Apparently “nationalism is bad” is an uncivil take. Unless there’s another reason someone would ban this comment… 🤔
American nationalism is bad because it’s an empire. That take is allowed.
Chinese nationalism, however, is good because it’s also an empire.
Ahhh. The vague and often confusingly unexplainable “Rule 1” violation on .ml that all the minions residing there always seem to find a way to pretend doesn’t exist when their beloved shithole of an instance’s strapped down oppressive bias is under attack.
I got mine yesterday too!
I mentioned bending over for dictators and they claimed it’s implied homophobia. Before getting banned, I asked if we’re back to assuming everyone on the Internet is male and got replied “oh look, I’m not a bigot, it’s implied misogyny not implied homophobia”…
The expression isn’t about any specific gender or sexuality, it’s about the power dynamic… It’s about the fact that people will do anything to please their masters.
pretty much par for the course on lemmy, you can’t have any interesting discussions about anything because you just get banned before it starts to get exciting.
seems to be most of the internet these days though. Dead internet theory and what not, although im convinced it should be altered slightly into three groups rather than two.
- people who are genuine real people and act like them (10-20%)
- people functionally indistinguishable from a bash script running coded responses (i think this is like 40% of the internet)
- chatgpt (whatever the remaining percent is, who cares.)
Lmao
Try this:
Criticizing the US, Russia, Israel, and Hamas all in one go, gets banned anyways.
Edit: Btw, those Chinese students aren’t necessary “brainwashed”.
There’s a chinese idiom called: 隔墙有耳 (Literally meaning: There’s an ear on the other side of the wall)
They know everyone is watching and listening, so they don’t feel safe speaking what they actually believe, especially not in public.
People criticize the government all the time, behind close doors with people you know.
You were supposed to only criticize the US and Russia, you homophobe!
Ehhh, I’ve gotten close to Chinese people and a part of it is genuine, talking one on one. However they are also filled with valid criticism for America as well (although I am British and generally tell them to think what they like about the USA, I couldn’t care less).
Things like the Taiwan issue is hard. It’s like “we won’t invade Taiwan” but also “America should stop giving Taiwan weapons to defend itself”. And also usual circular reasoning “Taiwan is our because it just is”
What doesn’t help is western people’s attitudes. Many Chinese people know life in the West is better. But I saw some British people on Xiaohongshu telling Chinese people “don’t come here, we want to leave”. They were telling the Chinese that education is expensive here, yet neglecting to say that our definition of inexpensive education is like other european countries with free university, compared to how it is here where all education is free up until 18, then universities are paid for 3-9k per year on a very generous loan with low interest that is paid off by extra tax and has an expiry date where it’s written off entirely. Or how hard it is to find a job, when China has a far bigger unemployment rate, and those who are employed have to run a ‘rat race’. But life is seemingly better there because they have big cities with mass transit systems and you can order oreos to your house at 3am.
Don’t get me wrong- I think China would actually be really nice to visit as a holiday destination. But I’d hate to actually live and work there.
And that’s not talking about censorship, lack of freedom of thought or the freedom of religion
Edit: Btw, those Chinese students aren’t necessary “brainwashed”.
Valid, and perhaps the “brainwashed” statement was an unfair one, though in at least a couple cases, the emotion behind the words felt very genuine. On the flip side, there was at least one standout conversation with a particular student where the opposite was true, so perhaps each case deserves more nuance than the blanket statement of “they’re brainwashed.”
EDIT: That ban is actually beautiful, btw. The hate the “regulars” perpetuate while going untouched versus bans on comments like this speaks far louder about the belief structure of the mods than any back and fourth with them could.
People criticize the government all the time, behind close doors with people you know.
Local girls? In my neighborhood?
lol wtf… that comment was not even bad… deff some power trippin going on
the two dudes who lead lemmy development and run both lemmy.ml and lemmygrad both deeply and truly suck at being decent human beings
Ever notice how they frequently respond in pairs as well? Wherever you see one spewing bullshit Marxist quotes and libraries worth of links, you’ll find the other.
Nutonic is second in command of lemmy.ml
My account has extensive “criminal” record with .ml
I am a bit more provocative, top comment here got banned for an a mild opinion lol
they must be getting tired of being drowned out by common sense.
