Monarchy and fascism share some characteristics but the things that make fascism what it is don’t originate from Monarchism or a revanchism for monarchy in any sense. When fascism qua fascism arose in Europe it was a separate formation from monarchists, for example, who still existed in substantial numbers in those countries back then. Instead, fascism arose from declining material conditions in countries that were losing imperialist status, such as losing colonies or having large foreign debts after World War I, and this situation - and “solution” - were both highly capitalistic. Fascism recruits from the petty bourgeoisie for its foot soldiers at the behest of factions of the haute bourgeoisie.

Capitalism is proto-fascism. Fascism, to the extent that it exists beyond World War II, has often been reinvented for crises of capitalism, whether domestic or imposed through imperialism. And who did the fascists take so much inspuration? For the Nazis, it was the United States, a bourgeoisie democracy (capitalist) premised on genocide and slavery.

There are many out there and it’s a challenge for me to recommend a specific order and set because I would want to think about tailoring it for a given person or audience. China is a large and multicultural country, the target of immense negative propaganda, and has an oft-ignored history of being colonized that is an essential part of the story. In another comment I recommended Wemheuer as a competent liberal historian, but that was only for the topic of famine when Mao was chairman, a counterpoint to Dikötter. Reading Wemheuer alone will give an incomplete picture and will be embedded with the author’s capitalistic and Western biases, so I then recommended reading Mike Davis’ Late Victorian Holocausts as a contextualizing piece and an introduction to a more appropriate historical, economic, and ecological framing of famine in China and other colonized and imperialized countries. But really there is a ton to read and I don’t know which parts you would be most interested in. If you give me some direction I can recommend some works.

np!

There are a wide range of historical works by competent people on China in the 1900s. Much of it will be in the primary literature, published in journals like China Journal, China, etc. You could read 10-30 articles from China Journal alone on this topic to get a basic handle on much of this (piecing together a good understanding will require reading many things, not just a book or two).

For an initial liberal historian’s view of The Great Leap Forward, you could read Eating Bitterness by Wemheuer. This would provide a sense of how a competent liberal academic approaches this topic. Of course, liberal academics trying their best to take themselves seriously are still biased animals like everyone, so what someone like Wemheuer will fail to do is contextualize against the underlying century of capitalist deprivation that made China’s economy brittle and primed it for agricultural fragility. As a simple liberal historian, Wemheuer will not understand or care much about economy or ecology. So to offset such oversights, I recommend reading critical works alongside liberal books like these. Some may appear in journals like China Journal. I might recommend reading something like Mike Davis’ Late Victorian Holocausts to get a more coherent view of what happened in China, to China, and what masses of the global south have struggled against for centuries, with nearly every famine being in some way man-made and of a greater scale than one would understand reading only hacks like parent recommended.

Re: first hand accounts, well yes of course we all know there was famine. Though I would caution against extrapolating from a single family’s stories to the experiences of hundreds of millions of people of varying cultures and economic situations over a period of decades.

Mao as, “the reason for it” is ahistorical mythmaking. It’s a cartoonish narrarive for liberal ideology that depends on Great Man Theory for storytelling because in cases like these the goal was and us villification and orientalist tropes about ignorant controlled masses. The all actual experiences, who carried out what acts, who killed who, etc, was actually quite complex and administered in a way that varied locally - and was designed and implemented by teams, not just one guy. In addition, there was a cycle of action-reaction-reaction-reaction-(…) of attempting to correct perceived mistakes that is largely ignored in these fairytales. Of recognizing, e.g., the folly of culling sparrows, and reversing the action in response to recommendations from a team of ecologists. Similarly, the positive impact of decimating the other 3 focus “pests” tends to be ignored in these narratives and the negative impact of culling sparrows exaggerared or at least given the least charitable guesswork, simply to fit a narrative.

Dikötter is widely criticized by historians and sociologists. He’s only praised in mainstream lay press by people who don’t know anything about this topic. He wrote for that lay audience, not academic, because it is easier to launder his bias and dishonesty to an audience with no familiarity on this topic, which is why I said to become informed before reading him in order to avoud miseducation.

