Very well said. I forget that one can already be on the defensive when engaging due to poor faith arguments or extraordinary claims which seem so obvious by others but which still need hard evidence to believe rather than gestures and seemingly innocuous phrasing.
I'm just going to paste the entirety of On Authority by Engels here, I know you don't read theory but at least try
A number of Socialists have latterly launched a regular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian for it to be condemned. This summary mode of procedure is being abused to such an extent that it has become necessary to look into the matter somewhat more closely.
Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subordination. Now, since these two words sound bad, and the relationship which they represent is disagreeable to the subordinated party, the question is to ascertain whether there is any way of dispensing with it, whether — given the conditions of present-day society — we could not create another social system, in which this authority would be given no scope any longer, and would consequently have to disappear.
On examining the economic, industrial and agricultural conditions which form the basis of present-day bourgeois society, we find that they tend more and more to replace isolated action by combined action of individuals. Modern industry, with its big factories and mills, where hundreds of workers supervise complicated machines driven by steam, has superseded the small workshops of the separate producers; the carriages and wagons of the highways have become substituted by railway trains, just as the small schooners and sailing feluccas have been by steam-boats. Even agriculture falls increasingly under the dominion of the machine and of steam, which slowly but relentlessly put in the place of the small proprietors big capitalists, who with the aid of hired workers cultivate vast stretches of land.
Everywhere combined action, the complication of processes dependent upon each other, displaces independent action by individuals. But whoever mentions combined action speaks of organisation; now, is it possible to have organisation without authority?
Supposing a social revolution dethroned the capitalists, who now exercise their authority over the production and circulation of wealth. Supposing, to adopt entirely the point of view of the anti-authoritarians, that the land and the instruments of labour had become the collective property of the workers who use them. Will authority have disappeared, or will it only have changed its form? Let us see.
Let us take by way of example a cotton spinning mill. The cotton must pass through at least six successive operations before it is reduced to the state of thread, and these operations take place for the most part in different rooms. Furthermore, keeping the machines going requires an engineer to look after the steam engine, mechanics to make the current repairs, and many other labourers whose business it is to transfer the products from one room to another, and so forth. All these workers, men, women and children, are obliged to begin and finish their work at the hours fixed by the authority of the steam, which cares nothing for individual autonomy. The workers must, therefore, first come to an understanding on the hours of work; and these hours, once they are fixed, must be observed by all, without any exception. Thereafter particular questions arise in each room and at every moment concerning the mode of production, distribution of material, etc., which must be settled by decision of a delegate placed at the head of each branch of labour or, if possible, by a majority vote, the will of the single individual will always have to subordinate itself, which means that questions are settled in an authoritarian way. The automatic machinery of the big factory is much more despotic than the small capitalists who employ workers ever have been. At least with regard to the hours of work one may write upon the portals of these factories: Lasciate ogni autonomia, voi che entrate! [Leave, ye that enter in, all autonomy behind!]
If man, by dint of his knowledge and inventive genius, has subdued the forces of nature, the latter avenge themselves upon him by subjecting him, in so far as he employs them, to a veritable despotism independent of all social organisation. Wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself, to destroy the power loom in order to return to the spinning wheel.
Let us take another example — the railway. Here too the co-operation of an infinite number of individuals is absolutely necessary, and this co-operation must be practised during precisely fixed hours so that no accidents may happen. Here, too, the first condition of the job is a dominant will that settles all subordinate questions, whether this will is represented by a single delegate or a committee charged with the execution of the resolutions of the majority of persona interested. In either case there is a very pronounced authority. Moreover, what would happen to the first train dispatched if the authority of the railway employees over the Hon. passengers were abolished?
But the necessity of authority, and of imperious authority at that, will nowhere be found more evident than on board a ship on the high seas. There, in time of danger, the lives of all depend on the instantaneous and absolute obedience of all to the will of one.
When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that's true, but there it is not the case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world.
