I don’t know which of those two statements is more ridiculous. Liberals can absolutely not be trusted with stuff like protecting your grandma’s medication. For example, look at what Starmer did as soon as Labour got in power for the first time in ages, he ended winter home fuel subsidies and Labour’s popularity has plummeted.

In general, liberals are privileged elites who believe in the system because it works for them. If you ever find that the system has failed you, if you ever find yourself in need of a couch to sleep on, you’ll find out exactly how “reliable” people like that really are. Liberal politicians are even worse, being completely bought out by corporate interests, while liberal voters merely fail to hold them accountable.

Communists, meanwhile, are responsible for the vast majority of global poverty alleviation in the world - 700 million lifted out of poverty in China, according to the World Bank. Cuba has the highest number of doctors per capita in the world, and regularly sends them abroad for humanitarian aid. At one point, early in Covid, Vietnam offered to provide masks and supplies to the United States. Before, each of these countries had incredibly backwards, reactionary regimes with incredibly low standards of living, but once the communists took over, rather than “burning everything down,” they built schools and hospitals and infrastructure, and improved the quality of life for the vast majority.

In the US, the Black Panthers, who were constantly demonized as being these evil radicals who just wanted to burn everything down, are the reason why kids have food to eat at schools. Because they identified a need in their community, they recognized that kids were going hungry and were unable to learn and wound up stuck in a cycle of poverty, so they started a free breakfast program. The cops broke in and literally pissed on their food, they went door to door claiming it was poisoned, that they were just trying to teach kids to hate white people, and so on. When that didn’t work, finally the liberals caught wind of it and figured if the government provided those meals, it would stop the Panthers from using it to promote themselves, and that’s how it became a national program. They never would’ve done it without a bunch of scary black Marxists with guns doing it first, and using the opportunity to promote their ideas.

Lmao “running him over?” The video shows him walking away completely unscathed, after they let him into the tank to talk. The tanks were also leaving the square, not entering it. That’s also not where the term comes from.

Famously loyal and trustworthy liberals will never deliberately betray you lmao. Just hope they never find out if you have to break a law the fascists draw up to protect yourself or others 🚔🚔🚔

And hope that you’re not part of whichever group they’re throwing under the bus to appease the fascists either.

The modlog shows you being banned from three communities: [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected]. You had exactly one comment removed from lemmy.ml, in which you said, “I love how all you idiots on lemmygrad, hexbear and .ml constantly show how stupid you all are.”

You know these things are public, right?

Comments removed recently from TheOubliette for “misinformation,” which just means saying anything the .world mods personally disagree with

The “finding out” should be that you lost while supporting genocide. Shouldn’t have done that, huh? Not very strategic or “adult in the room”, was it?

Did you miss all of the people supporting a lesser evil Harris genocide? Many are in this thread right now trying to preemptively pass blame for everything Trump does onto those who opposed the genocide and refused to vote for its committers. This is in no way a pro-Palestinian space, either. This thread has many examples of “the pro Palestinian protesters were a Russian plot!” and, “hope you enjoy Palestinians dying, non-voters!” sentiments.

Supporting evidence:

I think Kamala Harris would be an objectively great president (1000 upvotes)

Kamala Harris is like Princess Leia and blaming her for Gaza is analogous to blaming Leia for Alderaan (1100 upvotes)

Kamala Harris is a “former prosecutor with a spotless record” (1200 upvotes)

These are the real beliefs of the supposedly “reluctant” Harris supporters who say they’re only supporting her because she’s a “lesser evil.” It’s the classic motte-and-bailey tactic, defending a much weaker form of their beliefs when under criticism than what they actually believe.

On what basis have you concluded that? Is it not possible that the intent of the camps is to give people education so that they can become more productive members of society and thereby be less prone towards violent extremism? You’re just asserting their purpose with nothing to back it up.

So they were able to continue to live their culture without being individually forced to do anything?