We really should defederate from this shit
I have no idea why it’s taking so long.
You can always choose an instance that does, or block the instance in your settings.
Yes, until then we can each do small things like
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Crosspost actual decent content in a .ml comm to a non-.ml comm (a perfect opportunity to grow smaller comms)
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Call out their BS whenever you see it on other instances
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Screenshot their Tankie propaganda and post it here
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Advise newcomers
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Make memes about it
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Downvote any .ml community post you come across and then see 1st point
.world has already defed’d 2 of the 3 of the Tankie Triad, but I’ve been seeing a lot of “sticking heads in the sand”
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infosec.pub
defederates the big 3 (lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, lemmy.ml)
I dated a Chinese student at university. She seemed alright until somehow the topic of Tibet came up, and then she went full tankie describing how the Tibetan people were nearly subhuman, living terrible lives with no ability to care for themselves.
I’ve heard people say similar shit about indigenous Americans and yeah I think it’s safe to say that you cannot understate the dangers of propaganda and nationalism.
Oh man, Asians hate so many other Asians so ferverently it’s impressive. I knew a Japanese girl whose mom threatened to disown her if she dated any “Chinese hell bastards” (which was in fact, every Chinese person.)
Ain’t no racism like Asian racism. I lived with a Chinese buddy of mine for almost 10 years. He said American racism has nothing on Asian racism. Some of the Chinese and Japanese people legitimately despise each other. Long history of atrocities between them.
Well you’ve never asked a European about gypsies.
“I’m not racist, racism is wrong! except to gypsies… and arabs/jews, and also indians, and also-”
Remember, hate against those races are Justified! (despite that being the argument for literally every single racist)
My extended family is German and British. I am well aware how the gypsies are thought of by many over there.
I have lost track of how many times I have brought up gypsies when they are taking about how racist Americans are and then suddenly “it’s different”. They literally don’t even look at it the same way. That’s some wild shit.
I think it is different in some way. I can’t speak for Britain or Germany, but in Italy the situation with Romani, Sinthi or Caminanti (the three ethnicities of “Gypsies”, not sure how they translate to English) is a mix of political failure, policy issue, integration gone wrong and finally racism. The thing is, the majority of people of those ethnicities live and work in society, and you wouldn’t be able to point out someone being a sinthi, unless they would tell you. Most of these people don’t get any hate, and they wouldn’t in most cases even if people would know. However the “visibile” part of this population is the minority that lives in “camps” (policy failure), is generally a completely separate community and lives a completely different lifestyle including begging and petty crimes. These are the ones that get alla the hatred, and not even in all cases, there are success stories here too. Many people consider them subhuman, and this is racism 100%. Some people hate what they do (I.e. what they think they do based on some true fact, lots of stereotypes and collective attribution), but race has not much to do with it. There is a racist component in extending stereotypes to all the community, of individual crimes to the community, of course.
The problem is also quite hard to fix, because many of them (again, of those living in camps) are country-less after Yugoslavia dissolved, they don’t speak the language and they have super low scholarisation. Nobody wants to invest resources, so these people live as they can, which reinforces the stereotypes etc.
Anyway, my point is that most people have or would have absolutely no problem with gypsies that they meet in regular contexts. Most people though simply don’t even know they exist outside the camps. This makes it a very weird form of racism, that also varies across Europe. For example my mom lived in Portugal in a community where gypsies were integrated in some way (going around with horses and stuff!) and she was friends with them. Completely different from the ones in our area in Italy.
That long history can be found in a lot of places with “zero” racism, like… look at all of Europe, everyone at war all the time.
It is always funny when other places shit on America for our history of slavery. Like Koreans for example. They had the longest unbroken chain of slavery of any modern society and yet you’ll still have some of them trying to say Americans are the worst because of our history of slavery.
It’s like… All places in the world had (or still have) slavery going on. Why does the Internet seem to think we were the worst offenders???
It’s like… All places in the world had (or still have) slavery going on. Why does the Internet seem to think we were the worst offenders???
tbf, there are only a handful of systems of slavery that were worse than Southern US and Caribbean slavery as-introduced-by-the-triangle-trade. We were running one of the worst variations of what was already one of mankind’s worst systems ever devised.
