• assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I’m a bit concerned by just how well that worked. It increasingly confirms to me that the alt right and tankies are birds of a feather. Ignore information you dislike as propaganda, condone human rights abuse if it’s by a country you like and call the reporting bullshit.

      • tswiftchair@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        Purchasing an item manufactured in a country whose government is committing genocide is not the same as refusing to support a country’s leader who is directly supporting a genocide. I feel like this is obvious but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since your other comment indicates you believe in horseshoe theory.

          • tswiftchair@lemm.ee
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            11 months ago

            How does buying something that’s manufactured in China directly fund genocide, especially if the company you’re buying from isn’t even based in China?

            • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              Simple.

              1. You pay the company.

              2. The company pays the government in taxes or licenses or something of the like. China does not allow them to operate for free.

              3. The government uses the money to fund the infrastructure and personnel for the genocide.

              That dollar you spend may ultimately end up getting used to forcibly “culturally reeducate” Uighurs. If you didn’t buy the product that was made in China, that wouldn’t be the case.

              Now granted, this is indirect. I was incorrect to say direct earlier. And I don’t actually believe this makes a person culpable in genocide. I just also think that voting for Biden doesn’t mean someone wants genocide. If I had to pick however, the purchase likely carries more individual weight.

          • hark@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            What does this have to do with the genocide that biden supports? Or are you claiming that biden supports the genocide of Uighurs? Are you claiming that actually biden is fine to throw billions of dollars in support of the genocide of Palestinians because China?

            • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              If it’s a red line for everyone, and it means you shouldn’t vote for Biden as a result, then you should also be minimizing your contributions/purchases with the US economy and all other countries currently engaged in genocide. Either take an absolutist stance on all of them, or make your rationalizations for all of them. Don’t pick and choose.

              • hark@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                You mean like how the Biden administration picks and chooses with its stances on Russia and Israel? Per capita, Israel is actually committing the much worse atrocity, but the same people moralizing about Russia’s actions are telling people to shut up about Israel. Saying you can’t criticize one thing because other bad things are happening is textbook whataboutism, but it’s obvious that whataboutism is a term used by Americans solely as a shield for all their bad actions (i.e. don’t call us out on our hypocrisy because we flooded the news with our talking points first). I criticize China for its horrific treatment of Uighurs and I criticize Israel for its atrocities.

                As for consumerism, you don’t have to worry about that from me. I’m pretty sure you buy more shit from China than I do, since I barely buy anything at all.

                • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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                  11 months ago

                  I criticize China for its horrific treatment of Uighurs and I criticize Israel for its atrocities.

                  Then we have no disagreement. Especially since you don’t take the position that buying/voting is a full throated endorsement of the genocides.

                  My issue with the person was their absolutist stance that suggested you shouldn’t vote for Biden or do anything which could support a genocide supporting regime. You can and should criticize Biden and China while voting or buying their goods. But what you do to one, you should do to the other. It’s hypocritical to refuse to vote for Biden for the Palestinian genocide while buying goods from China that support the Uighur genocide. And vice versa – refusing to buy Chinese but being fine with voting for Biden.

                  Does that make sense? Basically, you shouldn’t pick and choose. You criticize it all or you excuse it all. If you refuse to support one, you refuse to support them all. If you tell people it isn’t real and is bullshit propaganda, you say that for all of them.

                  • hark@lemmy.world
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                    11 months ago

                    People have their own red lines and while they may seem conflicting or hypocritical, they are their own. Bringing up one separate thing in response to another is whataboutism, plain and simple. That was my point with my initial response. All that bringing up Uighurs did was divert the discussion towards other things, which is the point of whataboutism.

            • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              11 months ago

              They’re saying, if you still buy Uyghur slave labor produced goods from China, but tsk tsk Biden for being pro-Israel (literally every POTUS since the creation of Israel has been pro-Israel) you have no right to write Biden off and no right to tell others to not vote for him. It’s most likely that GodlessCommie is some kind of right wing astroturfer.

              • hark@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                So they’re saying that you cannot criticize Biden because bad things are happening elsewhere. Yeah, literally whataboutism.

        • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          You sound just like the people who say Israel is doing nothing wrong and all the criticism is just from antisemitism.

