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sat through unbelievable amounts of lib talking points in my Chinese politics lecture (hexbear.net)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by PolyethylenePt2@hexbear.net to c/chat@hexbear.net
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Enrolled in a class on Chinese politics and the first lecture was so unbelievably chock-full of lib talking points. Some that I can recall:

  • calling China a "closed autocracy" and "authoritarian"
  • mentioned that when surveyed, Chinese people rate the level of democracy in their country higher than Americans do for theirs, but with the caveat that they could be under "censorship"
  • showed the "democracy map" that's just this international-community-1 international-community-2 and of course China is lowly rated on the democracy scale
  • showed this chart that was literally like "Stalin and Mao killed more people than Hitler!!!" lenin-dont-laugh

There was also language about how the Core Socialist Values get "hammered" into people's heads in China, which definitely doesn't happen in the free West sans-troll

Might be a long semester if I stay in this course cringe

Edit: class has been dropped kel-bliss

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[–] infuziSporg@hexbear.net 1 points 11 hours ago

Missed opportunity to procedurally argue down every China fact and chalk it up to "propaganda and censorship and CCP lies".

China did not roll out a full-fledged domestic LLM in January 2025, China does not actually have the majority of the world's accessible rare earth metals, China does not have a GDP PPP of $33 trillion, and finish up with how China does not have 1.4 billion people because they are just fabricating all the statistics, and the only people you can trust about China are the Epoch Times.

You don't argue with these people on the points they're expecting. You make outrageous claims to catch them off guard and force them either to say "well it's not ALL propaganda", or to lean into something totally unhinged.

[–] CocteauChameleons@hexbear.net 30 points 1 day ago

Explains why you shouldnt listen to someone with a political science degree

[–] commieradcat@hexbear.net 15 points 1 day ago

Why pay for that?

[–] VILenin@hexbear.net 31 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

calling China a "closed autocracy" and "authoritarian"

All I need to hear that know that your professor is politically illiterate

but with the caveat that they could be under "censorship"

The professor could be under CIA death threats to say this. After all, there’s just as much evidence to support my caveat and I don’t like the CIA, so we just have to assume that I’m right.

I frequently travel to China, I have friends there and I speak mandarin. By this metric alone I know more about China than this soft genocide-denying nazi apologist professor ever will.

[–] Damarcusart@hexbear.net 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Now hold on there, this professor could have traveled to China and speak mandarin. He could be a failed sexpat mad at the QOL improvements in China because it means Chinese women are less desperate and he couldn't find a target to abuse as a result.

[–] VILenin@hexbear.net 13 points 1 day ago

Yeah it's impressive he finds time to "teach" in between eating out with his sexpat buddies to discuss how China "should" be governed in the most patronizing tone possible. So many of these guys marry a Chinese person, move back to the US, and then spend the rest of their lives demanding constant praise for having personally ended racism while ignoring the racist bullying their children face at school because their children are worth more to them as a vanity project than as human beings.

At my airline I stack my schedule a lot with the China routes so I get to see these guys in action all the time. Most memorable moment was when one of them went up to the gate agent in Beijing, unprompted from what I could tell, to lecture them about how it's possible for whites and asians to have kids and complain about the "narrow-mindedness of the Chinese". Did basically the same thing to a flight attendant after boarding. I got to be the one to tell him he could either shut the fuck up or find another way home.

[–] Coolkidbozzy@hexbear.net 21 points 1 day ago (1 children)

In undergrad I took a course on the USSR and simply didn't attend the lectures I knew would be cringe covering the 30s. The rest of it was really good, no lib stuff. The prof even said the CIA was on the ground during the hungarian revolution. The tests were all essay questions and my passive knowledge as a communist was enough to get an A+ lol

China as an AES state will never get this treatment in the west sadly

[–] jack@hexbear.net 10 points 23 hours ago

China as an AES state will never get this treatment in the west sadly

it will once we complete the revolution tho

[–] SoyViking@hexbear.net 22 points 1 day ago

when surveyed, Chinese people rate the level of democracy in their country higher than Americans do for theirs, but with the caveat that they could be under "censorship"

Unfalsifiable orthodoxy

parenti

[–] MayoPete@hexbear.net 22 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And they say we are the ones who are "brainwashed"

[–] LexIsDead@lemmygrad.ml 14 points 1 day ago

We absolutely are, though, Mao himself agreed!

