There's a propaganda push in the west to demonize China, with the obvious goal of creating consent for a potential war. Even the Trotskyists of wsws.org (which have no favorable view of China) usually defend China from fake or misleading shit. Repeating US propaganda uncritically, or even criticizing China for good reason without proper context, is helping the US propaganda machine bring us to the brink of annihilation.

It's important to be truthful and fair, and not encourage sinophobia and war propaganda, so be careful when criticizing China.

[–] soulless@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago (17 children)

Whether it's China or really anything, I'd agree to being critical of any claims made without proper context, yet the context here is the massacre and subsequent cover-up perpetrated by the Chinese government following peaceful protests on the Tiananmen square.

Meeting that with whataboutisms and vague excuses is disrespectful towards the victims full stop.

Being a socialist should be easy, because truth is on our side. It should be easy to point to Tiananmen square and say "this is what happens when the ruling class feels threatened", just like you can say the same thing when the US government busts their unions or murders their black citizens. Being an unquestioning supporter of either of these regimes is not what socialism is to me, and it never was. I just don't understand how anyone can reconcile these opposing views in their heads.

[–] gnuhaut@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Imagine there's this guy at your work, who every day brings up some crime or another, but somehow the perpetrator is always black. So you tell him "Can you talk about something else?", to which they get defensive and say "Why don't you want to talk about this? Can't we all agree that this is bad?". If you let this situation go on for too long, you'll soon find your workplace taken over by open racism, and everybody who's uncomfortable with this is going to quit, reinforcing this trend.

This is what's happening on almost all western social media, and society in general, regarding China. Open sinophobia, hate speech, and calls for violence.

[–] soulless@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

That does explain the issue in a much more understandable way to me, and I thank you for not assuming I'm here just to argue.

I guess my slice of the social media "bubble" has always been more left leaning so I tend to see much more criticism of NATO and the US and haven't really thought much about criticism of China since to me at least it has seemed fairly balanced or at least not too imbalanced.

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