You can feel free to read those histories and criticisms, as you should always do before accepting or recommending a pop history book.

Dikötter’s books are historically revisionist trash. To engage with them critically you need to read actual histories first, otherwise you will come away with wrong and unscholarly ideas - such as that Mao killed 100 million people.

Im a migrant to Australia. It’s true Australia has loads of issues involving racism. That said I DO have the right to protest

You are often permitted to stand around ineffectually or be in a parade that has no impact - though not always, of course. Once your action becomes actually disruptive to capital or related institutions, they lean on their own rules and the law to arrest, punish, expel, and/or deport those involved. As a migrant, I recommend that you familiarize yourself with this reality but avoid participation unless you are ready to accept those outcomes (and do not tell anyone your legal status, including me).

The only resistance allowed under liberalism is that which has no real impact on the greater schemes. Capitalist media tells fairy tales about how politics works, but they are falsehoods that whitewash history and try to make us complacent.

and vote towards a better future.

There is rarely much alignment between what you can vote for and what you actually want. Capitalist politics places emphasis on fights and reforms around problems that it itself creates and exacerbates, making you focus on undoing various injustices while doing nothing about the major ones. It provides the illusion of control and bastardizes the term, “democracy”, distilling it down to occasional votes for controlled parties and not rejecting the will and needs of the people. Again, your country is premised on genocide and the theft of the land and practices of indigenous Australians. You are participating in that, you are extolling the virtues of voting for people who engage in that theft and disposession to this day, like making indigenous Australians afraid of speaking to social workers lest the white supremacist institutions take away their children using anti-indigenous bias.

Ask yourself what control you have over various political parties’ positions, how they function, and why some parties enjoy popularity and favorable media coverage and others struggle and are wrongly vilified. Is it democracy in action?

And I can, and do, get involved with my community to do what I can regarding those topics.

It is of course good to be in community.

Importantly though I can live in the country and not face racism daily nor often get treated differently because of the way I look.

I think you are more likely just unfamiliar with what Australian white supremacy looks like because there is absolutely zero chance that you don’t encounter such people on a daily basis. Like I said, try following beauty standards associated with your ethnicity(ies) and engaging in disruptive action and you will immediately and viscerally learn what is often unstated but nevertheless present and impacting interactions. Or do the opposite and model whiteness and see what hapoens. Even just having a white sounding nane will consistently give you an advantage on job applications, including by people who say they are not racist. The racism is deep and pervasive, baked into the everyday.

Regardless I’m obviously going to take the word of the actual Chinese migrants I know of, and the people I know living in China, over strangers on the internet

You don’t have to take my word. Just go to China yourself. Assuming any amount of your stories are true, you should remember that you are negatively stereotyping 1.4 billion people based on a handful of accounts of people of unstated age who decided to leave the country. As an immigrant you should be familiar with the pressure to praise the country you move to and denigrate the one you came from. Immigrants in my country say absolute 100% bullshit things about the countries they came from. It seems to help them fit in. Particularly with white people. Also do not forget that immigrants are often a highly biased sample of the people from a given country. For example, in OECD countries, Indian immigrants are disproportionately upper caste and professionals forwarding petty bourgeois ideals. They will tell you absolute bullshit about conditions in India, they will be disproportionately Hindu supremacists, islamophobic, casteist, and praise light skin. You must dig deepee to understand a large and multifaceted country.

You’re allowed to have your own opinions on it, I just don’t think it’s a great idea to hand wave the racism issues in China, particularly for people who are black or brown.

I haven’t hand-waved any racism, full stop.

The way you speak of these things is so vague and unqualified that you yourself are basically dancing around the fringes of racism. Do you not know what racist logic looks like, e.g. denigrating entire ethnic groups or nationalities based on rumors, anecdotes from “a friend”, and half-remembered guesswork?

