‘Lemmygrad’s resident expert on fascism’ — GrainEater, 2024
‘The political desperadoes and ignoramuses, who say they would “Rather be Dead than Red”, should be told that no one will stop them from committing suicide, but they have no right to provoke a third world war.’ — Morris Kominsky, 1970
In January 1923, the young journalist Ernest Hemingway covered the Lausanne Conference for the Toronto Daily Star. His first encounter with Mussolini left him distinctly unimpressed. Ushered into a room along with other journalists, Hemingway found the Premier so deeply absorbed in a book that he did not bother to look up. Curious, Hemingway “tiptoed over behind him to see what the book was he was reading with such avid interest. It was a French–English dictionary—held upside down.”¹
https://www.cbr.com/disney-animators-why-refused-work-tron
A.I.-generated imagery is likely going to affect traditional art in the same way that knitting machines affected hand knitting.
I’m disappointed that you are offering a low-quality source like the Financial Times for these serious accusations, and the shoddy reporting is apparent in the article itself:
In many areas, officials have told current and retired civil servants that their benefits will be taken away if they worship more than a few times per year, according to Hui human rights campaigner Ma Ju.
Which officals? Which current and retired civil servants? And why is the only source for this ‘a US-based campaigner for Chinese Muslim rights’? The lack of corroboration should be worrying. Relying on pseudonymous sources is usually not good reporting, either, as they have as many credentials as a common rumourer.
The conclusion is also confusing:
Two years later, these remarks were formalised into the government’s “Five-Year Plan on the Sinicisation of Islam”, which set out to standardise Chinese style in everything from Islamic attire to ceremonies and architecture, and called for the “establishment of an Islamic theology with Chinese characteristics”.
Hui Muslims like Mohammed still fear a possible future without Islam in China.
So, wait, Beijing wants to destroy Islam by… reforming it? I guess that that could be possible in some way, but the article does not explain how.
That being said, I don’t want to dismiss every claim in this article at face value, like restricting religion to adults (which, honestly, might be for the best), but if I believed that Beijing was trying to eradicate Islam then I would be dissatisfied with this article’s quality.
Although this does make me wonder if there are Chinese Muslims consenting to or even ordering these reformations. Perhaps @yogthos@lemmy.ml or @davel@lemmy.ml could inform me on this if they would be so gracious.
I know… but the grumpy leftcom in me still prefers the strict criteria.
Paradoxically, I think that most ultraleftists would roll their eyes at me anyway for having a mostly positive view of the People’s Rep. of China.
These are some of the reasons why I would argue that it is wrong to place the People’s Rep. of China in the category of a generic capitalist country. I actually consider the Chinese economy to be presocialist, but the evidence that I have seen suggests that capital, the law of value, and generalised commodity production are all steadily shrinking in terms of prominence and importance, which is the opposite of what we would expect to find under a typical capitalist régime (id est a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie).
but whyyyyyyy do you trust Chinese sources??? huh???
Adivina quem teve a ideia de colonizar Palestina.
What are you talking about? Every single information source in the United States is always constantly talking about how great the PRC is, whether it’s in schools, on television, on websites (especially Reddit), on the radio, from think tanks, and so on. A perspective like ‘China also invests in genocide and mass detention, torture, surveillance and rape’ should blow your mind away: nobody has ever said that before! How can you read that and remain unpersuaded‽
Oh. That is a good point. You really showed us how wrong we were. I wish that I were as smart as you.
Have you asked any physicians to vouch for you?
I miss the days when antisemitism was accusing Jews of being avaricious, dishonest conspirators responsible for nearly every bad thing that happens. Now it’s all boring stuff like saying ‘from the river to the sea’, ‘ceasefire now’, and ‘maybe sending children to a military detention center isn’t a good idea’.
In 1939, the legal expert, Ernst Rudolf Huber, declared: ‘Asking people to vote is intended to strengthen the Führer’s position vis-à-vis the outside world and to be a clear demonstration of national unity. However, it is the Führer who continues to incorporate the true will of the nation.’ Hitler was not, therefore, bound by the results of the votes.