We have thus seen that, on the one hand, a certain authority, no matter how delegated, and, on the other hand, a certain subordination, are things which, independently of all social organisation, are imposed upon us together with the material conditions under which we produce and make products circulate.
We have seen, besides, that the material conditions of production and circulation inevitably develop with large-scale industry and large-scale agriculture, and increasingly tend to enlarge the scope of this authority. Hence it is absurd to speak of the principle of authority as being absolutely evil, and of the principle of autonomy as being absolutely good. Authority and autonomy are relative things whose spheres vary with the various phases of the development of society. If the autonomists confined themselves to saying that the social organisation of the future would restrict authority solely to the limits within which the conditions of production render it inevitable, we could understand each other; but they are blind to all facts that make the thing necessary and they passionately fight the world.
Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?
Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they're talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction.
The united states has the world's largest prison population by both total incarcerated and percentage of the total population. People from the US calling any other country authoritarian is fucking hilarious, and should make it clear how little meaning the word actually has in common usage.
A bunch of people on Lemmy pointing me to likely auth-communist propaganda is no different to me than a bunch of Christians pointing me to the bible. Why would I believe your websites any more than I believe the bible, or CNN?
Demanding evidence and the writing off evidence as "auth-communist propaganda" is just declaring your prejudice correct with an extra step. Shall we say that internal memos of the US government are "auth-communist propaganda" too?
Why would I believe your websites any more than I believe the bible, or CNN?
It's interesting because you seem to have still inherited your beliefs from the state you decry and corporate media.
A bunch of people on Lemmy pointing me to likely auth-communist propaganda is no different to me than a bunch of Christians pointing me to the bible. Why would I believe your websites any more than I believe the bible, or CNN?
I'm going to send you an emoji of a pig pooping on his own balls. I'm not sure if emojis are transfered properly through another federated instance, so if it doesn't work please send me a message so we can fix it.
No ML denies that China is 'authoritarian'. They argue that all states are.
Almost everything Marxists say is poorly understood by their detractors and framed in a negative light in one way or another.
what as far as I can tell is the rest of the academic world that doesn’t agree with you?
This makes it seem as though you haven't read the literature and arguments of either side. If that's the case you shouldn't be coming to any conclusions at all, especially to dismiss one side outright for being unorthodox. By definition, the counter narrative is going to sound unorthodox in light of the orthodox claims. The correct approach is to read the source and judge it on its own merit and in light of other known facts.
Same energy as saying that Soviets 'pressed' women into science careers in the same era as liberals were paying Nazi fashion designers (Dior) to design clothes for women (the 'new look') that made working almost impossible, so as to force them back into the home after their taste of (relative) freedom during the war years.
(To be fair to Dior, his sister was based and he apparently named a perfume after her but my source for this is rather cleansing (Wikipedia) so who knows how true that is.)
Your position is in fact unorthodox in my culture (U.S.) -- that's what I'm saying.
In Nazi Germany in 1944, I think it would be regarded as an unorthodox position that Jews aren't specifically inclined towards greed and evil conspiracy to destroy the Aryan race. By your epistemology, wouldn't it be true that the person defending the Jews is the one that has the burden of proof and not the people who cling to antisemitic conspiracy theories?
You're proudly proclaiming that you know little about the subject? Yet you still felt like joining in, because...?
Not to mention the fact that you're essentially asking that people chew up this complex topic and regurgitate a dumbed down version... because you're a yank and being uneducated is part of your "culture"?
You can read, and you have a mind, it's up to you to put those two things together to inform yourself and form opinions.
Rare to see an anarchist one. Though I'm guessing this one is "anarchist" because they have a Rage Against the Machine tattoo and went to a BLM protest once (But left early because some of the other protesters made them feel uncomfortable.)
To clarify for some of us that don't understand, are you saying the poster is sealioning or engaging in bad faith? I haven't ever seen this word and I'm not sure if there's some specific reference I am not getting.
