this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2024
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Late Stage Capitalism
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I can see where these things are coming, but it tries way too hard to use different terms for each side. Like Entrepreneur is definitely not the same as an Oligarch however one tries to twist it. Authoritarian - Law & Order comparison is a bit strange, since it would seem that you are implying that Authoritarianism to any kind of government. Every other term, hold Invasion, could have an asterisk attached to them.
I agree with your point. But the way I read this is not like "An Entrepreneur in the USA is the same as an Oligarch in Rusia", instead more like "If we used the same standards we use to call Rusian Oligarchs Oligarchs (which they totally are), then in the USA there are Oligarchs too (Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Gates, etc). But instead we call them Entrepreneurs". Same with all the other examples, there are actions that when performed by Rusia, China, etc, are called Authoritarian, but when performed by the USA and European countries are justified as upholding Law & Order or similar bullshit.
Of course the reading here can't be the USA and europeans do the same, so we can't complain about Rusia/China/etc. Fuck that, fuck Rusia, fuck China, fuck all of them. To me, the point is that, from the outside, is pretty obvious that Rusia and co are fucking imperialist assholes. It's obvious that the Rusian people are being manipulated by propaganda to support the fucking invasion of Ukraine. But we must be careful that the same is happening in all our countries, maybe to a lesser degree (though IMO the USA is at least as bad as Rusia when it comes to imperialism BS, but I'm latin american so I'm biased hahaha), and maybe this way we can stop doing the same awful shit they are doing.
You're absolutely right of course, and that is exactly the point of the OP. These things are not the same, but the media uses the terms on the left for the baddies, and the terms on the right for the good guys (the US and allies), even though the media are referring to the same exact thing.
They'll refer to Elon Musk as entrepeneur, but were he Russian, they would refer to him as an oligarch. The thirteenth amendment allows for slavery as a punishment, and the US uses it, but you'll never see the media refer to prisons as labor camps (which they are), even though they do for the baddies. When the US was busy murdering hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq using cluster bombs and napalm, the media would refer to it as collateral damage (by now I believe that there are major outlets that use the term "war crime" for what the US did back then). When Russia does the same in Ukraine, the media immediately calls it out as war crimes.