I don’t think Xi Jinping loves when Trump puts 1quadrillion% tariffs on China.

It would obviously be a net good for global society if the US federal government stopped functioning; if the government continues pursuing its current interests that will never happen, yet if foreign lobbyists whose interests are fundamentally enemical to the US (such as China, but not Israel, which is just an appendage of the US) can influence the US federal government it may happen. At least that seems more proximal than the US working class suddenly gaining the kind of militant political stances and organization that would be necessary otherwise. But if both things could happen that’d be even better.

Yeah, priests can’t run for office. However, it’s weird with the Pope because there’s restrictions on the ways in which a reigning Pope can stop being Pope (this actually was a big deal when Benedict XVI resigned, some people thought he didn’t have the right to do that just because he was sick). So while a priest just stops being a priest if he wants to run for office, I’m not sure how it works with the Pope.

Yeah you’re exactly right, as I said we live in completely different and irreconcilable realities. The fact of the matter is, given the option between sitting down with people like myself (Hexbear user) who have extremely different views, or just hitting the button that makes us all go away, the vast majority of people will just hit the button. It’s not really even a liberal thing, people behave that way regardless of ideology (although I think there’s something particular about how atomized and depersonalizing the current state of social media is that makes that kind of behavior more common).

But you see my point — you’re perfectly within your rights to think that everyone who’s a socialist/Marxist/whatever has gone too far or whatever, and not wish to interact with them. Replicate similar preferences across a whole community, though, and it ends up isolating them and creating the situation that the root comment of this thread is lamenting. We’re just little echo chambers siloed off from each other because the cognitive dissonance of experiencing each other’s versions of reality is too much.

It’d also be nice to see a few more viewpoints.

Unfortunately, hasty defederation has made this impossible. It’s too easy for people in a community to ask for defederation instead of confronting other people’s viewpoints. Not to mention that when very contentious topics are brought up and there are whole communities full of people who dedicate a lot of time to reading about and thinking about those topics, it can create a poor situation where that community suddenly starts an outburst of too many disagreeing viewpoints. Compound that with the extremely fractured state of information and media where people live in completely different realities. It gets to be too much, and it’s exceedingly difficult to have a civil conversation when the gulf between 2 communities is so large.

I mean, yeah

What close calls?

If the government actually did its job and stopped the fascist goons then maybe this wouldn’t have happened in the first place?

Yeah of course that’s not how French society will look at the murder. But that’s not because of how much the French value life (lol, how long did it take to recognize Palestine?) or because of how noble they are, it’s because French society is racist as hell and values fascists 1000x more than the Black and Brown people the racists kill routinely. I’m sure there’s a million little Charlie Hebdos looking to one up each other in how they can blame Muslims for this as I write this comment.

And for the record, a world without fascists is a better world. What else are people gonna do with the fascists, take them to Sunday school and teach them better values?

Awesome!

Thank you, that’s one. You said there’s hundreds.

“Asia is operated by a different network”

source: it was revealed to me in a dream

Wanna share some of those hundreds of videos?

but at what cost?

They are objectively correct that Radio Free Asia has propagated false narratives about North Korea. That’s a big part of what the organization exists to do.

Yes, because if we discount every first-hand account because of some people who don’t say the exact same thing- then we wouldn’t have almost any evidence that what went down in concentration camps during WWII actually happened.

That’s completely different. The Nazis kept records that corroborate the first-hand accounts. There’s photographic evidence of how the camps were laid out, the conditions their prisoners were kept in, bodies, experiments, and more. Honestly I find this line to be bordering on Holocaust denial because it’s so absurd: you think the Holocaust could have been carried out in such a way that only first-hand accounts provide evidence of it?

Also I’m not talking about getting slight details wrong, I’m talking about different defectors telling stories that directly contradict each other, or things that are simply impossible. Have you ever seen an interview with Yeonmi Park?

South Korean media reports of North Korean defectors are notoriously not trustworthy. North Korean defectors suffer from a lot of stigma if they go to the South and usually struggle to find a job. Tabloids pay them for their stories. Obviously, the taller the tale, the more likely they get a paycheck.

The fact that NK is so closed off means it’s hard to disprove a lot of the claims, but we can still know that they’re false when they’re contradictory. For example, some NK defectors have claimed having KJU’s haircut is illegal, others claim it’s the only haircut men are allowed to wear. Some claim that abortion is totally banned, others claim that the state forces women to get abortions.

Probably the epitome of this phenomenon is Yeonmi Park. Are you really gonna die on the hill that NK defectors like her are trustworthy sources?

One day this account will be 2 years old and its posts will be recognized for their greatness. But until then, it’ll just be a sockpuppet troll account. Very sad.

If he reads this thread before replying, I’m gonna give him a secret hint: don’t just assume that because Chairman Mao was Chinese that means Maoists are pro-China! It was actually a trick question! To answer this one halfway correctly, you might have to do at least 2 minutes of reading. To answer it very correctly, it may be necessary to get way more educated on political subjects before running one’s mouth online. I recommend reading Parenti and starting at Blackshirts and Reds! I believe in you!

Yeah, maybe, but I think what he meant by that was that I kept insisting he’s a tankie but he believes tankie = genocide supporter.

Anyway, I do think his thing of specifying that tankies are defined by our defense of China’s genocide specifically is interesting. I already pointed out that that excludes Maoists which I can’t wait to see his reply to.