This is just “communists are necromancers / mind controllers / Cthulhu delegates” kind of monster under the bed nonsense coming from Cold War propaganda era narrative and continuing on to this day. No state has 100% control over media and the reality is that after the initial push of the narrative (which primarily came from a “dude trust me” singular individual), the credibility of the claim slowly unraveled. This is in contrast to a history like, for example, US in Korea, where it started out as the US portraying it as for good and info on the US occupation’s atrocities came out over time, as people whistleblew and people investigated. Or how many people were duped into viewing the israeli colony as “it’s complicated” rather than colonialism doing what colonialism does (extermination of the natives) and only got through the bubble when raw first person information on atrocities committed by israel started coming through. In israel’s case, it’s not just that they are so brazen about it at this stage, it’s also the painstaking documentation that Palestinians have done, some of them getting targeted and martyred for daring to report on the crimes of the settlers.
There is no such equivalent evidence going on with China and claiming ultimate powers of censorship as the reason is, well… there’s a Parenti quote that comes to mind about an unfalsifiable orthodoxy. The absurdity of this kind of argument that happens in anti-communist propaganda goes something like:
The communists are evil. 2) If the evidence is clear and available, then you are evil if you don’t condemn them. 3) If the evidence is not clear and available, then it must be because the communists are totalitarian masterminds and are hiding the evidence from us. And obviously one who would support totalitarian masterminds is evil themself.
It’s one of those things like that saying, “You can’t reason someone out of a belief they haven’t reasoned themself into.” Much of anti-communist propaganda begins with an implied truism that communism must be evil and then reasons about how it is evil after the fact. By comparison, no such nonsense is necessary to criticize colonialism, for example; its crimes are well documented over hundreds of years and it depends on such narratives as saying that one people are civil and another savage, and so the savages “deserve what they get” (aka: dehumanization).
You will not find such narratives in the practice of communism because it goes out of its way to humanize and work to eliminate class and caste barriers. So its opponents simply make up atrocities committed in its name and claim that it’s a faked humanitarian goal.
In the United States, for over a hundred years, the ruling interests tirelessly propagated anticommunism among the populace, until it became more like a religious orthodoxy than a political analysis. 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
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the admins of this instance if you have any questions or concerns.
This is just “communists are necromancers / mind controllers / Cthulhu delegates” kind of monster under the bed nonsense coming from Cold War propaganda era narrative and continuing on to this day. No state has 100% control over media and the reality is that after the initial push of the narrative (which primarily came from a “dude trust me” singular individual), the credibility of the claim slowly unraveled. This is in contrast to a history like, for example, US in Korea, where it started out as the US portraying it as for good and info on the US occupation’s atrocities came out over time, as people whistleblew and people investigated. Or how many people were duped into viewing the israeli colony as “it’s complicated” rather than colonialism doing what colonialism does (extermination of the natives) and only got through the bubble when raw first person information on atrocities committed by israel started coming through. In israel’s case, it’s not just that they are so brazen about it at this stage, it’s also the painstaking documentation that Palestinians have done, some of them getting targeted and martyred for daring to report on the crimes of the settlers.
There is no such equivalent evidence going on with China and claiming ultimate powers of censorship as the reason is, well… there’s a Parenti quote that comes to mind about an unfalsifiable orthodoxy. The absurdity of this kind of argument that happens in anti-communist propaganda goes something like:
It’s one of those things like that saying, “You can’t reason someone out of a belief they haven’t reasoned themself into.” Much of anti-communist propaganda begins with an implied truism that communism must be evil and then reasons about how it is evil after the fact. By comparison, no such nonsense is necessary to criticize colonialism, for example; its crimes are well documented over hundreds of years and it depends on such narratives as saying that one people are civil and another savage, and so the savages “deserve what they get” (aka: dehumanization).
You will not find such narratives in the practice of communism because it goes out of its way to humanize and work to eliminate class and caste barriers. So its opponents simply make up atrocities committed in its name and claim that it’s a faked humanitarian goal.
The quote
– Michael Parenti, Blackshirts And Reds
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the admins of this instance if you have any questions or concerns.