God how true this is for all the America bad people
Lemmy has wayyyy to many people who can't understand that America bad ≠ China good.
Yeah it’s annoying when any criticism of Occupied China results in them talking about America
Well given how Lemmy is mostly American ultra-leftwing it's weird when they talk about changing China when they can't even change their own neighbourhood, or even their own home.
What the living fuck are you talking about 'occupied China'
that is the most brain broken anti-historic nonsense I've ever heard. The CPC is literally the result of decolonizing themselves. It was occupied until then. Not to be cliched but crack a fucking book holy shit
Drag noticed something after the election: All the non voters say it's not their fault, because Kamala is more to blame. They think blame is a limited resource. They think you can only blame either the DNC OR the voters, not both.
It's the same as with China. They think if America is bad, then China has to be good. If there's evidence of China being bad, the counterevidence is that America is worse.
Tankies think only one thing can be bad at a time. It's the same with genocide, too. We can't care about Ukraine and trans people and West Bank, because WhAt AbOuT gAzA.
The tankie mind only has room for one single bad thing in each subject. Only one bad genocide. Only one bad empire. Only one bad politician. They can't conceive of two things being bad at the same time. It does not compute. When they say they understand two things being bad, they're lying. They can only understand it in short term memory. They can't internalise it and apply it to long term memory. Fifteen seconds after they admit two things can be bad, they forget it. It's like clockwork. "America and China are both bad... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15... China can't be bad because America is bad! I'm not to blame for Trump's win because Kamala ran a weak campaign! Gaza is the only genocide that matters!"
Gets it in one.
There's a reason everyone is currently demonizing liberal ideology instead of standing up for the rights that the conservatives are working to strip away.
Liberal ideology is a regressive conservative ideology.
It was progressive three centuries ago. It's not anymore, it's outlived it's usefulness.
Noooooo I want the empire that hides all the bad things they do so I don't have to think about it while I drive my SUV and buy Starbucks!!!! /s
Idk man, I feel like a lot of us "America bad" people are from Europe and don't support China or Russia either.
Yeah the problem isn't "America bad", it's "America bad, therefore China/Russia good"
That's why I don't support governments or countries, I support people and anarchist liberation movements :3
No gods no masters
✊️
Peace, Justice, and Anarchy
✊
Only dragons, right?
Only bad dragons 😉
Exactly! I'm so tired of being accused of being a liberal and/or a fascist every single time I note that China or Russia isn't some perfect leftist utopia, but in fact just another empire that is a pain in the ass not only to other countries but also their own citizens.
China is a fascist ethnostate, Russia is another neoliberal capitalist state, North Korea IMO cannot be described as socialist, Vietnam is pretty cool but mixed and only partially socialist, Cuba is not great tbh just in general, Venezuela is horrible, the Nordic states are just Social Democrat states, Israel has multiple worker co-ops but that doesn't change the fact that they're still a genocidal ethnostate, that just about covers all the tankie countries.
Russia has long reached the end state of neoliberal capitalism, fascism. The US is currently transitioning.
Tankies support the more problematic empires such as Russia and China.
Did you not read the meme? Imperialism is bad no matter who is doing it, and arguing over which empire is more 'problematic' is counterproductive, as we should oppose all empires instead of wasting all of our time and effort on getting on each other's throats.
And in doing so they may have pushed large parts of the Chinese-American community to the right. Tankies caping for the CCP were not a good look for the moderate immigrants who had been fucked over by the Chinese government in various ways.
I wonder why a westerner who gets their news from english speaking western sources which profit off of the same wealth extraction as the empire they are part of would think like this? Surely the western free press would not be influenced by the whims of capital and empire. Obviously China and Russia must be the "worse empire", my empire told me so!
More problematic to whom? The US literally changed the political direction of my country and fucked us over real hard.
Where are the chinese wars and regime change operations? At least Russia only attacks its neighbors at most so countries far away have nothing to fear, unlike the US invading and destroying countries all around the globe.