"In 2023 saying Tiananmen Square massacre never happened is an extraordinary claim" is a conclusion. If you publicly claim that something happened, you should be prepared to provide some kind of evidence, even if it's flimsy. If you're actually willing to learn, read section 3 of this article
you're just loudly denouncing everyone who has investigated the event in question as wrong because they go against your (admittedly) ignorant view of reality
you actually want to convince people you need to make the information accessible and give people a reason why they should believe it over their normally acceptable sources. Making fun of them is probably counter-productive (even if it is fun).
Says an "anarchist"
On a post
About a book
That's is literally the source of the information in which you say we should be proving.
You not only have no right to complain about being made fun of and harassed but deserve it. lol
this is pure JAQing off. you'd have answers to your questions if you spent more time investigating and less time regurgitating state department propaganda
expecting everyone to do the work for you because you're too lazy is shit
y'all are doing god's work out there comrade. even if no known substance can pierce their ultradense skulls you might still catch someone who can be saved, and that's worthwhile
Honestly, you want a simple, widely accepted, heavily west-biased source? Literally just read the wikipedia article.
"[CBS and WP journalists] could not find enough evidence to suggest that a massacre took place on the square"
"cables from the United States embassy in Beijing agreed there was no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square"
Nobody here is denying there were protests, or that a limited number people died in clashes with police across the country. But literally no reputed source, western lib or otherwise, claims that the government was out in Tianenmen killing civilians in major numbers.
extraordinary claim and therefore is going to require extraordinary evidence
All it takes to prove that the massacre did happen is evidence. Where is this extraordinary evidence?
Proving that something doesn't exist is much harder. There was a liberal in here earlier though that was also saying that we're a bunch of conspiracy theorists. I gave him links, you can see them below. First hand reports from people who were actually there say that there was no massacre. This includes a CBS reporter and a Latin American diplomat.
Do you believe in Last Thursdayism? I choose not to because reality has no meaning that way and the consequences are still the same.
Do you believe in your own birth? After all, you couldn’t possibly remember it. How do you know aliens didn’t just materialize you out of nothing? Again, I choose not to subscribe to the alien-materialization theory because there’s a much better hypothesis that seems to make a lot more sense.
Again, fantastical claims. Where are these pictures?
Edit: I love that this is the second person to come in here who gives us shit for being conspiracy theorists, disregards first hand eyewitness accounts, and runs away when pressed for evidence. Murder trials in the US must work very differently than I've been led to believe.
First hand reports from people who were actually there say that there was no massacre.
In the square itself, maybe, but all eyewitnesses agree that the PLA shot and killed many hundreds of protesters in Beijing during the protests, which had been (until that point) largely peaceful.
So while you at the author of this article might be correct to say that there was no actual massacre in Tiananmen Square itself, there certainly was a massacre going on around it.
Gold star for you! This is significantly better than the usual nonsense that's pushed. But after having claimed a massacre for so long, this still seems like damage control to me.
Do these photos look like the aftermath of a massacre to you? Or do you think that the CPC account of the situation might be closer to reality? They claim that after the protest was broken up, some violent instigators began attacking the military in the area around the square. And yes, hundreds died, and many of them were soldiers.
There was a massacre that morning. Journalists have to be precise about where it happened and who were its victims, or readers and viewers will never be able to understand what it meant.
Again, the reporter's point is not that "there was no massacre"; it just didn't happen in the square.
Yep. Even after being forced to admit that he made it up, he's still reporting about things he admits he never saw. Which I have to admit, is a pretty bold move.
I'm really confused by this one. He admitted he lied, and so did many of his colleagues. But you believe that he's still telling the truth about the massacre?
Look, we don't know exactly what happened there that night. But it's clear that the west lied through their teeth about the entire thing, and the lies are self perpetuating at this point. China's story seems to check out. You HAVE to see that.
