Sure. As a matter of historicaly development, we know, as Marxists, that liberal capitalist societies, whether they have the formal institutions of representative democracy or not, tend to develop due to the tendencies of economic development the social consequences of the later and the political conjunctures, into fascistic or fascist political regimes and societies. But these are tendencies, they aren’t metaphysical or mathematical necessities. Even if we always saw every liberal democracy transform into outright into fascism, this doesn’t make them the same thing. If you were actually under a fascist government you would quickly realise the difference.

Fascism is partly characterized by it’s ideological and other superstructural features, but this is only a partial understanding. A fuller understanding notes that such states have only emerged in contexts of capitalist decay and crisis and act as a safety valve through which the capitalist class reestablishes political supremacy over the workings classes. However, I would point out that while capitalists are generally key parts of an any fascist state, the relationship between a powerful fascist state and individual enterprises (such as in Nazi Germany) does tip more and more towards the arbitrary power of the central executive government, to the point where they are more eager than capitalists to jeopardize profits for political objectives.

I’m obviously not saying that liberals have not engaged in extreme racism, colonialism, and genocide. Actually, from a historical point of view, they have been the best at it. It also isn’t wrong to say that in many respects fascism is also charaterized by the turning inward, the domestic usage, of the coercive, violent means of political repression which are innovated and developed in colonies. As Aimé Cesaire pointed out, fascism is like imperialism turned inwards. Modern America often treats many people internally in a fascistic way, embodied by the prison-industrial complex, especially if you are a very active, radical activist, or were or are in the past or present a member of a revolutionary group like the Black Panthers, or more generally a poor immigrant, a racial minority interacting with cops, or many other scenarios. The American state, like the British and French states, their political and economic elites, have already partly fascicized, are undergoing the process. But I really don’t think we’re passed the point of the nature of the political regime changing sufficiently to call them all fully fascist states. After Ukraine, the USA is the closest.

This is also why it is so weird and unnecessary to me when people just say that liberal democracy is the same thing as fascism. The fact that two things are linked or that one has tendencies that lead it to transform into, produce, be replaced by the other does not mean that they’re the same. Actually it implies the opposite, otherwise there would be no transformation to begin with. Take the Italian government. It is filled with realy, ideologically convinced fascists. But it does not find itself in a situation where, even as a unified coalition of Mussolini fans, they cannot actually find any means to exert fully fascist politics in defiance of the EU’s neoliberal economic agenda, nor NATO’s political agenda. Meloni does actually use the classic fascist technique of appealing to leftist sounding points. She recently went on Italian television and shit all over Macron and the French for enganging in neocolonialism against Françafrique, explaining the monetary system on tv and how most gold a child will mine in the period will end up in the French central bank. The difference with the Ukrainian government is that the material conditions of Ukraine allow, actually force, the government to fascicize beyond the confines of it’s own ideology and extend this to society more broadly and more radically. There is not even the pretence of liberal democracy in Ukraine amongst actual Ukrainians, let alone the Russophone Ukrainians or Russians of the east.

We have different words for a reason: to refer to different things. In this case, different types of political regimes. A liberal political regime is different to fascist political regime. The transition might be gradual or appear relatively continuous, but so was the emergence of feudalism and capitalism.

I’m hardly ever this condescending. I’ve made a special exception to hexbear users who’ve been brigading almost all posts about China and Russia since you federated again.

You’ve been telling everyone how you feel about libs since you federated, so I’m sure you will continue with or without me.

I know it’s tough to face the light and meet the wider world, but outside the basement you’ve been keeping yourself for three years, you should expect that people giggle at your idiocy, at best.

Hey I’m not drunk!

I can understand that because you feel duped, you find it hard to trust anything the US says today.

I didn’t feel duped, though. It was clearly an insane lie meant to justify a neocon, hawkish invasion of Iraq and Bush Jr was desperate to “finish the job” and get a pat on his back by Bush.

