• Durotar@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    It doesn’t mean that reports are false just because two states are enemies (which is an exaggeration).

        • ☭ Blursty ☭@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          It really is. Try it, next time you read a China Bad article, just decide that it’s bullshit first, then check into it and you’ll be proven right.

          • Duamerthrax@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Come in with preconceived notions and never second guess yourself? Sure, whatever.

            • OurToothbrush@lemmy.mlM
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              1 year ago

              Doing research to prove your assumptions correct or incorrect is literally how science works.

            • abraxas@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              I swear some of these people have never even been to China. I’ve had the opportunity, and had a lot of Chinese expat friends. I will say THEY believe the same as rest of the world does on a lot of these issues. I was told in no uncertain terms by my tour guide not to say anything about “things you might have heard” when I went to Tienanmen Square. And trust me, the soldiers everywhere with automatic weapons were enough to dissuade me from THINKING about it.

              There are a lot of differences that can be passed off as unpleasant cultural differences (like the one guy was a second class citizen and couldn’t get a city passport because he was from a village… the other guy had a full country Visa with zero effort because he grew up in Beijing), but other things “yeah, we’d look up the truth on all that stuff, but we had to work hard to get around the censors and some of our friends got in caught and got in trouble for doing it”.

              These tankies never seem to cover the part where the Chinese government is ACTIVELY suppressing this stuff in China. I could walk up to the site of the Bonus Army massacre and LOUDLY announce “I can’t believe the US government opened fired on American troops here over a peaceful protest” and not so much as draw police attention.

                • abraxas@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  So you’re ok with guys with machineguns keeping people to afraid to ask about the Tianenmen Square Massacre because you think it’s “misrepresented”? As an American in China who thoughts things were overblown, I left China 100% sure the Massacre is as bad as I was taught, because of the way the Chinese government behaved in Tienanmen Square when I was there.

                  And you really feel that it’s ok that there’s human rights advocates serving time for the crime of “inciting others to knowingly participate in unauthorised assemblies” about the Tianenmen Square Massacre, like Chow Hang-tung? Do you approve of jailing for speech where most countries will, at worst, have civil libel charges?

                  What’s the most severe penalty you would approve of for people who witnessed and survived the massacre recounting stories that are absolutely true to them? Maybe execute them all?

                  In my world, EVEN if the victim witnessed the event incorrectly, this is at best Witness Intimidation, and at worst its own human rights violation.

                  • GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.ml
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                    1 year ago

                    You seem to be projecting a lot of things that don’t have a firm basis in external reality. Are the guys with machine guns there to intimidate tourists, or are they there because Tienanmen Square is right in front of the Chinese equivalent of the White House and several other important buildings that require high security? The incident (which, let us be clear, also involved armed insurrectionists with incendiaries and commandeered rifles) wasn’t even the last major violent event in the area, as people did die actually in the Square some time later when Falun Gong members set themselves and a small girl on fire in protest of the group being banned!

                    The thought police you are imagining seem, if anything, to be a much better case for you being wrong. However you might feel intimidated in the moment, clearly once you left you understandably made a firm association between the Square and machine guns!

                    Furthermore, you’re making silly excuses for liars. There were people who weren’t even there for the supposed massacre (see the video) who were accounting very peculiar events in lurid detail, like tanks running over inhabited tents and then mulching them and such. Do you think some scared college student is going to have an anxiety-based hallucination that causes them to think they were places they weren’t and saw things that have probably never happened anywhere? When does that happen besides severe schizophrenics and children who aren’t processing that they just had a nightmare?

                    It seems to me that you are reaching for excuses, especially since you are disregarding the numerous witness, both domestic and foreign visitors, who all saw that there was no massacre in the Square as the media hysterically portrayed. Leaked state documents over the years (from ambassadors and such) only affirm this further. I can look up some if you like.

        • socsa@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          A black and white world where objective measures of press freedoms are apparently inversely proportional to trustworthiness of said journalists.

          Random blog with a Soviet flag? Impossible to be propaganda, because only capitalism can do a propaganda.

          Some of the world’s oldest free media with a long history of investigating the British government? Literally nothing but propaganda.

