Sorry if the title is a bit weird, I’m curious about what made you believe what you do. Mainstream leftism usually doesn’t go any further than trans rights or maybe UBI in some places, at least from what I know, so what made you go beyond that? You can answer generally or talk about a specific belief, just wanna see what caused the more radical opinions in you
I’m particularly curious about what changed your opinions about the USSR and China, most people think they’re awful, but in here they’re really liked and defended, I’ve even seen a lot of posts denying the Tiananmen massacre and the Holodomor and stuff like that, what made you go to such lengths?
Did you patiently watch all the videos I provided in my response? If not, I strongly encourage you to make time to do so as much of what you had trouble grappling with was already addressed therein.
I would like to have constructive conversation, but there are things you just need to see for yourself to really get the full picture, hence providing those video resources. They are all information dense and provide much needed context to why I said the things I said. What we absolutely must understand is that concepts of “independence” and technological competency and literacy do not exist in a vacuum. They are not neutral in the world of geopolitics. History matters and, more importantly, history does not expire. We have a responsibility to know how we got here, so we can make an informed and responsible decision about where to go from here.
I urge you to go back through and watch every video in order, and then re-read the text part of my statement. The videos themselves can also be considered intertwined with the rest of my comment.
hey, I apologize I have indeed not watched much of what you sent, only a little bit of the social credit system video. sadly I’ve been feeling pretty depressive recently so I haven’t had the mood to delve into politics much… but I appreciate your patience with me. i’ll try to come back to this and watch everything when I feel better, thanks a lot
It’s all right, I understand. I know you’re here in good faith and just trying to learn. I checked your profile and its description early on, so I’m doing what I can to accommodate your needs.
When you feel ready and have caught up on everything I provided, I look forward to speaking with you again. In the meantime, take care of yourself
heyo! thank you for your patience, I finally feel better and I’ve watched the videos you linked more deeply. here are my notes sorry for the long ass post
1- Thank you so much for introducing me to Invidious, that’s one more step to completely degoogling :D
2- Regarding the Cambodia video, I definitely agree that social media is very often used by the government to spread rhetoric and manufacture consent, I especially remember reading about the US trying to make a “cuban facebook” to let people organize counter revolutionary activity, which is really awful. not to mention the spying, the selling of your personal data, the profiles they make about you, it’s all awful. I think all social media should be nationalized and made open source by force, and follow decentralized models like Lemmy here
there is one thing that still doesn’t click with me though, and it’s… why wouldn’t chinese social media just do the same thing? China has a very bad reputation of mass surveilance and AFAIK WeChat and TikTok and all of that are closed source. So I don’t really know if they’re any better. They’re obviously not used to try and overthrow governments but it’d be so easy for them to be used to implant views on people I don’t see why we should believe China is not doing it
3- Regarding the three videos about democracy in China, they were quite good! They made me understand it a bit better and it’s genuinely awesome that young people can just petition the government like that, the most we ever get slightly similar to that here in Europe are referendums but most are completely non-binding so governments don’t have to follow them at all and they’re mostly just for show.
I do have one concern though, the three videos come from chinese news agencies - I understand western news agencies are heavily biased and are definitely not going to be honest about their main geopolitical rival, but I don’t see why China’s government wouldn’t have biases about themselves, obviously they’re going to present themselves in as best of a light as possible…
4- I have the same concern about the video about the HK protests but that’s a huge complicated topic I know next to nothing about and I know the CIA does all it can to overthrow governments so I’m more charitable toward that being the case…
5- I did some of my own digging about the social credit system and… yeah. it’s basically just the law. weird how so many people try to paint being punished for drunk driving or stuff like that as draconian or orwellian. I will say as a very privacy minded person I am generally against being tracked or your minor crimes being put on a list kept at all times about you (I know most governments do this too), but yeah it’s not extraordinarily bad or way worse than what we have here…
6- Taiwan is a complicated subject, I did say that I oppose an invasion regardless of geopolitics or history, but if the people actually living in there do want to rejoin with China I fully agree with the reunification… I was surprised an anti-PRC poll regardless showed that 60% of taiwanese people want to unify, I thought it’d be way, way lower than that.
I don’t have much else to say, I really hated when chinese nationalists almost broke one of my (at the time) favorite streamers for saying “the country of taiwan” once, and when a guy playing competitive hearthstone got banned for supporting a protest, etc etc, but I understand those are unrelated incidents
7- As someone whose blood boils when seeing how unjust homelessness is, how so many of us are gaslighted into justifying it, how unnecessary it is in the modern age… what China is doing to stop it is genuinely amazing (if it’s true ofc)