We have gone through (or are currently going through, it's a continuous process) the effort of actually washing our brains free of the propaganda and indoctrination of capitalist society, and we're all the better for it.

[–] FidelChadstro@hexbear.net 34 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I advise you to drop this course

[–] hello_hello@hexbear.net 12 points 1 day ago

+1 I beg you to drop this course. I thought about taking a "politics" course until I took a Japanese anime course that discussed Japanese war crimes and economic shock during the 90s. Anime course was far more materialist than poli sci.

[–] D61@hexbear.net 32 points 1 day ago

showed this chart that was literally like "Stalin and Mao killed more people than Hitler!!!"

Which people, teacher? honk

Which fucking people did they kill? big-honk

[–] Dimmer06@hexbear.net 37 points 1 day ago (3 children)

It wasn't the last straw but I dropped out of school shortly after my comparative politics professor handed out full page color prints of Winnie the Pooh to every student the day we were supposed to discuss China. I figured I wouldn't be learning anything in that program.

[–] VILenin@hexbear.net 9 points 1 day ago

Is this professor the same professor from all quiet on the western front?

[–] built_on_hope@hexbear.net 16 points 1 day ago

Fucking hell

[–] unaware@hexbear.net 22 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Unironically not too different to some classes I've had in China (okay that is an exaggeration but profs are libs here too—I guess it being an English language curriculum doesn't help)

[–] red_giant@hexbear.net 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

China is an authoritarian regime that crushes dissent, I say in china working at a university where I’m allowed to say china is an authoritarian regime that crushes dissent.

[–] godisidog@hexbear.net 13 points 1 day ago

China has soft lines on what you can get away with. Criticism in private is basically always ok, because who cares even if the state could find out. Criticism of the state to foreign kids is similar because why would China really care what they think, and who’d report it anyway?

On the other hand, Chinese people saying certain things in public to other Chinese people could get them a visit from the cops, it happens. Saying dissent is “crushed” is probably a bit dramatic outside of extreme cases, more it’s sternly discouraged but only when it’s deemed to matter.

[–] VILenin@hexbear.net 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Shanghai mind virus

[–] unaware@hexbear.net 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

At least there are still some based people in the city; the other day I met an old Party member who upon learning that a PCF member (cringe I know, but there isn't anything better) shook my hand and said that France and China should unite to take down the US empire lol

[–] VILenin@hexbear.net 3 points 12 hours ago

Man that city has changed so much since the 90s and even the 00s. I can vividly recall the increase of the frequency of overheard brainworms as the decades passed by

[–] LeninWeave@hexbear.net 14 points 1 day ago (4 children)

If your Chinese professors are telling you Stalin was worse than Hitler then the Chinese youth are going to have to get way less ironic about the "second cultural revolution" memes. mao-shining

[–] unaware@hexbear.net 10 points 1 day ago

Thankfully they don't do nazi crimes denialism, they often just repeat liberal arguments about central planning being bad due to lack of incentives and whatnot and this being why the USSR collapsed and that China's "state capitalism" is why it survived (that last part is kind of true I guess? but also so wrong at the same time!). I am learning some interesting things though, I'm still having an overall positive experience, but the liberalism does get annoying sometimes.

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[–] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 25 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Dude I am taking a "europe after 1919" course taught but the libbest lib. Todays lecture was about how communism and fascism are basically the same and fascism came about because of communism and also fascism is right wing politics with leftwing characteristics. None of it makes any sense.

[–] Damarcusart@hexbear.net 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

fascism came about because of communism

This part is true, it is capitalism's reactionary answer to try and destroy communist movements. Though I'm guessing this is less of a "capitalists are so scared of communism that they'll empower the worst people in the world in order to protect their hoarding of wealth" and more "Communism and Fascism are peas in a pod, a yin and yang, both equally horrible and equally responsible for each other. (But communism still worse though.)"

[–] Johnny_Arson@hexbear.net 24 points 1 day ago (5 children)

fascism came about because of communism

Technically yes, since fascism is just capital's immune response to communist movements. Hence why every anti-communist and anti-"tankie" space is just inevitably an environment where Nazi shit thrives.

[–] Gosplan14_the_Third@hexbear.net 16 points 1 day ago

Fascism is basically a cancerous outgrowth of the old socialist movement.

