This isn’t a centrist meme, it’s a leftist meme. Revolution is necessary, neither party represents worker’s interests.

I said it was tragic that it happened in the first place, and it’s horrible that the US took advantage of grievances the public had in order to force violent reaction. I also think it’s a good thing that the socialist system remained, millions more lives have been saved and extended thanks to it, regardless if the rioters that burned unarmed officers alive lived to see those lives saved.

Again, though, you’re deliberately avoiding having an actual conversation, and are looking to pick fights. I’ve talked about the June 4th incident before, several times, going over the causes, influences, distortions by the west, etc. A good source is Another View of Tiananmen by Sun Feiyang and Roderic Day.

I’m not going to apologize for being a Leftist, even if you call me pejoratives, lol.

They are stating that it was necessary to put down the color-revolution, a western-backed riot where the organizers themselves admitted to trying to provoke a violent response:

The students keep asking, “What should we do next? What can we accomplish?” I feel so sad, because how can I tell them that what we are actually hoping for is bloodshed, for the moment when the government has no choice but to brazenly butcher the people. Only when the Square is awash with blood will the people of China open their eyes. Only then will they really be united. But how can I explain any of this to my fellow students?

(Are you going to stay in the Square yourself?)

No, I won’t. Because my situation is different. My name is on the government’s hit list. I’m not going to let myself be destroyed by this government. I want to live.

• The Gate of Heavenly Peace

There were lynchings of officers, firebombings of vehicles, and widespread violence, all of a largely reactionary nature. These were not protests for social justice. Originally, they were ultraleft Maoists upset at Deng’s market reforms, but later they became liberal protests, backed by the US.

It was a tragedy that it happened at all, that’s correct, however if the counter-revolt succeeded in toppling socialism, countless lives would have been lost, just like when the USSR fell and 7 million people died that didn’t have to.

Not sure what you mean by “dodgy BS,” I have always been clear on what my stances are. I’m a Marxist-Leninist, I hold opinions generally held by Marxist-Leninists. I’m on Capital Volume 2. I’m a spooky scary socialist.

It’s still a tragedy, even if putting down the riots that resulted in lynchings of innocents before the PLA came in was ultimately necessary. You’re not really understanding what I’m saying.

A Maoist protest was twisted into a liberal one backed by the US, where the rioters went on to burn people alive and lynch unarmed officers.

The vast majority of people who lived in the USSR regret the fall of socialism. I can find a thousand people who think the US Empire is the most morally just country in history that truly provides for its people, but genuinely studying history, statistics, and the mechanisms of political economy domestically and globally point to that being a fantasy.

I’m sorry, but I really don’t have any reason to take a random internet stranger’s anecdote any more seriously than the large amount of reading I’ve done on Marxism, anarchism, history, and political economy in general.

Well, since you brought these up…

1. Nobody says that nothing happened around the square and in Beijing either. Everyone recognizes it as a tragedy, just not the way western media reports on it.

2. Nobody said the re-education camps are perfect, just that there isn’t mass sterilization or systematic murder like western countries claim.

3. The PRC’s CO2 emissions are from producing what the vast majority of the world consumes. As far as consumption is concerned, emissions per capita in the PRC are low and shrinking.

4. The PRC is socialist, the large firms and key industries are publicly owned. It isn’t in the later stages of socialism where private property has begun to disappear entirely and communism is around the corner, nor is it state capitalist like the Republic of Korea, Singapore, or Bismark’s Germany, where the state is involved in planning a majority privately owned economy.

5. Socially, the PRC is making great strides. Jin Xing is one of China’s top celebrities, and she’s openly trans. The older generations are more conservative, but the younger generations are more progressive, and China’s democratic structures mean change takes time but ultimately does come from below.

You seem to have a fantasy view of Marxists, while not being very well-read on socialist theory either. If you focused on connecting with people I think you’d get farther.

Not everything bad about China is CIA propaganda. They have a long way to go, economically and socially. At the same time, there’s factually a large anti-PRC budget for US propaganda, largely stemming from the large amount of friction faced when dealing with a socialist country in the world capitalist market. It’s accelerated because the PRC is currently surpassing the US in many key metrics, and is charted to do so in other areas in the coming years.

Which part of this do you disagree with? You’re being a contrarion at this point, I outright stated that not everything bad about China is a lie, just that a huge portion of it is. You just stated that “the truth is in the middle,” but what I stated above already acknowledges that while good overall, China has a long way to go socially and economically. In fact, the fact that they largely succeed in their planning and are continuously improving both shows how far they have come and how far they have to go.

