If nationalization is scandalous violence for you, let me say I want him to get the french treatment.

China doesn’t pretend that their media is unbiased, though. There’s no aura of unbiased media in China.

What they “pretend” to be doesn’t matter, what matters is the thoughts they want to put on the people who read it, why they want to, and how many of them do read it. Any and all state media or state collaborative media tries to paint the state it comes from in a good light. This is not somehow more benevolent or less manipulative when it’s done by China, even if “it’s easy to circumvent” or “people know it’s biased”.

Meanwhile, Facebook’s head of global threat intelligence, is literally a US intelligence plant

According to its CEO and founder Ren, Huawei’s corporate culture is the same as the culture of the CCP, “and to serve the people wholeheartedly means to be customer-centric and responsible to society.” Ren frequently states that Huawei’s management philosophy and strategy are commercial applications of Maoism.

Ren states that in the event of a conflict between Huawei’s business interests and the CCP’s interests, he would “choose the CCP whose interest is to serve the people and all human beings”. Qiao and Marquis observe that company founder Ren is a dedicated communist who seeks to ingrain communist values at Huawei.

I wonder if WeChat and TikTok are any different, too.

Bing has 100 million DAUs worldwide. Reddit has about 55 million DAUs worldwide. LinkedIn has about 22 million DAUs in the US. Twitter has about 54 million MAUs in the US. Threads has about 8 million DAUs worldwide (though probably less now, lol). 1-5% penetration of total users in terms of usage is indicative of very high awareness.

Last October, China clamped down on some VPNs

So basically, it’s easy to do, but illegal, but it’s rarely persecuted? That’s a really weird policy.

No it’s not. Much like you aren’t a CPC shill/russian bot/whatever, no one commenting on a lemmy post is a psyop agent with a secret agenda to manipulate everyone. Those guys have the entire media, they don’t need to hire people to pretend to be redditors. Just because you believe it really really hardly doesn’t make it true.

That was also the day we realized how much nicer C was to C++

Absolutely. I went through a whole process of using less and less C++isms that everyone was recommending me as they just made everything so much harder, longer to compile, produce more unreadable errors, harder to organize… Until I eventually was just writing C but structs have functions.

Then I moved to Rust and I have not looked back.

How in the world did they think no one would notice? Aren’t they a tech savvy company?

I get what you mean, but the other guy brought up democracy as if it was the be-all end-all solution.

Yes. No democracy, no support from me. “But the US isn’t democratic!” Which is why I don’t support it either. Not sure if the other guy is the same.

Countries that disprove OP’s point about democracy being the solution

No country disproves that democracy is needed. “Benevolent dictators” (all dictators think they’re benevolent) die. If you think a dictatorship is doing well just give it a few years.

most urban people either know how to flip the firewall or know someone who can - it’s really not that hard.

“Yes they censor everything, but it’s easy to circumvent!” is not an excuse. How accurate is this really though? Do you have any sources to prove this is the case? Genuinely interested.

As if the large media organizations in the US don’t all cite reports from “independent think tanks” that are conspicuously all funded by the same billionaires and manned by “ex”-US intelligence.

Chinese news cite chinese think tanks, both entities funded by the chinese government. How is it any different? Doesn’t China have more billionaires than the US too?

followed by USA/capitalism works best and is only system that works (does not)

Neither me not the person you were responding to said this. They criticised China on something - you made up the “hence the US is good/only thing that works” line. You just assumed if anyone thinks anything slightly remotely bad about China it’s because they’re an evil idiot liberul!!!. It really is just a reflex for you people no?

It’s not about brains, it’s about the flow of conversation. Everytime someone calls out China on anything there’s always a bunch of people that immediately say “Ah yes because the US–” No one is talking about the US. No one is saying it’s any better. It being a shithole too doesn’t magically make China not one. If that is the only thing you have to say then you don’t actually have an argument, just the vibe that it’s le based epic AES wholesome chungus country and if they do anything wrong it must be propaganda or not actually done by them.

This not an argument. You can’t respond to “X is doing something wrong” with “OH AS IF Y IS ANY BETTER” when literally no one was talking about Y. You’re just trying to derail the conversation. If you’re going to defend China stick to your guts and defend China, don’t attack completely unrelated countries implying I must think they’re any better, they’re not.

At least most people in Russia and China can distinguish between the truth and the party line.

