this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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Normies can be reached and memes help. I've already gotten some "maybe we were too auick to judge China" reactions when I point out they execute child molesters.

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[–] glimmer_twin@hexbear.net 73 points 2 days ago (4 children)

China might not have bombed anyone, but they did kill 30,000 Vietnamese people for no reason. I know it’s just a meme but we have to be intellectually honest, otherwise we’re no better than the liberals. If I can send this retort, one of our enemies can too.

[–] pinguinu@lemmygrad.ml 23 points 2 days ago

Was just gonna say that. Also the Soviet Union

[–] MayoPete@hexbear.net 9 points 2 days ago (2 children)

You don't need to "um, acshuully" yourself with propaganda. Otherwise you end up with a typical leftist wall of text meme that makes you look insecure about your own position.

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 37 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, but if propaganda is easily dismissed with a glib one-liner then it's not very effective. Could've made a similar meme with either "countries couped by the US/China" or "countries bombed in the last 50 years"

[–] MayoPete@hexbear.net 14 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Sure, "wars started by U.S. vs China" would be more effective here. But don't overestimate how much the average person knows about China or an foreign country if they are from burgerland. You will probably get more Winnie The Pooh Memes back than anything like the person I was replying to. Play to win, not to be 100% correct.

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

For sure. That's why I'd prefer not to make an obvious blunder out the gate. The point of these kinds of memes (as agitation) is to create an opening to talk about these things. Whatever you say will have more of an impact if the first response isn't some nitpicking asshole with an actual valid argument.
The nitpicking asshole will be present no matter what, but if they look reasonable, then your job will be that much harder.

edit: to expand on my point and to build off what @UmbraVivi@hexbear.net wrote: Propaganda for the masses through memes function in two ways in my mind - They create public discussions, where you're not arguing with any specific person, but rather proselytising to the reading audience. In that case you will get further if the other person does not appear as reasonable, which they will if they point out the meme is blatantly false (even if the actual argument the meme presents is completely valid.)
The other case is sort of like advertising, where the meme itself isn't super important, it's just there to build up a sort of brand identity of thoughts. In that case it's also not a good idea to present something that can be easily dismissed the first time the hypothetical thinker tries talking politics with someone who has read a little bit about stuff (China sucking ass with the sino-soviet split isn't the biggest of secrets, there's a good deal of chuds that know of it too. All ideologies have low-effort dunks).
If that's the case they'll either realise they're mistaken or they'll get mad, neither of which fosters anything productive.

This is not to say you have to "high-road" it or be completely correct or write a massive dissertation - None of that is necessary (or for the latter conductive) for good agitprop. I'm just saying making an obviously incorrect statement an integral part of your propaganda isn't a good idea.

[–] xijinpingist@hexbear.net 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

No, what you do is post something wrong which prompts people to correct you. But the actual answer is what you want to get across. Thus, 'face the wall' memes which I plan to post in threads encouraging Axis of Epstein to be adopted as a common phrase. Thus people will think, hmm...maybe we judged that Stalin fellow too harshly...

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

which prompts people to correct you

Only works when the general culture is one that supports your position. If you post something incorrect about China in most cases you're just furthering imperial propaganda. On hexbear you're just opening yourself up for dunks or pedantry, depending on what you post.

[–] xijinpingist@hexbear.net 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The whole thread is about appealing to normies

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 7 points 1 day ago

Yes so posting something wrong about China would not work.

[–] heiligerbimbam@lemmy.wtf -2 points 1 day ago (10 children)

It's easy for a native speaker to stir up a fuss here and throw in crude insults. You don't know me. The fact that you resorted to personal insults says more about your poor character than it does about me. The meme portrays China as the flawless, virtuous counterpart to the U.S., and I was right to criticize it by giving a few examples. I haven't defended the U.S. at all; they're terrible warmongers. Downplaying China’s transgressions strongly smacks of Chinese propaganda. No, I won't follow your crude links. We have a free press in Germany that reports on issues such as the reeducation and purging of the Uyghurs. I don't need your pseudo-lessons.

[–] bunnossin@hexbear.net 22 points 1 day ago

No, I won't follow your crude links.

No investigation, no right to speak. germany-cool

[–] Johnny_Arson@hexbear.net 25 points 1 day ago

We have a free press in Germany that reports on issues such as the reeducation and purging of the Uyghurs.

