Developing fascism is the understatement of the century lmao the US has slavery enshrined into the 13th amendment. Henry kissenger is literally still alive.
When white people do it, it’s “difficult history but ‘workable’” but when China superficially resembles it (taking Chinese history at face value), it’s “unforgivable capitalist dictatorship imperialist empire big brother”
There’s more to China’s political system than “just a dictatorship” but I won’t disagree with you that it’s not a dictatorship if you see one party rule as emblematic of one.
What I am arguing is that even well intentioned comments like the one I was responding too still misrepresents history and is to the benefit of the American political establishment (that being Washington and its business oligarchs). The person I was responding too wasn’t blatantly wrong, but the diction at use here is deserving of criticism. “Developing fascism” is an easy way to conflate both the Western European fascist culture and aesthetics and the historically unique proto-fascist (before fascism was defined academically) culture of the USA.
Neoliberal bootlickers like Johnny (“sell-out to the WEF”) Harris exploit this heavily to great effect on large for-profit social media sites: trading historical nuance for sensationalism. This isn’t a moot point it’s whats happening now.
Fair enough. I can see how the phrase “developing fascism” might mask the severity of the existing and growing problems within the U.S. To be honest, I wasn’t really aware of such differences, and think that myself and a lot of other people could learn a lot from that message. I’d be happy to discuss what we both think of as Fascism to make sure we’re talking about the same thing.
But also, that wasn’t really my main point. I’m not trying to minimize the faults of the US or demonize the Chinese political system. I of course know that there are a lot of forces contributing to the state that it’s in, and that there are a lot of factors that keep it that way. And I’m not even especially criticizing the idea of one-party rule.
But the fact is that there are many, varied human rights and freedoms being suppressed in today’s China, and those problems have been perpetuated or worsened under the control and direction of a single dynasty of leaders. I’ve read and watched a lot of accounts of political events in 2021/2022 from people who live inside and outside of China, and I’m forming my opinions on those. Stuff like the inhumane conditions during lockdowns, constant nucleic acid testing, corruption and negligence leading to huge wastes in the housing markets, etc. And I know that a lot of these phenomena were spun up due to how quickly China industrialized as a nation. But too many of them were brought about under the direct orders of Xi.
So when people see criticisms of China being challenged, whether or not they disagree with the idea of a dictatorship, they see it as a denial that those injustices are happening. I think more productive than arguing with someone who you perceive to be misunderstanding something, would be to ask them questions, see where their misunderstanding lies, and to offer information or sources that could educate them or help them educate themselves. When you go into the interaction assuming that someone is trying to paint with a broad brush and accuse them as such, then you’re going to get a lot of people to shut down, and then they’ll never receive your message.
In other words what you’re saying is that because other countries do fucked up shit that means it should be perfectly acceptable when china does it.
Seems awfully strange to try and normalize shitty behavior.