But yeah, people often aren’t looking at that so much as “I know about American slavery and not slavery in my own country”
We ended our slavery (aside from the prison industrial complex, but that’s kinda a different animal to “traditional” slavery) over 100 years ago. There are still many places in the world with slavery today that people seem less interested in talking about than our historical slavery.
I’m not trying to downplay our history but we can’t exactly change the past. But we can put eyes on the current slavery going on but we often don’t because people are still focusing on our old slavery. There’s a real “America bad” boner on the Internet and it’s always a little funny to me. Like yeah we are far from perfect, but it’s a little weird to be shitting on us for something we ultimately stopped doing while other places are still actively doing it.
I think because we’re still doing it in our prisons and it hasn’t ended.
The prison industrial complex and traditional slavery are two completely different beasts. I am not trying to take away from the very current and real problem with our country and its prison system, but this conversation is more talking about the good old-fashioned type of slavery that we abolished in 1865.
That’s horrifying honestly
I would’ve left the room
Can’t blame her. Without exposure to other cultures, its hard to have an open mind.
Ah yes good ol Rule 1 “Bigotry” the classic .ml go-to
Whenever you bring up the bans though the more prominent .ml users will proclaim that people mostly get banned for “bigotry” on .ml and there’s definitely no problem with opposing viewpoints.
This is the “bigotry” they speak of
Edit:
They can stay over there, and I will stay over here. Glory to the Fediverse.
What’s rule #1?
- Be civil and nice.
This is the specific rule as it is written in the sidebar.
Which is funny, because if you go back through my comments in that same thread, I had far more uncivil and mean comments elsewhere. But the one that got removed and banned is the one that speaks to lived experiences with Chinese (and American) nationalism in a fair and reasoned way? I was unsurprised when I discovered I had a ban. I was grinning like an idiot when I saw what post did it.
They don’t like u and want u banned but can’t find an actual rule violation.
“Bigotry”
The brainwashed ideologies in Chinese Students
sigh
During the first year of the Korean War, Edward Hunter, an American journalist who had worked in wartime intelligence, and post-war with the CIA, coined (or, more accurately, first popularised) the term brainwashing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Hunter_(journalist)#Journalism
In March 1958, Hunter testified before the US House of Representatives’ House Committee on Un-American Activities. He described the US and NATO as losing the Cold War because of the communists’ advantage in propaganda and psychological manipulation. He felt that the West lost the Korean War for being unwilling to use its advantage in atomic weapons
It’s a bit funny to hear people use the term without recognizing it’s tortured and sensationalist history. “We’ve been tricked into not kicking off a nuclear war” isn’t what most people think of when they hear “brainwashing”. But during the height of the Red Scare, that’s what Goldwater conservatives and John Bircher reactionaries were arguing for.
sigh
Oh you POOR TAXED THING!!
🤣 taxed is getting worked into my shit talk ty ty ty
Yw.
That’s very interesting, and I genuinely do appreciate the history lesson, but what exactly are you trying to communicate? That brainwashing is only possible in North America because that’s the population it was coined for? That the act only constitutes brainwashing if it’s coupled with calls for violence? That brainwashing is a strictly government term and using it colloquially has no meaning? That I should fully detail every term with a unique historical significant etymology?
There’s a lot of weird insinuations and half takes that don’t add up to a complete idea in this post.
The term is an invention of propaganda used to dismiss outside views. You’ll see it in the Christian community to describe why kids come out as gay or transgender as often as by state officials describing why foreigners stubbornly refuse to accept Western economic orthodoxy.
There’s a lot of weird insinuations and half takes that don’t add up
To understand why a CIA agent would describe people critical of the Korean War as unable to think for themselves, you do need to learn about the Red Scare first.
If things don’t add up, go out and fill in more of the variables.
Brainwashed is the appropriate term to describe nationalistic ideology, yes
No no, nationalism is freethinking because [checks notes] an American in the Cold War was a lunatic.
conflates two completely different points about propaganda and losing-because-not-using-nukes together
It was Hunter’s variation of the Chinese term “xinao”, meaning “cleaning the brain.”
social situations must be exhausting in your life huh
I’ve definitely upset a lot of people with a little bit of history.