The world is super complex. Not everything the West does is good - there’s plenty of examples in history, less from present day but definitely cases (Iraq is an awful example). Similarly, not everything China does is bad, far from it. I’ve travelled there extensively and work with Chinese citizens every single day. I have no hate for Chinese people - count many as my friend and they’re both hard working and fun to be around after work (once you get to know them). There’s plenty of things to like in China. And once you get to know Chinese people well, they will tell you story after story about the insanity inside their own country - that they are well aware of. They laugh at their own government.

So I’m not confused about the balance of things. On balance, the West is a far better influence on the world and care-taker of its citizens than China is. And let’s not get started on the Russian state, which is an oligarchic kleptocracy driven to violence by its isolated dictator.

If you payed closer attention

Real challenge right there.

I would not call them far left tbh. There’s something else about them that irks me. It honestly feels more North Korean to me and that ain’t left by any stretch of the imagination. It seems to be more authoritarian minded.

Lol Hu is 80 years young, just like our boy

Imagine for a split second that the strongest government in the world is constantly attempting to cause the overthrow of your legitimately popular government, despite it being popular and significantly beloved by almost all people there. This external, most powerful government in the world tried to cause unrest in every possible way, including funding all opposition groups and organizations regardless of their violent/genocidal intent (e.g. Falun Gong, Islamic terror groups) and cause unrest on your borders (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Korea).

What do you do? When good faith polling shows that you’re popular and fulfilling the needs and desires of your country’s working class but a foreign press tries to speak about the terribleness and need for overthrow, do you just let that happen with more money and propoganda than you can possibly provide to support yourself? Or do you censor the BS and report to your population that these images/ideas/orgs are actually subversive and attempting to change the government they legitimately love.

In this hypothetical situation, what do you propose? Allowing the propaganda but claiming it’s wrong has failed in many projects, and resulted in massacres once fascism won (Chile, Indonesia). Just trying to set up a wall of no information works for a bit, but info can cross anyways (USSR). Allowing limited access if you search for it but not allowing it’s widespread propagation is the method of china. A VPN allows you to see it all, but it can’t be spread too widely before it is stopped from being viral.

Do you have a better solution? Because this is how China presents itself and how the Chinese population sees it

And in hindsight, not such a great person. Or at least had a lot of negatives to go along with his positives. Probably best to hard code not only a term limit, but an age limit on elected officials. I’m tired of the world being run by geriatrics. Culture seems to be consistently 20 year ahead of government.

Unlike in China, the people here actually have the right to vote. That right does not exist in China

According to their respective peoples, China has an infinitely more vibrant and responsive democracy than the United States.

I’d hate to think you’d be so blind to the irony of saying such a thing as ‘wearing the skin of democracy’ if you were living in the west.

Either way I’d be ashamed to act like you have and speak despite having such ignorance about the Chinese system of democracy.

Democracy is when you vote between red man and blue man, both of whom have the same policies.

It’s a one-party state with all candidates chosen by the party.

I much prefer all those two or three party states where the candidates are chosen by their respective parties on the marching orders of the capitalist class

lmao dog you shoulda just said “i don’t know anything about that, why don’t you tell me?”

it still would have taken you zero effort and you’d have avoided embarrassing yourself

So you don’t know the structure

It’s a one-party state with all candidates chosen by the party.

It may wear the skin of a democracy, but it is not a democracy.

This is the vaguest description ever and it’s not even correct with the vague points. There are multiple parties, and given that there are multiple parties the candidates certainly aren’t chosen by one party.

How are candidates chosen? Who elects them? When are elections held? What is the structure of the elections?

Do you know any of these things? Serious question. Have you ever investigated and learned this topic thoroughly? You know how the US system works I assume, I bet you vaguely understand some other systems too, like parliamentary ones such as the UK (or not, could be wrong). Have you ever actually investigated the topic or have you just passively repeated vague statements made by other people who are also passively repeating vague statements about it?

If you want me to I can in fact give you a fairly good summary of how the Chinese system actually works. But do you even want to know? Are you actually open to learning?