Especially when it’s easy and true to say “corporate welfare” or “corporate handouts”.
Welfare is good too though but has the same problem of being a dirty word because of Reagan’s “welfare queens”
I guess handouts would be a decent one because it implies it being undeserved. Or maybe just corporate rigging/cheating. The SEC exists so clearly there’s some rules of capitalism that exist at least for the rest of us.
Yes, you are right, but still an easy formular. Alternative formulation could be socialism for the poor, consequences for the companies.
We need people to actually understand what socialism is (I find that it’s already plenty easy to explain as just economic democracy), and we definitely shouldn’t be associating it with bad things.
we definitely shouldn’t be associating it with bad things.
Sure we should tell what socialism is - and communism for that matter, which is precisely the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence - but we can be aware of context and that not at any time the most precise academic Marxist definition is needed, but in communicative processes often that which connects to the other or the audience.
I also believe that action and collective action and the theory circles within those movements are what gives people words for what they experience in the workforce. There is the place in my opinion - in those different social relations - to find clarity that you don’t find or strive for in most online posts or arguments. As nothing radicalizes as much as work and collective action which creates an actor in a conflict that is powerful.
“it can’t be a genocide because the population is increasing” is imo a weak argument because genocide doesn’t require killing and I think the argument from no refugees is orders of magnitude stronger
the argument from no refugees is orders of magnitude stronger
100%, I’m pretty sure it’s actually literally impossible to have a genocide with no refugees.
What is the no refugees point? Just that there aren’t any Muslims fleeing China? Tia
Genocides usually cause refugee crises, and there hasn’t been one from Xinjiang. What do you mean by “Tia”?
On this note, people argue that there are many Muslim countries that have the diplomatic position that there is not issue with PRC treatment of Uyghur people. I think that this is a reasonable argument against “genocide”, however I don’t see this as a strong argument that “there are no human rights abuses happening here, nothing to see at all”.
I agree that implying no mass death = no genocide is wrong, but it’s important to note that various sinophobic narratives around the treatment of Uyghurs (which I assume you’re referencing) are baiting in that direction already, pointing to birth rates and contraceptives as evidence of genocidal policies.
This post was a reply I accidentally made to the wrong comment, and several people seem to have upbeared it after I deleted it lmao.
deleted by creator is apparently a popular take.
when they bring up the gazillion death by communism ,… they mostly argue the Number not the Narrative…
better would be " its wierd how famineis the communist fault , but never the Capitalists that blockade them "
Honestly though…isn’t that the conversation you want to have? I know its an absolutely exhausting one to deal with but that really does cut to the heart of everything and especially now in our current era in a way I think people can kinda see almost day to day.
“Capitalism is an economic system, but communism is also a political system.”
“If capitalism has nothing to do with our political system then why is everyone so concerned with campaign finance in elections? Why are people so concerned with corporate bailouts?”
Even better, if capitalism is not political then how come capitalist governments keep interfering with and invading/couping communist countries?
Every argument about the uyghurs.
“Adrian ZoopZoop bad”
Ad hominem, and not persuasive. Of course you don’t like your political opponents, why would anyone ever be convinced by you criticizing him for his weird evangelism when you say little about his actual academic work.
“Nitpicking over definitions of genocide”
Obviously dumb.
Just read the fucking papers. They’re not complicated, find the evidence backing up the claims they’re making and figure out how it poorly supports the claims made. Same thing with the organ harvesting stuff. When you actually read the original stuff you can readily take apart the arguments being used there.
I saw someone link an article they claimed was about Chinese troll farms to support a claim about Reddit being astroturfed. One of you fuckers probably just called him a CIA asset as if that’s not the exact same stupid argument but this time without a supporting source. All you had to do was read the abstract of it to learn that the actual conclusions of the paper were that there weren’t any actual “farms”, just people posting after work to Chinese social media, not reddit or any western social media. It was literally the easiest dunk in the world but they couldn’t be bothered to read anything that isn’t 100+ Year old pamphlets. I used to be much more critical of China, but I shifted on it by reading the sources supporting the critical claims and finding them worthless. Meanwhile most tankie China posts are just masturbatory bad faith in-group circlejerks. The western propaganda is not hard to dismantle if you’d just fucking try. But no, just use fallacious arguments for the 1,000,000th time and enjoy trolling the libs.
Ad hominem, and not persuasive.
Libs love ad hominem and are often persuaded by it. This is why negative campaigning can work, for example. Adrian Zenz is very useful for making them question theiredia sources.