People are disagreeing with you moreso because you’re just picking fights and playing the contrarion.

Relying on your own personal anecdotes to prove a point is not helpful, same with asserting that someone has had to live in a socialist country to understand socialism. The truth is that socialism isn’t oligarchy. All socialist countries have had governments, yes, but these are democratically elected. Further, socialism doesn’t require “equal” distribution of resources, Marx railed against the “equalitarians” that argued as such.

Moreover, you seem to be confused on Marxism. Communism is a global system, countries like Cuba, the PRC, or the former USSR are examples of socialism. Socialism is a transitional status towards communism, it’s the process of sublimating property until production is fully collectivized and thus society becomes classless, and this can only be complete globally.

As an example, wealth inequality in the USSR was around a difference of five times from the top and the bottom, while in Tsarist and capitalist Russia that number was hundreds to thousands od times higher.

Overall, people are being accused of being a liberal because their understanding of socialism and communism are severely lacking, and myopic.

I’ve also talked to actual Chinese people that live in China, too. The Marxists are more correct about China than the liberals, by quite a laughably large margin.

Not everything bad about China is CIA propaganda. They have a long way to go, economically and socially. At the same time, there’s factually a large anti-PRC budget for US propaganda, largely stemming from the large amount of friction faced when dealing with a socialist country in the world capitalist market. It’s accelerated because the PRC is currently surpassing the US in many key metrics, and is charted to do so in other areas in the coming years.

Mao is very popular in the PRC, and among Marxists. The modern CPC recognizes his contributions as around 70% good, 30% bad. The Cultural Revolution in particular is a touchy subject largely seen as a misstep, but certainly not a “genocide” either. Same with famine, which was previously common in China but was only ended by the communists in power.

Mao’s popularity stems from establishing socialism in China, successfully kicking out the Japanese imperialists and then winning the civil war against the nationalist Kuomintang, and building up a robust system of socialism in early China, accomplishing metrics like a doubling in life expectancy, large (but unstable, as Deng would later stabilize with socialist market reforms) economic growth, banning footbinding, and more.

Since changing from within is impossible, and voting in a new party is highly unlikely, it seems the revolutionaries were right all along.

Yep, both are true, but the balance of power is still heavily in the US’s favor. Israel has counter-influence, of course, but at the end of the day it’s the US that holds all of the cards.

Thanks for the recs! And you too, have a great week!

Thanks for your comment! I definitely need to read more about the Middle East, I’ll see if I can find books going over the events you talked about.

🫡

The tail doesn’t wag the dog. AIPAC and Israel have some level of counterinfluence over the US, but the US Empire is the hegemon, and Israel its vassel. Trying to paint the US as under the control of Israel is mostly an actually antisemetic dogwhistle, and plays into the idea that a Jewish cabal is controlling the world’s Empire.

I know you probably aren’t intending it that way, but it’s important to correctly criticize the genocidal entity “Israel.” Mis-analyzing the dynamics at play weakens our chances of rectifying them.

Ultras desparately trying to argue that the country that spent a decade trying to form an anti-fascist coalition, and ended up being by far the most important power in defeating the Nazis (with ~85% of total Nazis killed under their belt), actually was pro-Nazi for having engaged in a deal for desparately needed processed goods while preparing for war with said country because the west wouldn’t provide what they needed

No, this is a very bad frame of analysis.

1. Settler-colonialism is absolutely still a massive issue. It isn’t a thing of the past.

2. The patriarchial structure of society still oppresses men and women everywhere.

You’re erasing very real issues, strawmanning what people believe, and plugging your ears. This is the “I don’t see color” problem, that’s you ignoring systemic problems, not getting rid of them!

What your tactic would result in is a large portion of women, ethnic minorities, and queer folk being further alienated just to potentially win more white men, but that wouldn’t happen either. Focus on liberation along all lines, economic, social, and more, and allow these coalitions to strengthen our position. You’re furthering division by shutting down the voices of oppressed peoples, strawmanning what they say, just because its uncomfortable for you to hear.

It was generally a pro-western coup. You can’t really disentangle the EU from NATO from the US along clean lines, they have lots of overlap. NATO, in 2021, affirmed its plans of further integrating Ukraine.

Really, Euromaidan was sparked by Yanukovych pivoting away from the more predatory IMF loan offer to the less predatory Russian loan offer. Indeed, the loan from Russia had better terms, the IMF loan would have forced Ukraine to slash their healthcare and education budgets, and stop subsidies in natural gas (which kept energy prices low) as part of the loan terms.