Comment on How come nobody does anything about North Korea?
Objection@lemmy.ml 3 days agoLet’s just review this conversation, shall we? What the other person said was:
Do you seriously believe they execute ppl for having the same haircut as Kim? And then execute ppl for having a different haircut from him?
They execute generals all the time, then the generals appear alive a few months later. That’s that mystical Juche necromancy for ya.
So, that’s two examples of egregious misinformation that they pushed back on. How did you respond?
And y’all invariably paint NK as these absolute saints
We can push back against misinformation without accidentally bootlicking.
The reason we “”“bootlick”“” and “”“treat them as absolute saints”“” is that you chatacterize any attempt to push back on blatant misinformation as “”“bootlicking.”“” So no, it is impossible push back on misinformation without “bootlocking,” because, by your standards, anything short of uncritically accepting every bad thing said about a US rival (that is, anything short of actual bootlicking towards the US) counts as “bootlicking.”
If I’m wrong, then show me what in their comment led you to conclude that they were bootlicking, aside from refuting misinformation.
Lemminary@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I think you’re connecting two things in my mind that were completely separate, and are using that as a springboard to jump to conclusions about my supposed standards based on one flawed premise, then about me uncritically accepting things, and also that I’m explicitly against US enemies. Brother, I’m not even American. Can I not talk about a pitfall that I often see with people defending NK, as an “inb4” if you will? Because I hope you reread the sentence that way.
If anything, my only direct comment about the person I’m replying to was the first question: Why so eager to jump in like that about a known violator of human rights that has voiced unconditional support for Russia, a country actively picking a fight with the entire West side of the world? A tyrannic, totalitarian regime is everybody’s enemy as far as I’m concerned.
But sure, maybe I’m reading the other person wrong too, and I’m unnecessarily assigning blame because of my previous experience with this exact same topic with other .ml accounts behaving that way and swarming the person commenting.
Objection@lemmy.ml 3 days ago
The problem is that even if there are people like that, the criticism gets directed at people with much milder takes. And in this case, you replied to someone with .ml saying “why do .ml’s…” and “y’all…” You were clearly including them, even though all they’d done was to identify some things that are objectively misinformation.
Because of… the truth? Does being a “known violator of human rights” make it ok for people to spread lies? Does it make someone a bad person to refute things that are objectively false? At that point, how could we even determine if anything said about them is true, if their critics are happy to lie, and to attack anyone who calls out lies?
I don’t care who you’re talking about, whether it’s North Korea, Iran, Trump, fucking, Nazi Germany, whatever, if people say false things about them, then I’m going to correct those falsehoods. There’s this whole social disease that correcting misinformation about something inherently means you support it. If someone says “In North Korea, they kill you for having the wrong haircut” and you say, “No, they don’t,” then congratulations, you are now “defending North Korea,” you are now a “North Korea apologist,” or, as some would say, a “tankie.” And then you ask why there’s so many “North Korea apologists.”
Some of us value truth and integrity more than we value bashing whoever the news tells us to hate. And because we have the audacity to interrupt the whole Orwellian “Five Minutes Hate” thing, that makes us traitors if not foreign agents or bots.
If North Korea is my “enemy,” it’s certainly a very small and distant one that’s not really worth messing with. Speaking as an American, my biggest existential threats are all domestic, like the rise of fascism and exploitation by the rich. I can see no reason why I would support my domestic enemies meddling in the affairs of other countries for their own benefit, and if I don’t support my government taking hostile action towards North Korea, then there’s pretty much fuck-all I could do about it in any case, is there? So what difference does it even make what anybody’s stance is on it, what’s the big deal if some people take it too far? The only relevant question with North Korea is “Should our government fuck with them or not” and the answer is obviously “not.”
Lemminary@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I think I very much addressed that in two different points to be rehashing this.
You’re saying the same thing I’ve expressed but from a different angle. We’re almost down to splitting hairs, except that you’re taking my words to an extreme. Did I or did I not add the tongue-in-cheek qualifier “accidentally” to licking boots to signify the benefit of the doubt of the people falling into this trap?
Not so distant if we’re going to be fighting a proxy war against them. If you think they’re a remote country not participating in world affairs, then I’ve got recent news for you.
aljazeera.com/…/north-koreas-kim-voices-unconditi…
npr.org/…/north-korea-soldiers-russia-ukraine-war…
Objection@lemmy.ml 3 days ago
What “trap”?? The “trap” of correctly refuting misinformation? How generous of you!
Oh, well that’s very simple. Don’t fight a proxy war against them. I think I may not have expressed my position properly: there are no foreign threats anywhere that are anywhere near as important and dangerous as the ones here at home.
Let’s do a quick quiz. Question 1: I can’t afford health insurance. The people primarily responsible for me not having access to healthcare live in which city?
Question 2: Which country’s government poses the greatest threat to my safety and has the greatest ability to imprison/kill/harm me, as an American?
Now, would you kindly explain to me why I should rally behind the people who are most likely to harm me and who are the reason I don’t have healthcare against people thousands of miles away?