Well, that depends on your interpretation. If you were a Shintoist who did consider the emperor’s divinity to be a central tenant, then no, from that perspective, your culture has been eradicated and the current form is a deviation. You’re playing fast and loose here with your standards, in any religion, there are various sects which consider themselves to be the true, correct interpretation, and certain others to be false. You yourself thought Shintoists would have to ignore the emperor’s renunciation to continue practicing their beliefs. There were Japanese people who saw it that way. And I’m not sure about this but I’m pretty sure you couldn’t go around postwar Japan proclaiming the imperialist interpretation of Shinto with the implication of returning to the imperialistic ways, in the same way you couldn’t go around waving swastikas in postwar Germany.

The better analogy would be to allow the chinese government to force one person to say “I am not divine”. Let’s say they were able to revive the prophet and make him say these words.

Well, that’s interesting, because surely the intent in that case would be to get people to stop practicing Islam. I thought intent was the crucial defining aspect that made mass incarceration not genocide when the US does it but be genocide when China does it.

These standards seem completely incoherent to me. It seems like you’re just adopting whatever stance allows you to thread the needle to include the things you want to include and exclude the things you want to exclude.

(Btw, small correction here, but I don’t think Muslims consider Mohammad to be personally divine.)

one needs to recognize this isn’t done to eradicate them.

Ah, but we know that the incarceration of Uighurs is done to eradicate them, because, uhh… how exactly?

But as long as there aren’t any explicit actions/sanctions against you doing your thing there isn’t a problem there.

Are there explicit actions/sanctions against Uighurs practicing Islam, or other aspects of their culture?

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here. They didn’t have the option? They didn’t do it?

I’m saying that modern practitioners of Shinto don’t consider the emperor divine.

And if the divinity of the emperor wasn’t the only thing keeping up shinto why does it matter that much then, that you liken it to a genocide?

What an interesting perspective. So what you’re saying is, if the Chinese government were to recognize Islam as one of its major, protected religions, but restrict certain radical teachings and versions of it, then it wouldn’t be genocide.

Good question! Do you consider the disproportionate mass incarceration of African Americans a genocide?

You may call me crazy but this doesnt sound like it all traces back to just one guy

That’s because you didn’t click the links on the article to see where the claims come from. That article cites Adrian Zenz, they just wized up enough to leave his name buried in the links. But you’re right that not every claim traces back to him, to be fair, we also have, uh, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, the UK parliament, and some random Australian think tank.

If what happenend in Eastern Ukrain was genocide, then what is happening to the Uygurs is definitely also genocide. But if what is happening to the Uygurs can’t be genocide, then what has been happening in Ukraine also can’t be genocide.

What the hell are you talking about? Ukraine was launching artillery shells at civilian targers in Eastern Ukraine. How is that nonviolent?

People changing their culture on their own volition is obviously different from people being forced to by those in power.

Is it? Genocide doesn’t necessarily have to be conducted by the state. If a a roving militia or gang of mercenaries went around killing a certain kind of people en masse, then it could still be considered genocide. So if we’re allowing for this idea of a bloodless genocide, then I’m not sure it’s obvious how non-state actors taking nonviolent actions that cause the decline of a culture don’t meet your definition.

The main argument for genocide though is, that a whole population is forced to erase their culture.

“Forced,” but not through killing.

There’s often a disconnect between first generation immigrants and their kids, who often end up adopting the culture they live in over their home culture through various social pressures. The fact that the US has road signs only in English forces people to learn English, doesn’t it? Are those road signs genocide? If public schools fail to make accommodations in terms of language, if they teach history from a different perspective than what their parents grew up with, is that genocide?

It’s absurd. What a coincidence that the first “nonviolent genocide” in history happens to come from the US’s chief geopolitical rival. It’s a dilution of the word for political reasons that attempts to put much less bad things on the same level as the mass extermination of a people. The primary reason that genocide is wrong is the violence accociated with it.

The population of japan could have chosen to ignore the obviously forced statement and continued to believe in their faith. And it seems like they did if shinto is still a thing

No, they did not. The emperor’s divinity was one aspect of Shinto, and a significant one, but Shinto was never like a monotheistic tradition.