Call them empire or whatever, but being unable to admit that the US is the bigger threat to real freedom in the world only contributes to the causes of the biggest and arguably most brutal empire in history, that is in constant state of war since it was founded.
Maybe it doesn't matter which empire is more problematic.
Well, at least global south countries are gonna have to choose between them or play both sides at best to survive the foereseeable future, so at least in some instances it does matter.
What will Nigeria choose? Chinese or US exports, loans, cultural influence etc
No country can be fully independent from the world around, so they do have to choose allies and foes.
You're just repeating the meme.
They are all bad, they are all part of the problems we face globally, and whatabouting "them" to avoid facing criticism of "us" only serves those in power by deflecting criticism of them.
The vile Russian Empire, with its Romanov dynasty, super problematic. If Peter is so great, why does he look so wimpy compared to Joe Rogan? Hah, those stupid tankies don't even realize the Chinese empire has been abolished for over 110 years!
Sorry for being snarky... Of course modern China is an empire. Just without overseas military bases. A soft empire, one might say.
They gettin into the overseas military bases; talkin’ bout Djibouti and a lil’ Cambodia as a treat
4 Chinese bases, as compared to 800 or so US bases. And what is the death toll of Chinese military interventions since the second World War? Not sure, but it certainly isn't racking up to the millions upon millions killed by US foreign intervention. Like the other commenter is saying, don't support nation states, good on you. But doing bothsidesism and false balances when talking about Empire is absurd. Like calling US empire 'less problematic' 🤡
It's something that really bothers me about communism and socialism being derisive in the US, even in 2024, about 35 years after USSR fell.
The alternative to community-centric society is autocracy, typically devolving into monarchism.
Death to monarchists!
I also noted this was a problem with the Rebel Alliance (who just supports a republic of oligarchs), and was called a centrist for my efforts.
I'm anti-imperialist and pro-metricist.
It's kinda unavoidable that if one major power loses influence, another will benefit from the vacuum. You can't really oppose your own country's imperialism without making the case that other countries taking advantage is an acceptable risk.
This is more or less the story of WWI. With the increasing tensions and military buildup, socialists of countries across Europe formed the Second International and agreed in the Basel Declaration, which said that they would use the crisis to rise up simultaneously against every imperialist power and put an end to both the war and to capitalism:
If a war threatens to break out, it is the duty of the working classes and their parliamentary representatives in the countries involved supported by the coordinating activity of the International Socialist Bureau to exert every effort in order to prevent the outbreak of war by the means they consider most effective, which naturally vary according to the sharpening of the class struggle and the sharpening of the general political situation.
In case war should break out anyway it is their duty to intervene in favor of its speedy termination and with all their powers to utilize the economic and political crisis created by the war to arouse the people and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.
But once the war actually broke out, most of them found reasons to rally around their country's flag. German socialists pointed to the conditions of serfdom under the Tsar and pointed to the massive colonial empires of Britain and France, while British and French socialists argued that Germany undemocratic under the Kaiser and had more responsibility for starting the war. They mostly agreed that both sides were bad, but they said they were only fighting to safeguard their countries "against defeat" rather than for victory, but regardless, for all intents and purposes it was the same thing. Of course, in all of these countries, there was considerable political pressure and propaganda pushing them to fall in line and to regard the enemy as worse, and many people did what was personally advantageous regardless of what they had said previously.
There was only one exception, where the socialists took advantage of the war to overthrow their government, without regard for the possibility that it could help the other side, and they did end up ceding a fair bit of land too, but they were able to put a stop that that theater of the meat grinder everyone was being fed into.
The way I understand the meme, it's not saying anti-imperialism is wrong. It's saying that being a tankie, i.e. simping for china and russia doesn't qualify as anti-imperialism.
anti imperialist/colonial supporters when they find out that the entire timeline of human history is conquest, colonialism, and imperialism.
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