I learned about the Jeju Island Massacre today, and I’m annoyed that I’ve heard about the Tiananmen Square Massacre so many times but nothing about this. I want to read a book that details similar events overlooked by the Western mainstream.
The Black Book of Communism is full of lies and exaggerations, so it’s not a model to follow. But I get that you want to dive into the “capitalist death toll,” and a good book on that front is Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis.
The Black Book of Communism is full of lies and exaggerations
But it was very honest when they counted Nazi soldiers as “victims of communism”.
Is there something like The Black Book of Communism but about capitalism or imperialism?
You’re in fuckin’ luck
I learned about the Jeju Island Massacre today, and I’m annoyed that I’ve heard about the Tiananmen Square Massacre so many times but nothing about this. I want to read a book that details similar events overlooked by the Western mainstream.
Something more contemporary to such incident, speaking of 1980s crackdown, compared the Beijing Crackdown of June 4, 1989, to the Gwangju Crackdown of May 18, 1980.
Tiananmen Square Massacre
Amazing to me how ignorant people are about this event (actually known as the “June 4th Incident” to Chinese people) and yet how seriously they expect to be taken. If you show me the Tank Man photo without even knowing that it’s a still frame from a video, I will treat you like a small child smearing their food all over the place.
No investigation, no right to speak!What does that look like in practice? I’ve had people say insane sinophobic shit in my presence recently but correcting it made me feel like I came across as a crackpot weirdo.
Depends how well you know someone. If it’s a stranger I would just call them a fucking weirdo for bringing it up, and if they’re concerned about government overreach maybe worry about their own government. A friend I would tell them they’re ignorant and they sound like a redditor.
I think you misunderstood, they were asking how to avoid coming across as a crackpot weirdo.
I think if someone you don’t know all that well starts going “tiny man square 1989” at you in a regular conversation, you wouldn’t be a weirdo for telling them that that’s odd and they should worry about their own government. Seriously, it’s actually weirdo behavior for people to even bring this up.
My friends would probably be embarrassed to be called redditors, so I stand by that one as well, but I don’t know your friends lol.
Sorry I was giving you the benefit of the doubt. I thought you were using a silly and unreasonable example that would only happen online to quickly refer to a type of comment. Which the comrade up the thread just referred to as “sinophobic” in the question you were answering.
I agree it would be very silly for someone to pull up a photo of a decades old historical event in face to face conversation unless there was some special detail or something. Generally people don’t just carry old news clippings around in their wallets. Has it happened to you even once?
My friends would probably be embarrassed to be called redditors, so I stand by that one as well, but I don’t know your friends lol.
The irony is that only people who are sufficiently online would even know what you mean by that. A lot of people I know would be puzzled if I called them a redditor. maybe think they were being accused of being interested in bitcoin or pick up artists or something. Even most of the leftists wouldn’t understand your political implication because they do not spend much time shit posting due to being busy. If they are on reddit it’s in the skin care subs or something.
Sorry I was giving you the benefit of the doubt. I thought you were using a silly and unreasonable example that would only happen online to quickly refer to a type of comment. Which the comrade up the thread just referred to as “sinophobic” in the question you were answering.
I’m referring to “Tiananmen” because the user you’re talking about was replying to my comment that was specifically about that incident. My original comment was exaggerated for a joke, obviously, it has a shining-eyes Mao emoji in it lol.
However, I have in fact had people bring up sinophobic shit to me in conversations (not specifically Tiananmen, it’s usually more general “Chinese are spying on me” shit or some Hong Kong nonsense), and I have in fact told them that the Chinese government isn’t concerned with us and they should worry about our own government which is trampling our rights constantly. I also do have friends who would understand what being called a “redditor” means in this context, and I obviously wouldn’t say that to someone who doesn’t because that would be ridiculous.
When someone says sinophobic shit, I stand by the response of “it’s weird to be so fixated on China, you should probably worry about our own country” instead of trying to point-by-point debunk whatever ridiculous propaganda they’ve dreamed up. People are actually just being massive racist weirdos with the China obsession, I really don’t understand how it makes me a “crackpot weirdo” to point that out to them.
Depends on what they said, but the most default option imo is just asking people where they got information from.
Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds is pretty Eurocentric but has a great overview of 1950s-1990s capitalist imperialism.
Killing Hope by William Blum is a pretty much comprehensive account of all the crimes of the US Foreign Policy machine up to like 2005 (I think, I haven’t read it in a while).
The Jakarta Method (2020) by V. Bevins sort of fits what you’re asking for. It’s less about the crimes of capitalism and more about the crimes committed in the name of anti-communism in the 20th century.
Look into any country’s history outside of the encyclopedia and you’ll find a Black Book of Capitalism.
I think it’s not that productive to just have a list of dead, tallied in event after event, but there are multiple titles named “The Black Book of Capitalism” that try to discuss the subject in greater depth than “The Black Book of Communism” does its subject.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzbuch_Kapitalismus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Livre_noir_du_capitalisme
That said, I feel like there must be a tally somewhere in the huge wall of links that the owner of lemmy maintains.
I feel like there must be a tally somewhere in the huge wall of links that the owner of lemmy maintains.
Yo that is someone who receipts.
Also in the same directory: us_atrocities.md.
edit: he’s still not looking like he has a great handle on the topic of gender and sex work.
Wikipedia for The Black Book of Communism is in the category Books critical of communism so likely there is something to be found in the category Books critical of capitalism? But I’m not sure which one, if any, is comprehensive.
Like there is too much. I heard a rumor that all history is the history of struggle between the classes. So the misdeeds of the wealthy are pervasive. The fact that someone could even write “a book” about the subject of communist atrocities only illustrates the paucity of material. (Not even saying anything about accuracy of its claims.)
Until someone recommends a book, which I’m sure someone will, try these: War crimes committed by country; Human rights abuses by country.
There are the classics like chomsky (personally tarnished by being pally with epstein) and Zinn’s People’s history of the united states (which is narrow, not at all comprehensive, and still a massive book).
If it makes you feel better, Manufacturing Consent was, by Chomsky’s own admission, mostly written by the other author, Edward S. Herman. Also, Chomsky made it obvious that he was a hack, a coward, a fraud, and a bastard in terms of political commentary decades ago, and has done well reinforcing that profile every time he has opened his mouth since.
You could probably combine Late Victorian Holocausts and The Jakarta Method to get something equivalent
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169
This might be what you’re looking for. It’s by Jason Hickel, who is good for this kind of stuff.
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