          You like them, therefore any criticism of them is propaganda and bullshit. Horseshoe theory in action.

          • GodlessCommie@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            No sweetheart. Israel is 100% in the wrong, their Zionist apartheid terrorist colonialist state is a failed experiment that needs to come to an end.

            Anytime a person or a country tells you who your enemy is odds are it’s them

    • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      Trump’s deals with the Saudis to genocide Yemenis are your red line for him, the situation for Gaza is your red line for Biden, and now you’ve solved genocide by throwing your vote away on someone who can never win.

      • GodlessCommie@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Your assumption that a critique of Biden means support for Trump is infantile. Oh, and the Yemeni genocide by the Saudis started with Obama. My concern and vote isn’t about who can win, it’s about doing what’s right. Focusing only on who can win is for losers.

        • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          I’m not making that assumption at all. I’m saying your “red line” point is infantile because it rules out both major candidates, thus you will throw your vote away, which helps the candidate you hate most to win. If your metric is genocide, tasteless as it is, you have to vote for whoever you think will help minimize the deaths by genocide in the future. “Red Lines” don’t work if they don’t differentiate between the candidates.

          • HACKthePRISONS@kolektiva.social
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            11 months ago

            >which helps the candidate you hate most to win

            when i voted for howie and biden won, does that mean that i hated biden the most? what kind of quantum emotion theory are you cooking up?

            • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
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              11 months ago

              You are not the only person voting, you not voting for a major party candidate doesn’t declare the person you dislike most the victor, it just helps them win.

              Assuming you would have voted for Biden if you only had the two major party options, then voting for anyone else or failing to vote is a vote less for Biden, which is equivalent to a vote for Trump.

              • HACKthePRISONS@kolektiva.social
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                11 months ago

                >you not voting for a major party candidate doesn’t declare the person you dislike most the victor, it just helps them win.

                only a vote for a candidate helps them win

              • HACKthePRISONS@kolektiva.social
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                11 months ago

                >Assuming you would have voted for Biden if you only had the two major party options

                that is not a good assumption: I only vote for candidates if I want them to win.

                • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
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                  11 months ago

                  The base assumption here is not that you would actually vote for either one, it’s that when given only two choices, you prefer one or the other. The only way that doesn’t hold is if you truly do not care between the two options and it’s a coin flip. If that is true, then the ‘person you hate most between the two’ still benefits, but it’s a coin flip which one it is so you don’t care.

                  If you prefer Biden over Trump, you are helping Trump by not voting for Biden. And vice versa. Even if you would never vote for any major party candidate, that just means you are always helping the major party candidate you hate the most.

              • HACKthePRISONS@kolektiva.social
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                11 months ago

                if not voting is voting for trump, then voting for trump would be like voting twice.

                this is clearly absurd election misinformation.

                non-voters are the biggest voting block in the country. there is no way what you are saying is true.

                • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
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                  11 months ago

                  A person who would otherwise support Biden, voting for Trump instead, is indeed a two vote swing. That is just the math of it.

          • GodlessCommie@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            I hate them both equally. And there is no lesser evil, that’s a thing white liberals tell themselves to ease their conscience for supporting people they know are doing harm, but not to them directly.

            • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
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              11 months ago

              If you hate them exactly equally then I guess feel free not to vote.

              A lot of people, ethically, would feel compelled to use their vote to minimize the amounts of deaths by genocide. Avoiding the question by pretending everyone sucks equally instead of actually trying to improve things is not some moral high road.

              • GodlessCommie@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                minimize the amounts of deaths by genocide

                Supporting the guy thats continuing to fund and arm genocide is not minimizing death

                • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
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                  11 months ago

                  It is if that guy can get the genocide to stop earlier than the other guy could. Or if the other guy would stop it earlier then vote for him.

                  • GodlessCommie@lemmy.world
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                    11 months ago

                    It is 100% within Biden’s power to have stopped it October 8. The exact same way that Ronald Reagan did when Israel was bombing Lebanon in 1982. All he has to do is threaten to cut off funding and weapons exactly like Ronald Reagan did in 1982. Ronald Reagan got results, Joe Biden the self-proclaimed Zionist, has refused to do the same thing that he has the power to do.