Comment

Comment on Has anyone else noticed the strong pro CCP and anti-west vibes here?

mech@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

On one hand, lemmy used to be a safe-space for communists (including those that wish for the USSR back) before Redditors moved in. The developers of lemmy are politically pro-China and anti-USA.
On the other hand, the USA have stopped being the shining beacon of freedom and democracy they used to be seen as by many people in the west. So anti-USA posts will get lots of upvotes even from people in the west or the USA itself.
And thirdly, the western countries’ refusal to do speak out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Jordan and Lebanon has turned most of lemmy against their governments.

China just looks less bad in comparison than it used to be.
When western governments don’t give a fuck about human rights anymore, they have no standing to criticize China over it. And when western media refuse to even address the genocide, trust in them is lost and people start to doubt whether the stories they tell about the evil adversary China are true after all.

So it’s a mix of Lemmy’s original board culture, and a major shift in public perception in general.

P.S.: I’d love to read more news and stories from African countries on Lemmy!

source

Sort:hotnew top

Imperious_melange@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I agree with your analysis. I do still find it disturbing how silent people are about genocides in other locations such as Sudan, Nigeria, or even Myanmar. Not to speak of the Uyghur people of China. I find most this location to be of people mostly repeating what they were told by someone else and not aware of the world as it is. I wouldn’t say the CCP today had much to do with communism and is at its core selective towards that which benefits it and against anything that is not, that is they could not care less about political philosophy, religion, economic systems or any other stories crafted by man. If it is against them it is bad, if it is in worship of them it is good.

source
- devolution@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  no one cares because they’re fucking brown. That’s the honest truth. Sad to say.
  
  source
  - Imperious_melange@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    In essence yeah. Although the Uyghur people are not brown but similarly people do not care.
    
    source
    Maven@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    A lot of tankies will tell you that the Uyghur genocide isnt even happening and isnt real.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
- tunetardis@piefed.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I’m interested in your take on the USAid funding cuts. It only made the news briefly where I am amid a long list of disruptions that have wreaked havoc closer to home, but I can’t help thinking this has to be one of the worst things that happened on a global scale?
  
  source
  - Imperious_melange@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    It’s bad and also good. A lot of funding wasn’t reaching the people in need and finding its way into peoples pockets. Some funding was enabling poverty aka it was treating symptoms and not causes. Some funding was actually helping people and now they are suffering without it, namely helping to provide medicine and treatment. You see this in lots of places with charities where only a small fraction of the money collected actually goes to whatever the charity is for.
    
    If anyone wants to help Africa they should invest in business and production. There is more than enough potential here and the fastest way to improve the lives of people isn’t just handing them money, it’s employing them and paying them well. If USaid ever cared there would still be businesses operating without any financial input after they left. All that money and there’s nothing to show for it and that is by design.
    
    source
    birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I don’t think only investing into business and production is what would help. If those businesses get taken over by venture capitalists or go into stocks, then the motive shifts towards profit, rather than people.
    
    It’d help more if those businesses were worker co-operatives, and their people worked together to establish community exchanges, and the workers use the profits of cooperatives to:
    
    save for crises, ensuring that even then, workers still can thrive.
    
    establish more businesses in different sectors, being all horizontally federated.
    
    grow funds to outcompete capitalist structures, to take them over and turn them into other worker-owned cooperatives, and so the ball keeps on rolling.
    
    train themselves to defend one another, and learn each other’s jobs. This in case scabs (strike-breakers) or cops arrive and arrest some workers.
    
    Especially farms, mines, woodlands, – anything involving natural resources and land – would be crucial.
    
    Sure, in this age of digitalisation, a lot happens online, too. But even then, at its root, for data centres you need land, water, and resources. For computers, you need minerals, from mines. For cables, you need boats of hardy materials. And for those labourers, you need farms and woodlands to supply them and their clothing.
    
    source
    tunetardis@piefed.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Thanks for that. It set me straight on a few things.
    
    What do you think about microloans then (kiva, etc.)? Is that a better approach? I know it’s more grassroots than a gov program, and I don’t know how much of an effect they have in the grand scheme of things.
    
    source
psycho_driver@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

China just looks less bad in comparison than it used to be. When western governments don’t give a fuck about human rights anymore, they have no standing to criticize China over it. And when western media refuse to even address an ongoing genocide carried out with western weapons and money, trust in them is lost and people start to doubt whether the stories they tell about the evil adversary China are true after all.

In my opinion, of the two shitty governments in question, I believe China actually has the well-being of its citizens more in mind than do the oligarchs controlling the USA. China’s quality of life for its people has been rising by leaps and bounds in the past fifty years. Meanwhile over here the best people who aren’t in the 1% can hope for is stagnation, while for the majority things are just getting continually worse.

source
- mech@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Yes, that was always the Chinese government’s deal with its citizens: We make your life better, as long as you don’t rebel, resist or demand “freedom”.
  And the western model was “we give you personal freedom, consumer goods and some participation in government, so you don’t demand an actual redistribution of wealth and power”.
  