          • OurToothbrush@lemmy.mlM
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            1 year ago

            A black and white world where objective measures of press freedoms are apparently inversely proportional to trustworthiness of said journalists.

            Oh my god, are you seriously claiming you can objectively measure press freedoms while saying socialists live in a black and white world? Just want to give you a chance to walk back your statement

            • socsa@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              I am quite curious to know your methodology for measuring press freedom so we can compare and perhaps find something which can be considered locally objective.

              • OurToothbrush@lemmy.mlM
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                1 year ago

                You’re retreating into “locally” objective. In this topic you’re not going to get agreement on what constitutes press freedom, so it is pointless. My point is that the claim of objective press freedom existing is ridiculous. You walked it back, but to a position that still seems ridiculous to me.

                For example, I dont believe there is such thing as a free press. Any org that can produce a press machine is going to influence that press, whether that is a government or private interests. Editorial freedom isn’t possible, editorial control just ranges from the subtle to the overt.

                • socsa@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  You are the only one making assumptions here. I want to find some common ground.

                  So let’s pull this thread. I agree that bias is inevitable, but do you believe this negates the value of even trying to protect press freedom? And if so, do you extend this to all forms of truth seeking?

                  • OurToothbrush@lemmy.mlM
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                    1 year ago

                    So let’s pull this thread. I agree that bias is inevitable, but do you believe this negates the value of even trying to protect press freedom? And if so, do you extend this to all forms of truth seeking?

                    Of course bias is inevitable, Im saying institutional bias will always be enforced down the chain onto journalists and writers.

                    Can you give me your definition of press freedom? Because it seems contradictory if the owner of a press will influence what is published but journalists of that press somehow have press freedom.

          • fishtacos@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Wow, what? Communists talk openly about propaganda… You have no idea what you’re talking about.

            We are well aware what our biases are. We are trying to get westerners to see their own biases. Being called out as hypocrites feels like an attack, but when we say everyone have biases, we know it’s true about us too.

            Absorb news from a wide variety of sources, including sources from other countries, and you’ll see that the BBC is in fact biased against China.

            It takes time, and reading a lot, and you won’t get it from Lemmy/Reddit/twitter(or X or whatever now)/FB. Even ground news only has so many sources. And you know what, the BBC does great coverage for a lot of things, they are a pretty high quality source for a lot of news. But yeah, everyone has biases, and the BBC is biased against China.

      • Durotar@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        That statement is illogical. You must have huge problems with the simplest logic to argue that. You can’t bent logic by twisting what I said. Stop clowning.

    • OurToothbrush@lemmy.mlM
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      1 year ago

      It doesn’t mean that reports are false just because two states are enemies (which is an exaggeration).

      If they were strongly cited I would not be criticizing people believing them. All sources are biased, the question is how factual a source is.

      The BBC is strongly biased against China. If they make claims without proof the most logical course of action is to not assume they are telling the truth and not incorporate what they say into your beliefs. (Note that this is different than “assume they are lying”)

    • MacroCyclo@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, China was a major ally, but it is showing its dark (autocratic) side lately.

    • socsa@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Aren’t these threads wild? These people don’t want to engage in actual discussion here. They just want to remove your agency by calling you brainwashed, do the sealion “source” thing, and then ad hominem away any sources you do provide.

      I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - the world deserves a better class of communist.

      • OurToothbrush@lemmy.mlM
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        1 year ago

        It isn’t sealioning to expect a government or corporate news agency to provide strong citations when making contentious claims.

      • GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        They just want to remove your agency by calling you brainwashed

        Unlike when the liberals in this very thread accuse people of being brainwashed or paid shills, because then it is righteous!

        do the sealion “source” thing,

        lmao what dastardly trolls they are to care about sourcing

        and then ad hominem away any sources you do provide.

        Like you’d ever accept People’s Daily or whatever. The “tankies” need to mostly rely on liberal outlets because you will discard reporting out of China (etc.) out of hand.

        the world deserves a better class of communist.

        If we had a better class of communist, you’d hate them too because you’d believe everything you’re told about them, just like you do with the existing breeds.