As I have consistently stated, racism exists in China but it is a low racism country overall. As you have admitted, the racism you will tend to encounter in China is naivete and not something deeper and malicious, which is what Anglos project from the white supremacy they are familiar with and help maintain in the countries they live in. You are in Australia. Australia is an Anglo settler colonial project premised on the genocide of indigenous Australians. You say you prefer to live there rather than experience rumored racism in China from a vague host of Han people (Han Chinese can refer to people from many countries, regions, ages, etc). Presumably you don’t really care about indigenous Australians and are somewhat naive about what most white Australians think of you, and you are trying to get by as “one of the good ones”, i.e. the subtly white supremacist liberal approach to race and ethnic background. If not, I’d be curious about your perception of how you are treated when adopting beauty standards drawn from your ethnic background(s) and when you politically challenge the violent liberal status quo. When the cops come to break up your direct action on Palestine (do you do anything remotely challenging white supremacy?), who stands with you?

But contrary to what you’re thinking, you can get by just fine in China and advance. But you might not be in a society propped up by imperialism and genocide and therefore need to work longer hours on top of learning a new culture.

Re: my familiarity with China, I am completely confident in what I’m saying and don’t need to tell internet stories about friends or rumors I heard to pretend at knowledge to broad brush countries and ethnic groups. If you don’t believe me, just go yourself. It is very inexpensive for Australians and you can spend a week or two in advance finding people who actually integrated locally and traveled to show you the ropes.

Cool you have a friend and used it to broad brush 1.4 billion people.

Anglo settler ass logic.

Well you obviously haven’t been to or lived in China for any period of time and most likely have an idealistic view of the countr

Please do yourself a favor and depend a bit less on making things up about other people.

Chinas a great place but being ignorant to its rampant racism is just silly.

I am not ignorant of racism in China, I have already described what form it comes in. You have a chauvinistic view based on a lack of understanding and investigation.

Because you’re certainly wrong. Waste of time comment.

I am correct, actually. But you are behaving quite childishly, letting anyone still reading clock the insecurity.

That’s correct, it is effectively nonexistent. You’re projecting the pattern of white supremacy onto a culture you know nothing about.

Sounds good!

That it, generally speaking, false.

China is low racism, particularly compared to other options. The racism experienced by black people in China is more that of unfamiliarity than bigotry. It does not come from the same place as white supremacy and does not have the same meaning or function.

I suggest developing a plan that is not just about building a better lifenfor yourself, but for others and community. For example, China ticks all of your boxes (yes, even privacy in comparison to the US), but it is also important to consider how you would personally make China better in the process, as you are, by moving, saying that your current conditions are pushing you to want to leave. So what about your current place of living was driven to that and how can this be made the case the world over?

Ultimately, capitalism is the underlying force of reaction, conservatism, and deprivation. It sets the guard rails of social policy, funds and purges the thought-moving forces of society. It creates homelessness. It destroys countries and societies, forcing them to adopy defensive and antagonistic positions to be viable and not only dominated. So I would recommend also thinking of this question in terms of how you might build your life as well as do well in fighting capitalism. As, ultimately, if this force is not recognized, you might find a place that ticka your boxes but is ultimately a forcr for capitalist expansion, e.g. most OECD countries. This wouldn’t make you a bad person but it is a major wrinkle in the idea of building a good life by finding a place based on these (all very reasonable) boxes to tick off.

Right wingers love Sowell tho

Civility should be liberalism and they should be cheering it on to eat socialists in the second panel

Big artists are performing clowns for monopoly capitalists.

Not all Palestinians support Hamas. There are Palestinians who reasonably understand that Hamas provocations, despite operating as a liberation organization, does not achieve anything against a greater power. Namely, the most powerful military in the Middle East.

“Not all [ethnicity] support [X]” is a truism that applies to all ethnicities and basically all Xs. Here, you are actually using it to just share your own i correct positioning but trying to clothe it in a Palestinian jacket. The organizers of the Al Aqsa Flood are extremely popular in Gaza, in fact, as is the action itself.

Palestine is a conflict between Jews and Muslims.

