Full disclosure, I live in Africa and don’t have a dog in this fight. I like proper discourse and it’s alright if I and another person disagree on something, what is important is that we communicate and understand where the other is coming from. The ultimate goal is the satiation of needless and avoidable suffering for all minds.
I’ve only been on Lemmy for a few days but across any sub I’ve noticed any criticism of China or the CCP is met with immediate downvotes and anything remotely positive of the US or really any western country whatsoever meets a similar fate.
Anything pro-African is mostly neutral but in essence ignored, no upvotes, no downvotes, no comments.
Has anyone else noticed this? Am I completely off base here? And is there anything else here that seemingly gets downvoted automatically. It would be sad to see the fediverse and Lemmy be nothing more than just another echo chamber on the web.
Finally, I am posting this assuming it will also be downvoted to hell based on the title alone and that itself will be some monochrome of truth of the situation here.
On one hand, Lemmy used to be a safe-space for communists (including those that wish for the USSR back) before Redditors moved in. The developers of Lemmy themselves are politically pro-China and anti-USA.
On the other hand, the USA have stopped being the shining beacon of freedom and democracy they used to be seen as by many people in the west. So anti-USA posts will get lots of upvotes even from people in the west or the USA itself.
And thirdly, the western countries’ refusal to speak out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Jordan and Lebanon has turned most of lemmy against their governments.
China just looks less bad in comparison than it used to be.
When western governments don’t give a fuck about human rights anymore, they have no standing to criticize China over it. And when western media refuse to even address an ongoing genocide carried out with western weapons and money, trust in them is lost and people start to doubt whether the stories they tell about the evil adversary China are true after all.
So it’s a mix of Lemmy’s original board culture, and a major shift in public perception in general.
P.S.: I’d love to read more news and stories from African countries on Lemmy!
In my opinion, of the two shitty governments in question, I believe China actually has the well-being of its citizens more in mind than do the oligarchs controlling the USA. China’s quality of life for its people has been rising by leaps and bounds in the past fifty years. Meanwhile over here the best people who aren’t in the 1% can hope for is stagnation, while for the majority things are just getting continually worse.
Yes, that was always the Chinese government’s deal with its citizens: We make your life better, as long as you don’t rebel, resist or demand “freedom”.
And the western model was “we give you personal freedom, consumer goods and some participation in government, so you don’t demand an actual redistribution of wealth and power”.
But in many western countries, especially in the US, the rich and powerful have stopped honoring their part of the bargain, while the Chinese government is holding up their end.
You have a long way to leap when you start out so far behind.
Don’t forget the main reason western countries moved all their manufacturing there is because of their lack of labour rights.
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no one cares because they’re fucking brown. That’s the honest truth. Sad to say.
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A lot of tankies will tell you that the Uyghur genocide isnt even happening and isnt real.
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Turns out people aren’t going to be that moved by a decade of genocide accusations that still haven’t been able to produce any credible evidence, especially when they’re currently seeing an actual genocide being live streamed in front of their eyes
Are we talking about recent developments here? Because, honestly, I don’t think they’ve been a beacon in a looong time for those of us outside the US.
Yeah a lot of people in the USA thought we’d still had a chance to come back after 9/11, even if the before-times where also a farce.
2016 the mask came off at home and 2024 they’re not even trying to hide anymore
You’re lumping in a whole lot of countries with America and England there.
Almost like that’s the whole point of the anti “West” thing.
This is the official stance of the EU on the matter:
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-position-situation-middle-east/
The word genocide doesn’t appear anywhere in the document.
Yeah they’re not going to use the word genocide without a pretty strict set of criteria being met by an international court. They don’t use that word on non-western countries either.
But it is nice to see they repeatedly condemn Israel’s actions on that page, which you didn’t quote.
I agree. I don’t see things overly pro China, but me being from the US, the US deservedly gets shit on. The rich and the crazy have been allowed to completely ruin it. Then, so many countries sucking the Israeli cock is just insane to me. Seems most countries are ran by terrible people. China included.
I would expand this idea further… since all governments occasionally violate human rights, they shouldn’t be very much in the business of calling out human rights violations by other governments. That should mainly be the role of citizens or private organizations, not governments.
China looks less bad in comparison because it hasn’t dropped a bomb in a conflict since 1989. It hasn’t fired on a boat since 1988. The US criminal justice system manages 10x more people than the Chinese criminal justice system with more than double the recidivism of China. China doesn’t engage in structural adjustment programs like the IMF does and they forgive billions in loans unlike the West. There are grandparents alive today who were subsistence farming when they were 5 and are now experiencing consumer robotics and self-driving cars. China looks good because of reality, not just because the US is recently doing bad things.
So can non-Chinese reporters and journalists come in and check and make sure that reality is true?