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If your first instinct as a westerner is to criticize and lecture 3rd world communist movements, instead of learning from their successes, then you have internalized the patronizing arrogance of the colonial system you claim to oppose.

  • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    Idk how anyone can defend how we (the US) does shit. Especially after this year. If you weren’t already privy to how monstrous we can be now you are, and now we pulled any good shit we might have done, too.

    • The Menemen@lemmy.ml
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      12 days ago

      I am not only on .world (actually started out there and moved over here), but yeah, for me that was the last straw. That official app is just an affront.

    • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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      12 days ago

      Most of us have started from the default programming. I didn’t get a lot of what I get today when I moved from Reddit. I know it can feel shitty to keep repeating the same things and make the same arguments over and over again but that’s the process of teaching.

      • comfy@lemmy.ml
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        11 days ago

        I know it can feel shitty to keep repeating the same things and make the same arguments over and over again but that’s the process of teaching.

        For what it’s worth, it’s important to have ways to do this efficiently, like linking to other resources or having copypastas. Otherwise the infinite influx of ignorant noobs will eventually cause burnout or just waste too much time.

    • comfy@lemmy.ml
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      11 days ago

      Depends which wave of newcomers. Some in more recent migrations just got banned for criticizing musk or endorsing Luigism, which is pretty milquetoast stuff any old lib can do.

  • garbagebagel@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    I wrote my thesis about how we can learn from Cuba’s green farming movements (because they were essentially locked out of capitalism) and was criticized for it.

  • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
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    12 days ago

    I am hard pressed to think of any Americans older than twenty five that I have ever met IRL that was truly opposed to colonialism. High-schoolers and college students; sure. That’s about it though.

    EDIT: To be clear, I am not defending colonialism. I just don’t think most Americans understand or think about its impact. Out of sight. Out of mind.

  • IHave69XiBucks@lemmygrad.ml
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    12 days ago

    I just had to explain this to someone the other day lol. Figure ur gonna get lots of hate from libs about this post so wanted to just come in and say hi. 你是很好老师同志。Your posts in response are nicely done. I hope people take the time to read them.

  • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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    12 days ago

    What are some succesful 3rd world communist movements? Asking for a friend

  • pineapple@lemmy.ml
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    12 days ago

    Dang I didn’t know there were successful communist nations in developing countries.

    • comfy@lemmy.ml
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      11 days ago

      Dang I didn’t know there were successful communist nations in developing countries.

      Funnily enough, two started off as developing and ended up as world superpowers.

      • pineapple@lemmy.ml
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        10 days ago

        I’m assuming your talking about Russia and China I think it very fare to criticise them, considering they are both totalitarian nations which don’t respect the needs of there citizens.

        • comfy@lemmy.ml
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          10 days ago

          The USSR (Soviet Union) and the PRC (China). The USSR is not Russia, and it doesn’t exist anymore.

          And of course it’s fair, and in fact important to criticize them. We have the benefit of hindsight and can see how some of their decisions were serious mistakes. On the other hand, it’s also important to analyze what they did good and learn from that too. Neither was perfect, both were improvements, and the terrible fates of Russia and Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union is proof of how much good the SU was for its citizens.

          which don’t respect the needs of there citizens.

          They both inherited countries plagued with regular famine and have both eliminated it. In fact, in 1983 the CIA documented the SU as having a better typical diet than the USA. Clearly they respected the food security of their citizens.

          The SU managed to rapidly build low-cost housing after repelling a HUGE invasion of extermination from Nazi Germany. The “commieblocks” were critical in housing people after war. China has also made huge strides in home ownership and elimination of poverty. Meanwhile, poverty and homelessness is increasing under capitalist countries, with them doing little to resolve their housing crises. Clearly they respected the need for shelter of their citizens.

          Keep in mind, that both these countries were devastated by world wars and civil wars. Their countries started off in serious crisis and had already had revolutions. If they didn’t respect the needs of their citizens, they would have ended up failed states overthrown by their desperate population or quickly collapsing to invasions.