I know enough from this one sentence to know that you're a piece of shit Zionazi who doesn't actually give a fuck about Muslims other than to score points against your state's designated adversaries.

Thankfully this is hexbear where I am not bound by silly civility fetishism and have the free speech to tell you to follow your leader: i-am-adolf-hitler

[–] SexMachineStalin@hexbear.net 19 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

we have a free press in Germany

hahaha

Anyway, please tell the class about how the KKKraut free press responded to the crackdown on Jüdische Stimme, the hitler-detector speech by Marco Rubio in Munich over a month ago and Merz' comments on Iran and humanitarian law

Marg bar Alman

Anyway, when are the KKKrauts going to pay reparations for the genocide in Namibia?

[–] Cowbee@hexbear.net 9 points 1 day ago

By "free press" you mean "dominated by capital," and since capital dominates the German state, this also means it conforms largely with the views of capital from a legal basis as well. That's why German press is so Zionist and tries to whitewash the Palestinian genocide, while going gung-ho into whatever mythologizing is useful to capital when speaking of enemies of the German state. The press and state both serve the dominant class in society, they cannot exist outside of that context. Outlets that run counter to capital are shunned, sanctioned, blacklisted, or minimized and undermined by the system itself, regardless of how truthful they are.

Germany has a free press

Unless you bring up Palestine.

[–] mathemachristian@hexbear.net 28 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

@xijinpingist@hexbear.net this is a meme you can use if you want

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 23 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Im not a native speaker. It's also a weak attempt at deflection to suddenly focus on language, when that hasn't been the source of critique for you. You're bad at rhetorics.

I dont know you, and yet I was right on every account. You haven't engaged with the material provided, you still cling to long debunked propaganda. China is not and has never been purging Uyghurs.

We have a free press in Germany

And they say Germans have no humor. Anyway go get arrested for opposing Israel.
If you actually read the "report" about Uyghurs in china, you'd realise how laughable it is. 7 anonymous sources interviewed are used to extrapolate data for millions of people - data that is disproven by the very sama dataset it uses. The report is supported by the purposely mistranslated "police files". You'd know this if you actually investigated the things you claim to know of, or if you actually had a free press that did what journalists claim to do. But you don't. You have a propaganda apparatus, and you trust it blindly.

I haven't defended the us at a ll

Another poor attempt at deflection. Focus on what.

Downplaying China’s transgressions strongly smacks of Chinese propaganda.

If you look through the threat or even actually just read my comments, you'll see noone is downplaying Chinas transgressions. You're just not mentioning any, so we are correcting your misinformation. Spreading misinformation is what propaganda is. You'd do well to actually engage critically with what you're presented by your capitalist media, instead of assuming they somehow don't have an agenda or a bias.

No I won't look at your crude links.

Called it. Scared to learn, content to continue to engage in a discussion that can go nowhere because your hubris handicaps you.
At least learn about Cho Gonda

edit: came up with an alternative dunk, here you go

Downplaying China’s transgressions strongly smacks of Chinese propaganda.

Downplaying the persecution of the german minority in the Sudetenland strongly smacks of bolshevik propaganda

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 19 points 1 day ago

My free press has just taught me how you guys chop off the head of a Muslim every day and force the rest to eat pork mixed with ground up Palestinians, yet you dare to speak on how others treat their citizens???

[–] reaper_cushions@hexbear.net 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Das mit der freien Presse ist spätestens seit der causa Hüsseyin Dogru einfach nur ein kompletter Witz. Aber ja, technisch gesehen sind du, ich und Friede Springer absolut gleichberechtigt bezüglich dessen, was wir in unseren Tageszeitungen veröffentlichen.

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Don't you guys have some pretty draconic laws about being anti-israel?

[–] mathemachristian@hexbear.net 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I don't know too much about it tbh, but as far as I know the laws are about racism and antisemitism in general. It is then up to the police to interpret what is antisemitic and what isn't in order to prosecute. And then also up to the judges discretion if it goes to trial. So for example there is no law that explicitly forbids "From the river to the sea" (as far as I(!) know) but if it could get "reasonably" interpreted as antisemitic you're fair game.

So you're at a rally and starting a chant or have a particular slogan as part of your speech, the whole rally could get disbanded and then they figure out the "exact legalities" later. The police are allowed to do mistakes in the name of combating antisemitism, you're not.

