this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2026
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Forgive me if I sound like a teacher seizing on everything to make another point lol, but this strikes me as worth addressing as well.
One of the accusations that gets levied at liberation efforts, anti-imperialist efforts, marxist-leninist efforts, and so on, is that they use "propaganda". The implication here is that propaganda is some kind of uniquely bad thing that the bad people are doing and that the Good and Pure Western Empire does not stoop to the level of propaganda (even though they definitely, explicitly do, example here: https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/documents-expose-how-hollywood-promotes-war-on-behalf-of-the-pentagon-cia-and-nsa/).
It's this baseless claim to some kind of "neutrality" and is used to position the empire as somehow "above the fray" and able to make judgments of peoples and countries from on high. Likely going back to colonialism and its positioning of the colonizer as a "civil people" who are above the "savages". There's a good piece on colonialism pinned on lemmygrad for discussion right now in fact: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10964427
The reality is: Everything and everyone has bias. However, this is not the same as saying "everything is relative" (which would be more like solipsism and not a dialectical materialist view). It's more just a way of pushing back on the idea that anyone/entity can be truly neutral to conflict. That having biases does not uniquely taint you and is an inevitable part of existence.
The important part for communists / marxist-leninists is that information is representative of truths about oppression and is in the interests of the oppressed masses. It is biased toward their interests, but this does not de facto mean it is dishonest. On the flip side, much of capitalist media is biased toward capitalist interests, but is presented dishonestly as if it is in the interests of the masses - otherwise, the working class would be put off by it.
Okay so this basically was my experience in that forum. I wasn't even conscious of the class struggle and was completely unaware of reading theory before my experience with posting the documentary. I didn't really understand these feelings, this sense of injustice that I was discovering for the first time. I wasn't even siding with DPRK yet but realized I should at least be critical of the propaganda that western media spews out non-stop at the very least. That's what I emphasized in my thread but the reaction was overwhelmingly negative. As the thread went on I became flustered with the responses and looked into the things they were saying, not feeling right with the responses. They brought up USAID and that disagreeing with USAID was horrible to do. That "both sides" of imperialism are bad. (Saying that China and DPRK are imperialist). They were justifying US/NATO presence everywhere because while they "oppose imperialism" they somehow justify that it's better than the "savages" of DPRK becoming imperalist.
I felt that it was basically? Defaulting to the imperial core? Mind you, the entire forum is mostly Americans. I genuinely thought they advocated for justice and rights, they do call themselves very leftist. But when challenging this, they suddenly became extremely pro-imperialism.
I crashed out and felt betrayed. But out of that I found out why I felt this way because it lead me to read on Marxist-Leninism. How? Because I looked up "tankie" and "campism" which is what they called me and that they don't tolerate Marxist-Leninist posts.
Sorry for the tangent. Haven't felt a place to vent these thoughts anywhere.
No sorry needed, I'm glad you found this place. Dealing with those kind of people is an experience I'm sure most, if not all, here have had at one point or another (and if I'm not mistaken, it was one of the motivations for building this forum in the first place). Some have even described experiences like it in the west with political parties that position themselves as "left" but then have shitty stances on imperialism. It can be very disillusioning.
I haven't been here since the beginning, but from what I hear, this place has been accused of being repressive in its views or something, when it's other instances on lemmy that have a tendency to defederate with it. It really is reminiscent of DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim and offender).
So-called "tankies" are supposedly "authoritarian" but imperialists don't blink an eye when the empire justifies another aggressive and unprovoked military operation in a country thousands of miles away, when it coups other countries, when it puts sanctions on another country that result in the deaths of its citizens, and so on.
Yeah, pretty much colonialism in a nutshell. The old "civil and savage" narrative continues to rear its head. That you'll find this sort of garbage coming from people from the US makes more sense when you consider it in the context of its origins as a settler colony committing genocide and building itself through slavery, and then its subsequent transformation to a global imperial power. And its western europe allies, many of them have their share of brutal parts in colonial history. British empire, French colonialism, Belgian, etc.