“Nitpicking over definitions of genocide”
This is usually a topic introduced by the lib. Sometimes they really want to talk about cultural genocide. Sometimes they’re making claims of genocide and you need to remind them of the miraculous transformation of the cultural genocide claim into a straight-up genocide claim and that this happened through Mike Pompeo and a right wing foreign policy think tank - how loosey-goosey this is and that, again, the media has happily played along and unquestioningly repeated both narratives.
I’ve de-sinophobified 6+ people irl with these counternarratives and I’m not exactly canvassing on them, just talking to people in lib social circles.
Not just libs. Someone in here argued with me last month or earlier this month that something happened in Uyghur and CCP is covering it. It was on the post about some radlib quote tweeting “we did it” to the AP article about Uyghur. It ended with them saying that “neither you nor I know Chinese or have been there but something did happened”. Idk how you can convince yourself to find “truth” in a right wing propaganda while posting on a leftist website.
Everyone loves ad hominem, it’s fucking fun to use. Doesn’t make it a valid argument.
These argument approaches sometimes work, for sure. But if the public consensus is anything to go by, there’s limited fucking reach for them. Sure they’ll work socially, but no institution is going to amplify those messages, and it fails whenever you encounter someone who knows to be rightly skeptical of ad hominem arguments.
Everyone loves ad hominem, it’s fucking fun to use. Doesn’t make it a valid argument.
Define validity. Topics like journalism fundamentally depend on trust, so attacking sources is 100% valid. The only source for many claims is going to be dubious and there will often be no other context to invoke because it’s just what some prick in a think tank pulled out of their ass. The only option is to point at the source as being ridiculous and untrustworthy.
These argument approaches sometimes work, for sure. But if the public consensus is anything to go by, there’s limited fucking reach for them.
It definitely works better than sticking to some decontextualized platonic ideal of what arguments follow, which is my overly detailed guess at the alternative you’re thinking of. The problem with ad hominem is that it’s an entry under “fallacies” in Wikipedia, yes?
Sure they’ll work socially, but no institution is going to amplify those messages,
This is a problem for anything outside of the current ruling class’s status quo, though it’s not a 100% effective filter. The system will try to co-opt or villify grassroots narratives and can end up amplifying messages that way, with varying levels of success at deranging the ideas in question.
and it fails whenever you encounter someone who knows to be rightly skeptical of ad hominem arguments.
I’ve never seen it fail. Even the people who think they care about ad hominem use it constantly because authority is (1) a necessary aspect of non-deductive logic and (2) just plain part of how we rationalize our current positions. That person will discount something if Trump says it if they think Trump is a joke. That person will discount anything said by AOC if they think she’s an agent of Satan. That person will discount something said by a scientist that believes the earth is round - because they’re a flat-earther and such a person must be part of a cabal.
It’s easy to deal with: you just start asking them how they know anything about the topic that doesn’t come from an untrustworthy source and whether they just believe claims from charlatans by default or increase their standard of evidence for incompetents and liars.
This isn’t entirely fair to the people pushing back, though I agree sometimes people choose the wrong arguments. There are better arguments that are commonly used, however: see explanations of why Zenz’s work is lacking, “there is no refugee crisis”, and “Muslim-majority countries do not support America in this” for three.
Also, the Zenz thing actually does convince people. The guy is fucking crazy, demonstrating that does make people more hesitant to trust his “research”.
See I don’t find any of those arguments persuasive, and if someone is genuinely looking for rigorous critique they shouldn’t either.
The existence or non-existence of a refugee crisis is probably the strongest argument, but is easily challenged. “China’s control is just that powerful”, “The genocide is through authoritarian control and only limited state violence. So refugees aren’t necessarily present.”
As for the Muslim countries claim, there’s a lot of weird assumptions there. Primarily that state actors would give a shit about human rights abuses when it goes against their national interests to complain.
And finally, Zenz is a creep. Yeah some folks will find this persuasive, but it’s still a bad argument. A fallacy is a fallacy, if you’re talking to someone who cares about the weight of evidence they (and I) won’t give a shit about who he is unless you can demonstrate how his others beliefs affect how he interprets his research.
What weight of evidence? The studies use flawed methodology, the people involved have shown their bad faith. You can’t prove a negative, all you can do is discredit the evidence. People are always going to have a rejoinder which amounts to “I just know in my heart that China is evil”.
unless you can demonstrate how his others beliefs affect how he interprets his research.
He believes god sent him on a quest to destroy China, I’m pretty sure it affects how he interprets his research. He also works for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, known CIA cutout IIRC.
