This could obviously be seen as a circle jerk post, but I’m just ranting a bit, need to get this annoyance off my chest after watching a crap video (The latest innuendo studios video, if you are curious, but that video isn’t important specifically here).
Liberals (The American Democrat kind) spend a lot of time talking about how the alt-right will throw a piece of junk science in your face in order to support their racist conclusions or false medical conspiracy theories. This is all fine and dandy because the alt-right are looking for anything that back a racist or sexist or anti-trans conclusion, even when the studies conclusion doesn’t really support that. I usually agree with the “American democratic liberals” in these cases.
But most social/political “studies” are pretty much junk, “we surveyed 100 young people in one city and now we think we know what the whole of American youth think”… Right… sure you do.
Plus history is one of the most contentious topics in all of… Well history ironically. You can’t just point to the winners and say “See, we won the war, so we’re definitely right about the history of the country we destroyed”… Buuuut…
Then they turn around and throw a junk survey or a junk “study” that has some anti-communist rhetoric, and you explain why it is junk and how it’s factually incorrect, they double down… Just like the alt-right does… Because they will believe anything that supports their anti-communist conclusions… Why does that sound familiar?
I’ve run through this so many times before, between anti-China “studies” and anti-Soviet rhetoric. They’re so willing to just blindly accept anything that the USA says, even stuff said during the Red Scare, for which even most of them will even admit was a time of deep propaganda. Exposing CIA declassified documents sometimes works, but often doesn’t anyway. How many times I’ve heard about “holodomor” or “Stalin killed more people than Hitler”. It’s just so aggravating.
End rant; have a good day
By the way, if you made it this far, I really appreciate this community because on the whole, people are willing to listen and talk to people so long as we are approached in good faith. We tend not to just spit on someone for asking an honest question (But it is totally funny to spit on someone who is clearly just an anti-commie fascist or something).
Sorry if it’s a bit off-topic, but your frustration feels relevant to my current thing.
These days I’ve basically made a hobby out of tracking down sources with regards to what I call the “sinophobia machine”, it’s a big ecosystem from yes the usuals at the top from CIA cutouts like RFA and NED which is now directly funded by US Congress, to human rights groups, think tanks, NGOs and academics alike who weigh in with some kind of veneer of expertise. This ecosystem includes so many splinter orgs like “x government in exile” and even sometimes makes connections with splinter orgs from the falungong cult media empire. Oh, and all the Chinese dissidents and liberals who are genuinely convinced of western democracy, as well as white guys in yellowface “pseudonyms,” who get passed around in western news media as serious (implied independent) activists – the very same news outlets that denigrate domestic BIPOC activists ranging from landback to BLM. Western mainstream media loves to pull sources from all of these kinds of groups, soaps it all up and spins and spins anti-China yarns to their unquestioning masses of devoted audiences, who then repeat and croak up their own anti-China, uh, memes? like pooh bear. Even when their audiences question the veracity and trustworthiness of their media and calls it “fake news”, the sinophobic stories are rarely, if ever, questioned. **
Sometimes I have to pinch myself cuz it’s so widespread, there’s so much going on and not a lot of people are discussing or even seem to be aware of how deep those roots are buried… yeah I feel like conspiracy theorist, but I literally have all the threads lining up. The other day I was reviewing a list (thanks wikipedia, you are a den of imperial core simps but man there’s so many crumb trails goddamn) of the more prominent Chinese dissident student protesters from the June fourth incident who were ahem evacuated by CIA/MI6+triad+whoever involvement in Operation Yellowbird and I stumbled onto a guy who founded an Asian American organization that had participation in leading/organizing parts of the #stopaapihate movement. I know they’re not like directly controlled in a straight line to some grand puppet master, not even close because that would be absurd, but this stuff is so interconnected I’m starting to feel like I’m losing it. I’m glad the RedNote/小红书 thing is happening right now, but I doubt it will lead to anything like a consciousness of what I’ve described above.
** I do also want to point out that in large part I view asian americans (general, not every individual), which I am one of, as part and participants of this occurring, or at least allowing sinophobia to go rampant, in the present day. In Houston area back in 2014, a Chinese immigrant family was found all shot dead in their home. There were rumors in the diaspora community that the dad was either an official or industry head that escaped the anti-corruption sweep in the mainland (thank you Xi) and a lot of people including my parents speculated that it was an extrajudicial hit saying that the murders were really clean and nobody found their bodies in their house for a long time. And for a long time no leads turned up so the rumors lingered. Well, 8 years later in 2022 the police found their man with both DNA evidence and a motive (coworker), not CPC hitmen. Contrast with this: in 1994 Connie Chung spread a sinophobic trope on CBS, and I quote: “Every day, planeloads of Chinese citizens arrive legally in the United States, ordinary people, but to the Chinese Government, some of them may be future spies, who a few years down the road will be activated to steal America’s military and technological secrets, whether they want to or not.” Various Asian American groups actually protested this for four months and they eventually got CBS to air an apology and correction. Can you imagine that today?
Don’t feel bad about feeling like you’re going down a conspiracy theory rabbit hole. Obviously be conscious of that and be careful, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of anti-China sentiment is a conspiracy theory in the first place.
I am a white guy, not an Asian American, but I’m glad that Asian Americans like you have class consciousness and understand what this country is truly about with regards to its propaganda. Obviously, most people who have immigrated here from communist countries have done so because they are capitalist friendly. I tried explaining this to a friend of mine when we were talking about the USSR. He said, oh, all the people here say how bad the USSR is. And I said, of course they do. They fled the USSR. They obviously don’t agree with its practices. The vast majority of people that stayed behind actually have positive feelings about the USSR In retrospect.
To be fair, I probably pushed him a little hard when I said that a lot of people that fled were the slave owners and horrible people, and he felt that I was implying that the descendants of those people are all horrible people too, which I didn’t mean to say. But that’s another off-topic rant.
One of the reasons that I fell in a commie-rapid hole is because I started actually looking at the evidence, supposed evidence rather, that Americans and NGOs and think tanks were pushing about their anti-China agenda. As someone who prides myself on being science-based and evidence-based, and when I was a liberal, someone who cared a lot about being correct in terms of scientific thinking, I found these “studies” terrible. Often refuting the claims that are in the title of the study itself or even if the title didn’t make that claim it was the news agency that did. Basically everything that these liberals are saying that the alt-right do to push their lies is exactly what the liberals do and they just eat it the fuck up because CNN/BBC said it instead of Fox News.
Very frustrating indeed.
It’s funny you mentioned holodomor since the video uses that as an example in the visuals.
Yeah… I was going to post the video to a lib-friendly instance, but I backed out because it mentions Holodomor, implying it was a genocide. Because “both sides.” Common compatible left L.
The Alt-Right Playbook x PhilosophyTube: Doublewrong
This is why I’m careful to watch BreadTube videos all the way through before posting them. Anti-communism is often buried in there somewhere.
The worst part is that most of the rest of the video had really good arguments (especially the “engage with the underlying argument, not their distractive one”). It was really discouraging to see that and just really ruined the vibe.
As I mentioned in my other reply, that was actually what signaled me to come here and make this post because it was such a darn good video! And then they had to just go and ruin it by being like “nope sometimes we put our heads in the ground too”, and like… Ugh… damn it this is why I’m not a liberal anymore.
Yeah, I know that feeling. The only reason I hatewatch liberals is to see what their current worldview talking points are, so I can see where they’re right and where they’re ignoring the inherent violence that is unquestioned in the system (insert Adam Johnson market forces rant here).
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
That’s actually literally what reminded me of it. And then my head went down this entire spiraling track and I was like, I gotta write this down.