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submitted 1 month ago by culprit@lemmy.ml to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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[-] QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml 35 points 1 month ago

authoritarians

Thought terminating cliche used by the unintelligent and uninformed to avoid reckoning with reality beyond vibes.

[-] GirthBrooksPLO@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago

"non authoritarian governments are known to implement mass firewalls and online surveillance"

[-] dessalines@lemmy.ml 32 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Every country should be blocking the US surveillance giants, its extremely naive for countries to be letting facebook, twitter, reddit, and google operate unhindered.

There' no such thing as a "non-authoritarian" state or other myths like the tooth-fairy, but even if they existed, then it'd be hard to argue that letting the US surveillance state operate freely within your borders is somehow "non-authoritarian". The US is more likely than any other country to use the intelligence they've gained learned to harm you physically. See the Phoenix Program.

[-] RiverRock@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Literally every government with the capability to control information is doing that, and frankly the rise of bleach-injecting covid denialist flat earth tradwife inflluencers has proven China right to do so.

[-] GirthBrooksPLO@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

From Merriam-Webster

" of authoritarian

1 relating to, or favoring blind submission to [authority].

2 relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people

[-] RiverRock@lemmy.ml 28 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

So like, objectively not China? Because their ruling party consists of 90 million members and they're constantly debating shit, and enjoy an incredibly high satisfaction rate among non-party members?

[-] QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 month ago

consists of 90 million members

It's been over 100 million since 2024

[-] GirthBrooksPLO@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago

Would a non-aurhoritarian government be able to institute a one-child policy like China?

[-] RiverRock@lemmy.ml 22 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yes, of course they could. Individual people make the decision to practice birth control every day, and a vast democratic assembly of millions voted in by their peers can make that decision as well. Meanwhile in the US, reproductive policy is dictated by nine unelected ministers: an objectively far less democratic process, yet our media never describes the US government as "authoritarian." Because it's not a term meant to usefully delineate important differences in form and function, it's a vibes based epithet meant to be wielded against geopolitical enemies of capitalism. It's a thought-terminating cliche, deployed highly selectively against anti-imperialist societies to artificially cast proletarian authority as uniquely evil while tacticly normalizing the authority of billionaires and corporations.

In practice, authoritarianism is when you are objectively more democratic in function and policy than western countries, but commit the cardinal sin of using that authority to safeguard your sovereignty, people and resources from the inhumanity of global capitalism.

[-] GirthBrooksPLO@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Yes, but those are entirely voluntary. The point is that a government should have no say in reproduction whatsoever. That is why campaigns to change the cratering birthrate have failed.

[-] RiverRock@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

That's cool that you can have that opinion from your position of being one doordash order away from having food to eat, but if you were an elected representative of a society that had to build itself up under seige after a century of colonial pillaging and a world war that devastated your economic and food infrastructure and killed millions of people, you might actually have to engage with the brutal reality of famine and underdevelopment, with the unavoidable questions of survival. If the Palestinian Resistance manages to secure it's territory to administer, they will have to engage with these questions too. If and when that happens, will you simply write them off as "authoritarian", and dismiss those who support their struggle as "simping for authoritarians"?

[-] architect@thelemmy.club 2 points 1 month ago

Lol such a tired argument. If you get to fucking assume shit about others (aka build a strawman) then the rest of us get to do it to you.

You’re not even worth giving the time to read that whole thing. The moment you clapped off about fucking doordash you made yourself irrelevant.

[-] StupidBrotherInLaw@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago

If you think you're being super dismissive with the 'not worth my time to read' bit, you should it's now well into being an overused Internet trope that makes one look childish and lazy.

[-] RiverRock@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

You have no response to the fact that the work of building society requires engagement with reality, so would rather attack the person pointing it out on the grounds of some imaginary debate rules. Your desire to avpid thinking about the actual conditions of reality is transparent and cripples your ability to understand the world and why things happen in it.

[-] BrainInABox@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 month ago

Given the vagueness of your definition, yes absolutely.

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[-] Gold_E_Lox@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 1 month ago

i love that it has the caveat in the second definition abt a constitution. like, no guys, totslly not us, look at this definition we created to show how we arent authoritarian

[-] QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml 23 points 1 month ago

You clearly don't understand the purpose of the firewall and the online surveillance is no more than any other country but at least our government is accountable to us as opposed to owned by capital.

[-] GirthBrooksPLO@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago

Are they accountable to you or to party members?

[-] QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml 23 points 1 month ago

To us. There's a reason that even from Harvard's research the government has a 95+% approval.

Direct elections reach the township and county levels where voters choose deputies to local people's congresses. These grassroots deputies constitute the overwhelming majority of all deputies nationwide. Advancement to higher levels requires proven service at lower rungs, ensuring every national deputy has worked up from local material conditions and remains accountable to the masses below.

Grassroots legislative liaison stations and community consultation channels ensure mass input shapes policy at every stage, making democracy a daily practice not a periodic (meaningless) ritual. Whole-process people's democracy embeds consultation and pilot programs into governance: policies are tested locally, refined through mass feedback, then scaled nationally. This grounds decisions in what we want and need.

All 55 ethnic minorities hold guaranteed representation in the NPC. Farmers and labourers comprise roughly 15% of deputies while professionals and technical personnel make up the remainder.

Even besides all that if you just look at what the Chinese government does as opposed to those owned by capital. Mass poverty alleviation, anticorruption at all levels, massive investment in socially profitable but monetarily unprofitable public services, deflating the housing bubble. These are not the actions of a government only looking out for a select few.

And also the CPC has over 100million members since 2024 that 1 in 14 people are party members not to mind those who aren't but are active in consulting due to their position such as most engineers and scientists.

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this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2026
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