China is and has committed genocide.
The US is and has committed genocide.
That’s not a point in either’s favor. That’s a moral wash.
I’d rather both nations failed, so something more humane can potentially take its place (and revolution over and over until that happens) but as an American, rejecting China means nothing, just as a Chinese citizen rejecting America means nothing.
Rejecting evil empires begins with undermining the one that you’re expected to support and be a loyal cog of. A Russian openly hating America or a Chinese person openly hating Russia is indistinguishable from patriotism/nationalism.
I can only hurt one empire materially, the one I materially live within. The Chinese have to reign in China, and the Russians Russia. The best I can do is my part not to strengthen or support the evil empire I was born under to the best of my ability.
I can only hurt one empire materially, the one I materially live within.
Right, but you missed the core of my point. If you don’t like either, you don’t have to support either. If that means going to a decentralized option or going without a TikTok alternative, seems like you’ll achieve your dual goal of not helping either terrible option.
From my perspective, being disloyal to my country’s attempts to monopolize the information I imbibe, and being counted as part of that mass movement directly is again more important than also rejecting receiving the social media of another evil empire that, again, would simply be seen as patriotism/nationalism/nothing at all. It doesn’t actually meaningfully benefit China, but it does very publicly, as a movement of people not just me, work as a demonstration of undermining the authority of the evil empire I do have some tiny insignificant influence in.
They’ll ban it of course, and there will be another one. And that continuous “We don’t respect you or your authority because you arent on our side” does over time diminish the misplaced faith some still have in our captured institutions. Unfortunately signing up for Lemmy over reddit’s greed or some scandanavian social media doesn’t send the same message.
It has to be an enemy evil empire for the powerful of our evil empire to take notice and be concerned at all. Otherwise, it’s akin to “protesting” with a permit at a designated protest zone out of the eyeline and profit operations of those you’re protesting, aka masturbation.
Well, you do what you think is best. I’m not trying to tell you how to live your life, and I think our goals are aligned, but it seems we’ll have to agree to disagree on what we each think is the best course of action.
Good luck out there. Gonna be a rough couple of decades.
I can only hurt one empire materially, the one I materially live within. The Chinese have to reign in China, and the Russians Russia. The best I can do is my part not to strengthen or support the evil empire I was born under to the best of my ability.
What you can do is not grow the ones you can’t hurt.
Zero good will come from using this app. If you want to support something positive go sign up for Loops and use the Fediverse alternative rather than support genocidal empires in any form.
That’s not a point in either’s favor. That’s a moral wash.
Ok, you’re either trolling or been fed a lot of misinformation. The problem is about recency and extensiveness, and China is worse on both.
Is your point here that China’s actions against Uyghurs is more recent and extensive than the US’s part in Gaza?
Recent, extensive, and active. The US doesn’t have a direct part in Gaza, China has a direct part in the issues w/ the Uyghurs.
I’m not saying the US is innocent here, just that they’re very different situations.
The USA has killed orders of magnitudes more people in the last few years. Just, objectively.
Source?
The problem with the Uyghurs in China is less about deaths and more about cultural genocide. They’ve been rounded up and jailed en-masse (estimates are upwards of a million people), threatened, surveilled, etc, all to force them to submit and abandon their cultural heritage. It’s pretty similar in scope to the Japanese Internment in the US, but much larger in scope and with a much more nefarious goal.
I obviously don’t have hard figures on the actual death toll (not sure anyone does, as China doesn’t seem interested in disclosing it), but again, regardless of whether it’s higher or lower than whatever you’ll attribute to the US, the worst part here is forced cultural assimilation, or in other words, psychological violence (i.e. punishing “wrong thing”).