          As for China, the government, despite censorship and political repression, still remains popular among its citizens, according to censorship-resistant US studies[1]. It’s largely avoided war, hugely reduced poverty, and has become a world leader in technology.

          There are many valid reasons to criticize these countries and it’s important we do that. But they clearly respected the basic needs of their citizens. There are few other countries which have done more to reduce poverty and homelessness than them.


          1. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/ ↩︎

          • pineapple@lemmy.ml
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            9 days ago

            Thank you for telling me that. I never really thought that communist nations have done good things in the past, I suppose I already knew that about china. But I did not know that about the USSR. There is no education about any good thing communist nations have done well, at least in the curriculum I grew up with. And communism is therefore ingrained in people essentially as a synonym for bad.

            • comfy@lemmy.ml
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              9 days ago

              Glad I could help :) My curriculum was similar, mine didn’t really talk about communist countries at all, and since a lot of our media like movies come from the US during the Cold War, when their government’s biggest enemies were the Soviet Union and the worker labor movement fighting for more worker rights, those movies often chose communist countries or communists as an easy choice for villains, so there’s a shallow but very widespread and normal idea that those countries are just simply evil, and ours is good. On top of that, most newspapers and television channels are owned by the richest people (mega-millionaires and billionaires, not just middle-class money), rich enough to own or invest in them, and funded by large companies advertising, and usually the people with that much money love how capitalism is working and are threatened by socialism or communism, so they have a self-interest in highlighting all the mistakes of those countries and all the wins of their own. I was amazed that a few years before, the US government was putting out posters like these during World War II, where Russian and Chinese soldiers are celebrated as allies alongside Canadians and English!

              On a related point, it’s also important to remember that many people instinctively compare these countries to rich, developed countries like Britain, the USA, and others, instead of comparing them to how they were before and after. I used to do this too, but countries are so different, with different histories, resources and neighbors that it’s usually unfair to simply compare them like that. This short 3 minute clip from a Michael Parenti lecture gives some good examples of this, focusing on their experience talking to Cubans.

  • Hlodwig@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    “Successes”?

    Most of them are 3rd world countries because of these movements…

    The few who succeeded only use “communism” as label but are aggressively balls deep into capitalism like China.

    • Dessalines@lemmy.mlOP
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      12 days ago

      Most of them are 3rd world countries because of these movements…

      There’s far too many of these to list, but lets take Vietnam and the DPRK as examples:

      • Between 1963 and 1973, The US dropped ~388,000 tons of napalm bombs in vietnam, compared to 32,357 tons used over three years in the Korean War, and 16,500 tons dropped on Japan in 1945. US also sprayed over 5 million acres with herbicide, in Operation Ranch Hand, in a 10 year campaign to deprive the vietnamese of food and vegetation cover.
      • US dropped large amounts of Agent Orange, an herbicide developed by monsanto and dow chemical for the department of defense, in vietnam. Its use, in particular the contaminant dioxin, causes multiple health problems, including cleft palate, mental disabilities, hernias, still births, poisoned breast milk, and extra fingers and toes, as well as destroying local species of plants and animals. The Red Cross of Vietnam estimates that up to 1 million people are disabled or have health problems due to Agent Orange.1, 2
      • US Troops killed between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians, including women, children, and infants, in South Vietnam on March, 1968, in the My Lai Massacre. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated. Soldiers set fire to huts, waiting for civilians to come out so they could shoot them. For 30 years, the three US servicemen who tried to halt the massacre and rescue the hiding civilians were shunned and denounced as traitors, even by congressmen. 1
      • In 1967, the CIA helped South Vietnamese agents identify and then murder alleged Viet Cong leaders operating in villages, in the Phoenix Program. By 1972, Phoenix operatives had executed between 26,000 and 41,000 suspected NLF operatives, informants and supporters.1

      Vietnam and the DPRK are absolutely success stories, for breaking their colonial chains, and defeating the most powerful and evil empire in history.

      Alse China is not a capitalist country, its a mixed economy with the planned socialist sector predominant, and the communist party standing above the political system.

