now associated communism with fucking terrorists

What planet do you live on? Virtually everyone who is not a communist already associates us with terrorists. Until we begin to consistently meet people’s material needs, that is not going to change.

The dude was protecting his identity, and I applaud him for his virtually entirely positive contributions to our movement.

No anarchist that I know of is organizing efforts in Xinjiang to fight China.

See, I disagree with this. By regurgitating the unverified claims (which some anarchists do), those anarchists are organizing efforts against China. (Edit: Although not in Xinjiang, but that distinction is not important in my opinion.)

While pretty much every anarchist I know in the US spends hours every week organizing efforts to fight the US in one way or another.

Awesome work for sure.

The discussion around China’s treatment of Uygurs is always so unnuanced to me. … China is a villain and needs to be stopped. China has not and never will do anything wrong. Your criticisms are orchestrated by the CIA.

Tankies don’t say the latter at all. We painstakingly and categorically debunk the unverified claims and point out that it’s extremely dangerous to promote Western propaganda. That being said, we do not dance around with nuance in this respect, and we cite sources such as the nuanced anti-war takes which perpetuated criticisms against the imperialist’s targets. Those nuanced takes completely failed to prevent the Gulf War, the war on terror efforts against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc. Public opinion matters. Spreading unverified claims feeds the public opinion machine.

My point is that it makes sense to deride the takes of anarchists who promote the unverified claims, but it does not make sense to deride the takes of tankies who fight against promotion of the unverified claims.

My entire point is that there is nothing wrong with the non-nuanced take from “tankies.” We should categorically reject the Western claims. Sorry, but “documented video of some Uyghurs claiming they were oppressed by China” by themselves are insufficient evidence to verify the claims being made. Namely that the claimed oppression is systemic and structural. I can’t possibly know whether these testimonies are bought and paid for by the West or if they are legitimate. There’s also no evidence that these claims of oppression are systemic nor structural.

You’re drawing a false equivalence between the two extremes. Plus you’re straw-manning the “tankie” take by claiming we say “China has not and never will do anything wrong. Your criticisms are orchestrated by the CIA.” All your criticisms, even if a little strawman-y there, too, of the anarchists who criticize China as a villain are pretty on point though.

The point is that actual anti-imperialists should categorically reject these unverified claims that the oppression is systemic and structural. Any failure to categorically reject the unverified claims is empowering imperialism in the West. This is a common problem for anarchists, as they tend to criticize all governments equally and as a result help to promote the power of the global hegemon.

If China takes over the global hegemony and implements the sort of obvious imperialism that the West perpetuates today, then I’ll criticize them to the exclusion of the West.

I’m not going to stop criticizing the spread of Western propaganda ever. Even before I understood economics well enough to be a leftist, I still criticized Western intervention and justifications for war always because it so obviously carried malicious intent. Whether you’re an anarchist, a liberal, a conservative, or a communist, if you regurgitate unverified Western propaganda, you are doing the slave master’s work for them.

Your post was talking about nuance with respect to China in the context of an active propaganda attack by the West against China based on unverified claims. This propaganda attack is clearly and obviously intended to curry favor with the Western population in order to escalate military, economic, and/or diplomatic action against China.

You shouldn’t have a nuanced take with respect to unverified claims which are obviously and clearly intended to promote a narrative that will lead to military, economic, and diplomatic action. You should have an absolute take and categorically reject the unverified claims.

No one disputes that the vocational centers, and I sure am glad I don’t have to figure out how to stop documented terrorists whose training was facilitated by the West in Afghanistan, but I can’t in good conscience condemn vocational centers when there is no precedent for a more humane way of deradicalizing documented terrorists. There are lots of unverified claims around these vocational centers, and I will categorically dismiss them until there is verifiable evidence, because I oppose any and all military, economic, and diplomatic actions taken by the West.

The West has shown over and over again that its only goal is shoring up power for capitalists. China is obviously a threat to the West. Even in the imaginary world where “they’re capitalist though!”

Also, replace all of these ideas with Russia or Iran and my points would be exactly the same. It doesn’t even matter if China is socialist or not, they’re clearly the lesser evil relative to the West, and Western hegemony is the #1 enemy.

If you live in China, by all means, have a nuanced take.

If you live in the West, stop supporting US justifications for military and diplomatic action against less imperialist nations.