There’s a lot of unjust persecutions around the world, yet i could also talk about the land of the free, who persecute not one, but two candidates, Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for having a different opinion of the world, and quite possibly a third if they rigged the primaries against Bernie Sanders, and also more generally having only two political parties who can be helped by the wealthy, and even voting machines.
I’m from France and it’s worse, the u.s. may only have two political parties, but here we need to get votes from mayors to be able to present ourselves, of course this number has gone up and is now public. It’s another way to prevent changes.
Even if they had the authorization they would still not be known by depoliticized citizens.
I’m harsh but we’re indeed no stranger to authoritarian measures such as dissolving pacific organizations for their point of view(, only one example), or demonizing popular speakers such as Étienne Chouard(, pro-democracy activist), and many many more, whose opinions can only be heard thanks to the relatively recent Internet, but they’re making laws to protect “us”(themselves) from what they call disinformation, hate speech, or genocide denial(, how easy it would be to censor any debunking of their recent uyghur lies under the guise of genocide denial, it was the same argument for Yugoslavia, the Darfur, and certainly more). We’re just living in a bubble, with our own personal lives, yet voting.
In both countries, we’re not aware of what, e.g., a communist news program could look like, we deem the only kind of information we know as objective, and even diverse because there’s a center-left and a center-right(, revolutions are extreme hence the status quo is conserved). Multisubjectivity is closer to the true objectivity.
The few of us who read foreign medias would mean german ones, or eventually italian or swedish, sometimes outside the west as long as it’s aligned with “the”(our) “universal” truth.
When a different view of the world from outside irrupts in our bubble, they’re simply wrong, as a proof, everybody we know disagree with them, but since we don’t read their medias, we’re unable to ever explain why this other side could think that they are the good guys(, we’ll only say that they’re propagandised, which isn’t the same as being able to give any details about the content of this propaganda ; yet i’m not sure that their(, russians, chinese, cubans, venezuelans, iranians, …,) citizens would be unable to briefly describe our propaganda, i.d.k.)
Of course, nothing is perfect, including bourgeois republics(, in democracies the power belong to the cratos, not to representatives who establish themselves the rules of their representation), and i guess i just wanted to criticise political/‘non-economic’ imperfections inside the west instead of western influence outside our borders for once.
/endrant, sry for the length.
I’m sorry, I have a really hard time reading your post. But I gather that you wanted to talk about crimes against the people instead of external entities? That’s sort of what I intended to do with the comm I created. A daily reporting of the US’ past human rights violations/crimes through its short history, in the style of western Tienanmen Square articles:
!daily_us_history@lemmygrad.ml
I’ve only been doing it for about a week and a half, but I already have a couple of posts there specifically relating to suppression of speech/media that doesn’t agree with the western narrative. The HUAC inquisition of anti-war protesters, and the attempted character assassination of a prominent journalist.
I haven’t fully decided on what I’m talking about tomorrow, but I’m leaning against talking about The Camden 28, so I’ll talk about it a bit here. They were a group that attempted to sabotage the draft for the Vietnam war. The FBI had them dead to rights, but the jury refused to convict. The war was THAT unpopular, but the government still took people off the streets and sent them halfway around the world to kill people who did nothing to them. That sounds pretty totalitarian to me.
I’m sorry, I have a really hard time reading your post. But I gather that you wanted to talk about crimes against the people instead of external entities?
Can’t blame you, and yeah, i just felt that i was describing, in my comments these last years, an all-powerful West reigning over a world mostly constituted of “illiberal” poor countries(, if i’m stereotyping my speech), and wanted to talk somewhere about how we’re also the subject of criticisms of “illiberalism”, that our propaganda influences the perception of our everyday life, inside our borders, not only external countries(, mostly demonized enemies, but also under-criticised allies(, Israel or the release of radioactive water from Fukushima come to mind as examples, the kind of informations which would be put forward if these countries were on the “other side”)).
Since even in this reply i’m talking about the imperfections of foreign countries i wanted to point out somewhere, for once, our own political “illiberalism”, and perhaps read some “hot takes” regarding capitalist “democratic” republics.
I’m thanking you for the links, they’re good examples.
We invaded Libya to protect protesters, that’s so stupid, and we didn’t care when it was sanctioned before ; and we don’t care as well, or outrightly ignore, the current countries under our sanctions, what a world.
Can you explain the needing to get votes from mayors and what the graph is showing? I don’t really understand, and I’ve never heard of that particular form of disenfranchisement.
Sure, at first you had to get 50 names of public officials(, let’s call them referrals, since sponsorship or patronage aren’t probably the best equivalent for «parrainage»,) in order to be allowed to present yourself at presidential elections.
Then 4 years later, it became 100 signatures/referrals.
Then 15 years later, in 1976, it becomes 500 referrals, and they will have to make these names public(, with the pressures we can expect).
There has been laws asking to replace this with signatures/referrals from citizens instead of mayors, but none were accepted.
As a result, you can see a long list of names with “only” 12 obtaining these 500 referrals(, but half of them received their signatures in the last weeks, most are ignored by our population, that’s the truth, only 3-4 are considered serious options, one each among the far left, center-left, center-right, and far right, and since we didn’t have much reasons to complain about our lives these last decades with all this technological progress and the rest, only center-left and center-right politicians were ever elected since our fifth republic was created in the 50s(, after a military coup b.t.w.)), every single one of these authorized candidates come from decades-old political parties(, our current president is a surprising exception, even as a previous minister and with a strong oligarchic support it wasn’t easy to create a new political party, and as a result our traditional center-right party has become far right).
So, any anti-establishment candidates(, who aren’t from a «parti de gouvernement»,) will never be heard. François Asselineau didn’t get the authorization, neither did Clara Egger(, a pro-democracy party, linked to Étienne Chouard), they’re only examples, mostly unknown from the public.However, this stays a detail, propaganda has more importance, and Internet is shaking this foundation of their power. They can still continue quite a while with the current situation since people are still using Internet for entertainment instead of documentation on anti-imperialist stances, communism, neo-colonialism, alter-mondialism, etc. But that’s still a threat and i’m sure there’s no need to convince you that what they call disinformation often is uncomfortable truths that haven’t yet pierced through our bubble.
I’m going off-topic there, and i think i’ve answered your question so, since there’s probably not a lot of meaning behind preaching to an already convinced choir, i’ll stop there, thanks for your comment :) !Thanks for the explanation!