Ad hominem, and not persuasive.
Just because it’s an ad hominem attack doesn’t mean it’s a fallacy. If people were saying “Zenz has never bowled a 300 in his life, and you trust him about China??” then it would be, but Zenz’s history is relevant to describe his motivations, especially given that he is often the sole source of the accusations.
The difficulty with anything around the Uyghurs is that leftists are tasked with proving a negative; we can point to the lack of direct evidence (no bodies or refugees, even), but libs just use this as evidence of China’s oppression (parenti_quote.jpg). I think a better strategy than just “read the fucking papers” is to relate this to the WMDs in Iraq. There, we had a complicit media reporting on completely fabricated information about one of America’s enemies - it even includes a Pulitzer-winning expose where reporters annotate a bunch of blurry satellite images as evidence.
Yes it’s an ad hominem. You’re saying he’s an untrustworthy source without examining any of his arguments, that the definition of ad hominem. And it’s lazy.
Your example is a non sequitur, not ad hominem.
You don’t have to prove a negative, just demonstrate that the evidence for the affirmative is insufficient. But that means reading so it’s hard I guess.
I don’t think it’s ad hominem to point out that a source is flawed, Adrian Zenz himself says he’s on a holy crusade against China and is the primary source of many Ughyur related claims. Yes it’s not going to convince anyone who already believes his shit surely, but it’s the same way I’d go “It’s fucking Tucker Carlson who cares what he thinks about the Covid vaccines, he’s a known liar” for that topic.
Did you address the content of the argument, or did you say the source is untrustworthy? The latter is ad hominem and it’s fallacious. Talk about why he’s wrong. People can be circumstantially correct even if they’re creeps. These arguments are only persuasive to people who either don’t know the weaknesses of them or are already on your team. Besides, there are other sources on China besides Zenz. If all you know how to do is tell me Zenz is bad you’re going to fall on your face in every other scenario. Which is exactly what is see happen in the wild.
The difference to me is that from a known liar, expecting a higher burden of proof is the only reasonable outcome. Of course, to dismiss all evidence would be wrong but enacting higher standards is only fair.
An anti vaxxer might give good medical advice about a boil that a doctor gave suboptimal advice for, sure that scenario can happen, but absent anything else it’s completely rational to disregard the anti vaxxers advice and follow the doctors instead. The amount of evidence that the anti vaxxer would have to supply is much more intensive than the amount the doctor has to bring before I would flip to the anti vaxxers boil advice.
Just read the fucking papers. They’re not complicated,
They are intentionally complicated. I’ve read dozens of articles on the subject that just cyclically reference eachother with zero primary sources
find the evidence backing up the claims they’re making and figure out how it poorly supports the claims made
There often times is no evidence or its entirely in Chinese. You tell a lib that their article has no evidence and they completely ignore you. That’s all they ever do.
This subject in particularly is annoying as fuck. The only big repositories debunking this stuff are ML subs and grayzone articles and a lib will immediately discount those two sources. Best way to counter Zenz shit is to point out he’s a bigoted zealot to tarnish his word. Libs eyes gloss otherwise.
This is all ignoring the fact that Zenz is paid to write this bullshit and I am paid to do 40hrs a week of physical labor. I do not have time to go through every Zenz article and write up counter points with sources. Memes are a much better value proposition.
A common pitfall I’ve seen is the tendency to describe some utopian future when people start asking what communism means. Like the whole moneyless, classless society where no one really knows the specifics of how that would operate. You get curious people asking about how that’s possible and rather than just directly say political goals are inexorably linked to capital, states, and the division of labor, they get into fantasy talking about hypothetical social organizations or completely automated factories or any number of things that simply do not exist currently. Not only is it unconvincing, but I really think it confuses the hell out of the average person when they have to square this concept of hypothetical classless society with currently existing communist projects and they have to do it without a good basis in theory or historical understanding.
Also yes, I do believe a moneyless, classless, stateless future is possible and inevitable but hell if I know how we get there from here other than the eventually victory of socialist countries worldwide and continual advocacy for my own immediate class interests.
Counterpoint: right libertarians have somehow convinced a lot of people that a stateless capitalist society can exist while money and private property (as we understand it today) are still a thing, so clearly people aren’t all that critical of utopian shit.
Actual historical materialism: any post-capitalist society will produce its own contradictions and future comrades will need to find a way to square that circle. But that’s not an argument you have with a clueless lib.