Furthermore, why is this event of a couple hundred casualties pushed so hard by the media as proof of China's evilness, when Mai Lai or the 228 incident are barely talked about? This is 100% pure propaganda, and it's mostly, perhaps entirely untrue.
It's hard to know exactly what happened, of course, but the facts of the matter are that even the CCP themselves acknowledged the fact that hundreds died and all the Western journalists who were there confirmed that the PLA shot and killed hundreds of protestors.
Also, while it's true that Western journalists may have been biased, it's also certainly true that China's authoritarian and notoriously opaque government cannot be trusted to tell the truth either, especially if they were responsible for the deaths of many civilians.
While the extent of the massacre in Beijing may be contested, it seems incontrovertible that it did occur.
Furthermore, why is this event of a couple hundred casualties pushed so hard by the media as proof of China’s evilness, when Mai Lai or the 228 incident are barely talked about?
Asides from the fact that this is classic whataboutism, you are categorically wrong to suggest that the My Lai massacre is portrayed in Western media today as anything other than a horrific attack upon civilians.
It is perfectly possible to deplore both massacres, in Beijing and in Mai Lai. This is not a simple zero sum contest between China and the US where one must be the good guy and the other the bad guy.
That was my analysis as well. It's really hard to tell where his seething hatred for China (and really all of Asia) ends and the truth begins. There's very little actual substance.
If some tourist also asked me about some shootout that happened in my country I would bail ASAP too. Serial killer shit lol who begins a convo with "so what about that time yall killed students"
"Hey, what do you think about the 2020 antifa uprising where the antifa burned all America's cities down and executed white parents and small business owners?"
You have seen documents that are reliable and not published by American and European imperialist intelligence agencies? Produce them then, that is the extraordinary claim
There are videos and eye witness accounts of 9/11. There are literally only CIA and American accounts of this "atrocity" in China a country Americans hate in a way that can only be described as racist, using talking points that they always lie about. Do you believe the Iraqi's had WMDs? Do you believe that the North Vietnamese forces attacked the Maddox? Do you believe that Iraqis threw babies on the floor in Kuwait? You never looked into it have you? You saw a picture of a tank and had white people tell you things.
If I had a sufficiently powerful laser I could point it at one of the retroreflectors they put up there and get a reflection back, there is actual proof, and the fact that the Soviets even acknowledged it says a lot about its veracity. Do you think that just because some of the stuff that the US says is true that I'm to take the other things at face value without proof? If NBC cites CBS cites AP cites Reuters cites CBS cites NBC... am I supposed to just be like oh well there's a lot of citations so clearly it must be true? Please try to challenge this "west good by default" mindset that you have, it clouds your judgment.
Oh, good response. I should keep this in mind in the future when people try to call us "conspiracy theorists." Establishing that we believe in things that have evidence behind them, and don't just say everything the US says is a lie.
Many leftists conspiracy theories are just "Yeah, the US toppled this government and slaughtered a huge number of people. Here's the CIA written article on the CIA website where they admit to it".
I guess that's why people never listen to us. Our conspiracy theories are boring. They're all "shady government agents doing exactly what you'd expect them to do."
We don't get any fun stuff like secret cabals or lizard people or hologram moons. It's all just real world espionage shit, which is much less fun and exciting than James Bond.
Just came from a forum thread where OP was like "i don't want to be a conspiracist but I think tech companies are working together to suppress tech workers!" And I had to be all yeah bruh they go caught ten years ago and had to pay some fines and pinky promoise not to get caught again. Shit's exhausting I hate it here I wanna go live in Tamriel.
The country that says Iraq had WMD said China did a thing that wouldn't make any sense for them to do. That is the extraordinary claim. Why do you feel that a claim made by the US, who has only ever lied to you, is a reasonable starting point?
I think the US verifiably lies more than other countries, and has international publishing efforts that make it harder for other countries to lie like we do. Being the hegemony and the long time sole superpower does put you in unique positions