This is actually the Zionist framing. There is an identical framing that occurred in reaction to this from occupied muslims and sympathetic muslims, but the framing is fundamentally flawed. There is a reason it is framed this way by Zionists, as they want you to ignore the material reality and history and instead, wrongly, believe that this is about religious differences and as old as the rekigions. Completely wrong. The “Israeli” occupation is an ethnic supremacist ethnic colonialist project like Manifest Destiny, with Palestinians being those occupied and killed by a foreign colonizer whose project is premised on the expulsion and death of the indigenous. It is around a century old, maybe century and a half depending on where you draw the line, but mass “immigration” of Zionist settlers began in the 1920s. Zionists conflate their genocidal project with Judaism, but this is an incorrect and fundamentally antisemitic way of thinking.

Zionist Jews who live abroad who support the State of Israel.

There’s that antisemitism at work. Most Zionists are not Jewish. They are self-professed Christians and non-Jewish atheists. “Israel”'s main backers are the US and Europe, with political class members of those religious views and general populations to match.

Muslims and Judaism do not view themselves in a secular fashion, because there was never a state and church separation like the way Christianity had from the beginning that evolved into popular Western culture.

This is completely ahistorical.

First, on Palestine. Prior to the occupation within the last 100 years, Palestine was multi-ethnic and multi-religious, governed by a relatively (though not officially) secular government. Jewish, Christian, Druze, Muslim, all lived together in integrated communities. This is in contrast to the ethnic supremacist “state” of “Israel”, which explicitly discriminates on the basis of rekigion and ethnicity from top to bottom, devaluing the lives of Palestinians.

Second, on so-called originalist Christian secularism: Christianity got its start re: government as the officially adopted religion of the Roman Empire, with ecclesiastically dressed-up policies to accompany it. Christianity inherited this title from the previous state rekigion of Rome, the polytheistic one with which you may be familiar. Christianity went on to be inseparable from state governance for over 1000 years.

The notion of “a separation between church and state” re: Christianity is actually a modern invention, an iconoclastic one wherein liberalism, the political ideology of capitalism, sought to undermine and do away with explicitly religious rule. The result waa to move the real powers of the church over to the state controlled by bourgeois interests. They called it “freedom” but of course the state did the same basic things as before.

Secularism comes from Christianity.

Secularism predates Christianity by ages. And as I said, Christianity has not been particularly secular.

Judaism is the “ways of being Jewish”, not the ways of being an American, Greek, or European.

This is a European antisemitic trope. Get out of here with this crap.

In fact, being “Jewish” was so important, Zionist resurrected the Hebrew language from extinction just to prove how Jewish they are

Zionists made Hebrew the official language in an effort to create an ethnic nationalist identity. Jewish people around the world spoke and speak many languages.

The Umma is the community of Muslims, therefore, the community is more important than the individual.

This is not logic.

You are viewing things from the Western idea of individual worth, and the supposed rights that exist over the individual that suppose to protect them. These are unreasonable first principles. In philosophy and science, a first principle is a basic proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption.

Valuing lives is not a Western individualist notion. OP has been inculcated with Western imperialist propaganda, but then again, clearly so have you.

Islam defines a Muslim, just as a transgender believes what they think of themselves defines them. You can’t have it both ways and not have a contradictory logic. Neither are liberal societies.

This does not make sense. In addition, there is diversity of opinion within islam. You cannit broad brush like this.

The Zionist policy is to expand the State Of Israel to include all of Greater Israel. Over the decades, they have been expanding, while the Palestinian state has been getting smaller. It is pretty obvious what is going on here, and like the long term policy of American Manifest Destiny, Greenland anyone, Zionist have their own Manifest Destiny.

100%. No notes, all correct.

Israel is given credit, because they are Jews, who were victims during the holocaust. In Christian morality, victims are given credit. The Israel Lobby is strong, and there is a kinship aspect to it. Christians for some reason view Jews as their next of kin, and have similar overlapping prophecies. These are the

This is the Zionist PR strategy. To understand why this support exists you have to look at the material basis, as it dictates what propaganda is created and disseminated and given worth by media outlets, achools, etc. “Israel” does not receive support in its genocidal project because it conflates itself with judaism and reminds everyone of the holocaust. It is the reverse: “Israel” has these messages promoted and repeated uncritically to shape public opinion because it provides material value to the ruling class and their political class pawns: disruption of surrounding states, particularly those seeking sovereignty. This is what Biden meant when he said if there were no “Israel” they would need to invent one. “Israel” is a US-backed ethnic supremacist tool of domination in the region.

