, or if you're not happy, start a war against China ? If we start by not respecting international and trade laws, why should they ? You cannot put official pressure on them if you don't respect the rules yourself. If you don't, it ends up on a slope to all-out war (not necessarily immediately with arms, but a cold war at first, and then you end up with covert ops like Iran is doing, except China won't have the need to do it covertly). Well indeed. Partly why I was so critical of our government earlier in the thread. Although didn’t do a very good job in articulating my thoughts. Either the threat to security was there with Huawei to begin with, or it wasn’t and was overblown. As far as I’m aware very little has changed there on that technical level, so either the wrong decision was made initially and reversed, or the inverse. What has changed is the US taking a harder stance on China far as I can tell and boom it’s reversed. One of my main reasons for wanting us to remain in the EU was to keep Europe as a more powerful bloc in resisting the US and China, as well as fearing a more isolated UK being vulnerable to such leverage. The effects of which we’re seeing earlier than I expected due to the US and China’s relations dipping in the way they have lately. If I remember correctly, way back in February, it was decided that Huawei would be limited to just 35% of the 5G sector. I'll have to find the article I was reading. Huawei was regarded as a threat, but a threat that could be managed to not being a threat. Now, the reason why Huawei has to be limited as opposed to outright banned providing 5G in Britain is simply because Huawei is the most advanced provider of 5G, out the companies that can provide 5G. The only other companies were Ericsson and Nokia and they are regarded as behind Huawei in every regard except for "security" risk. If you want to retain competition in the market, there is only 2 other companies and for resilience reasons, you want 2 providers of 5G anyways. Essentially Ericcson and Nokia have the other 65% of the market.
What has changed now? It isn't anything on the security front. Poltics? Perhaps the Hong Kong situation was a catalyst. Perhaps it's simply that an American company has developed passable 5G technology in the intervening 4 months and used UK's now international weakness to strongarm UK to excluding Huawei entirely. It wouldn't be beyond Trump to persue the interests of a specific company. Whatever the case was, it was decided that 35% of Huawei in UK posed no risk to UK and it is doubtful anything could change in that regard.
Found the article I was talking about: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/the-future-of-telecoms-in-the-uk
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fascism is very context-related in that every country / place has its own kind of fascism. Some researchers argue fascism should refer only to 1930s Italy and Mussolini. So I don't know if China is fascist but it certainly is totalitarian even if the communist party has made some concessions. The communist party of China infringes on many rights people in the West take for granted e.g freedom of speech and religion.
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On July 19 2020 08:36 stilt wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2020 20:13 Acrofales wrote:On July 18 2020 19:54 Nyxisto wrote:On July 18 2020 19:45 sharkie wrote:On July 18 2020 18:45 Nyxisto wrote:On July 18 2020 08:19 Sermokala wrote:
China is definitely everything nazi Germany was if Hitler wasn't making explicit speeches about hating jews and just wanted to kill them in private. Its a wildly corrupt combination of state-owned industries, partially state-owned industries working as proxies, and no real accountability at any level of government that is controlled through one party that decides every other position in government.
