Thousands of individual Uyghur peoples have testified against the US narrative. This includes written testemony, video documentary, and more. While these are all testimonies, and thus don’t compare to the actual sources I shared elsewhere, if you are going by testemony alone then you ought to listen to what the overwhelming majority of those living in Xinjiang are saying.

Germany today is not a democracy, it’s a dictatorship of capital. The working classes have no power in Germany. Being single-party is not the same as not being democratic. Democracy is rule by the majority, which you conflate with pluralism, which is simply an aspect of western democratic forms, not an actual requirement for rule by the majority.

As for the GDR being authoritarian, sure, only the ruling class was the working class. Many people did lose out with the implementation of socialism, especially because the GDR actually did de-Nazify. People in the former GDR gained the freedom to be impoverished, to see the safety net broken down, to return to being exploited by capitalists and to return to exploiting the global south through imperialism. Sure, they could buy western trinkets again, and business owners benefitted, but I can’t really see that as a valuable “freedom.”

As for the USSR coercing the GDR, the Soviets were devastated by Nazi Germany’s genocidal invasion. They forced reparations on Germany, which they did have a right to.

As for the KPD and DKP being negligent, that doesn’t mean they aren’t representative of Germany’s left. The problem is that Germany, like the rest of the west, is overwhelmingly right-wing, with variances between flavors of right-wing.

Regarding the idea that imperialism is expansionism, this is reductive. The Statesian north invaded the south, freeing the slaves. The PLA invaded Tibet, freeing the slaves. Expansion alone is not imperialism. Imperialism as leftists understand it is a systematic process of under developing other countries and super-exploiting them. This system is run through the consolidation of monopoly finance capital, and is what drives outward expansion for profit.

Regarding Russia in Syria, the Assad government was friendly with Russia. Now, the government of Syria is strong allies with Israel, and is complicit in genocide of Palestine and Lebanon.

Again, Russia cannot replace France, the US, etc. It has nowhere near the same military monopoly, nowhere near the finance capital. France is not imperialist because it expands, but because it is brutally expropriating wealth from the global south. You cannot say that finance capital does not matter, only to then say it’s critical.

Further, the Belt and Road Initiative is not a debt trap. China frequently forgives debt, and has no requirements for reducing sovereignty like western loans do, which include stipulations requiring privatization. The numbers do not back the “BRI is imperialist” narrative.

China does not suppress the Uyghur people, again, read Xinjiang: A Resource and Report Compilation. Neither China nor Russia are imperialist, and you have not explained how either is, beyond simply staying that expansion is imperialism. I gave you a detailed response, and you refuse to grapple with it. Completely bad-faith on your part.

Leftists and revolutionaries should protect the rights of the working classes, I agree! That’s why I take issue with you spreading misinformation to target socialist countries like China, and gave you definitive proof that you are spreading such disinformation. In doing so, you are supporting narratives imperialists use to manufacture consent for war against China. You aren’t actually a friend to the Uyghur people, you’re using them as atrocity propaganda to spread narratives invented by the US.

No? I explained that Russia has a paltry sum of finance capital, which is the basis of the imperialist stage of capitalism. This is easily verified information, Russia has a tiny number of the top companies in the world. What does “Russian imperialism” look like? You can point to the conflicts Russia has been in in the past few decades, such as the present Russo-Ukrainian war, but this is something even the DSA understands was primarily caused by NATO expansion.

Why is it that emerging anti-colonial movements in the global south, such as the Alliance of Sahel States, turn to Russia? Can you explain how Russia is under-developing and super-exploiting the Alliance of Sahel States, as France was before? The answer I give is that Russia shares in common with these global south countries a common interest. That common interest is an erosion of the present unipolar world order, where the US Empire remains supreme. Would Russia like to replace the US Empire? Perhaps. Can it? No, it utterly lacks the same finance capital that allows the US Empire to function.

Rather, the era of imperialism that we are in, depends on IP monopoly, cultural dominance, global military dominance, and control of the world’s reserve currency. Through IP monopoly, global south countries must spend greater amounts of labor to purchase western designed technology. Through cultural dominance, the US leverages Hollywood to make the US appear good, just, and powerful. Through the US Empire’s near-thousand millitary bases around the globe, countries risk destruction by going against it. Through control of the world’s reserve currency, the US Empire can simply print more money, and make the world pay the price of inflation.

Russia has none of this, nor the ability to replicate or replace any of this.

Again, though, this is all a smokescreen for the actual topic of discussion: your insistence on parroting imperialist narratives about China. China is enormously important because it is systematically breaking down all of those aforementioned mechanisms:

1. China is now developing technology in a way that makes it so that the west no longer has monopoly on high-tech.

2. China is beginning to undermine western cultural domination (though this is very new).

3. China is controlling rare Earths, which the US needs for the development and production of millitary weaponry

4. China is accelerating dedollarization, and supporting alternative economic blocs like BRICS.

All of these are strengthening the global south against imperialism, which explains the current desparation of the west and the far-right sliding we see. Yet you are manufacturing consent for war against socialist China, playing a good role for imperialists who wish to go to war with China over peacefully losing.

You can’t argue with my points, so you dismiss them and refuse to acknowledge them. It’s intensely dishonest.

This is a total non-sequitor and a pure dodge from the point I made. Incredibly dishonest and bad-faith of you. Nevertheless, Russia is expansionist, but it isn’t imperialist, at least not as Marxists understand the imperialist stage of capitalism. Russia has a paltry sum of finance capital, it’s instead a nationalist, capitalist country. Because it has no colonies nor neocolonies, it is helpful with increasing global south-south trade and undermining imperialism as it presently exists.