Again this is from kind of hearing and reading about it, not too knowledgeable about it.

https://theleftberlin.com/how-germany-tries-to-ban-the-slogan-from-the-river-to-the-sea/

Diese Mehrdeutigkeit sieht die Richterin nicht. Die Parole [from the river to the sea] könne nur bedeuten, das Existenzrecht Israels zu leugnen, da gefordert werde, einen palästinensischen Staat zu gründen, »für den Israel wegmuss«. Es sei »ganz klar«, dass damit das Massaker der Hamas gebilligt werde und damit Mord, Vergewaltigungen und dass Kinder massakriert wurden. Relevant sei nicht, was die Angeklagte für sich damit meine, sondern was bei unbeteiligten Dritten ankomme. Das Motto der Demo hält die Richterin für vorgeschoben, es sei offensichtlich nur um Palästina gegangen. Deswegen verurteilt sie die Angeklagte.

https://www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1184315.from-the-river-to-the-sea-berliner-gericht-verhaengt-geldstrafe-fuer-umstrittenen-losung.html

[–] Lowleekun@hexbear.net 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I mean he is kinda talking about that. The guy he mentions is a journalist that was sanctioned (no judge needed) for "wrong speak".

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I wasn't trying to dunk, he seemed knowledgeable, so I figured I'd ask in the hopes of learning more

[–] Lowleekun@hexbear.net 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Well yeah, germany was never really big on free speech, so people just don't care. The majority supports our "reason of state", due to decades of streamlined propaganda. Israel critique was fought against way before Oct. 7, that's just when it became obvious. The sanctions are new because they are an extra judicial way of destroying any person without a way for them to defend themselves.

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Same in Denmark. Soyvikings post about elections here was a fantastic summation of the danish civic mind. We've jailed people for liking facebook posts about Israel getting bombed

[–] brain_in_a_box@hexbear.net 3 points 1 day ago

Why do you write like the most insufferable person imaginable?

[–] UmbraVivi@hexbear.net 13 points 2 days ago

I think you're both right, it depends a lot on who you're talking to. If you're in a public debate against someone who might've done their homework, they could make you look like an idiot with this. But if you're posting sth like this on facebook or whatever, the masses are just gonna see this and not question it very much.

[–] xijinpingist@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago

I was really looking for some bad-ass "face the wall" ones but the memes in this thread have been a poor haul at best, mostly text comments criticizing China.

[–] xijinpingist@hexbear.net 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

What, in 1972? China lost that war. It was never more than a brief border clash anyway. They had one with India and one with the USSR over some islands when a river changed course.

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 23 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Sure they lost, but they shelled Vietnam. They also gave support to a big swathe of reactionairy movements across the globe during the sino-soviet split.

[–] Blakey@hexbear.net 13 points 1 day ago

Oh, well, if they LOST the war...

America hasn't been on the winning side of any of its wars since WWII but I hope you don't think that's a mitigating factor.

[–] blinfabian@feddit.nl -2 points 1 day ago (3 children)

also the annexation of tibet in thr 50s

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 12 points 1 day ago

Dude you've fallen for propaganda. China was invited in by local revolutionaries and helped them overthrow a literal slavelord-theocracy.

[–] Johnny_Arson@hexbear.net 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

You misspelled liberation. You can critique China on plenty actions such as supporting (briefly) the wrong side in Vietnam and Cambodia, but liberating a literal fucking slave state from its monarchy is not one of those things.

[–] blinfabian@feddit.nl -3 points 1 day ago (6 children)

is hexbear a tankieshithole? aw man, didnt realise :/

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Okay coming at you with less hostility: What do you think you know about Tibet? What have you actually researched - Not just picked up from a 9 year old Last Week Tonight video or some newspaper article sourcing second-hand anonymous sources, but what do you actually know about Tibet? How specifically are tibetans being oppressed by the chinese government? What was Tibet like before the revolution?

I'm going to steal an excerpt from a book (both book and excerpt was pointed out to me by @Cowbee@lemmy.ml in a comment a long time ago) and share them with you. I hope they actually encourage you to look into things instead of blindly trusting the propaganda that surrounds us.

Two excerpts from Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth:

Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries rested in the hands of small numbers of high-ranking lamas. Most ordinary monks lived modestly and had no direct access to great wealth. The Dalai Lama himself “lived richly in the 1000-room, 14-story Potala Palace.” [12]

Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, a member of the Dalai Lama’s lay Cabinet, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. [13] Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some Western admirers as “a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma.” [14] In fact it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served mainly as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order, protect their property, and hunt down runaway serfs.

Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their peasant families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they were bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeatedremoved, beginning at age nine. [15] The monastic estates also conscripted children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.

In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. There also were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. [16] The majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than slaves, the serfs went without schooling or medical care. They were under a lifetime bond to work the lord’s land — or the monastery’s land — without pay, to repair the lord’s houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand. [17] Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners lease them out to work in a distant location. [18]

As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no responsibility for the serf’s maintenance and no direct interest in his or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their masters, guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could neither organize nor strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a market context. The overlords had the best of both worlds.

One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: “Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished”; they “were just slaves without rights.” [19] Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a “liberation.” He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord’s men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he claimed. [20]

The serfs were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. They were taxed for religious festivals and for public dancing and drumming, for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being cast into slavery. [21]

The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.

Selection two, shorter: (CW sexual violence and mutilation)

The Tibetan serfs were something more than superstitious victims, blind to their own oppression. As we have seen, some ran away; others openly resisted, sometimes suffering dire consequences. In feudal Tibet, torture and mutilation — including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation — were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves, and runaway or resistant serfs. [22]

Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: “When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion.” [23] Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then “left to God” in the freezing night to die. “The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking,” concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet. [24]

In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, gouging out eyes, breaking off hands, and hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling. The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master’s cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who wasremovedd and then had her nose sliced away. [25]

Earlier visitors to Tibet commented on the theocratic despotism. In 1895, an Englishman, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the populace was under the “intolerable tyranny of monks” and the devil superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama’s rule as “an engine of oppression.” At about that time, another English traveler, Captain W. F. T. O’Connor, observed that “the great landowners and the priests… exercise each in their own dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal,” while the people are “oppressed by the most monstrous growth of monasticism and priest-craft.” Tibetan rulers “invented degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstition” among the common people. In 1937, another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, “The Lamaist monk does not spend his time in ministering to the people or educating them. […] The beggar beside the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is used to increase their influence and wealth.” [26] As much as we might wish otherwise, feudal theocratic Tibet was a far cry from the romanticized Shangri-La so enthusiastically nurtured by Buddhism’s western proselytes.

edit: I would also encourage you to look at how tibetans (and other non-han ethnicities) are treated by the chinese government and compare it to how the US or the EU treats regions with ethnic minorities. One simple example: Tibetan is the language used in schools in Tibet. The same cannot be said for native american tribes in the US.

[–] RedWizard@hexbear.net 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 2 points 1 day ago

Thanks!
By the way do you have the longass comment about china and xinjiang and tiananmen? The one with formatted headlines and everything. I've been looking for it, but can't find it. It usually gets posted in response to libs like the ones in this thread

[–] Cowbee@hexbear.net 7 points 1 day ago

Hexbear does have communists, yes. As @BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net pointed out, Tibet waa a feudal slave society that the PLA aided in liberating. China has made missteps, but liberating the slaves and serfs from Tibet was not one of them.

[–] xijinpingist@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago

The situation in Tibet was as described. The lamas kept serfs which are slaves. They did everything you'd expect medieval pieces of shit to do, including the things Epstein did on that island.

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Lmao "oh no my uneducated notions about the world are challenged!" Go back to your echo chamber.
Tibetans being serfs to the Dalai Lama is surface-level knowledge, so common that even wikipedia, as biased as it is, has to acknowledge it.

If you're going to chime in on a discussion, then you need to do a basic level of investigation first or at least have the humility to acknowledge your deficiency when it is pointed out.
In better words: no investigation, no right to speak

[–] Johnny_Arson@hexbear.net 7 points 1 day ago
[–] RedWizard@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

You should really dispel yourself of this strange "tankie" notion you have. You're only alienating your allies, and getting nothing but barbarism in return. Also, give BanMeFromPosting's reply a read, it's full of real history you should take the time to learn.

[–] xijinpingist@hexbear.net 3 points 1 day ago

You mean when the Red Army marched in to a literal theocratic medieval slaver state, overthrew it and started to teach women to read?
Where they strangled the last king with the entrails of the last priest? That Tibet? There's more to the story than Leo DiCaprio. Tibet was like Hawaii, it was going to get taken by somebody. The Dalai Lama isn't some saint. He's the one who kissed a kid and sucked his tongue on camera without realizing he was doing it. He totally ate the pizza with walnut sauce.