The “Israel” lobby would not be allowed to exist if it contradicted the interests of the ruling class. It is, de facto, an intentionally-promoted mechanism of the US to discipline its political class, intelligentsia, and students.

There will be nothing done regarding the Manifest Destiny of Zionism, because there is nothing from the Muslim world that is strong enough to stop it. Israel would have not been formed under The Caliphate, or had the Ottoman Empire continued on.

The last sentence is true. Neither governance would have tolerated this project. However, opposition to “Israel” is not something that can only be undertaken by neighboring states - though Yemen is exemplary. “Israel”, like all ethnostates, is actually highlu fragile - this is why it requires so much funding and support from the US, as do neighbkring comprador governments. A weakening US empire could lead to a collapse so dramatic that nobody would expect it.

“Israel” has already experienced a brain drain since the Al Aqsa Flood and is in a perpetual state of political crisis, as their ethnic supremacy is contradicted by being unable to safely live in Northern “Israel” or “return the hostages”. They demand blood because they have no other security. They are fragile, held up by the US. They can fall at an opportune moment.

I had a conversation with someone on telegram’s GazaNow channel and I got the impression he’s in some military branch of Hamas that operates in Gaza. Dude told me things like “if we didn’t start this, Israel would attack us” and “we’re defending our land, our religion” (Religion? Really? What about Palestine?) and “this is jihad”.

“Israel” and the West do not really discriminate between brown muslim and Palestinian. The Zionist project is both racist and islamophobic and they seek to frame it in terms of religion, primarily as a way to deflect from the fact that it is colonialist and ethnic supremacist. Looj at the ignorant comments here about how this is simply “Jews vs. Muslims” and that it is an age-old “conflict” rather than a roughly century-old occupation. There is nothing incorrect in that person’s statements.

I tried to make reason out of his words, I told him they shouldn’t have done this, they had no strategic backup, Hezbollah and Iran didn’t know what they’ll do (but funny enough, Israel knew and saught the chance to start this genocide, which I do believe they were preparing for),

Through some unknown process you have decided they are involved in Hamas militarily. On what basis and in-depth knowledge do you feel you can chide them on geopolitical and military strategy?

I am also confused about your statement about Hezbollah. On which basis do you make it? Hezbollah began attacks on October 7-8.

I told him they lost their Islamic credibility with killing people instead of just kidnaping them,

This is nonsense. There is no dictate in islam that you must always capture and not kill occupiers.

I told him they would have had so much more support and legitimacy if Israel attacked first

“Israel” attacked in 1948. What on earth do you mean by credibility? And international support? The Al Aqsa Flood reversed neighboring countries’ normalization of relations with the occupation. No states that had any alignment with Palestine reversed course afterwards. What mythical international support do you believe was squandered? It has been an open genocide for over a year, we all know it, it is nakedly done against hospitals and schools, and the imperialists do not care. They support it. They do not think of Gazans as people. They are deeply racist in support of their own projects.

but he was continuing that this is jihad and as much martyrs is necessary to acheive victory and freedom, that much martyrs will be.

When you fight for liberation against murderous occupiers you accept that you will probably die trying to achieve it. This is a clear-eyed statement about the nature of the occupation and resistance.

Now. I don’t call citizens of Gaza martyrs, but victims.

Calling those killed martyrs, as is common in Palestine if you ask your friends, is a form of resistant optimism with both a religious and liberationist basis. The idea is that they died in a struggle, not simply killed without context, and that this is a valid struggle. To free from occupation, apartheid, deprivation, deep indignity, dehumanization. There is a reason every group involved in struggle there uses this terminology and asks that supposed allies not depict this solely as despairing defeats.

