this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2025

-2 points (49.2% liked)

Ask Lemmy

27482 readers

2772 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

6) No US Politics.

Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

-2

Anyone getting suspicious of the divisiveness and anti-American circle jerk on Lemmy? (reddthat.com)

submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by [email protected] to c/asklemmy

121 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Lemmy has a strong tendency to criticize the US, and a lot of the critiques of certain issue with the US are valid. However, I started getting really tired of opening comment sections in innocuous and non-political posts only to see that someone somehow found a way to criticize the US in it. At first, I started thinking that maybe some Lemmy users are really unhappy and find criticizing a something stronger helped them feel better as if standing up to injustice was a passion of theirs. But, we don't see them do that with other targets, just the US. The more I notice and think about it, I'm starting be suspicious that some of those users and comments aren't authentic, but made to create divisiveness in the West and reject the US entirely. In other words, they may be Russian, Chinese, et al. agents working to feed a stream of propaganda in order to further cause chaos and lack of unity in the West as we have seen them do before.

Anyone else think about this?

This is what I'm thinking the game plan is:

Criticize something obviously unjust that the US has done. Ignore that all other major powers have also committed atrocities.
Link and liken it to other US matters & behaviors
Paint the US entirely as evil so that nothing the US can do is just
Attack anyone that supports anything out of the US (we are between here and #3 above)
Create a black-and-white model of geopolitics: US vs everyone else. EU and Russia on the same team lol
West fragments as US and EU relationship dwindle from pseudo-populist movements (e.g. MAGA)
Pick specific countries in the EU to start alienating and repeat the cycle
???
Profit in special economic zones

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The PRC has big problems, that it is Guantanmo-ing or arresting and using as prison slaves at least three ethnic minorities for thought crimes is an atrocity.

But the huge increase of living standards for all Chinese citizens, including those of persecuted minorities when they're not being locked up for ideological reasons is almost unbelievable.

Over a billion people have gone from not having plumbing to having indoor toilets, heating/cooling systems and access to modern health care in the space of 50 years.

[–] Nibodhika 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Over a billion people have gone from not having plumbing to having indoor toilets, heating/cooling systems and access to modern health care in the space of 50 years.

I'll reply to this with a quote from C. K. Lewis:

Of course slavery is the worst thing that ever happened. Every time it has happened – black people in America, Jews in Egypt, every time a whole race of people has been enslaved, it’s a horrible thing.

But maybe every incredible human achievement in history was done with slaves. Every single thing where you go, ‘How did they build those pyramids?’ They just threw human death and suffering at them until they were finished…There is no end to what you can do when you don’t give a f*ck about particular people

Hence why I compared it to he economic miracle of Nazi Germany.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

The ethnic repression outside of Tibet is relatively new.

Most of it was sudden access to international capital as a new market with Deng's reforms and becoming the manufacturing hub of the world (with all the pollution and poor work conditions that came with it)... Unless your argument is that all people living in authoritarian regimes are functionally slaves in which case that's hyperbole that I think does a disservice to slavery be it chattle or the more traditional kinds (and note that the pyramids weren't built by slaves unlike the Great Wall).

Edit: I'd also dispute the economic miracle of Nazi Germany. They built up an economy based on sacrifice and war prep, but it ran out of steam in a handful of years and was close to collapse before the war even began. Even allowing for a collapse of the Chinese economy sometime soon, that's orders of magnitude more successful with objectively less murder and ethnic cleansing (per capita) than the Nazis went for.