Right, and the part you quoted is in the context of what immediately followed. The clarification that he was talking about the eventual ideal, and that in the meantime, using authoritarian measures were necessary to the point that anyone who opposed them was supporting reactionaries.

It should of course be noted that Marx expected a spontaneous, worldwide revolution, starting from the most developed countries. This was something that he got completely wrong, (he was not a prophet) and the socialists who put his ideas into practice had to adapt to the real circumstances that they found themselves in. In the case of a worldwide revolution, of course it would be easier to persue the phasing out of authoritarian measures sooner, since they wouldn’t be necessary to protect against foreign threats and subversion (something presumably included in the not-yet-destroyed “social conditions that gave birth to the political state”). Even in such a scenario, Engles was extremely clear that he considered such measures absolutely necessary.

What “respected historians” are you referencing? I haven’t seen you cite any. Care to share with the class?

Has there ever been a genocide in history where no one was killed?

Honestly, if we’re going to use such standards and definitions that a “nonviolent genocide” is possible, then I’m not sure I understand what makes such a thing wrong. In Japan, the number of people who believe in and practice Shinto is in decline, and more and more people are paying for Western style weddings, so temples are struggling to keep their doors open. Is that an inherently bad thing? Is that genocide? How about in the context of the Allies pressuring the emperor to renounce his claims to divinity, undermining a major aspect of Shinto beliefs? Because it seems to me like that did more good than harm. Does that mean I support the (mostly) “nonviolent genocide” of Imperial Japanese culture?

Or perhaps a better example: After 9/11, there was a wave of hate crimes against Muslims, the US extrajudicially detained people (primarily Muslim) without trial and subjected them to numerous human rights abuses, and there were many people talking about how, “Islam is a religion of violence,” and about “Turning the desert to glass,” and the country started two wars with Muslim countries in which about a million people were killed. Did that constitute a genocide? Why or why not?

In fact, authoritarian socialism - as practiced in virtually every single Marxist-Leninist country that ever existed - was completely counter to the ideals of Marx and Engels.

Do you mean the Engles who said this:

[T]he anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?

Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don’t know what they’re talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction

…or is there some other Engles I should know about?

Do you deny the genocide happening in China or in Ukraine? Then you are a tankie.

Do you believe that claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence? Then you’re a tankie.

Some people have this idea that if a claim involves genocide, then it gets to bypass the entire process of investigating a claim, because it’s technically “genocide denial,” so like if someone said “France is committing genocide against Belgians!” you’d just have to accept it without question. In fact, it’s the opposite, more extreme claims require more solid evidence.

Since we’re on .ml though, we don’t have to deal with such absurd censorship standards, and I’m free to point out the fact that the whole “Uighur genocide” narrative is just unsubstantiated propaganda, coming almost entirely from one crackpot named Adrian Zenz. And at this point it’s largely outdated propaganda, since the narrative has largely quietly disappeared from the news after the claims about it couldn’t be verified.

You’re welcome to prove me wrong though. You know, just show me the bodies. How long has it allegedly been going on at this point? We can see what an ongoing genocide looks like by what’s happening in Gaza. Strange how there aren’t any similar images coming out of Xinjiang, isn’t it?

It’s always funny to me how the go-to examples of like, “See, they just blindly support anything the regime does!” tend to be relatively minor events after the state in question has considerably chilled out. Like, Stalin and Mao did much worse things compared to Khrushchev/Hungary and Deng/Tienanmen. The problem being, communists are generally willing to criticize things like the Great Leap Forward, because, surprise surprise, we don’t just blindly support anything they do. The reason for this is that the word tankie isn’t meant to describe someone who blindly supports everything a communist country does, as it’s claimed to, but rather, someone who supports anything any communist country does.

The fear Western leftists had that led to the term being coined was that people who had previously been critical of Stalin and Mao would respond positively to the countries moving away from their approach, and so they had to create a label to discredit such people and associate them with the previous leaders. It’s one of the reasons Khrushchev’s approach was questionable, because no matter how much you try to distance yourself from someone like Stalin and paint yourself as “one of the good ones,” you’re still never going to appease the Western left that demands absolute perfection, let alone the West in general.