Lassalle, Bernstein and co push for reforms within capitalism instead of revolution, the demand to abolish the present state of things is sidelined or even got rid of, and claas collaborationism becomes seen as desirable.

If you only ally with the bourgeoisie, you can get "a healthy mix" where you get the best of capitalism and the best of socialism!

During WW1 some realized, who cares about that reform stuff! What unites "us" is our glorious nation! It's definitely more important than social reform (some say it's even harmful to our interests!)

At all steps of the way, the most important thing is that you prevent communists from getting influential. They're harmful to the success of the program after all, and they scare off the bourgeois.

How much violence you use is up to you!

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[–] VILenin@hexbear.net 14 points 1 day ago

None of it makes any sense.

Yeah, Nazi apologia tends not to

[–] Coolkidbozzy@hexbear.net 10 points 1 day ago

This was my college's mandatory poli sci course alongside political compasses and horseshoe theory. Americans are not the brightest

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 31 points 1 day ago (1 children)

mentioned that when surveyed, Chinese people rate the level of democracy in their country higher than Americans do for theirs, but with the caveat that they could be under "censorship"

The Parenti quote about an "unfalsifiable orthodoxy" is arguably being too charitable for this. In the scenarios outlined by Parenti, the western chauvinists took empirical facts and then find some mangled logic to make those facts an indictment on their enemies. In this scenario, the facts are simply discarded out of hand for being too inconvenient. Western polling shows just the same type of sentiment among PRC citizens! Does the CPC censorship extend to polls conducted by fucking Harvard? Are they under the thumb of Big Xi?

I've seen the chart you mean and it's honestly just embarrassing to imagine someone teaching a college course sharing what is literally a single rung higher than PragerU shit. It vastly downplays the people killed under Hitler while using fanciful nonsense to tar Mao. Like, there's uncritically regurgitating disgusting propagandists like Conquest, and then there's putting up low-effort, trash-tier slopaganda like it's useful for educating college students.

[–] LeninWeave@hexbear.net 30 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The Harvard one was even more than a single poll or polls, it was a long-term study of public opinion. I think it's about as rigorous as this kind of survey data could be.

The infographic is absolutely just nazi genocide denial. This professor is functionally a fascist.

[–] LeninWeave@hexbear.net 35 points 1 day ago (3 children)

showed this chart that was literally like "Stalin and Mao killed more people than Hitler!!!"

Nazi class, lmao.

[–] PolyethylenePt2@hexbear.net 31 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

Did some digging on that figure, and it gets worse lol. Here's the chart for context

Seems to have been originally posted on reddit-logo. I checked the given source for the chart and it's an article on the 10 dictators who killed the most people on a top 10s website that hasn't been updated in 10 years. The article itself has a lot of gems too. It ends with

The moral of the story is: Let’s stop allowing evil political dictators to take office. And if we do have someone bad in office we can find better ways to get them out than murdering them, wars, and aggressive confrontations.

Like c'mon i-cant

[–] godisidog@hexbear.net 25 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Mao is responsible for every death that ever happened in China while he was in charge, and let’s add a few dozen million for fun!

Hitler though isn’t even responsible for every death in a war that he started, nor every death that the military under his orders caused; hell, let’s give a bunch of those to Stalin.

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[–] LeninWeave@hexbear.net 27 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Adolf Hitler

17 million

how-compelling

[–] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's bordering on Holocaust denial, but of course it's still taught in schools at all levels in Amerikkka.

[–] LeninWeave@hexbear.net 16 points 1 day ago

TBH I wouldn't even say bordering. The only way this isn't Holocaust denial is if it's WW2 denial.

[–] LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins@hexbear.net 26 points 1 day ago

No wonder children can't learn to read when this is the level of professor training our teachers

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[–] LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins@hexbear.net 26 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

"Hey professor don't you think making an explicit point to tie communist ideology which opposes fascism and the supporters of which were actually the first victims of fascism with "being worse than fascism" might be, i dunno, an attempt to rehabilitate the images of nazis and fascism?"

who-did-this

[–] LeninWeave@hexbear.net 29 points 1 day ago

Looking at the image they literally took people killed by the nazis and counted them as killed by Stalin, so it's actually even worse than that.

[–] SoyViking@hexbear.net 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

"The people who liberated Auschwitz were worse than the people who built Auschwitz. I am a very serious and intelligent expert"

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[–] redparadise@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 17 hours ago

That democracy map is insane lmao

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