The Chinese government has built up the world’s largest known online disinformation operation and is using it to harass US residents, politicians, and businesses—at times threatening its targets with violence, a CNN review of court documents and public disclosures by social media companies has found.

The onslaught of attacks – often of a vile and deeply personal nature – is part of a well-organized, increasingly brazen Chinese government intimidation campaign targeting people in the United States, documents show.

The US State Department says the tactics are part of a broader multi-billion-dollar effort to shape the world’s information environment and silence critics of Beijing that has expanded under President Xi Jinping. On Wednesday, President Biden is due to meet Xi at a summit in San Francisco.

Victims face a barrage of tens of thousands of social media posts that call them traitors, dogs, and racist and homophobic slurs. They say it’s all part of an effort to drive them into a state of constant fear and paranoia.

  • Serinus@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Or maybe you could try presenting actual ideas. Do you not know what the books you supposedly read were about?

    • novibe@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Basically they are about (specially Blackshirts and Reds) how “libertarian” socialist experiments all failed, and were ultimately destroyed by national and international bourgeoisie.

      I think Critique of the Gotha Program by Marx is much better than the Communist Manifesto, as it’s also a critique of the libertarian socialist Germans.

      Like, if you want to get very sad, read about the politicides in Indonesia, Korea, South America etc. Communists (and I include anarchists, libertarians socialists, democratic socialists etc. here) have to organize in strong movements to survive.

      All communist experiments that lasted more than 1 years were either MLs or Maoists.

      We really should look at this and try to learn from it. It’s a fact, it’s just something that has happened.

      We have to understand why democratic socialism is vulnerable to being exterminated, and why ML and Maoism aren’t.

        • novibe@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Man if that’s what you got from what I said, idk what to tell you.

          I sure hope no one becomes a fascist after materially studying and analysing history. And if they have any shred of empathy as well of course.

        • novibe@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Nobody said he was… that is not the point.

          Would you be really shocked if “tankies” agreed the state sucks? They are… gasp… communists after all no? And communism is stateless, moneyless and classless, right?

          Like even “tankies” are anti-statists… they just disagree with people like you that we can reach communism without authoritarian revolution, creating a dictatorship of the proletariat, and first transitioning to socialism. And that doesn’t mean they agree the revolution and the proletariat dictatorship will be like in the USSR, Cuba, China etc.

          Marxists-Leninists and Maoists understand socialism will look different everywhere it comes, and will adapt to the culture and expectations of the working class of those places… only anti-communist leftists make the mistake of thinking “tankies” idolise the USSR or China. That what they want is an exact repeat of the Bolshevik Revolution…

          • jackalope@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            You very clearly didn’t watch the video. Your interpretation of the critique of the Gotha program is off by a mile.

            • Inmate@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Posting a lone YouTube video is indicative of a deep and fruitful intellectual bedrock. Lookout: this guy’s got answers 🤣!

            • novibe@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              I didn’t say anything about what the critique was…. I did make a typo saying libertarian socialist German communes. But I tried writing libertarian socialist German communists, which doesn’t make sense either, but the meaning was libertarian socialist Germans, or libertarian German communists.

              In any case, I never said it was the main point of the text either……

    • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Why should you listen to me when the people I referenced are more knowledgeable? That was the point. Read.

      • Serinus@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Because I don’t care. And you haven’t made me care.

        You have a bit of time here to make some kind of point to make us interested in the hours you want us to spend. You haven’t accomplished that.

        It’s like trying to sell someone on coming to your space opera production when all you’ve done so far is sing off key for six seconds.

        No? Why would anyone want to voluntarily subject themselves to that. I don’t need to spend five hours of my evening attending your play to know that it probably sucks.

        If it were any good, you’d be able to make a small, interesting point out of it.

        Do I want to learn more about your hemorrhoids? No. Fuck no, dude. That’s not how I’m spending my evening.

        • daltotron@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          You know while I do empathize with being asked to care about something and being annoyed at that, it’s also annoying to be inundated with takes from people on complicated subjects, who aren’t willing to put in some hours worth of work. Nobody’s going to be willing to personally walk you through the subject matter and do all of the intellectual labor for you specifically, that’s an unreasonable request of them, and frankly, less efficient than just reading.

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Sure, but you need to sell someone on why the time is worth spending. Nobody here is asking anyone to walk them through the subject matter, just give an idea of why the subject matter is worth digging into.

            I personally have read the The Communist Manifesto, and when paired with what I know about human nature and how it turned out in practice, my conclusion is that it’s a bunch of idealistic nonsense. It can only work in the way described if everyone buys in and the leadership is noble, which is true for pretty much every governmental system out there (dictatorships can work well if the dictator works in the interests of the people). It doesn’t work well when you remove the assumption, because people will game the system and consolidating power is a recipe for disaster.

            And that’s why liberal democracy has worked so well. Instead of assuming people are good and consolidating power is beneficial, it instead mitigates the damage bad actors can cause. There are obviously downsides, but the average liberal democracy should be better off than the average dictatorship.

            So I’m not going to pitch The Communist Manifesto because I find it uninteresting. I will, however, pitch How Democracies Die, which is an interesting look at how bad actors have subverted or attempted to subvert democracy to turn it into authoritarianism, and it culminates in a discussion about Donald Trump and similar political figures. You won’t find a pitch for an ideal political system, but you will find examples of weaknesses in past and existing institutions, and I think that’s a lot more interesting than a non-existent, “ideal” system that we don’t fully understand.

            • Serinus@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              This is a great example of how you can take complicated subjects and express the ideas in a simple way while still recommending further reading. I’m absolutely more likely to read How Democracies Die now than I am to read anything the tankies have suggested.

              If you can’t explain something to a five year old then you don’t really understand it.

              I’m convinced the tankies understand less about government than they do about social media techniques and creating a cult.

              Hell, I’m even trying to help them. Novel ideas are good for everyone. It’s why we believe in freedom of speech and not banning books. Trying to bandwagon and browbeat and mock people into joining your “cause” is… less helpful.

      • Serinus@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        If you got anything out of it other than a sense of pretentiousness, you should be able to extract and express some ideas from it without going into detail.

        Instead you just sound like a cult.

        • RichCaffeineFlavor@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          How do you summarize a history book? The detail is the entire point. If simply stating the conclusions would work you wouldn’t tell people to produce sources. All you’re doing is making excuses for yourself to be lazy and anti-intellectual. And you’re making it impossible for yourself to be exposed to ideas that take any amount of time or effort to articulate.