this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2026
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[–] quill7513@anarchist.nexus 6 points 1 day ago

you believe that no country should ever attempt to arrest people that are illegally spreading misinformation directly to sow racial division, arming malcontent separatists, and funneling money towards extremists specifically so they commit terror acts and specifically so they can sow racial discontent and separatist movements?

No, I do not believe this. But moreover, I do not think this is what this law does, in function. The bigger issue here, to me, is that China is declaring that they have the right to enforce Chinese law outside of China. While States (capital S intentional) and borders are intrinsically bullshit, the idea of one State enforcing compliance on people living outside of that State is a nightmare scenario. I think there are more effective ways to counter misinformation than what is being proposed here. One of the biggest things they could do is address structural issues within the China that have established a hegemonic racial hierarchy in which some people receive preferential treatment from the state and others have to fight to maintain their cultural identity and language. In particular Blang, Nu, Gelao, Yi, Achang, Daur, Fuyu Kyrgyz, and Ili Turkic people face total cultural erasure. These cultural traditions need not be erased for a Marxist eutopia to be achieved. In fact, these people demand our solidarity with them in order for any of us to be able to achieve a positive pro-social outcome for any of our societies. When Marx wrote about international solidarity, this was the sort of thing he meant. We cannot claim to have class consciousness if we erase some people's cultural identifiers in service of some hypothetical positive outcome.

I've been talking to some of my Cambodian friends recently, and something struck me. I tend to think of colonization as being predominantly a process by which one population erases another in order to steal their resources. They all talk about colonization in terms of one population stealing another's resources with the predominant aim of erasing their culture through homogenization. It's still something I'm processing and working through, but I think it's something we should all take into consideration as we combat colonization.

I know anarchists are a bit on the naive side

You "know" this and yet I perceive things like what you're saying to be naive. This is something we'll have simply disagree with because I think our perspectives are completely irreconcilable. We are looking at the same set of problems and seeing a different set of root causes and actions to take based on that.

and historically haven’t exactly been victims

This though I'll need to push back on. In my country identifying as an anarchist is considered reason to have your citizenship revoked if you hold dual citizenship or are naturalized. Anarchists in Israel do not receive due process, the act of identifying as an anarchist is considered to be an act of terrorism that is met with being shot on sight. Mikhail Bakunin spent 2 years in solitary confinement after being sentenced to death before being imprisoned for another 3 years before being exiled to Siberia for 5 years (which he escaped, not released). Ukrainian and Russian anarchists who supported the reds against the whites were ultimately crushed and largely put to death after the Russian civil war. Spanish anarchists in the 1930s faced persecution from both forces supported by Italian and German fascists in Franco and Soviet forces supported by Stalin. Rojava was destroyed by forces supported by both Turkey and Russia just earlier this year. The US national guard and police forces have bombed multiple anarchist workers' movements throughout Appalachia and the Pacific Northwest.

Yet still we organize under these principals. For me, it's because I've known the pain of being hungry. I've known the anxiety of being homeless. Many of my friends and allies are the same. We know what it means to experience poverty, and we know the value of community supporting each other. So we spend our time building a coalition of allies that can resist and defy the state because for us this is a matter of life and death. I think your analysis of anarchists is at least a little reductive, however my read on this is that it's not coming from a place of malice. I just ask that you meet and talk to some anarchists, and consider adding some anarchist theory to your reading. Whether you add any of that to your praxis is of course up to you (since the ultimate Anarchist philosophy is that no one is more equipped to determine what is best for someone's self determination than them).

one would think you’d pay some attention to how your enemy actually operates and why your movement will always fail if you do not have plans in place against these tactics.

I do. Which is why I'm skeptical about this situation and its positive benefit for the people. I'll be thrilled if it turns out I'm wrong, but if my country was passing a law like this I'd be fucking horrified.