Blakey [he/him]

uh huh.

I’m not saying the US is good

Just that everything it says about its geopolitical rivals can be assumed to be true.

So, free and fair elections. Well, now we’re back to square one, and pretty much describing how Western democracies work.

Consider Australia: all of the major political parties nakedly serve the interests of capital, and decide who can and cannot run in their elections. This is the case in all of the liberal “democracies”. They aren’t “free and fair” elections by any reasonable definition.

Normally I don’t respond to low level comments like this, but the intellectual laziness here is mind boggling. Dictionaries exist for a reason.

…I really, really hope that you are being deliberately obtuse here in refusing to acknowledge that they are asking what you mean by the term to further the conversation. The other option is that you think there’s some context where asking a person you disagree with for some kind of objective definition makes sense, and that really, really doesn’t speak highly of your reasoning ability. Different people have wildly different understandings of “authoritarian”.

False, that is the result of capitalism when it goes unchecked, not the definition. And different countries have different levels of checks on capitalism.

…you don’t think that the existence of a capitalist ruling class is part of the definition of capitalism? Why are liberals always so happy to lecture people on the basis of What I Reckon Sounds About Right Probably…

That’s… You’re literally describing capitalism though. Capitalism is defined by a capitalist ruling class which means that government can be expected to use its power in the interests of that class… Such as by bailing out corporations.

Russia is fully thirty-five fucking years into its life as a neoliberal hellhole.

The constitution explicitly, openly vests power exclusively in wealthy and/or slave holding men. Are you seriously claiming that wasn’t “intentional”?! Your founding fathers overwhelmingly WERE wealthy slave owning white men, they “extracted” those concessions FROM THEMSELVES.

weird how his neck just did that

I’d also point out that countries like Australia don’t have a constitution at all and they’ve lasted longer than that.

Are you… Feeling okay? Did it even occur to you to maybe google this bonkers claim?! Now personally I don’t feel like this neoliberal, white supremacist, settler-colonial project which was founded on a continuing genocide is much of a model for anything regardless of how long it’s lasted, but it does in fact have a fucking constitution!

What’s really depressing and frustrating about all this is that at no point will this experience ever tempt you even for a second to consider you could be wrong about other things, too. 55+ years on this earth and you haven’t bothered to learn the critical thinking skills of an eight year old.

Do you hear yourself? A detention facility. So… A prison, or a gaol, or what could be ANYTHING. So not, in any way, evidence of a concentration camp. Well done.

The picture only proves literally that those people posed in front of a camera in that way. It’s probably legit and not staged, though! That’s fair.

But we still don’t know anything about it. Was it taken in china? Japan? America? Vatican city? Who knows!

Is the individual in the picture a peaceful Uyghur who is going to be killed and their organs harvested? Are they a murderer or other violent criminal? Are they a han man who was taking bribes? A Japanese woman who poisoned her husband? A refugee who fled to America and is now being deported for Failure To Be White? Again, we don’t know!

How about the facility - is it a concentration camp in china? Is it an American prison or ICE detention centre? Maybe a Filipino gaol? Guantanamo bay? Who could say!

You can’t - you apparently got this from Adrian Zenz, a far right ghoul who says woman shouldn’t have the vote and that he was sent by god to destroy china - not someone particularly trustworthy.

You may take his claims seriously but it’s ridiculous to suggest other people should. You keep claiming you’ve shown evidence but what it amounts to is… Nothing. Nothing that can be proven to have any veracity, nothing that comes from a trustworthy source.

Finally there’s something incredibly racist in the claim that there’s a huge campaign of systematic violence against Uyghurs in Xinjiang, yet there are no refugee camps in neighbouring countries with large Uyghur populations and no outbreaks of violence. You seem to think that, for some reason, the Uyghur people are just… Taking it. They are neither fighting back nor fleeing. I also love how somehow the Muslim nations who sent in inspectors are just… Lying. Nope, can’t possibly listen to the brown people. Not when there’s a bunch of good ol’ boys telling you The Truth!

I mean, look at this. You have a completely anonymous photo that could be of anyone, anywhere, doing anything… And that’s more convincing evidence than the complete lack of any kind of organised resistance to a supposed genocide that, if it were happening, would make Gaza look like a schoolyard scuffle. Come. On.