After watching the video and reflecting on it, I feel like "world police" as a term to describe the US may be understating the attitude. That it's more like the US has the attitude of a slave owner, where it views every country, resource, and people as a possession and freaks out when anybody wants self determination; which would fit with it never fully losing its slavery roots.
Surreal. This while Columbia University students protesting genocide are facing threat of the national guard being brought in, while students at University of Austin Texas are dealing with violent cops just for peacefully demonstrating.
So let me get this straight, your family bribed your way into owning a factory and you want sympathy because you had to give it up? Meanwhile, in the US, the supreme court is going to be ruling on whether states can fine people for sleeping outdoors, while homelessness gets worse. It might be the case that had your family done the same in the US, you'd still have that factory and be wealthy too. That's not a good thing. The dictatorship of capital in the US comes at the cost of everyone else.
In the US, cities have been known to bulldoze homeless encampments: https://www.vice.com/en/article/5db7qb/dc-bulldozed-a-homeless-persons-tent-while-they-were-still-inside
And you're saying "China bad, US good" because you lost control of a factory.
There is very much an experience of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" even in something as mild as trying to make a communist-sympathizing point on the internet. To some, there is nothing you can say that is considered valid. They decided you weren't worth listening to from the moment you said something that set off their McCarthy Communism Detector 5000 (TM). But they sure will pretend like they are interested in entertaining "debate" in spite of this, taking you down a path of wild generalizations and hypotheticals, while running away from anything factual you bring up about history that counters the narrative they've been told.
And that's not even getting into the people who are actively scheming against communism, as you are talking about. Some of it's plain people being tricked into thinking only in binary terms of good/evil, freedom/authority, and superimpose hypotheticals over reality.
I think of that saying that goes, "No plan survives contact with the enemy." But varied for the situation, "No liberalism survives contact with the enemy." Those who live by hypotheticals can only have control over hypotheticals. The imperialists of the world seem content to let them muck about with that, as it poses no material threat to their power on its own and can be misdirected into schools of thought that confuse and distract from what is happening.
Reminds me of this, as anti-communist rhetoric often does:
“During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime's atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn't go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.” ― Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
"Condemn in the strongest possible terms" makes me think of that line from A Few Good Men:
"I strenuously object?" Is that how it's done? Hm? "Objection, your Honor." "Overruled" "No, no. I STRENUOUSLY object." "Oh. You strenuously object. Then I'll take some time and reconsider."
Also, he calls it "Iran's attacks", but considering what Iran did was 100% self defense after a loathsome attack done to them, it can be taken to mean that he is saying he "condemns in the strongest possible terms" any right for Iran to defend itself, i.e. he views the fake settler state of israel as being a legitimate state and doesn't see Iran as a legitimate state or even as actual people who have a right to defend themselves. Which tells you all you need to know about how these white supremacists view the region.
Then there's the part where they are so deep in paranoia and racism they think you are a foreign spy if you say anything sympathetic about the country. (I actually had this happen to me once online.)
Good points. My mind has been on this exact subject recently and I've been trying to work out what it is I'm trying to say, though I think you said some of it. Regardless, I will attempt to put into words some of what's on my mind about it.
Namely that there is this moralizing view (that in my case, I see most coming from catholic upbringing, but it may be from western media as well) where the focus is on this idea that everyone is sort of at risk of becoming morally corrupt. And so there is this undue focus on the morality of an action in isolation and whether it moves the needle on driving you toward corruption, sometimes leading to a pathology associated with what we call "harm OCD", but more often probably just causing people to be a bit warped in their thinking and attention paid.
The moralizing view, rather than looking at what is effective toward the goal and the benefit and harm contained in it, it tends to look for purity very much so. The action that contains both benefit and harm is considered corrupted (which doesn't make sense, as it's virtually impossible for any action to contain only one or the other, purely) and must be faced with guilt and reassurance that it has no broader implications of the person becoming a corrupted being.
Ironically, the moralizing view is more apt to cause you to have a mismatch in intent and result. Because you are viewing people as good or bad. So you are both unfairly accommodating and forgiving of the people in the "good" group and you are unfairly combative and unforgiving of the people in the "bad" group.
As communists, this kind of thinking is impossible to work with and at odds with dialectics. We have to be able to do principled criticism of our own and we have to be understanding of the masses who are not communist, just as we work against the colonizer/imperialist and look out for those in need (which often go hand in hand). What is most effective is the order of the day and the moralizing view would tend to think this is somehow unfeeling and corruptive, that by focusing on what is effective over what is "the right thing to do," you are losing sight of your moral center and becoming one of the "bad" ones. I think the mistake here, though this I admit is a component of it I'm less clear on because of the internalized strength of that moralizing thought process, is in thinking that being effectiveness focused means lacking compassion. Compassion is a critical element for us as communists and we have to figure out how to reduce harm with compassion at the helm, which leads us to scientific socialism theory and practice. The moralizing view, by contrast, is all about fear of the "animalistic nature" (a bizarre view of humans and animals as something only a few steps removed from brutality at all times); and it is focused on running from a negative rather than evaluating how to reach a positive.
Curious to know if that makes sense. This is so long cause I'm thinking some of this through as I type.
It is strange to contend with for sure. People are actually facing up to an ongoing genocide and using language like (and I am not exaggerating here based on what I've seen) "Trump would make it a thousand times worse." It is a claim that has no grounding in a reality that we can contend with. Genocide is about as bad as you can get. There is no "turbo genocide."
What that kind of language tells me is that the people peddling it either: 1) don't believe there is a genocide going on or 2) don't care very much that it's happening because it doesn't affect them personally.
I don't know how else one could arrive at such an absurd position. I expect revulsion, disgust, outrage, at what is being backed by the US state and in spite of the horror, it is heartening how many people seem to get that aspect of it (I will take the positives where I can find them). But when it comes to the liberals who somehow bypass all of that and say "but Trump," I do not trust their understanding of the world or their capability to empathize. I find it difficult to see them as substantially different from reactionaries who fear scapegoated specters.
Re: debate, it certainly gets tiresome when you sink hours into reading, research, and sometimes having to go through the pain of reevaluating a significant part of your worldview (cause of indoctrination) which is no small feat and no small ask of time and energy - and then deal with stubborn, smug liberals who dismiss what you say out of hand and repeat the same few talking points yet view themselves as "independent thinkers." 😩
If there is anyone who could become a billionaire and then, somehow, without any working class force to make it happen, through sheer incapability to do anything sensible, become an eX-billionaire, it would be Elon Musk.
Well, Trump and Biden are not substantially on different sides. They are two faces of the same side. If the parties were on substantially different sides, there would be some kind of actual holding accountable from the one to the other and preventing things from getting worse. Instead, what we get is blame directed at "the left" (a vague amorphous blob buzzword in these situations, similar to "tankie") for wanting anything different from the status quo. The democrats continuously show a near total lack of interest in doing anything about the depravity that they say the republicans are doing, even going so far as to do much the same things (if not worse) but with different PR branding, and then shame people for correctly understanding this means that neither party is meaningfully better.