A few months ago I was listening to a podcast, I remembered it as Citations Needed but it could have been another adjacent one, where they interviewed someone from Electronic Intifada about NYT's journalistic malfeasance around the article "Screams Without Words". I've been looking for it and can't find it.

The part that stuck out to me the most was the mother of a daughter who was used as a puppet for these lies saying "she was only killed" and talking about what a miserable situation it is to be saying such a thing.

After spending a couple days interacting with them, I have come to agree with the common sentiment hexbear already had that it's probably not worth trying to persuade a small number of steadfast neoliberals among those of us with limited patience, which includes myself.

If I'm a wimp and you still want to go buck wild, of course.

But the suggestion I got that .ee would probably be a better staging ground is at this point taken to heart. Since we are federated with them, I think the thing to do is make (appropriate, non-hostile) posts in .ee communities where the purpose of the comm adequately fits with topics that it would be useful to discuss.

As with my last post, which was misbegotten, it's just a thought I had

There are a bunch of sicko neoliberals and insufferable redditors there, yes, but there are also some normal libs and a few comrades, and it seems like a good way to encourage lemmy generally to re-embrace leftism.

I've been using an alt to talk on there and it's honestly not that bad. It's a little bad, but not that bad. I think if we just try to patiently explain ourselves, we have a reasonable chance of reaching people and shifting the general political alignment.

Those of us who aren't up to dealing with ghouls (I am frequently included in this group) can just stay at home here and that's just fine.

Anyway, just an idea. I would appreciate feedback.

idk, I was thinking about this a lot with the Chapo interview and how completely fraudulent the coverage of Israel was. It feels like we shouldn't let liberals get away with this shit by burying it in the past and pretending they always held more "moderate" beliefs. Even I had forgotten about the "putting Jewish babies in ovens" claim and I'm really fucking online about this mythbusting stuff (ask me about any story involving the DPRK). I think it got overshadowed by the "40 beheaded babies," which admittedly there is more memory of because the WH has struggled to get Biden to stop lying about it.

There are some rare cases of people remembering these hoaxes, probably the best example being "Saddam's human shredder," where there is memory of how there was this hoax that mainstream news pushed and libs completely bought, while the next closest example, WMDs, is something that Democrats kind of just pin on Republicans despite Dems also falling for it/perpetrating fraud for it (just not for quite as long).

I've got easily another dozen examples off the top of my head, but you get the idea. It's sort of the cousin of the retroactive invention of reality that we see with cases like MLK, how people pretend northern whites were broadly on his side and ridiculous shit like that, or even that he wasn't still hated by whites throughout the country at the time of his death, and it was the long-term impact of the campaigns lead by himself and others that ultimately forced even most of white culture to acknowledge his side as being that of justice.

No, it's not the one about how Democracy isn't Coca-Cola

The main phrase of it was something along the lines of "The Communist Party must follow the people into the fire", that is, it must defer to the outcome of votes and the popular will even when it believes the outcome will be for the worse (presumably while expressing its own view) so that it does not grow out of touch with the people and instead gains trust and credibility from them in the long term.

It's not on redsails, unfortunately, but I'm sure one of you all linked it to me in the first place.

From what I can gather, there's one Jew in the whole game (who I think is just called "Jew") and he ends up being a collaborator with a demon cult that seems to want to consume humanity. It doesn't seem like people really hold this against him long term, since he gets into more benign misadventures in the "where are they now?" montage at the end, but it seems like the most on-the-nose fash writing possible otherwise.

I haven't actually played the game, partly because I was put off by this element of the synopsis, so did I miss relevant context? Even just a "fuck you guys for making a leper of me and then demanding my loyalty" type line?

I've seen a few times people cite Furr while disavowing him in a more general sense, but I have never seen someone here talk about specific problems with him and his work.

I remembered this fact because I was looking up information on Losurdo and found a little eulogy Furr wrote for him (which incidentally had the answer I was looking for, that Losurdo did not speak Russian).

Furr seems like an absolute crank in terms of his general writing, see this text at the end of an article he wrote refuting a Current Affairs article:

I have been studying the allegations of crimes against Joseph Stalin for many years. My intention is to research every one of them.

When I began years ago I thought that it would be only a matter of time – perhaps a year or two – before I discovered that at least one of these allegations against Stalin was true, could be confirmed by primary-source evidence. I was wrong. So far, after several decades of searching, I have yet to evidence that Stalin committed even one crime, much less the myriad crimes that Trotsky, Khrushchev’s men, Gorbachev’s men, and academic researchers have confidently asserted.

I intend to keep looking. Perhaps some day I will discover at least one genuine crime by Stalin that I can truthfully say is supported by the best evidence we have. If and when I do, I will publish it and the evidence to support it.

Which is just a villain origin story, though again I must say that every refutation I have personally seen from Furr (though few in number) made sense.

So I ask again, what is actually wrong with him? Or has he merely inherited his own "Black Legend"?

So I've been putting off writing this for a long time and it'll probably need to be a series, but I've had a difficult time answering challenges from my friends who assert that China is either a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie or of the Bureaucracy (i.e. state capitalists), and that it's a competing imperialist power along with America (and they also say Russia but I can answer that one being stupid on my own).

The problem with China Discourse is that there is a serious paucity of sources dealing with nuanced critiques rather than just "debt trap!" bullshit or whatever, since the objections of liberals and the objections of smarter ultras are very different. At the very least, the sources dealing with this Discourse are less accessible to me.

But now I'm extremely bored and also recently saw Comrade Queermmunist's excellent rebuttal against the claim of China doing imperialism in the DRC, which gave me some hope that Hexbear would be able to answer some of these claims with something at least plausible.

The main objects of concern are the for-profit national businesses causing bureacratic class antagonism, foreign policy in the form of UN peacekeeping contributions, and straightforward imperialism at the base of its supply chain, along with miscellany like this:

https://newworker.us/international/chinas-stock-market-a-lesson-on-what-socialism-is-not/

I don't know, it's all a mess and putting off ideological work causes problems. If nothing else, let this be a practical lesson to you:

To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from principled argument because he is an old acquaintance, a fellow townsman, a schoolmate, a close friend, a loved one, an old colleague or old subordinate. Or to touch on the matter lightly instead of going into it thoroughly, so as to keep on good terms. The result is that both the organization and the individual are harmed. This is one type of liberalism.

It catches up with you and makes things worse in the end.

And they said we should just accept it on their credibility.

I had the occasion to look this up again, so I thought I should post it for more than the shitlib I got it for (so now it's also for the three of you sorting by new at this hour)

I know it's tired to post these but come on, let me have just this one. It's so fucking dumb.

https://hexbear.net/comment/3723348

If you participate, remember to be nice to the people who demonstrate good faith.