There's a term you'll probably come across, if you haven't already learned about it. Ultra-left, or left-com. Some people who purport to be on the left and even are closer to being marxist-leninist than the colonizer-brained people tend to be, will try to pull this "both sides" thing and say "the US is imperialist but also China is". So that's another angle to look out for. China, from all the evidence I've seen, does mutually-beneficial deals with other countries, or even gives them loans that are easy to pay back to help them build vital infrastructure, which is markedly different from the imperial practice of predatory loans and purposeful underdevelopment of a country in order to maintain control of it and use it as an outpost for extracting resources. ProleWiki has a good article on that here: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Imperialism#Chinese_%22imperialism%22
It was doubly frustrating because one person who took GREAT offense to the video, who also linked to wikipedia articles like the kidnapping of a Japanese director or the Malaysia assassination in 2017. When disputed on this, I was not allowed to talk about it because I was "some white dude in Iceland" and they however, was a child of a refugee from the Vietnam war(southern region I think?) and that there's generational trauma that somehow gives them higher authority on the opinion of this entire conversation. Who then proceeded to defend imperialism while at the same time saying they have issues with US imperialism. What am I to think about this? It was very confusing. Said person was American too.
I wasn't sure what to think of it myself, because well. I am not oppressed, I am white and living within the imperial core is a status of privilege no matter how well I am actually doing in life. Still though, that whole interaction still bothers me. Is it wrong?
I also read https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Essay:State_Capital_vs._Finance_Capital:_Why_China_is_not_--_and_Cannot_Become_--_an_Imperial_Hegemon which I thought was a very good essay.
Oh yeah, that's a frustrating sort of trap. You're trying to be conscientious about being a white person talking to someone who is considered non-white and they're using this against you to push narratives that actually benefit white supremacy. So I think that's the important thing to look for, is when the implicit narrative they're pushing is enabling of white supremacy and its racism. vs. when they're sharing a lived experience that is worth listening to and taking into account.
The common implication here, for example, is that 1) They (sometimes as a person who has never even lived in the region they're talking about, who is only related to it by ethnicity and distance of being a descendant of someone who has) somehow speak for millions of people who do live there and who grew up there and who still live there. 2) What the people who do live there say is not worth listening to or is tainted when they overall like their government because "they're brainwashed" (millions of them, apparently). Which is pretty racist.
So it circles back to the superiority thing, but they're siding with the imperial/colonial view instead of the one that benefits their own people (and to be fair, they may have less connection with their ethnic country of origin than the imperial core country they live in if they grew up in the empire, immersed in its culture).
As for where they get the narratives like "my father/grandfather/etc. was oppressed by the government and fled", sometimes that goes back to their relative being among the power elite from the previous regime and so they fled for that reason. Like a landlord. It's not always the case, but when we're talking about governments led by a communist vanguard party, it is one of the reasons those stories get started. I believe another reason is people buying into fear-mongering of "scary commies" when the change of power happens and fleeing for that reason. War of course can be scary and involve hardship regardless of what side you're on, and Vietnam was trying to shake off the yoke of colonialism.
So yeah, in short: If they're pushing views that further white supremacy, them being non-white doesn't excuse it. And some of the so-called victims of communism are members of the former exploiting class who ran. If you're ever uncertain about it, please feel free to bring it up more on this forum and ask. None of us is imbued with proper judgment on it with ease and working through stuff together can help.
P.S. I don't think I've actually read that essay myself, but I will give it a read, thanks for mentioning it. Looks like a good addon to the point, to further back it up.
I want to give you the biggest hug ever. You've found good people.
Thank you!! I think so too! After having lurked for a bit and seeing how people talk here, it's very interesting since in other places it ends in a lot of name calling and bans.
Congrats on finding Marxism-Leninism!
Thank you! I'm still learning and the amount of books, lectures and articles are hard for me to read as I am a slow person but the knowledge is very worth it.
That's awesome! If you want something to help guide your studies, I made a basic ML reading list that you can check out, see if it helps!