[…]
The [German Fascists] kept speaking of ‘true democracy’, ‘improved democracy’ (Goebbels), ‘better’ and ‘simpler democracy’ (Hitler), or of ‘genuine democracy’. During the 1934 plebiscite, the Interior Minister, Wilhelm Frick, asked: ‘Where in the world is there a country that is ruled so democratically as Germany?’ Hitler liked boasting, above all in the presence of foreigners, of the ‘40 million Germans’, who stood ‘united behind him’; he was not prepared ‘to take any action without having reassured himself of the people’s trust’.
In August 1934 he told foreign correspondents: ‘Every year I take the opportunity to submit my authority to the approval of the German people. […] We barbaric Germans are better democrats than other nations.’ The official justification for the ‘Plebiscite Law’ of 14 July 1933, which was designed to facilitate the ‘consultation of the people’, stated that this was simply a procedure based ‘on old Teutonic legal forms’.
(Source.)
I think that we all hand out permanent bans too easily. It makes sense for obvious ragebait accounts and spambots, but for users who are socially awkward or in need of reeducation, a permanent ban is just too long. That is a measure much better suited for lost causes. I can ask @Alaskaball@hexbear.net to consider reducing your ban (maybe to a week or something), but I can’t promise anything.
I agree that something like the Shoah is extremely unlikely to befall Jewish people again, and seeing so many false alarms over antisemitism would make anybody feel cynical. I take antisemitism seriously and even I have to say that they’re wearing down my morale. It’s like attending a hotline but receiving dozens of calls everyday from little kids over trivial problems.
That being said, some Jews (especially the Charedim) face harassment from individuals, and occasionally the violence becomes lethal. Nearly seven years ago a neofascist stabbed Blaze Bernstein to death, and of course there was the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting later that same year. I know that those aren’t the most recent examples, but it is plausible that the ordinary incidents usually go unreported because the victims don’t expect the authorities to do anything.
Personally, though, I think that the focus on antisemitism is too narrow. Jewish people have plenty of problems, and some will tell you that antisemitism is not even in the top five. They have varying responses depending on where they live: pollution, inaccessible healthcare, want of transportation, want of worker’s rights, or even settler-colonialism (it affects one Puerto Rican Jew whom I know), to name only a few examples. Treating antisemitism as Jews’ only problem is inaccurate and uncreative.
Freedom for White Cishet Capitalist Men House
Yeah, when you make easily falsifiable claims like ‘memorials or to draw attention to the deeds, not to honor it’, it is pretty clear that you did not read a damn thing that I linked to you, proving that you don’t care about Fascism after all. Thanks for the confirmation.
Feel free to keep goofing around here but I’m done with you.
Do you not even understand how time works?
Most anticommunists don’t. There were anticommunists who thought that the G.P.U. still existed after 1934.
I am giving you a very simple and very easy test so that you can demonstrate to everybody your reading comprehension and your ability to engage in conversation. You are neither required to divulge any personally identifiable information nor depart with any possessions. Now I am going to ask you for the third and final time: tell me what I wrote at the bottom of this comment.
Máo was particularly annoyed by the Eurasian Tree Sparrow (Passer montanus, 树麻雀) part of the diet of which was grain. Chinese scientists had calculated that each sparrow consumed 4.5kg of grain each year — and that for every million sparrows killed, there would be food for 60,000 people. Armed with these statistics, Máo launched the Great Sparrow Campaign to address the problem.
[…]
The campaign against the sparrows was finally terminated in late 1959 when the Academy of Sciences leaders highlighted the findings of scientists such as Zhu Xi and Zheng Zuoxin. Zhu and Zheng had autopsied the digestive systems of sparrows and found that three-quarters of the contents were harmful insects and only one-quarter was human food. This showed that sparrows were beneficial for humans.
On this advice from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Máo declared a complete halt to the Great Sparrow Campaign, replacing sparrows with “bed bugs” in the “Four Pests” campaign. Suddenly sparrows were not just protected but the domestic population was supplemented by imports of sparrows from [Soviet] Russia!
Eventually, after several years of poor crop yields, the situation began to improve. The number of people who starved in the 1958–1961 famine is disputed — and it’s impossible to say how much of the disaster was caused by the extermination of sparrows — but there can be no doubt that this episode is a stark lesson about the unintended consequences of human interference into natural ecosystems.
(Source.)
The redesigned mosques remind me of the Kaifeng synagogue, which is quite unlike any synagogue that I have ever seen. If you told me that it was a Confucian or Taoist monastery, I would have believed you.