Further, I do not “support” Russia. I support it as far as it acts towards undermining imperialism as a global system headed by the US and its vassal states. I oppose the nationalist, capitalist system it operates under, and I support movements for socialism within Russia.

I think you should answer for why you are comfortable parroting imperialist talking points. Do you disagree with the sources I linked? The majority of sources they cite are western. You’re repeating the modern equivalent of Saddam’s WMD, or Hamas beheading babies, or white genocide in South Africa.

This isn’t actually true, and you’re contributing to a very deliberate attempt to block the Belt and Road Initiative from proceeding smoothly to delay China’s rise and give western imperialists more time. You are pushing a fabrication. If you want a place to start, I highly recommend reading Xinjiang: A Resource and Report Compilation. Steadily, western organizations have had to walk back claims as they have been proven baseless over and over again, yet this is still treated as important atrocity propaganda for its political utility in this New Cold War.

That’s too kind, but thank you!

I see that you are from lemmy.world, and I see that we are both using Lemmy. I don’t really see what that has to do with anything.

As for the whole of Europe surging to the right, I am well aware. The global south is managing to develop through increased south-south trade, which is weakening European abilities to benefit from unequal exchange and imperialism. There’s a ton of intricacies I just glossed over, but what we are seeing isn’t anything new: when capitalist economies suffer crisises in profitability, they surge to the right as smaller capitalists feel squeezed out and larger capitalists take advantage of this.

My point on the former GDR regions being especially vulnerable to this rightward shift is just that, the trend is broad but is especially pronounced in the GDR due to the crushing of the socialists during the reintegration of eastern Germany into the west.

One thing I strongly disagree with is your analysis of what authority actually is. By all means, Germany today is an “authoritarian regime.” States exist to uphold the ruling class of society and to prevent other classes from gaining political power. The extent to which authority is applied depends on the conditions a society is in. Modern Germany is a dictatorship of capital, and is an imperialist state. The former GDR was a socialist state, where the working classes ran society. Both are “authoritarian,” in that both exerted controls on those who undermined the state, but both serve enormously different groups of people.

As far as modern socialist parties in Germany are concerned, the KPD and DKP seem to be more representative of socialist views.

Yep, with the dissolution of the GDR came a thorough eradication of all organized socialists in the East, who were purged and punished by the western half. This created a vacuum easily filled by the far-right.

I have always engaged in good faith. I don’t work for republicans or Putin, I spend time and money organizing as a communist.

I do belive the DPRK is a legitimate socialist state, yes. The economy is worker run and controlled. They are incredibly poor, largely due to sanctions, but like Cuba they stretch what they do have very far. That’s also why Cuba and the DPRK have such strong and positive relations, with Cuba only recognizing the ROK in 2024.

As for the idea that I use LLMs for any of my comments, that’s false. I sometimes copy chunks from older comments if I have already addressed a topic in detail, but I have never used any LLM for any of my comments. No idea where this came from, other than the fact that some of my comments are longer, which really is just because I’m a yapper. I don’t appreciate the baseless allegations of LLM use as a means to undermine my points, if you oppose what I’m saying, tell me directly.

I am definitely a communist and a propagandist, I agree with that. I believe socialism to be necessary, and devote time and money to organizing work and outreach. I definitely fit the definition of propagandist as someone deliberately trying to get people to become sympathetic to socialism and communism and join an org, but that doesn’t mean what I say is incorrect either. It’s all true.

If you disagree with what I have to say, tell me directly. Don’t just lie to others about me in an attempt to undermine socialist talking points, it’s enormously bad-faith to do so.

Libya had some of the highest living conditions in the region under Gaddafi. While it wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, it is now a failed state. The reason the US murdered Libya was because Libya was sovereign and preventing the penetration of US capital. Obama wasn’t trying to kill a bad guy or anything, he and the imperialist class wanted to plunder Libya.

That’s why we need to understand the concept of the base and superstructure. The base is the economic formation of society, which gives rise to and supports the superstructure, which is the laws and culture of a society, which in turn reinforce the base. Whoever controls the commanding heights of the economy controls the state. Even if it is nominally publicly owned, in capitalism it is de facto privately controlled.

I’m aware that people are going off the founding of the USA 250 years ago, but it did not shake up the general settler-colonialism that already existed by much.

Trump represents one wing of the capitalist class, that’s why it worked. Any blue shift would also serve a wing of the capitalist class. That’s why any actual positive, lasting movement must also be revolutionary.

Yep, that’s why I said it’s important to join an organization. Education, agitation, and organization!

For sure, automation represents an incredible opportunity for workers, presuming workers actually are the ones directing the development of society. It does reduce the inputs required to produce goods, which frees up time for redirection and reduction of labor overall. I was more trying to combat the idea that AI will be a magic bullet for capitalists, when really we’ve already seen the impacts of automation before. It comes in a new form, with new particularities, but it’s not fundamentally different.

AI can’t really generate wealth in the long run. Automation of all types generates temporary advantages in pricing, but other groups catch up eventually. This lowers the rate at which labor is exploited as a ratio of production, which lowers the actual source of profit. Absolute profits rise, while rates of profit fall.

The only way out is revolution, which begins with the people, mass class consciousness, and organized leadership that can help steer the movement in a positive direction. This is why grassroots organizations of disciplined workers are so critical, they can help us accomplish the tasks of educating, agitating, and organizing.

Are you trying to double-down on the Zionist rhetoric? Genuine question, this is the same thing Israelis say about Palestinians.