Counterpoint: right libertarians have somehow convinced a lot of people that a stateless capitalist society can exist while money and private property (as we understand it today) are still a thing, so clearly people aren’t all that critical of utopian shit.
Right libertarians usually just argue for a “small state”, but you’re right that people often aren’t that skeptical. Unfortunately, usually it’s “good thing = utopia”, so they’re still unlikely to be convinced by talk of far-off communist society.
The far off hypothetical society stuff is so unconvincing that I regularly see folks on our side get blindsided when liberals start poking holes in it. Granted, liberals critique it from the framework of “you can’t possibly fix every single problem so we shouldn’t even try” but our side falls into the trap and tries to go after “actually we can fix every problem.” It’s such a misstep we should avoid and it should be obvious we can’t promise utopia, we can offer concrete direct political goals right now. Probably mixed in with optimistic hopeful rhetoric too.
Right libertarians don’t occupy a very stable political niche in America and I don’t think the average person gives them much credence or had even heard of them. I’d wager they also come across as utopian cranks to most people, perhaps less than us because “communist” carries more connotations.
I think you’re right about this one. There is a time and place for imagining a far away utopian future but the left should never lose sight of the concrete struggles workers face and we should always be able to give good believable answers to what we would do to improve conditions for the working class here and now. Organising mutual aid and solidarity networks in the community does more to convince people you are on the side of the workers than dreaming of a perfect world 100 years in the future.
Mutual aid and direct organization strategies are in fact the way to get our feet in the door. The different meanings of the word “communist” must sound like nerd pedant shit on the outside. Like “actually there’s a difference between a communist country building socialism and a stateless communist society” might as well be verbal quaaludes to the average person. Absolute snore and it makes us sound nuts.
a passage i like, from anarchy by malatesta:
spoiler
That’s all very well, some say, and anarchy may be a perfect form of human society, but we don’t want to take a leap in the dark. Tell us therefore in detail how your society will be organised. And there follows a whole series of questions, which are very interesting if we were involved in studying the problems that will impose themselves on the liberated society, but which are useless, or absurd, even ridiculous, if we are expected to provide definitive solutions. What methods will be used to teach children? How will production be organised? Will there still be large cities, or will the population be evenly distributed over the whole surface of the earth? And supposing all the inhabitants of Siberia should want to spend the winter in Nice? And if everyone were to want to eat partridge and drink wine from the Chianti district? And who will do a miner’s job or be a seaman? And who will empty the privies? And will sick people be treated at home or in hospital? And who will establish the railway timetable? And what will be done if an engine-driver has a stomach-ache while the train is moving? … And so on to the point of assuming that we have all the knowledge and experience of the unknown future, and that in the name of anarchy, we should prescribe for future generations at what time they must go to bed, and on what days they must pare their corns.
If indeed our readers expect a reply from us to these questions, or at least to those which are really serious and important, which is more than our personal opinion at this particular moment, it means that we have failed in our attempt to explain to them what anarchism is about.
We are no more prophets than anyone else; and if we claimed to be able to give an official solution to all the problems that will arise in the course of the daily life of a future society, then what we meant by the abolition of government would be curious to say the least. For we would be declaring ourselves the government and would be prescribing, as do the religious legislators, a universal code for present and future generations. It is just as well that not having the stake or prisons with which to impose our bible, mankind would be free to laugh at us and at our pretensions with impunity!
We are very concerned with all the problems of social life, both in the interest of science, and because we reckon to see anarchy realised and to take part as best we can in the organisation of the new society. Therefore we do have our solutions which, depending on the circumstances, appear to us either definitive or transitory — and but for space considerations we would say something on this here. But the fact that because today, with the evidence we have, we think in a certain way on a given problem does not mean that this is how it must be dealt with in the future. Who can foresee the activities which will grow when mankind is freed from poverty and oppression, when there will no longer be either slaves or masters, and when the struggle between peoples, and the hatred and bitterness that are engendered as a result, will no longer be an essential part of existence? Who can predict the progress in science and in the means of production, of communication and so on?
What is important is that a society should be brought into being in which the exploitation and domination of man by man is not possible; in which everybody has free access to the means of life, of development and of work, and that all can participate, as they wish and know how, in the organisation of social life. In such a society obviously all will be done to best satisfy the needs of everybody within the framework of existing knowledge and conditions; and all will change for the better with the growth of knowledge and the means.
I’ve never read this person but I really should. Seems like what I’ve observed isn’t a new thing.
I usually just offer up Star Trek as an example of a communist society. Seems to work most of the time.