Theres really nothing communist or socialist about the country anymore. They just keep the fiction running to stay in power. Having state-owned business doesn't turn you into Nazi Germany, what the hell lol. I was in Shenzhen for work about a year ago and I can safely tell you that it was nothing like Nazi Germany. China is an autocratic state, not a totalitarian one. The country is depoliticized, not caught in a giant struggle for life and death and total war. China's private sector is also large, probably 60-70% of the economy, a lot of it informal. In many ways the country is so capitalist it makes the US look socialist, competition between private firms is cutthroat in ways you don't find in many other places. So you know what it was like in Nazi Germany? Being German, having family who lived through World War 2, having talked to actual holocaust survivors I'm pretty sure I have a better grasp on what it was like in Nazi Germany than someone comparing every non-democratic government on the planet to it, yes. For most people, Nazi Germany was just another government. In fact, initially maybe even better than the previous one, because they stopped paying the ridiculous reparations and invested in huge government projects that gave many people jobs. We have this weird idea that because a regime is terrible, it must be awful for everyone living there. It is simply wrong. What happens is that life continues as normal except that the shoemaker on the corner suddenly disappears and if you try to ask what happens you get shushed. And if you don't shush then maybe you disappear as well, but most people shush. And then when the butcher opposite disappears they join in doing the shushing. And life continues for these people mostly the same as it was before except they can't talk about certain topics. Of course, if you happen to be a Jew, or gay, or gypsy then no matter how much you shush, you got disappeared. And China isn't dissimilar right now with how they're rounding up Uyghurs and "reeducating" them. Oh, and the "social credit" ranking program is something the Nazis could only dream of. Reeducating them doesn't mean exterminating them, they have to process the love of the state for the sake of this sort of confucian social order, it isn't racially motivated. Well, not that I agree but I believe it should calm down unless the cia finances some terrorists which is bound to happen. Anyway, this comparaison is quite stupid. Nazi Germany was a protestant and capitalist country with a tradition of decentralism just like the USA and GB (ah, the benevolant british empire...) which actively try to genocide/destroy culture by assimilating and overwhelming them with this mindless entertaining industry. This is exactly the same elite, the same people, the same political horizon, the same racial capitalism that american "progressists" and let's call the international bourgeoisie you're probably part of now use masterfully with identity policies. Now, if you combine it with this remnant of manifest destiny, we got imperialist power which base their political culture on identitary conflicts. Which leads naturally to the idea that genocide is in the ethos of those countries... And this theory is quite true, when Germany tried to destroy Russia, some historians presented it as the courageous german soldiers who fought to prevent the commies threatened western civilization and they were rights in the sense that Nazi Germany is indeed the true face of the world dominated by USA with an elite absolutely certain of its superiority and ready to wash the world of everything which isn't them. A world my country is now part of as our elite is pretty happy with these consumerism combined with this mindless entertainement for the masses and has thus decided to adopt the american way of life. As a result, there is no difference between a french bourgeois and an american one, they speak the same language, read the same stuff (1984, on the road => the little catechism of the liberal, after this, they are now ready to die for freedom, how cute) and think totally alike. But when people resist, well, it turns into a civilization conflict in which for example every arab nation who doesn't compel is mercilessly destroyed, humiliated, bombed or even stolen while you are being extremely good at building narrative to justify it : your superiority of values, "Democracy" (well, considering how uneducated and instrumentalized people are in the West, I would rather called this a perfectly locked oligarchy and idiocracy) and ofc, the "good side of history" which is quite easy to do when it's people of your class which wrote it but I am pretty sure that one day, the West today will probably be considered as way worse than any of his ennemies. But I am being pretty optimistic because the derugalation of economy, the careful destruction of social and polticial bodies with identity policies really make me wonder how things can be done for climate change when everything is done to incapacitate strong moves in this matter. As would say Maggie, there are no society or politics, just communities. Edit : I am obviously support the idea of China taking over the world over Western barbarism, maybe they could even accidentally save Europe from it.
I have a hard time parsing this post. It quotes me, but I get the feeling that is more a coathanger than that this actually replies to my post. I also have a hard time figuring out whether most if it is sarcasm and stilt thinks the entire world is going to shit due to consumerism and it didn't really matter at all who won ww2? Or whether this is all deadly serious and China is actually not fascist, but current western civilization is, or maybe arab nations are? Or whether I am just not understanding anything that is going on in this post.
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China is an authoritarian country but isn't totalitarian whatsoever. Arguably it stopped to be in 1976 after Mao's death. The state control over private life of chinese citizen today doesn't even start to resemble with totalitarianism.
I think we should be careful about the words we use and the comparisons we make, or they risk losing all meaning.
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EPT