  But in many western countries, especially in the US, the rich and powerful have stopped honoring their part of the bargain.
  
  source
- yucandu@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  
  China’s quality of life for its people has been rising by leaps and bounds in the past fifty years.
  
  You have a long way to leap when you start out so far behind.
  
  Don’t forget the main reason western countries moved all their manufacturing there is because of their lack of labour rights.
  
  source
richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

the USA have stopped being the shining beacon of freedom and democracy they used to be seen as by many people in the west

Only blind people ever saw it like that. In Latin-America we’ve known for a long time that USian foreign policy consists mostly in destroying inconvenient countries with resources for profit.

source
- mech@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  
  Only blind people ever saw it like that.
  
  Maybe it was wrong to generalize. I grew up in West Germany, so my perception is naturally biased.
  The contrast between how the USA used to be seen in West Germany before the W. Bush presidency and now is very, very strong.
  
  source
  - birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I’d say even Reagan already was a very weird president. Before the Watergate affair with Nixon, trust in American presidents was generally high in non-socialist Europe, though imho they went radically overboard with their anticommunism, conflating anarchism and all liberationist movements with what they saw as red fascism.
    
    After Reagan, the surface may have seemed similar, but beneath in the cogs of the American system, something started breaking the labourers of which we see the effects even now. Reagan instigated a new level of arguments for abolishing the state anywhere, such as COINTELPRO, Operation Cyclone, indebting the American labourer while stagnating wages, and so on, and radicalising the discourse step for step.
    
    source
    homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Definitely Reagan.
    
    source
  - EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    American here and I think your wording was spot on.
    
    It WAS seen as a “shining beacon” by many around the world.
    
    SEEN as. And as someone who was born here, I can assure you that many in the US absolutely know that is a facade at best.
    
    The shell began cracking in other parts of the world decades ago (longer in places like Africa), but for most Europeans and the mostly un-terrorized-by-US-military countries, I think the turning point was “WMDs” in the early 00s. When every other “Major” country is either silent or outright saying “we have no Intel suggesting this” then you can’t really claim to have moral superiority, and once you see a liar as a liar, it’s all downhill from there.
    
    “seen as” was absolutely the correct phrase, as it was only an illusion.
    
    source
frisbird@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
China looks less bad in comparison because it hasn’t dropped a bomb in a conflict since 1989. It hasn’t fired on boat since 1988. The US criminal justice system manages 10x more people than the Chinese criminal justice system with more than double the recidivism of China China doesn’t engage in structural adjustment programs like the IMF does and they forgive billions in loans unlike the West. There are grandparents alive today who were subsistence farming when they were 5 and are now experiencing consumer robotics and self-driving cars. China looks good because of reality, not just because the US is recently doing bad things.

source
- yucandu@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  So can non-Chinese reporters and journalists come in and check and make sure that reality is true?
  
  source
k0e3@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

On the other hand, the USA have stopped being the shining beacon of freedom and democracy they used to be seen as by many ~~people in the west~~ of its own citizens.

Are we talking about recent developments here? Because, honestly, I don’t think they’ve been a beacon in a looong time for those of us outside the US.

source
- 4am@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Yeah a lot of people in the USA thought we’d still had a chance to come back after 9/11, even if the before-times where also a farce.
  
  2016 the mask came off at home and 2024 they’re not even trying to hide anymore
  
  source
yucandu@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

And thirdly, the western countries’ refusal to speak out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Jordan and Lebanon has turned most of lemmy against their governments.

You’re lumping in a whole lot of countries with America and England there.

Almost like that’s the whole point of the anti “West” thing.

source
- mech@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  This is the official stance of the EU on the matter:
  …europa.eu/…/eu-position-situation-middle-east/
  
  The European Council strongly condemns Iran’s indiscriminate military strikes against countries in the region and expresses its solidarity with countries affected.
  
  The European Council discussed the deteriorating situation in Gaza and the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem, which is of grave concern.
  
  The word genocide doesn’t appear anywhere in the document.
  
  source
  - yucandu@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Yeah they’re not going to use the word genocide without a pretty strict set of criteria being met by an international court. They don’t use that word on non-western countries either.
    
    But it is nice to see they repeatedly condemn Israel’s actions on that page, which you didn’t quote.
    
    source
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

When western governments don’t give a fuck about human rights anymore, they have no standing to criticize China over it.

I would expand this idea further… since all governments occasionally violate human rights, they shouldn’t be very much in the business of calling out human rights violations by other governments. That should mainly be the role of citizens or private organizations, not governments.

source
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I agree. I don’t see things overly pro China, but me being from the US, the US deservedly gets shit on. The rich and the crazy have been allowed to completely ruin it. Then, so many countries sucking the Israeli cock is just insane to me. Seems most countries are ran by terrible people. China included.

source