I haven’t read a lot of these sources myself yet, but the first one at least by the Communist Party of India is worth a read.
I haven’t read a lot of these sources myself yet, but the first one at least by the Communist Party of India is worth a read.
I don’t even know what to believe with this shit and I’m not an anarchist but this is the most ridiculous objection I’ve seen. “WHAT ABOUT [worse thing that anarchists also oppose]” is fucking meaningless and leaves you looking less like a good Marxist and more like you’re just looking for any reason to dunk on nerds on the internet.
Yeah my bad sorry for bringing attention to the country that has killed millions of Muslims in the middle east, destabilised countries which don’t bend to it’s will, has been rabidly anticommunist since communism has been a thing and is using the same playbook of disseminating atrocity propaganda to justify military interventions in recent history. Guess I will need to read more Marx before I can reach your level and cry whataboutism.
tf? I’ve got no problem with you also bringing attention to the US, in fact I think it’s necessary to drop into conversations like these and bring reminders like that.
My issue is the idea that unless “the mess at home” is cleaned, we can’t care about bad things happening elsewhere on smaller scales.
Well “the mess at home” is responsible for “bad things happening elsewhere on smaller scales”. In this case the NED funds the Washington based Uyghur World Congress which is the main group pushing for Uyghur secession. US funds separatist terrorists in Xinjiang, many of whom go to fight for Jihadist factions against Syria.
Meanwhile the west is pushing atrocity propaganda to manufacture consent for an escalation of conflict against China. One cannot really play both sides here. Fencesitting as an American and not opposing the US destabilising other countries, especially while taking no initiative to organise for political change, is supporting American interventionism.
That’s all I wanted to say. Sorry for the earlier reply. Lost my cool.
That’s more substantive and mostly makes sense, I just don’t agree that choosing neither empire constitutes fence-sitting…that attitude seems to me like liberal lesser evilism.
I don’t know, should I call an American who didn’t fight for America in the second world war because they didn’t want to fight for America’s imperialist project a fence-sitter because German fascism was the greater evil? Even if they were involved in anti-fascist activism at home? To me that sounds ridiculous and incredibly convenient for any force that is not literally the absolute worst on the planet…all they have to do is oppose the bigger bad.
That argument is based on the premise of false equivocation of Nazi Germany and China, a narrative in which equating deradicalisation camps with concentration camps plays a large part. China is not an expansionist state. They claim Tibet, Taiwan, which is a separate discussion but they have no intentions of expanding beyond that. They haven’t been in any war in the last fifty years. Similar argument could be used to justify Americans fighting in the Vietnam war which I am sure you know was not a justified invasion.
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Oh no, in that example I’m equating China now and the US in that era. Meaning a force that opposes the greater evil (Germany then, the US now) but that itself has imperial interests. (In this case maybe not literal territorial expansion, but exerting control through business…much like the US but, yknow, not as aggressive)
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“Whataboutism” as a claim can be abused a lot to avoid criticism of the other evil that is being referenced, but there is no reason to believe that’s the case on an anarchist forum where you would be very hard pressed to find anyone who isn’t also extremely opposed to the US and other western empires. Given the demographics of a site like this, it’s also likely that most of their activism is targeted toward them as well. There is no reason that criticism of a potential evil has to wait for a larger evil to be toppled.
You’re not actually making a point here, just hurling insults.
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