I am sure that most people in the country with the largest censorship firewall in existence know the truth any better. And before you say B-B-B-BUT AMERICA— Yeah they censor shit too. I hate both of them.

So… no, you don’t have an actual point to make.

Yes yes we know America is bad too, now do you have an actual point to make?

I’ve seen countless times of things we need being completely ignored by the system. When it’s inconvenient enough it will simply never get passed. We can fight for it, and win, but if the same system remains in place, once again, what we won was a concession that can and will be taken away at the nearest chance. You showing me an example of a rich youtuber followed by millions of people being able to do it doesn’t change what the situation is like for regular people like you and me. You can do both if you want to, just don’t think emailing a bunch of rich aristocrats is going to ever have a reasonable chance of being meaningful. Seriously, if you want to make real change, join an org.

Also, “extremism” just means things that go against the status quo. It’s not a synonym for “bad”.

I didn’t ignore it. I said what we achieve working within the system is a temporal concession and thus it’s not actually a reliable and deep change. It’s good, but it shouldn’t be the only thing we do.

I’m not being defeatist at all. Quite on the contrary, I’m telling you to fight.

My point is that fighting within the system never works. Everything we achieve that way eventually gets taken away from us. As long as the ruling class is still in power, they simply benefit the most from granting us as little as possible, and so they will always search for ways to do just that, and to take away things they previously granted us if they think we wont be threatening enough to take them back.

That’s why I am saying, do not hire lobbyists or email politicians or something. Or if you do, make sure it’s not the only thing you do. Join an org. Join an union, a party, a syndicate, organize. That is what has brought, brings and will bring real change. Fight against the system.

Kropotkin is a nice start, though if you want an introduction I think Errico Malatesta’s work is a lot better for that. The essay “Anarchy” is short for leftist standards and is very good. Also “At the cafe” is honestly an amazing introduction piece and it’s written in a regular language as socratic dialogues, so it’s perfect for starting. It even adresses a lot of counter arguments from many perspectives.

Otherwise Anarchy Works by Peter Gelderloo is also amazing.

For the standards of leftists in the USA, they’re massive.

What would be different about this revolution that would see it go right (or what examples am I missing?)

I would say there’s no way revolutions of today will go in exactly the same path as before. Remember that China’s and Russia’s revolutions happened in extermely rural, agrarian, over exploited and basically completely ruined countries. If there’s a revolution in the global north, just the difference in conditions and systems is already going to make a huge difference. But even if it happens in the global south, most of it is at least partially industrialized and not agrarian, as far as I know.

Anyway, other than that, I can’t really give you an objective, unbiased answer. I was actually the same as you a couple of years ago, actually. I had the same concerns as you. I think you would really resonate with anarchist theory, analysis and critique of past revolutions, if you’re interested in digging into it.

Why would you ‘shut up’?

Concessions are given, the radicalization stops as the standards of living improve. People are satisfied and don’t pursue the deeper systemic issues. Once the radicalism has died down, efforts are made to remove those concessions. Sometimes it does not work, a lot of the times it does. The rise of neoliberalism was one of these efforts, the most succesful so far.

Passed laws just don’t evaporate into thin air after they’re done being passed, they continue to exist.

They don’t evaporate, they get repealed. Tons of things do. Roe v Wade, police defunding, literal underage labour laws got repealed this year. The Paris Agreement almost worked, but thankfully protesting brought it back.

Not everything was about slavery.

I’m not talking about slavery. Every fundamental working right we have comes from fighting. The 40-hour work week and 8-hour work day, the abolition of child labour, the minimum wage, pensions, sick leave, paid overtime, the right to strike… even weekends are thanks to fighting. Look it up if you don’t believe me.

You may notice some of these things have been dissapearing recently, and that’s exactly what I’m talking about. They were concessions given to us so we stopped being a threat. They don’t perceive us as one anymore, and so they’re trying to gain more power for themselves by stripping us of the things we earned. And part of this threat reduction is precisely the insisting on working within this “democratic” system, which will never meaningfully challenge them, because it is for them, by them, and controlled by them.

Enormous by socialist standards. The fact that they can have so many members in this day and age is commendable. A few decades ago any socialist thought being given an honest platform at all among the general population was a miracle.

I think you’re seriously underestimating what most young socialists believe. It is true that they don’t believe in revolution, but many of them change when they grow older and they lose faith in the system. I’m confident that will keep happening.