The Deprogram

And I’m not criticizing the meme, but there seems to be this trend amongst us in the western “left” to expect China to swoop in and take care of all our problems in a style akin only to the nostalgic “memories” we’ve developed of the Soviets.

This is an interesting point because the key here is the USSR doesn't exist anymore. And for quite a few of us in these spaces, it probably never existed while we were alive (or not while we were cogent adult beings). The USSR as a world savior simply never existed. As impact beyond itself goes, the USSR made a huge difference in defeating Nazi Germany and being the first to establish a socialist state project, but it also took massive losses in the process of fighting Nazi Germany and was stretched thin from that and its international efforts. Meanwhile, the US was positioned really well after WWII to steamroll over the planet, utilizing pre-existing colonial and imperial tendrils to make it all the easier to do so.

In other words, what I'm trying to say is that although the USSR did great things for people, it was still heavily limited by its material conditions. And if it was still around today, it would be getting criticized by ultra-leftists in similar ways to how China is criticized now. Because it wouldn't be making all of the most plainly "moral" decisions, it would not be saving the world but instead acting in a complex way that tries to move the international and local cause of liberation forward, and the western empire propaganda machine would be telling people from day one to despise everything it stands for.

Here the Christian culture that Jones Manoel talks of rears its head again. Now that the USSR is no more, we can freely romanticize what it was, in a form unmarred by complex and uncomfortable realities. We can wallow in the comfort of the idea untouched and untainted by good will having to work within circumstances full of cruelty and neglect. It's reassuring in a way to hide in the purity of the idea, if one believes that acting within a cruel world, rather than rejecting it with the most swift and bridge-burning measures, has an inevitable corrupting influence that destroys otherwise good efforts or damns one (if not the whole world) to depravity.

Likewise with praise of China. It is dangerous (to their comfort) for the purist to sincerely learn about China in detail because the ideal will be shattered in favor of the material realities. The Christian-influenced conclusion will lead to the belief that it has been "corrupted". It is then knocked down from the pedestal that it never asked to be on, where it can be spat upon like a fallen angel who seeks to lead lost souls astray.

that's good of him at least!

but the second you criticize the lack of any real support for Palestine, all of a sudden you get a 10 pages essay about why their strategy of inaction is 10D chess and how they have to keep doing business with Israel and having their politicians literally praise trade deals with them in order to somehow eventually prevent the single last Palestinian child from being murdered.

This is just bad faith nonsense. People have really got to stop believing negative stuff they read about an AES project just because it aligns with what they already suppose is happening.

I can't seem to find it in my bookmarks at the moment so maybe I didn't bookmark it, but there was a thing just recently about a company that was having problems because of China having blocked new investments in israel and marked it as high risk since 2023. I could not figure out from that one story whether the blocking new investments part was recent or if that was also since 2023, but this is part of the problem. Most sources English-speaking people will come across about China organically are not sources coming directly from China about what China is doing.

I use this as an example because it demonstrates how it already isn't as simple as "they are doing business with israel as normal".

Another recent example, about Venezuela, was some people falling for an imperialist headline that claimed Venezuela was sending oil to israel and they took this as evidence of Delcy Rodriguez being a sellout. But official Venezuelan sourcing corrected this claim.

As for the stuff about "10D chess", I can only assume you're referring to analyses that delve into the situation China found itself in after the USSR got destroyed and why it has taken the path it has. It's not 10D chess, it's dialectical and historical materialism, which can probably sound convoluted sometimes, but that's because 1) taking on a hegemonic global capitalist empire is complicated and 2) we're largely trying to explain it from the outside in without having grown up in the Chinese context and being privy to how it all went down.

You're welcome to challenge the analyses and do your own, but dismissing it as 10 page essays of excuses is not helping anyone. It's pretty low effort to fling shit at people who are trying to understand the world and shout some moralist proclamations. It takes more effort to contribute to that understanding, but more importantly, it can require real sacrifice to take moral stands that have consequences for doing so that can result in a painful end.

And if the people of Palestine can be steadfast throughout the decades of torture and genocide they've faced, what is your excuse for proclaiming them doomed?

The burden for China to have to do something against the wests genocide when they have nothing to do with Palestine, even historically is weird. Despite that the diplomatic perspective of China has always been one of contesting the Golan heights, supporting North Korea and historic support of the PLO when it was a marxist entity.

To say they are not anti-colonial is wrong, they are also pro-trade and diplomancy - im not going to get mad at them for mirroring what the US does which is just bomb them.