      • Hlodwig@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        FYI i am currently working in Vietnam. Let me be clear: its a tourism country, corrupted and social programs are a joke compared to Europe… China is one of the worst countries in distribution of wealth. The communist country is a capitalist mafia ruling the country (and the party itself).

        But yeah, i do agree, US is a dickhead country.

        Communism is not, never was and will never be about socialism.

        Like seriously, guess which country (the state itself) is spending the most of its GDP in social help? Not even the first one, look at the top ten. Guess what? None of them are communist countries or even had communist at the head of the state during their history…

        • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
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          12 days ago

          Europe/US have social programs because they plundered other countries and continue to do so through financial mechanisms, which they built with plundered wealth, it’s idiotic to make this comparison.

          • IHave69XiBucks@lemmygrad.ml
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            12 days ago

            And its not even accurate. This person you replied to is taking a very narrow view of social programs to mean direct government handouts. All communist nations are still in development stages and most of their social spending goes towards building vital infrastructure, and helping communities become self sufficient and independent. In the Nordic countries a poor village may be given a cash handout to buy food for example, but in China a poor village will be provided with skills and resources to support themselves indefinitely. This is how China raises people out of poverty permanently while European social programs simply put a bandaid on the problem.

      • Hlodwig@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        I dont oppose colonialism. Its anti-colonialism that have created the worst blood thirsty and arrogant country in the world with its Uber capitalistic ideology: The US… Should have the “US” remained into UK colonies, we would have a better and more peaceful world right now. Same could be sayed about Israël and China… Hmmm… I see a pattern here… One common things between these… UK!

        • Dessalines@lemmy.mlOP
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          12 days ago

          The US was not an anti-colonial country; it was a british settler garrison that broke away in order to conquer the continent unhindered by British treaties with native peoples. Westward genocidal expansion and the theft of land were the goals.

          The actual anti-colonialists in the revolutionary war (the indigenous peoples), rightly sided with the British in that conflict. Unfortunately their loss resulted in the decimation and near-genocide of hundreds of tribes. Sun-yat-sen and Ho Chi Minh and other revolutionaries were rightly scared that their countries would suffer the same fate.

          • edel@lemmy.ml
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            12 days ago

            I was aware of the atrocities and agreement violations, but not that perspective that colonials wanted to get free from any agreements the British did with the natives… Is that a common knowledge in the academia, disputed or a minority one? It is not to discredit it at all the idea, just to genuinely know its status at university level?

            • Dessalines@lemmy.mlOP
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              12 days ago

              I believe they have noted it, but they consider it more minor and less important than Marxist historians do.

              Interestingly just like the british, the US itself went through various phases of disputes with its own settler frontier terrorists that it empowered, when it wanted to do the conquering in a more “orderly” manner (although the goal never changed). A lot of these are chronicled in Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz - an indigenous people’s history of the US.

              • edel@lemmy.ml
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                12 days ago

                Thanks for the info and all references you do in Lemmy. I don´t consider myself with a similar ideology as you, but indeed I am learning lots of info from your posts.

        • besbin@lemmy.ml
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          12 days ago

          I dont oppose colonialism

          Oh! So you are just a Western colonist who spread the patronizing arrogance propaganda your “leftist” westerner compatriots are slopping up. The wall is that way, go face it!

        • Kras Mazov@lemmygrad.ml
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          12 days ago

          What the actual fuck am I reading? I have never been exposed to such pungent liberal brain rot in my life as I have reading your comments in this thread.

        • Keeponstalin@lemmy.world
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          12 days ago

          I dont oppose colonialism. Its anti-colonialism that have created the worst blood thirsty and arrogant country

          That’s insane. The supremacy and dehumanization here is crazy

    • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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      12 days ago

      Most of them are 3rd world countries because of these movements…

      Lol. Name one country that went from first world to third world because of communist movements.

    • vfreire85@lemmy.ml
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      12 days ago

      Most of them are 3rd world countries because of these movements…

      with perhaps the exception of south korea and with some good will taiwan, not a single capitalist country reached the so called “developed” status coming from underdeveloped. all of those who did received a downpour of american taxpayer money.