Yahya Sinwar is a martyr because he chose to live as a combatant and he died as a martyr by defending Gaza. Citizens of Gaza are not combatants and they never asked Hamas to do this. A lot of them blame Hamas because they lost their loved ones, their lives, their future. They are VICTIMS.

“A lot of” is a weasely way of avoiding the truth, which is that the Al Aqsa flood and its military leaders are extremely popular in Gaza. 70-90%.

Do you really think they wanted this? That they’re happy to die for Allah and Palestine? If you do, like many Muslims do, than you are disgusting just as Zionists and takfiris are, because you are dehumanizing them for their religious beliefs and for your own “pro Palestine” image.

Per the actual sentiments of Gazans, the organized resistance is very popular. Organizing resistance, including militarily, does not mean you want to be bombed. Uf you want to call them victims, then you should accept that you are now engaging in victim blaming. Hamas et al (the Al Aqsa Flood was not just Hamas, a fact you don’t seem to know) are not bombing Gaza’s schools ans hospitals and homes. That is the occupation they are organizing against. At no point in your “unpopular” (it is actually a very popular Western chauvinist position) statement did you correctly lay responsibility with “Israel” and its friends, including the Global North and comprador neighbors.

No, they are not happy they’re martyrs. Just the opposite. They’re devastated. Source? I have few friends in Gaza I talk to every fucking day.

Stop tokenizing your friends. Palestinians are actual people, they have diverse views and experiences. If you only have a few Palestinian friends then you should appeal to my many friends with the exact opposite - and much more popular - position.

Let your friends write their own posts if they want to discuss this.

And I blame Hamas for starting the third Nakba and all of the devastating pain people in Gaza are going through for a year and a half.

Yet again you fail to mention the people actually dropping the bombs, delivering the bombs, making the bombs. Instead you place blame with the only organized resistance against them within Palestine. Disgusting. This is also getting repetitive so I will skip such things.

More on their corruption. Qatar funds Hamas and Netanyahu is investigated for ties with Qatar. Put your tinfoil hats on and ask yourselves what is the outcome of October 7th as we can today witness and what are the eye poking facts that no one cares about?

And now you are just entertaining childish fantasies that Hamas is a Zionist OP. This is not a serious way of thinking.

Gaza is demolished and almost ethnically cleansed

This is the trajectory of all of Palestine without resistance. The occupiers have never stopped pushing. You’d know this if you ever read any history at all and internalized its meaning.

West Bank is under constant attacks,

This was already happening, it just increased in intensity. The West Bank is governed by the “passive” comprador government you seemingly wish Gaza had. Notice that it doesn’t save them. Instead, it works with Zionists to do patrols and disappear people.

Hezbollah is decapitated

Hezbollah is fine. Its primary strategic loss is in Syria falling, not the deaths of leaders.

Syria fell under governance of fucking ISIS

Backed by Turkey and the US, “Israel”'s sponsor. Syria had virtually nothing to do with any of this aside from proximity to “Israel” and being targeted by imperialists for being a remnant of independent Arab Nationalisn.

gulf states didn’t move a finger

The gulf states are run by governments installed by the US. They materially abandoned Palestine decades ago. Their approach to Palestine improved after the Al Aqsa Flood.

that Saudi shit prince is the best friend with Kushner

You’re about a decade late to that fact.

Trump is bombarding Yemen

The US has been bombing Yemen since Obama. Most of the bombing, to date, happened under Obama.

the only true supporter of Palestine, he threats Iran, he’s preparing USA troops in Diego Garcia for what, to attack Yemen and Iran,

Every president has worked against Iran. I’m at a loss for the exact relevance. Iran needs nukes to ensure its survival but it is naively playing it safe. Old news.

Israel is attacking Lebanon and Syria, potentially could attack Egypt. What is the outcome? Great Israel and USA hegemony over the region. Even worse, erasing of culture of the Middle East. And the worst, erasing lineages of Levantine and Arab families.

Notice the aggressors in those situations. It is not Hamas. Have you confused Hamas for the US Empire? Imperialists are responsible for their crimes, not those who oppose them.

Your logic is that of the whipped dog.